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Scientific and Recreational Diving in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary

2009-07-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary (TBNMS) is primarily known for its vast number of shipwrecks. An estimated 200 shipwrecks reside within and just outside the sanctuary’s waters. These wrecks range from nineteenth century lake schooners and paddleboats to perhaps Thunder Bay’s last wreck, the German freighter Nordmeer, which wrecked near Thunder Bay Island in 1966.

Each year hundreds of recreational divers come to TBNMS to brave the chilly waters of Lake Huron for a chance to glimpse sunken history. In addition to the recreational divers, the sanctuary has a team of scientific and archaeological divers working to protect, preserve and learn more about the sanctuary’s known wrecks as well as research and explore for undiscovered wrecks.

Scientific diving requires additional skills and training above and beyond what is required for a typical recreational diver. While diving to depths greater than 30 meters can be considered advanced for a recreational diver, imagine having to dive to that depth and greater to set up equipment or take samples!

The chilly water temperatures of Lake Huron also require divers to use dry-suits almost all year long. Water near the bottom of the Middle Island Sinkhole in early September is a brisk 38 degrees Fahrenheit!

TBNMS divers have played an important role in sinkhole exploration. Scientists depend on the divers to collect samples of the purple and white microbial mats at the bottom of the sinkhole and deploy and position instrumentation, such as the respiration chambers and tripods for accurate data collection. Divers also provide underwater photographs and video of the sinkholes.

What is Geothermal Energy

2009-07-16T01:39:00.000-07:00

Several technologies have been urbanized to take benefit of geothermal energy. Geothermal is the heat from the earth. This heat can be drawn from the earth using many sources like hot water or steam reservoirs deep in the earth that are accessed by drilling; geothermal reservoirs located near the earth's surface, mostly located in western states, Alaska, and Hawaii; and the shallow ground near the Earth's surface that maintains a relatively constant temperature of 50°-60° F.

This variety of geothermal resources allows them to be used on both large and small scales. A utility can use the hot water and steam from reservoirs to drive generators and produce electricity for its customers. Other applications apply the heat produced from geothermal directly to various uses in buildings, roads, agriculture, and industrial plants. Still others use the heat directly from the ground to provide heating and cooling in homes and other buildings.

Other geothermal resources exist miles beneath the earth's surface in the hot rock and magma there. In the future, these resources may also be useful as sources of heat and energy.

CLONING

2009-07-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut presented Dolly, the cloned sheep, to a surprised world, ethicists and policymakers have been striving with the settling implications of his study. For years, cloning of adults, animals or humans has been largely the stuff of science invention. Because the successful cloning of a six-year-old sheep, many of the assumptions and questions being raised have roots in the fictional: Could Hitler or the Incan Ice Mummy brought back to life? Would humans be cloned only to cannibalize their organs?

Uses of Cloning

• The production of animals engineered to take human genes for the making of certain. proteins that could be used as drugs; the proteins would be take out from the animal’s
milk and used to treat human diseases

• The mass creation of livestock that have been hereditarily customized to possess certain desirable behavior.
• The upholding of endangered species.
• The production of offspring by infertile couples.
• The production of offspring frees of a potentially disease-causing genetic fault carried by one member of a couple; the person without the defect could be cloned.

From few years now India may not have goa beach.

2009-06-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

One of the India's most beautiful beaches is the Goa beach.

One monsoon night in the year 2000, a 240 m long ship, River Princess, broke its anchor and got stuck ion cost . Since then it hasn't budged and the result? Twenty thousand tonnes of rusting metal, on Goa's beaches. This has led to an environmental disaster as these beaches are now almost on the verge of disappearing as the ship interferes with the natural movement of sand.

The Goa government has been accused for not taking any action to remove this ship. Now, 9 years later, just before this monsoon, the government seems to have woken up. The government is placing massive tubes, which they hope will serve as artificial sand dunes, like shock-absorbers between the land and the sea. Tubes cost Rs 6 crore.

The government even introduced a new law that enabled them to remove the ship.
They have permitted this to deliberately degrade and that is the shameful part.
But the damage is more widespread. Scientists say, while Goa thrives on tourism, the industry is also answerable for coastal degradation.

With no one to check its 100 kms seashore line sand dunes and plants on the beaches have been wiped off destroying much of the coasts natural security system.

Swine Flu: HK Quarantines Hundreds At Hotel

2009-05-02T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of tourists and employees were under quarantine in a downtown Hong Kong hotel Saturday after a Mexican guest tested positive for swine flu. With the outbreak on its doorstep, China suspended direct flights from the Latin American country.

Hours after the first confirmed case in Asia was reported, the continent got its second: Tests showed a South Korean woman also had the disease. She has been under quarantine since returning earlier this week from Mexico, the epicenter of the disease.

Sixteen people in Mexico and one toddler in the U.S. have died from the disease. More than 650 cases have been confirmed worldwide, with 397 in Mexico. Canada, Israel, New Zealand and more than a half-dozen European countries have also confirmed cases.

Source: http://www.boston.com/

Car Crashes

2009-04-24T04:11:00.000-07:00

Fashion Life

2009-04-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

Not content with offering cut-price lobsters and champagne Aldi supermarkets have ventured into the beauty world. And the product that’s hitting the headlines is called Lacura Wrinkle Stop and costs £6. And why is it causing a commotion? For two reasons - it claims to be the new Botox and it contains a form of snake venom.

This isn’t the first time a “snake venom” like substance has been used in creams, the featured image is of Planet Skincare’s daily moisturiser which costs up to £60 per pot. It literally flew off the shelves when Selfridges first introduced it, and top starlets including Hilary Swank are said to be fans.

The chemical involved isn’t exactly snake venom, but a synthetic form based on the paralysing effects of the Asian temple viper snakes. Yes that’s right paralysing effects, hence why it’s the new Botox, the idea is that it stops those pesky nerve signals so your face doesn’t contract which means you can’t get lines. The synthetic venom is called Syn-Ake. Testers claimed that with a twice daily application for four weeks a 52% reduction in the appearance of wrinkles was noted.

It is very interesting, and is sure to cause bedlam in Aldi supermarkets on 20th April. I’m personally a bit of a sceptic about these things, I believe in daily moisturising and SPF 15 every day. But there is no doubt that we all want to look younger and this is preferable to Botox as there’s no injecting poisonous chemicals into your skin. What do you make of anti-aging products? Are they real or just a scam? Will you be trying this snake venom cream?

Source: http://www.myfashionlife.com/

Scared Silly

2009-04-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka Military Says It Pushes Back Rebels

2009-03-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka's military said Thursday it had brushed off a Tamil Tiger counterattack by killing 30 guerrillas, pinning the rebels in a rapidly shrinking area and moving closer to ending the quarter-century-long civil war.

Ethnic Tamil lawmakers, meanwhile, rejected the president's invitation for talks, urging the government to first ensure the safety of civilians trapped in the war zone.

The latest fighting took place on the edge of an enclave controlled by the rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, in Sri Lanka's war-ravaged north. The rebels tried to attack government lines at the village of Iranaippalai, the military said.

"We successfully repulsed the attack and over 30 LTTE cadres were reported killed," military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said.

Nanayakkara said a number of soldiers were wounded in the battle, but did not give details.

Access to the war zone is restricted and it was not possible to confirm the report.

The rebels have been battling since 1983 for a separate Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka where it once controlled a large swath of territory, but a series of major victories by government forces in recent weeks has pushed them into a small pocket on the coast.

The rebel holdouts — along with tens of thousands of terrified civilians — are confined to just 8.4 square miles (21 square kilometers) of jungle and beach on the northeastern coast.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa invited the Tamil politicians for talks Thursday evening to discuss the situation in the north. The Tamil National Alliance, the largest political party for ethnic Tamils, said it told Rajapaksa it would not participate until the government halts its military campaign and gives more food and medicine to people trapped in the war zone.

