Monday, January 28, 2008

Rotogravure

Rotogravure (roto or gravure for short) is a type of intaglio printing process, in that it involves etching the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is stamped onto a copper cylinder because, like offset and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press. The vast mass of gravure presses print on reels of paper, quite than sheets of paper. Sheetfed gravure is a modest, specialty market. Rotary gravure presses are the best and widest presses in operation, printing everything from narrow labels to 12-feet-wide rolls of vinyl flooring. Additional operations may be in-line with a gravure press, such as saddle stitching services for magazine/brochure work.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Multiple fruit

A multiple fruit is one fashioned from a cluster of flowers called an inflorescence. Each flower produces a fruit, but these grown-up into a single mass Examples are the pineapple, edible fig, mulberry, osage-orange, and breadfruit.

In the photograph on the right, stages of flowering and fruit development in the noni or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) can be experiential on a single branch. First an inflorescence of white flowers called a cranium is produced. After fertilization, each flower develops into a drupe, and as the drupes make bigger, they become connate (merge) into a multiple fleshy fruit called a syncarpet.

There are also many dry multiple fruits, e.g.

Tuliptree, multiple of samaras.
Sweet gum, multiple of capsules.
Sycamore and teasel, multiple of achenes.
Magnolia, multiple of follicles.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Batsman

A batsman in the sport of cricket is, depending on context: Any players will perform for batting. A player whose expert in the game is batting. During the play of a cricket match, two members of the batting team are on the field, although their team-mates wait off the field. Those two players are the existing batsmen. Each batsman stands near one of the two wickets also end of the cricket pitch near the centre of the ground.

The two batsmen have different roles:

The striker stands in front of the wicket nearest him and attempts to protect it from balls bowled by the opposing bowler from the other wicket. The non-striker stands stopped near the bowler's wicket. While protecting his wicket, the striker may also hit the ball into the field and attempt to run to the opposite wicket, exchanging places with the non-striker. This score a run, the two batsmen may continue to exchange places, scoring additional runs, until members of the fielding team gather and return the ball to either wicket.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Pawpaw

Pawpaw (Asimina) also known as a prairie banana or Ozark banana, is a genus of eight or nine species of small trees with large leaves and fruit, native to southeastern North America. The genus includes the largest edible fruit native to North America. They are understorey trees of deep fertile bottomland soils. The name, also spelled paw paw, paw-paw, and papaw, probably derives from the Spanish papaya, perhaps due to the superficial similarity of their fruit. Pawpaw is in the same family Annonaceae as the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, and soursop, and it is the only member of that family not confined to the tropics.

The pawpaws are shrubs or small trees, reaching heights of 2 to 12 m tall. The leaves are alternate, simple ovate, entire, 20 to 35 cm long and 10 to 15 cm broad. The northern, cold-tolerant common pawpaw is deciduous, while the southern species are often evergreen. The fetid flowers are produced singly or in clusters of up to eight together; they are large, 4 to 6 cm across, perfect, with six sepals and petals (three large outer petals, three smaller inner petals). The petal color varies from white to purple or red-brown. Pollinated by scavenging carrion flies and beetles, the flowers emit a weak scent which attracts few pollinators, thus limiting fruit production. Larger growers sometimes locate rotting meat near the trees at bloom time to increase the number of blowflies. Asimina triloba is the only larval host of the Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly.

The fruit is a large edible berry, 5 to 16 cm long and 3 to 7 cm broad, weighing from 20 to 500 g, with numerous seeds; it is green when unripe, maturing to yellow or brown. It has a flavor somewhat similar to both banana and mango, varying significantly by cultivar, and has more protein than most fruits.

History

The earliest documentation of pawpaws is in the 1541 report of the de Soto expedition, who found Native Americans cultivating it east of the Mississippi River. The Lewis and Clark Expedition depended and sometimes subsisted on pawpaws during their travels. Chilled pawpaw fruit was a favorite dessert of George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson was certainly familiar with it as he planted it at Monticello.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Polymer

Polymer is a substance collected of molecules with large molecular mass collected of repeating structural units, or monomers, connected by covalent chemical bonds. The word is resulting from the Greek, πολυ, polu, "many"; and μέρος, meros, "part". Well known examples of polymers contain plastics, DNA and proteins.

While the term polymer in popular usage suggests "plastic", polymers consist of a large class of natural and synthetic materials with a variety of properties and purposes. Natural polymer materials such as shellac and amber have been in utilize for centuries. Biopolymers such as proteins (for example hair, skin and division of the bone structure) and nucleic acids take part in crucial roles in biological processes. A variety of other natural polymers survive, such as cellulose, which is the major constituent of wood and paper.