"Any political dialogue can be meaningful only when the humanitarian crisis comes to an end," TNA lawmaker Rajavarothayam Sambanthan told a news conference, adding that about 50 civilians are killed in the fighting daily.

The United Nations and European Union have recently voiced concern over the fate of civilians in Sri Lanka's conflict.

The government has rejected criticism it has not done enough to help them, and Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management Mahinda Samarasinghe said Thursday that "sufficient food and medical supplies" had been sent to help the people. The government last week sent 10 tons of medicine — enough for two weeks, he said.

"We will ensure that there will be no shortage," he told a news conference.

John Holmes, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, said Thursday that the international organization estimates between 150,000 and 190,000 civilians are trapped by the fighting and cannot escape, resulting in dozens of deaths each day.

The government says the number is 50,000 to 60,000, and accuses the rebels of using them as human shields in a bid to avoid defeat.

U.S. diplomat Rosemary DiCarlo said the U.S. has urged Sri Lanka's government to cease shelling in areas where there are large numbers of civilians, including hospitals.

"We've had promises, but we need to see results," she said. "The government of Sri Lanka must pay more attention to protecting the civilians in this conflict."

Sri Lanka's U.N. ambassador Hewa M.G.S. Palihakkara told reporters he would recommend his government consider a pause in fighting if the rebels are cooperative.

"If the LTTE's ready to let these people go, I will posit it to my government to let these people go," Palihakkara said.

The military says more than 55,000 civilians have escaped since the beginning of January.

All are being put into temporary camps, and Samarasinghe said the government decided to transfer the management of camps from the military to a civilian agency, upon the recommendation of Holmes.

Red Cross and ICRC and UNHCR officials will be present when people are screened to make sure they are not rebels, he said.

The rebels could not be reached for comment, because communication with their stronghold has been severed.

ForMoreInfo: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVoaDFmbCYS-Usz9ACDRIengj21QD97649OG1

Varun’s Tongue Compounds: BJP

2009-03-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Struggling to resolve a rift between party president Rajnath Singh and general secretary Arun Jaitley, the BJP has been caught unawares by Varun Gandhi’s inflammatory remarks in Pilibhit.

Addressing an election rally, Varun, who is the BJP candidate from Pilibhit said, “If somebody lifts a hand against Hindus or thinks they are weak, (and that) there is nobody behind them, then I swear on the (Bhagvad) Gita that I will cut off that hand.” The two Muslim leaders of the BJP — Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Shahnawaz Hussain — have demanded an unconditional apology from Varun.

Former party president M Venkaiah Naidu, however, ruled out any action against Varun. “There is no question of taking any action against him. He is our party candidate.

Whatever he said, good or bad, the party is with him.” He added that the authenticity of the tapes would be verified.

BJP spokesperson Siddarthnath Singh advised candidates to exercise caution while delivering speeches. He said the BJP would decide on its future course after the EC had verified the tapes.

BJP spokesperson in Parliament, Shahnawaz Hussain, said, “We are of the strong belief that Varun Gandhi should apologise.

The BJP dissociates itself from his remarks. This is not what the party stands for.” Sources said that Hussain, who is the convenor of the Minority Cell in the BJP, objected to Gandhi’s speech at the Central Election Committee meet.

Party vice-president Naqvi condemned Varun’s statement, saying that such kind of language did not have any place in the BJP. He said Varun’s speech was a manifestation of his family and the Congress culture.

Korea Plans To Launch A Satellite

2009-03-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) North Korea told two U.N. agencies it plans to launch a communications satellite between April 4-8 - an unprecedented disclosure seen as trying to fend off international worries that it is really a test of long-range missile technology.

The notification to the International Maritime Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization underscores the communist regime is intent on pushing ahead the launch in an attempt to gain greater leverage in negotiations with the United States, analysts say.

North Korea specified two "danger" zones - one close to Japan - in its disclosure of the satellite launch plan. Pyongyang gave the U.N. agencies coordinates where parts of its multiple-stage rocket would fall, making it clear the projectile would fly over Japan toward the Pacific.

One of the zones is in waters off Japan's west coast, less than 75 miles (120 kilometers) from its northwestern shore, according to the agencies. The other lies in the middle of the Pacific between Japan and Hawaii.

Though it is an international norm for countries to provide such specifics as a safety warning ahead of a missile or satellite launch, it was the first time the communist North has done so.

The U.S. and other governments have said any rocket launch — whether missile test or satellite - would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning North Korea from ballistic missile activity.

The U.N. agencies said Thursday that North Korea informed them by letter of the launch details the day before. It is the first time the regime has offered a safety warning ahead of a missile or a satellite launch, according to the South Korean government.

"They want to do the launch openly while minimizing what the international community may find fault with," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University. "The launch will earn North Korea a key political asset that would enlarge its negotiating leverage."

Countries planning a space launch or missile test normally notify maritime or aviation authorities so aircraft and ships can be warned to stay away from affected regions.

But North Korea did not do so ahead of its purported satellite launch in 1998 over Japan and a failed 2006 test-flight of a long-range missile, drawing international condemnations.

Few buy Pyongyang's claim that it needs a communications satellite when one of the nation's stated top national goals is addressing chronic food shortages.

Use of mobile phones, the Internet and international calls are tightly controlled in the totalitarian North.

"They might put a transistor on the rocket" and claim it was a satellite launch, said Hong Hyun-ik, a North Korea expert at the security think tank Sejong Institute, who is skeptical of the North's intentions.

Officials and experts have said even if a satellite is launched, the North's ultimate goal is to test and demonstrate its missile capabilities.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said Tuesday the North may be planning a space launch, but said the technology is no different from that of a long-range missile and its success would mean the country is capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

"If a three-stage space launch vehicle works, then that could reach not only Alaska and Hawaii but part of what the Hawaiians call the mainland and what the Alaskans call the lower 48," he told a Senate panel.

South Korea, Japan and the United States have warned the North against any rocket launch.

"It's provocative, it's not helpful and it's destabilizing," U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Thursday. "We think the North needs to desist, or not carry out this type of provocative act, and sit down ... and work on the process of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that a launch "will threaten the peace and stability in the region."

Analysts say a rocket launch would increase the stakes and, more importantly, the benefits the impoverished nation might get from negotiations with the U.S. and other countries trying to persuade it to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Mortage Woes Break Records

2009-03-05T21:39:00.000-08:00

Foreclosures are spreading by epidemic proportions, expanding beyond a handful of problem states and now affecting almost 1 in every 8 American homeowners.

It's an economic role-reversal: The economy, driven down by the collapse of the housing bubble, is causing the housing crisis to spread.

Figures released Thursday show that nearly 12 percent of all Americans with a mortgage — a record 5.4 million homeowners — were at least one month late or in foreclosure at the end of last year.

That's up from 10 percent at the end of the third quarter, and up from 8 percent at the end of 2007. In addition, the numbers now include many once-qualified borrowers who took out fixed-rate loans.

Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association also showed that a stunning 48 percent of homeowners who have subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages are behind on their payments or in foreclosure.

The reckless lending and borrowing practices in states like Florida, California and Nevada that were the epicenter of the problem are no longer driving up the nation's delinquency rate.

Instead, foreclosures are being fueled by a spike in defaults in places such as Louisiana, New York, Georgia and Texas, where the economy is rapidly deteriorating and unemployment is climbing.

"It's jobs. People are losing their jobs left and right," said Houston real estate agent Michael Weaster.

On Thursday, the Labor Department said new unemployment claims last week totaled 639,000, lower than expected, but still at elevated levels.

That trend highlights one of the biggest challenges confronting the Obama administration's mortgage-relief plan launched this week. While the $75 billion plan could help change the loan terms or refinance up to 9 million homeowners, unemployed borrowers will have a hard time qualifying.

The key to the housing market is what kind of workers are losing their jobs. Unemployment for people with college degrees, some college education or technical training — those most likely to own homes and have prime fixed-rate loans — has nearly doubled over the past six months, according to the bankers association.

To give debt-burdened homeowners a little more muscle to negotiate with their lenders, the House on Thursday passed a bill 234-191 that would to give bankruptcy courts the power to reduce mortgage payments.

The legislation would give bankruptcy judges — who now can modify loans for cars and student loans but not for primary residences — new power to cut the interest rate and principle on a home mortgage.

The Senate is expected to take up the measure in a couple of weeks.

The only bright spot in the foreclosure report was that the devastation wrought by subprime ARMs is waning. Their 30-day delinquency rate continues to fall and is at the lowest point since the first quarter of 2007. Most of those types of loans have made their way through the system as lenders stopped originating them in the first half of 2007.

That offers little comfort to Florida, where 60 percent of homeowners who have a subprime ARM are at least one payment behind and 1 in 5 of all mortgage holders are not current on their loans.

And while the worst is not over for Florida, the problems appear to be just beginning in once-healthy markets like Houston and New York.

The number of unsold homes in Houston skyrocketed to a 17-month supply in February from eight months in January because homeowners fear they will be in financial straits soon or already are, said Weaster, of Century 21.

And in the New York area, where the financial industry is handing out pink slips like ticker tape, homeowners who once had good credit are defaulting at an increasing clip.

Tata Nano

2009-02-26T04:47:00.000-08:00

Tata Motors said it will launch the much-awaited Tata Nano at a function in Mumbai on March 23, 2009. In select markets Nano can be expected to be seen on the road before the end of April but for the larger part of the country it will be towards mid-May or the second-half of May.

Finally the much anticipated launch is going to happen on 23rd of March but over and above it is understood that the Nano will get consumers only by the end of April or maybe May.

Vendors gave a sense that they have been supplying components to Tata Motors in small chunks, in fact they been gradually scaling it up and now from the month of April they will be supplying components for about 4,000-5,000 Nano per month.

The initial numbers as Tata Motors said that the first chunk or some Nano will be based at the dealership level from the first week of April and the bookings will start from the second week of April which essentially means that people will have to wait for to get their hands on Nano. So the initial numbers are going to grow because the vendors are gradually supplying them the components because there is not enough manufacturing scaling up that has been done. There are certain dealerships who have some good relationships with the existing customers, those customers may get some preference over the totally new customers and that set of customers may be able to book the car earlier than the rest.

This is been manufactured at Pune and Pantnagar. Sanand of course will take time at least by the end of this year or early next year only will they start manufacturing there. So till then there will be small amount of manufacturing that will be done out of these two plant. However it has to be seen what sort of response will be getting from consumers and how big will be the craze for Nano and how much will actually start selling. In select markets the car can be expected to be seen on the road before end of April but for the larger part of the country it will be towards mid-May or second-half of May. That is when one can expect to see the Nano in almost every corner of the country. Dealers say the booking amount initially could be anywhere between Rs 50,000-75,000.

Charging Solution For Mobile Phones

2009-02-18T04:09:00.000-08:00

The aim is to make a standard charging solution for mobile phones

If the GSM Association has its way, by 2012 most phones will use a standardized charger to power them. The association has announced a plan to standardize chargers across a spectrum of manufacturers.

Major manufacturers, including Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have joined the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) consortium. The list also includes major telecom companies like Vodafone, Orange, Qualcomm and Telefonica.
The aim is to make a standard charging solution implemented, probably using micro USB chargers. While some phones already have this feature, other manufacturers too are likely to join in, so that the standardization is achieved.

Apart from various benefits, this move could bring a reduction in the number of chargers produced, as old chargers will not become useless.
The move will also bring a considerable reduction in emission of greenhouse gases during manufacturing and transportation of replacement chargers.
The chargers, while remaining standard, will also be customized for "local" versions as some countries use proprietary plug points like the three pin plug used in the UK.

Object Verb Subject

2009-02-09T01:01:00.001-08:00

Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology, although it is rare among languages in general. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses. While the passive voice in English may appear to be in the OVS order, this is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence, for example Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject, Sam is the 'agent', who is acting on the 'patient,' the oranges, which are the object of the verb ate. In the passive voice, The oranges were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed so that patient is followed by verb, followed by agent. However, the oranges become the subject of the verb were eaten which is modified by the prepositional phrase by Sam which expresses the agent, maintaining the usual Subject Verb (Object) order. OVS sentences in English can be parsed when pronouns mark the case (Him like I.) But such a sentence is clearly nonstandard. This sort of reversed order can also be used in English when relating an adjective to a noun although here cold is a predicative adjective, not an object.

Line-scan camera systems

2009-02-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

A line-scan camera is a camera device containing a line-scan image sensor chip, and a focusing mechanism. These cameras are almost solely used in industrial settings to capture an image of a constant stream of moving material. Unlike video cameras, line-scan cameras use a single array of pixel sensors, instead of a matrix of them. Data coming from the line-scan camera has a frequency, where the camera scans a line, waits, and repeats. The data coming from the line-scan camera is commonly processed by a computer, to collect the one-dimensional line data and to create a two-dimensional image. The collected two-dimensional image data is then processed by image-processing methods for industrial purposes.

Line-scan technology is capable of capturing data extremely fast, and at very high image resolutions. Usually under these conditions, resulting collected image data can quickly exceed 100MB in a fraction of a second. Line-scan-camera–based integrated systems, therefore are usually designed to streamline the camera's output in order to meet the system's objective, using computer technology which is also affordable.

Line-scan cameras intended for the parcel handling industry can integrate adaptive focusing mechanisms to scan six sides of any rectangular parcel in focus, regardless of angle, and size. The resulting 2-D captured images could contain, but are not limited to 1D and 2D barcodes, address information, and any pattern that can be processed via image processing methods. Since the images are 2-D, they are also human-readable and can be viewable on a computer screen. Advanced integrated systems include video coding and optical character recognition (OCR).

Abiotic stress In Animals

2009-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

For animals, the most stressful of all the abiotic stressors is heat. This is because many species are unable to regulate their internal body temperature. Even in the species that are able to regulate their own temperature, it is not always a completely accurate system. Temperature determines metabolic rates, heart rates, and other very important factors within the bodies of animals, so an extreme temperature change can easily distress the animal’s body. Animals can respond to extreme heat, for example, through natural heat acclimation or by burrowing into the ground to find a cooler space. It is also possible to see in animals that a high genetic diversity is beneficial in providing resiliency against harsh abiotic stressors. This acts as a sort of stock room when a species is plagued by the perils of natural selection. A variety of galling insects are among the most specialized and diverse herbivores on the planet, and their extensive protections against abiotic stress factors have helped the insect in gaining that position of honor.

Llama

2009-01-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

The llama (Lama glama) is a South American camelid, widely used as a pack animal by the Incas and other natives of the Andes mountains. In South America llamas are still used as beasts of burden, as well as for the production of fiber and meat.

The height of a full-grown, full-size llama is between 5.5 feet (1.6 meters) to 6 feet (1.8 m) tall at the top of the head. They can weigh between approximately 280 pounds (127 kilograms) and 450 pounds (204 kilograms). At birth, a baby llama (called a cria) can weigh between 20 pounds (9 kilograms) to 30 pounds (14 kilograms). Llamas are very social animals and like to live with other llamas as a herd. Overall, the fiber produced by a llama is very soft and is naturally lanolin free. Llamas are intelligent and can learn simple tasks after a few repetitions. When using a pack, llamas can carry about 25%–30% of their body weight for several miles.

Llamas appear to have originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago. They migrated to South America and Asia about 3 million years ago. By the end of the last ice age (10,000–12,000 years ago) camelids were extinct in North America. As of 2007, there were over 7 million llamas and alpacas in South America and, due to importation from South America in the late 20th century, there are now over 100,000 llamas and 6,500–7,000 alpacas in the US and Canada.

Arctic Ocean

2009-01-12T22:57:00.001-08:00

Amundsen Gulf
Baffin Bay
Barents Sea
Beaufort Sea
Bering Sea
Chukchi Sea
Davis Strait
Denmark Strait
East Siberian Sea
Greenland Sea
Hudson Bay
James Bay
Kara Sea
Kara Strait
Labrador Sea
Laptev Sea
Lincoln Sea
Norwegian Sea
White Sea

Flax

2009-01-07T00:57:00.000-08:00

Flax (is a member of the genus Linum in the family Linaceae. It is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was probably first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent This is called as Jawas/Javas or Alashi in Marathi. Flax was extensively cultivated in ancient Egypt. (New Zealand flax is not related to flax, but was named after it as both plants are used to produce fibres.)

Flax is an erect annual plant growing to 1.2 m tall, with slender stems. The leaves are glaucous green, slender lanceolate, 20–40 mm long and 3 mm broad. The flowers are pure pale blue, 15–25 mm diameter, with five petals; they can also be bright red. The fruit is a round, dry capsule 5–9 mm diameter, containing several glossy brown seeds shaped like an apple pip, 4–7 mm long.

In addition to referring to the plant itself, "flax" may refer to the unspun fibres of the flax plant.

Chicxulub crater

2009-01-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

The Chicxulub Crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named—as well as the rough translation of the Mayan name, "the tail of the devil."The crater is more than 180 kilometers (110 mi) in diameter, making the feature one of the largest confirmed impact structures in the world; the impacting bolide that formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter.

The crater was discovered by Glen Penfield, a geophysicist who had been working in the Yucatán while looking for oil during the late 1970s. Evidence for the impact origin of the crater includes shocked quartz, a gravity anomaly, and tektites in surrounding areas. The age of the rocks and isotope analysis show that this impact structure dates from the end of the Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 million years ago. The impact associated with the crater is implicated in causing the extinction of the dinosaurs as suggested by the K–T boundary, although some critics argue that the impact was not the sole reasonand others debate whether there was a single impact or whether the Chicxulub impactor was one of several that may have struck the Earth at around the same time. Recent evidence suggests that the impactor may have been a piece of a much larger asteroid that broke up in a collision in distant space more than 160 million years ago.

Human languages

2008-12-25T23:27:00.001-08:00

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science of studying them falls under the purview of linguistics. A common progression for natural languages is that they are considered to be first spoken, then written, and then an understanding and explanation of their grammar is attempted.

Languages live, die, move from place to place, and change with time. Any language that ceases to change or develop is categorized as a dead language. Conversely, any language that is in a continuous state of change is known as a living language or modern language.

Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For instance, there are a few dialects of German similar to some dialects of Dutch. The transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual (see dialect continuum).

Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.)

The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Genetics

2008-12-15T22:18:00.000-08:00

Genetics (from Ancient Greek genetikos, “genitive” and that from genesis, “origin”), a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms.The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times 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 in a discrete manner—these basic units of inheritance are now called genes.
DNA, the molecular basis for inheritance. Each strand of DNA is a chain of nucleotides, matching each other in the center to form what look like rungs on a twisted ladder.

Genes correspond to regions within DNA, a molecule composed of a chain of four different types of nucleotides—the sequence of these nucleotides is the genetic information organisms inherit. DNA naturally occurs in a double stranded form, with nucleotides on each strand complementary to each other. Each strand can act as a template for creating a new partner strand—this is the physical method for making copies of genes that can be inherited.

The sequence of nucleotides in a gene is translated by cells to produce a chain of amino acids, creating proteins—the order of amino acids in a protein corresponds to the order of nucleotides in the gene. This is known as the genetic code. The amino acids in a protein determine how it folds into a three-dimensional shape; this structure is, in turn, responsible for the protein's function. Proteins carry out almost all the functions needed for cells to live. A change to the DNA in a gene can change a protein's amino acids, changing its shape and function: this can have a dramatic effect in the cell and on the organism as a whole.

Grain milk

2008-12-03T01:08:00.000-08:00

Grain milk is a milk substitute made from fermented grain or from flour. Grain milk can be made from oats, spelt, rice, rye, einkorn wheat or quinoa.

Grain milk looks very similar to cow's milk. It has a lower protein content and a higher carbohydrate content than cow's milk. Just as cow's milk is often fortified with Vitamin D, which it naturally lacks, grain milks may have calcium and some vitamins (especially B12) added to them.

Grain milk is low in saturated fat and contains no lactose, which is beneficial for those who are lactose intolerant. Grain milk also lacks milk protein, making it suitable for vegans and people with milk allergies.

Flavored grain milk can come in plain, vanilla, chocolate or a variety of other flavors. Like unflavored grain milk, it is often available with added nutrients. There are also grain milk cream and desserts available.

Horticulture

2008-11-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

In the area of horticulture, Defra has policy responsibility for work on horticultural production and marketing, potatoes and hops. Along with other UK Agriculture Departments, Defra administers schemes for growers, including the Producer Organisation (Fresh Fruit and Vegetables) Aid Scheme.Growers may also be eligible for payments under the Single Payment Scheme.

Defra's horticultural policy responsibilities extend to the following EU regimes:
* fresh and processed fruit and vegetables and bananas

* flowers and plants

* hops

Part of this responsibility includes attending EU Management Committees. These are meetings attended by EU Member States whose responsibility it is to give an opinion on proposals made by the Commission for the management of the regimes. Further information on Management Committees can be found on the Europa website.Defra commissions a variety of research which has relevance to the industry. Defra also sponsors the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent.

Tonicity

2008-11-19T03:48:00.000-08:00

Tonicity is a measure of blood capacity or effective osmolality in cell biology. Osmolality and osmolarity are properties of a particular solution, independent of any membrane. Tonicity is the base measurment for complex compounds with provides immunity to the body, and is equal to the sum of the concentrations of the solutes which have the capacity to exert an osmotic force across that membrane. Tonicity, also, depends on solute permemability (permeant solutes do not affect tonicity; impermeant solutes do affect tonicity). Tonicity is generally classified in three ranges; hypertonicity, hypotonicity and isotonicity. Hypertonic, isotonic and hypotonic solutions are defined in reference to a cell membrane by comparing the tonicity of the solution with the tonicity within the cell

Inner planet Venus

2008-11-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

Venus (0.7 AU) is close in size to Earth, (0.815 Earth masses) and like Earth, has a thick silicate mantle around an iron core, a substantial atmosphere and evidence of internal geological activity. However, it is much drier than Earth and its atmosphere is ninety times as dense. Venus has no natural satellites. It is the hottest planet, with surface temperatures over 400 °C, most likely due to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. No definitive evidence of current geological activity has been detected on Venus, but it has no magnetic field that would prevent depletion of its substantial atmosphere, which suggests that its atmosphere is regularly replenished by volcanic eruptions.

OpenGL 2.1

2008-11-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

OpenGL 2.1 was released on August 2, 2006 and is backward compatible with all prior OpenGL versions. OpenGL 2.1 incorporates the following functionality:

Shading Language revision 1.20 (GLSL)

to specify and query non-square matrix uniforms for use with the OpenGL Shading Language

Pixel buffer objects for efficient image transfers to and from buffer objects for commands such as glTexImage2D and glReadPixels.

This functionality corresponds to the ARB_pixel_buffer_object extension.

sRGB texture formats.

This functionality corresponds to the EXT_texture_sRGB extension.

Cognition

2008-10-30T02:27:00.001-07:00

Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines, but is generally accepted to mean the process of awareness or thought. For example, in psychology, it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of concepts; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of entities, can be modelled as societies which cooperate to form concepts. The autonomous elements of each 'society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate emergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity. Cognition can also be interpreted as "understanding and trying to make sense of the world".

Steel lattice

2008-10-21T02:10:00.000-07:00

The steel lattice is the most widespread form of construction. It provides great strength, low wind resistance and economy in the use of materials. Such structures are usually triangular or square in cross-section.

When built as a stayed mast, usually the whole mast is parallel-sided. One exception is the Blaw-Knox type.

When built as a tower, the structure may be parallel-sided or taper over part or all of its height. When constructed of several sections which taper exponentially with height, in the manner of the Eiffel Tower, the tower is said to be an Eiffelized one. The Crystal Palace tower in London is an example.

Single Message Authorisation/Clearing

2008-10-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

Some financial networks operate a single message solution, in which a transaction is authorised and cleared via the same message.

A transaction will be authorised via a pre-authorisation step, where the merchant requests the issuer to reserve an amount on the cardholder's account for a specific time, followed by completion, where the merchant requests an amount blocked earlier with a pre-authorisation. This transaction flow in two steps is often used in businesses such as hotels and car rental where the final amount is not known, and the pre-authorisation is made based on an estimated amount. Completion may form part of a settlement process, typically performed at the end of the day when the day's completed transactions are submitted. All these messages will be sent "on-line" from the merchant acquirer to the issuing bank.

Bluetooth 1.2

2008-09-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

Faster Connection and Discovery

Adaptive frequency-hopping spread spectrum (AFH), which improves resistance to radio frequency interference by avoiding the use of crowded frequencies in the hopping sequence.

Higher transmission speeds in practice, up to 721 kbit/s, as in 1.1.

Extended Synchronous Connections (eSCO), which improve voice quality of audio links by allowing retransmissions of corrupted packets, and may optionally increase audio latency to provide better support for concurrent data transfer.

Host Controller Interface (HCI) support for three-wire UART.

Ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2005.

VOR

2008-09-23T02:33:00.001-07:00

The next major advance in "beam based" navigation system was the use of two signals that varied not in sound, but in phase. In these systems, known as VHF omnidirectional range, or VOR, a single master signal is sent out continually from the station, and a highly directional second signal is sent out that varies in phase 30 times a second compared to the master. This signal is timed so that the phase varies as the secondary antenna spins, such that when the antenna is 90 degrees from north, the signal is 90 degrees out of phase of the master. By comparing the phase of the secondary signal to the master, the angle can be determined without any physical motion in the receiver. This angle is then displayed in the cockpit of the aircraft, and can be used to take a fix just like the earlier RDF systems, although it is, in theory, easier to use and more accurate.

Sight

2008-09-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

Sight or vision is the ability of the brain and eye to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible range (light) interpreting the image as "sight." There is disagreement as to whether this constitutes one, two or three senses. Neuroanatomists generally regard it as two senses, given that different receptors are responsible for the perception of colour (the frequency of photons of light) and brightness (amplitude/intensity - number of photons of light). Some argue[citation needed] that stereopsis, the perception of depth, also constitutes a sense, but it is generally regarded as a cognitive (that is, post-sensory) function of brain to interpret sensory input and to derive new information. The inability to see is called blindness.

Notable paleontologists

2008-09-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

History includes a number of prominent paleontologists. Fossils were systematically studied in the 11th century by the Persian naturalist, Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in Europe), in The Book of Healing (1027), and by the Chinese naturalist, Shen Kuo (1031-1095). In particular, Ibn Sina's theory on fossils was accepted by most naturalists in medieval Europe and the medieval Near East by the 16th century.

The modern discipline of paleontology begins in the 19th century, when Charles Darwin collected fossils of South American mammals during his trip on the Beagle and examined petrified forests in Patagonia. Mary Anning was a notable early paleontologist. She found several landmark fossils, in her home town of Lyme Regis. Although self-taught, she collected and described them in a very systematic way. William Buckland, Richard Owen, Gideon Mantell, Georges Cuvier and Thomas Huxley were important early pioneers, in the field of paleontology. Thomas Jefferson took a keen interest in mammoth bones. Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh waged a famously fierce competition known as the Bone Wars in the late 19th century that involved some questionable practices, but which significantly advanced the understanding of the natural history of North America and vertebrate paleontology. Professor Earl Douglass of the Carnegie University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opened the fossil quarry protected today by Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Douglass' fossils are in several Natural History Museums. Meanwhile, Baron Franz Nopcsa, a pioneer paleobiologist, argued that dinosaurs might have been both warm-blooded and ancestral to birds.

Besides looking at mammal teeth and unearthing penguin skeletons, George Gaylord Simpson played a crucial role in bringing together ideas from biology, paleontology and genetics, to help create the 'Modern Synthesis' of evolutionary biology. His book "Tempo and Mode" is a classic in the field. Prominent names in invertebrate paleontology include Steven M. Stanley, Stephen Jay Gould, David Raup, Rousseau H. Flower and Jack Sepkoski, who have done much to expand our understanding of long-term patterns in the evolution of life on earth. Large names in the field of paleoanthropology include Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey, Raymond Dart, Robert Broom, C.K. 'Bob' Brain, Kenneth Oakley, Robert Ardrey and Tim White. In recent times, Mongolian paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold has done much to expand our understanding of dinosaur and bird evolution. Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago has made several important dinosaur finds in areas such as the Sahara, where fossil hunting has been uncommon.

Panic disorder

2008-09-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

In panic disorder, a person suffers from brief attacks of intense terror and apprehension that cause trembling and shaking, confusion, dizziness, nausea, difficulty breathing, and feelings of impending doom or a situation that would be embarrassing. One who is often plagued by sudden bouts of intense anxiety might be said to be afflicted by this disorder. The American Psychiatric Association (2000) defines a panic attack as fear or discomfort that arises abruptly and peaks in 10 minutes or less, and can occasionally last hours.

Although panic attacks sometimes seem to occur out of nowhere, they generally happen after frightening experiences, prolonged stress, or even exercise. Many people who have panic attacks (especially their first one) think they are having a heart attack and often end up at the doctor or emergency room. Even if the tests all come back normal the person will still worry, with the physical manifestations of anxiety only reinforcing their fear that something is wrong with their body. Heightened awareness (hypervigilance) of any change in the normal function of the human body will be noticed and interpreted as a possible life threatening illness by an individual suffering from panic attacks.

Normal changes in heartbeat, such as when climbing a flight of stairs will be noticed by a panic sufferer and lead them to think something is wrong with their heart or they are about to have another panic attack. Some begin to worry excessively and even quit jobs or refuse to leave home to avoid future attacks. Panic disorder can be diagnosed when several apparently spontaneous attacks lead to a persistent concern about future attacks.

Protected mode and supervisor mode

2008-08-25T03:13:00.000-07:00

Modern CPUs support something called dual mode operation. CPUs with this capability use two modes: protected mode and supervisor mode, which allow certain CPU functions to be controlled and affected only by the operating system kernel. Here, protected mode does not refer specifically to the 80286 (Intel's x86 16-bit microprocessor) CPU feature, although its protected mode is very similar to it. CPUs might have other modes similar to 80286 protected mode as well, such as the virtual 8086 mode of the 80386 (Intel's x86 32-bit microprocessor or i386).

However, the term is used here more generally in operating system theory to refer to all modes which limit the capabilities of programs running in that mode, providing things like virtual memory addressing and limiting access to hardware in a manner determined by a program running in supervisor mode. Similar modes have existed in supercomputers, minicomputers, and mainframes as they are essential to fully supporting UNIX-like multi-user operating systems.

When a computer first starts up, it is automatically running in supervisor mode. The first few programs to run on the computer, being the BIOS, bootloader and the operating system have unlimited access to hardware. However when the operating system passes control to another program, it can place the CPU into protected mode.

In protected mode, programs may have access to a more limited set of the CPU's instructions. A user program may leave protected mode only by triggering an interrupt, causing control to be passed back to the kernel. In this way the operating system can maintain exclusive control over things like access to hardware and memory.

The term "protected mode resource" generally refers to one or more CPU registers, which contain information that the running program isn't allowed to alter. Attempts to alter these resources generally causes a switch to supervisor mode.

Foraging Foraging

2008-08-19T02:57:00.000-07:00

Foraging Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment in which the animal lives. Foraging theory considers the foraging behavior of animals in reference to the payoff that an animal obtains from different foraging options. Foraging theory predicts that the foraging options that deliver the highest payoff, should be favored by foraging animals because it will have the highest fitness payoff.

Robert MacArthur, J M Emlen, and Eric Pianka, first proposed an optimal foraging theory in an independent paper in 1966. This theory argued that because of the key importance of successful foraging to an individual's survival, it should be possible to predict foraging behavior by using decision theory to determine the behavior that would be shown by an "optimal forager" - one with perfect knowledge of what to do to maximize usable food intake. While the behavior of real animals inevitably departs from that of the optimal forager, optimal foraging theory has proved very useful in developing hypotheses for describing real foraging behavior. Departures from optimality often help to identify constraints either in the animal's behavioral or cognitive repertoire, or in the environment, that had not previously been suspected. With those constraints identified, foraging behavior often does approach the optimal pattern even if it is not identical to it.

Tagged Image File Format

2008-08-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a file format for storing images, including photographs and line art. It is now under the control of Adobe Systems. Originally created by the company Aldus for use with what was then called "desktop publishing", the TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications. Adobe Systems, which acquired Aldus, now holds the copyright to the TIFF specification. TIFF has not had a major update since 1992, though several Aldus/Adobe technical notes have been published with minor extensions to the format, and several specifications, including TIFF/EP, have been based on the TIFF 6.0 specification.

The TIFF is a flexible, adaptable file format for handling images and data within a single file, by including the header tags (size, definition, image-data arrangement, applied image compression) defining the image's geometry. For example, a TIFF can be a container file holding compressed JPEG and RLE (run-length encoding) images. A TIFF also can include a vector-based Clipping path (outlines, croppings, image frames). The ability to store image data in a lossless format makes the TIFF file a useful image archive, because, unlike standard JPEG files, the TIFF using lossless compression (or none) may be edited and re-saved without losing image compression; other TIFF options are layers and pages.

Although the currently accepted standard format, when the TIFF was introduced, its extensibility provoked compatibility problems. Programmers were free to specify new tags and options — but not every implemented program supported every tag created. Resultantly, the TIFF became the lowest common denominator image file. Today, the most TIFF images and readers remain based upon uncompressed 32-bit CMYK or 24-bit RGB images.

Eukaryotic cells

2008-08-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Eukaryotic cells consist of cell membrane, organelles which represent the functional components for storage, excretion, digestion and nucleus (centre of the cell), it contains all the vital information needed by the cell or the whole organism to function, grow and reproduce.
Eukaryotic cells are found in humans, plants and animals, also algae, and protozoa. Eukaryotic cells have both a cellular membrane and a nuclear membrane. Eukaryotic genome is more complex than that of prokaryotes and distributed among multiple chromosomes.

Mitosis: The division of the parent nucleus into two daughter nuclei, separating the duplicated genome into two sets, each identical to the parent cell's genome.

Cytokinesis: The pinching and division of the cell membrane and cytoplasm, separating the recently divided nuclei, the organelles, and other cellular components.

Meiosis: The division of the nucleus in sex cells that reduces the diploid number of chromosomes to a haploid number in order to facilitate sexual reproduction.

Examples of cell division in multicellular eukariotic organisms include repair, growth, and development. An injury or wound is healed when the cells exposed by the injury divide at an excellerated rate until they come into contact with other cells. After this the cells return to a more typical division rate. Cell division causes an organism to grow as long as the rate of cell division exceeds normal cell death. As cells divide and become more numerous they are located in more diverse physical and chemical environments. These variations in local conditions influence the cells to alter gene expression causing the cells to differentiate and become more specialized allowing an organism to develop

Modernism

2008-07-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

Many advocates of capitalism agreed with Marx's analysis of capitalism as a process of continual change, but, unlike Marx, believed and hoped that capitalism would essentially go on forever.

Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, two opposing schools of thought - Marxism and liberalism - believed in the possibility and the desirability of continual change and improvement. Marxists strongly opposed capitalism and the liberals strongly supported it, but the one concept they could both agree on was modernism.

Modernism is a trend of thought which affirms the power of human beings to make, improve and reshape their society, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. It reaches its extreme limits with the Russian Revolution and the third Chinese revolution, inspired by Marxist ideology. Here, people claimed such confidence in the ability to change their world for the better, which they thought that, in a relatively short time, largely illiterate peasants could begin to build a just, egalitarian and socialist order in a conscious way, armed with science and technology.

Alphabets

2008-07-21T00:20:00.001-07:00

An alphabet is a small set of symbols, each of which roughly represents or historically represented a phoneme of the language. In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.

In most of the alphabets of the Mid-East, only consonants are indicated, or vowels may be indicated with optional diacritics. Such systems are called abjads. In most of the alphabets of India and Southeast Asia, vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are called abugidas. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree, are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called "syllabics". However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable.

Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet. Because of this use, Greek is often considered to be the first alphabet.

Breeding stock

2008-07-15T00:46:00.001-07:00

"Breeding stock" is a term used to describe a group of animals used for purpose of planned breeding. When individuals are looking to breed animals, they look for certain valuable traits in purebred stock for a certain purpose, or may intend to use some type of crossbreeding to produce a new type of stock with different, and presumably superior abilities in a given area of endeavor.

For example, to breed chickens, a typical breeder intends to receive eggs, meat, and new, young birds for further reproduction. Thus the breeder has to study different breeds and types of chickens and analyze what can be expected from a certain set of characteristics before he or she starts breeding them. Accordingly, when purchasing initial breeding stock, the breeder seeks a group of birds that will most closely fit the purpose intended.

Breeding stock

2008-07-15T00:46:00.000-07:00

Sword

2008-07-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

The sword is an evolution of the knife. Its name literally means “hurting tool” from the Old German “Swert”. It is one of the most universally recognised ancient weapons and has taken many forms across many different countries. It is used to both slash and stab in much the same way a knife does.

During the Middle Ages, most European swords had double edged straight blades made for both slashing and stabbing. Examples of these swords include the one handed arming sword and the two handed longsword. Curved swords such as the falchion existed in Europe during the Middle Ages but were not as prominent as the straight ones.

The primary sword used in Japan is the Katana, which has a curved blade that is short in comparison to the Rapiers or Longswords of Europe. It is known for its sharpness and formed an integral component of the culture of the Samurai. The weapon remained in use even as other weapons of the time were neglected. It eventually disappeared after The Satsuma Rebellion. The weapon had a renaissance during World War II where it was used by Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theatre. Although the katana is seen as the primary sword of the Samurai, many other types of swords were used by the Samurai. These include the uchigatana, the odachi, the nodachi and the tachi

In its use by Roman forces the sword was relatively short, but effective in combination with a shield, since the soldier could block a downward slash with his shield and then thrust from below and upward into the midsection of an opponent. This technique was extremely effective when in a closed formation. Examples of the successful use of this technique include the defeat of the outnumbering forces of Queen Boudica in the Battle of Watling Street in the year 60 CE.

The sword was used differently in more modern Europe. It was a very long, cylindrical, and narrow blade with no edge and was used to stab rather than slash. It is the source of fencing as we know it today. Most middle and upper class men would be trained in fencing with the smallsword as it was the primary duelling weapon.

The Scimitar was a curved but short blade used in the Middle East. Its name is derived from the Persian shashimir. The weapon is vaguely similar to the European Sabre in that it is a curved slashing weapon.

The sword fell into disuse after Europe discovered gunpowder and related projectile weapons. Duelling and fencing for social purposes continued well after the invention of the handgun. Duelling fell into disuse even before the end of the 20th century and with it the sword ceased to be used in any practical sense.

Morphogenesis

2008-06-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

Morphogenesis (from the Greek morphê shape and genesis creation),( literally, "beginning of the shape"), is one of three fundamental aspects of developmental biology along with the control of cell growth and cellular differentiation. Morphogenesis is concerned with the shapes of tissues, organs and entire organisms and the positions of the various specialized cell types. Cell growth and differentiation can take place in cell culture or inside of tumor cell masses without the normal morphogenesis that is seen in an intact organism. The study of morphogenesis involves an attempt to understand the processes that control the organized spatial distribution of cells that arises during the embryonic development of an organism and that give rise to the characteristic forms of tissues, organs, and overall body anatomy. In the human embryo, the change from a cluster of nearly identical cells at the blastula stage to a post-gastrulation embryo with structured tissues and organs is controlled by the genetic "program" and can be modified by environmental factors. The term morphogenesis can also be used to describe the development of unicellular life forms that do not have an embryonic stage in their life cycle, or to refer to the evolution of a body structure within a taxonomic group. Morphogenetic responses may be induced in organisms by hormones, by environmental chemicals ranging from substances produced by other organisms to toxic chemicals or radionuclides released as pollutants, and other plants, or by mechanical stresses induced by spatial patterning of the cells.

Mitosis

2008-06-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

Mitosis is the process by which a cell separates the chromosomes in its cell nucleus, into two identical sets in two daughter nuclei. It is generally followed immediately by cytokinesis, which divides the nuclei, cytoplasm, organelles and cell membrane into two daughter cells containing roughly equal shares of these cellular components. Mitosis and cytokinesis together define the mitotic (M) phase of the cell cycle - the division of the mother cell into two daughter cells, genetically identical to each other and to their parent cell.

Mitosis occurs exclusively in eukaryotic cells, but occurs in different ways in different species. For example, animals undergo an "open" mitosis, where the nuclear envelope breaks down before the chromosomes separate, while fungi such as Aspergillus nidulans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) undergo a "closed" mitosis, where chromosomes divide within an intact cell nucleus. Prokaryotic cells, which lack a nucleus, divide by a process called binary fission.
The process of mitosis is complex and highly regulated. The sequence of events is divided into phases, corresponding to the completion of one set of activities and the start of the next. These stages are prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase. During the process of mitosis the pairs of chromosomes condense and attach to fibers that pull the sister chromatids to opposite sides of the cell. The cell then divides in cytokinesis, to produce two identical daughter cells.

Because cytokinesis usually occurs in conjunction with mitosis, "mitosis" is often used interchangeably with "mitotic phase". However, there are many cells where mitosis and cytokinesis occur separately, forming single cells with multiple nuclei. This occurs most notably among the fungi and slime moulds, but is found in various different groups. Even in animals, cytokinesis and mitosis may occur independently, for instance during certain stages of fruit fly embryonic development. Errors in mitosis can either kill a cell through apoptosis or cause mutations that may lead to cancer.

SSI, MSI, LSI

2008-06-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

The first integrated circuits contained only a few transistors. Called "Small-Scale Integration" (SSI), they used circuits containing transistors numbering in the tens.

SSI circuits were crucial to early aerospace projects, and vice-versa. Both the Minuteman missile and Apollo program needed lightweight digital computers for their inertial guidance systems; the Apollo guidance computer led and motivated the integrated-circuit technology, while the Minuteman missile forced it into mass-production.

These programs purchased almost all of the available integrated circuits from 1960 through 1963, and almost alone provided the demand that funded the production improvements to get the production costs from $1000/circuit (in 1960 dollars) to merely $25/circuit (in 1963 dollars).[citation needed] They began to appear in consumer products at the turn of the decade, a typical application being FM inter-carrier sound processing in television receivers.
The next step in the development of integrated circuits, taken in the late 1960s, introduced devices which contained hundreds of transistors on each chip, called "Medium-Scale Integration" (MSI).

They were attractive economically because while they cost little more to produce than SSI devices, they allowed more complex systems to be produced using smaller circuit boards, less assembly work (because of fewer separate components), and a number of other advantages.

Further development, driven by the same economic factors, led to "Large-Scale Integration" (LSI) in the mid 1970s, with tens of thousands of transistors per chip.
Integrated circuits such as 1K-bit RAMs, calculator chips, and the first microprocessors, that began to be manufactured in moderate quantities in the early 1970s, had under 4000 transistors. True LSI circuits, approaching 10000 transistors, began to be produced around 1974, for computer main memories and second-generation microprocessors.

Trance production

2008-06-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

Trance employs a 4/4 time signature, a tempo of 130 to 160 BPM, and 32 beat phrases, somewhat faster than house music but usually not as fast as rave music. Psychedelic Trance is sometimes faster and earlier tracks were sometimes slower. A kick drum is placed on every downbeat and a regular open hi-hat is often placed on the upbeat. Some simple extra percussive elements are usually added, and major transitions, builds or climaxes are often foreshadowed by lengthy 'snare rolls' - a quick succession of equally spaced snare drum hits that builds in volume towards the end of a measure or phrase.

Synthesizers form the central elements of most trance tracks, with simple sawtooth-based sounds used both for short pizzicato elements and for long, sweeping string sounds. As with other genres of electronic music, important synthesizers are the Roland TR-808, TR-909, and TB-303, which is the source of the "acid" sound. There are also several synthesizer sounds that are almost completely unique to its genre. One of these sounds is the "supersaw", a waveform was made famous by such classic trance synthesizers as the Roland JP-8000, the Novation Supernova, and the Korg MS2000. A technique called "gating" is often employed in creating lead sounds (turning the volume up and down rapidly in rhythm with the piece to create a stuttered, chopped sound). Rapid arpeggios and minor scales are common features. Trance tracks often use one central "hook" melody which runs through almost the entire song, repeating at intervals anywhere between 2 beats and several bars.

While many trance tracks contain no vocals at all, other tracks rely heavily on vocals, and thus a sub-genre has developed. The sound and quality of the production relies to a large degree upon the technology available. Vintage analog equipment still holds a place in the hearts of many producers and enthusiasts, with names such as Moog, Roland and Oberheim staples in the trance sound palette. However, the mainstream availability of digital technology has allowed a whole new group of producers to emerge because while top shelf digital (or analog modeling) synthesizers cost thousands of US dollars, high demand and a small supply of clean vintage analog synthesizers causes them to be extremely expensive.

Trance records are often heavily loaded with reverb and delay effects on the synthesizer sounds, vocals and often parts of the percussion section. This provides the tracks with the sense of vast space that trance producers tend to look for in order to achieve the genre's epic quality. Flangers, phasers and other effects are also commonly used at extreme settings - in trance there is no need for sounds to resemble any real-world instrument, and so producers have free rein.

Psychoactive mushrooms

2008-06-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Psilocybin mushrooms possess psychedelic properties. They are commonly known as "magic mushrooms" "mush" or "shrooms" and are available in smart shops in many parts of the world, though some countries have outlawed their sale. A number of other mushrooms are eaten for their psychoactive effects, such as fly agaric, which is used for shamanic purposes by tribes in northeast Siberia, Russia. They have also been used in the West to potentiate, or increase, religious experiences. Because of their psychoactive properties, some mushrooms have played a role in native medicine, where they have been used in an attempt to effect mental and physical healing, and to facilitate visionary states. One such ritual is the Velada ceremony. A practitioner of traditional mushroom use is the shaman and curandera (priest-healer) María Sabina.

Nomogram

2008-05-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

A nomogram, nomograph, or abac is a graphical calculating device, a two-dimensional diagram designed to allow the approximate graphical computation of a function. Like a slide rule, it is a graphical analog computation device; and, like the slide rule, its accuracy is limited by the precision with which physical markings can be drawn, reproduced, viewed, and aligned. Most nomograms are used in applications where an approximate answer is appropriate and useful. Otherwise, the nomogram may be used to check an answer obtained from an exact calculation method.

The slide rule is intended to be a general-purpose device. Nomograms are usually designed to perform a specific calculation, with tables of values effectively built in to the construction of the scales.

Understanding the Context

2008-05-27T07:30:00.001-07:00

Many different methods of communication are possible on the Internet; some use specific software and all involve text and/or graphics.

* Some activities take place in real-time while others allow for a delayed reply.

* Discussion areas may be public or exist for a particular group of people.

* Information can either be broadcast or targeted at a particular user.

As the technology develops, and users and providers become more proficient, the boundaries between the different Internet services are blurred. For example, email is used in chat rooms, web pages include discussion areas and newsgroups can have files attached.

Each Internet service has its own educational value, risks, and recommended ways of dealing with problems, and these are detailed in the following pages. They are not exhaustive and many apply across Internet services. Schools should consider the sum of the advice in these guidelines across all areas.

Overview of the Click Thinking Pack

2008-05-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

Schools and government initiatives are encouraging the educational use of the Internet right across the curriculum and young people are taking readily to this way of learning and communicating.

At the same time, the media tends to focus on the rare occasions when use of the Internet causes distress. The Scottish Executive believes that young people need to be protected and informed; and that those responsible for them, whether teachers, parents or other careers, should be aware of the issues involved.

Previous Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) publications in this area have dealt with the need to protect pupils from misuse of computers (Information Ethics) and to understand copyright implications (Copyright and Ethics in a Digital Age).

This booklet focuses on personal safety and wellbeing. It attempts to clarify potential risks and to empower Internet users in schools so that they can keep themselves safe. Those who manage Scottish schools, and all teachers, whether responsible for a primary class or for teaching a subject, will find policy guidelines and background information which will prepare our pupils to take their safe and well-earned place in the Digital Age.

Much of the advice in these guidelines will be relevant to other Local Authority staff responsible for overseeing young people's use of the Internet (e.g. managers and staff in community education centers, residential homes for young people, libraries and other settings). These groups should take account of the messages about personal safety, and put into place the recommendations suitable for their setting.

BACK TO SCHOOL SAFETY ALERT:

2008-05-07T04:48:00.001-07:00

CPSC Urges Bicyclists to Wear Helmets

CPSC Document #5002

Each year about 800 bicyclists are killed and more than half a million are treated in hospital emergency rooms. In recent years, almost two-thirds of the deaths and one-third of the injuries involved head and face injury. About one-half the injuries to children under the age of 10 involved the head or face. Helmets may reduce the risk of head injury to bicyclists by as much as 85 percent. Yet, only about 50 percent of bicyclists wear helmets.

The purpose of a helmet is to absorb the energy of an impact to minimize or prevent a head injury. Crushable, expanded polystyrene foam generally is used for this purpose.

A bicycle helmet should have a snug but comfortable fit on the rider's head. Some helmets are available with several different thicknesses of internal padding to custom fit the helmet to the user. If a parent is buying a helmet for a child, the CPSC recommends that the child accompany the parent so that the helmet can be tested for a good fit.

For a helmet to provide protection during impact, it must have a chin strap and buckle that will stay securely fastened. No combination of twisting or pulling should remove the helmet from the head or loosen the buckle on the strap. Children should be instructed to always wear the helmet level on the forehead, not tilted back. The chin strap should be adjusted correctly and firmly buckled.

Helmets manufactured after March 1999, are required by federal law to meet the CPSC standard. When purchasing a helmet, consumers are urged to examine the helmet and accompanying instructions and safety literature carefully. Consumers should also look for a label stating conformance with the CPSC standard.

Bicyclists should avoid riding at night. If you must ride at night, install and use front and rear lights on the bicycle and wear clothing with reflective tape or markings. These precautions are in addition to the reflectors that the CPSC requires to be on the front, rear, pedals, and wheels of bicycles.

Many bicycle-car crashes can be avoided by applying the rules of the road and by increasing attentiveness of cyclists and motorists. Bicyclists have a legal right to share the road, but they are often not noticed in traffic. Drivers should always keep an eye out for bicyclists, especially when turning, merging, changing lanes, or entering intersections.

All-Terrain Vehicle Safety

2008-04-28T05:55:00.001-07:00

Too many ATV riders -- young and old -- are dying or experiencing life altering injuries from incidents involving ATVs. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommends that all ATV riders follow the seven safety tips below every time they ride.

An estimated 740 people died in 2003* in incidents associated with ATVs. In addition, in 2004* there were an estimated 136,100 emergency room treated injuries associated with ATVs. About a third of all deaths and injuries involved victims under 16 years old. CPSC also reported that ridership has continued to grow, with 6.2 million 4-wheeled ATVs in use in 2003*.

The major ATV manufacturers agreed in Consent Decrees in 1988 and in subsequent voluntary action plans that they would not manufacture three-wheel ATVs; they would place engine size restrictions on ATVs sold for use by children under 16; and they would offer driver-training programs.

Children and young people under the age of 16 should not ride adult ATVs.

All ATV users should take a hands-on safety training course.

Always wear a helmet and safety gear such as boots and gloves while on an ATV.

Never drive an ATV on paved roads.

Never drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Never drive a youth or single-rider adult ATV with a passenger, and never ride these vehicles as a passenger.

There are some ATVs that are designed for two riders. Passengers on tandem ATVs should be at least 12 years old.

J-Hook Shaped Stake style (Anchor Types)

2008-04-21T06:17:00.001-07:00

This style is used when holes are not pre-drilled into the ground shoes (bars) or rear ground shoe (bar) of the goal. Similar to the peg or stake style, this anchor is hammered, at an angle if possible, directly into the earth. The curved (top) portion of this anchor fits over the goal member to secure it to the ground (Figure 3.4). Typically, two to four stakes of this type are recommended (per goal), depending on stake structure, manufacturers specifications, weight of goal, and soil conditions. Stakes with larger diameters or textured surfaces have greater holding capacity.

Anchoring/Securing/Counterweighing Guidelines

2008-04-14T04:58:00.001-07:00

A properly anchored/counterweighted movable soccer goal is much less likely to tip over. Remember to secure the goal to the ground (preferably at the rear of the goal), making sure the anchors are flush with the ground and clearly visible. It is IMPERATIVE that ALL movable soccer goals are always anchored properly (see Figure 2). There are several different ways to secure your soccer goal. The number and type of anchors to be used will depend on a number of factors, such as soil type, soil moisture content, and total goal weight.

Soccer Goal Injuries and Deaths

2008-04-07T06:39:00.001-07:00

According to the 1994 National Soccer Participation Survey (Soccer Industry Council of America), over 16 million persons in the United States play soccer at least once a year. Seventy-four percent (over 12 million) of these persons are under the age of 18. Soccer ranks fourth in participation for those under 18, following basketball, volleyball, and softball and well ahead of baseball, which has an annual participation of 9.7 million.
There are approximately 225,000 to 500,000 soccer goals in the United States. Many of these soccer goals are unsafe because they are unstable and are either unanchored or not properly anchored or counter-balanced. These movable soccer goals pose an unnecessary risk of tip over to children who climb on goals (or nets) or hang from the crossbar.
The CPSC knows of four deaths in 1990 alone and at least 21 deaths during the past 16 years (1979-1994) associated with movable soccer goals. In addition, an estimated 120 injuries involving falling goals were treated each year in U.S. hospital emergency rooms during the period 1989 through 1993. Many of the serious incidents occurred when the soccer goals tipped over onto the victim. Almost all of the goals involved in these tip over appeared to be home-made by high school shop classes, custodial members, or local welders, not professionally manufactured. These home-made goals are often very heavy and unstable.
The majority of movable soccer goals are constructed of metal, typically weighing 150-500 pounds. The serious injuries and deaths are a result of blunt force trauma to the head, neck, chest, and limbs of the victims. In most cases this occurred when the goal tipped or was accidentally tipped onto the victim. In one case an 8-year-old child was fatally injured when the movable soccer goal he was climbing tipped over and struck him on the head. In another case, a 20-year-old male died from a massive head trauma when he pulled a goal down on himself while attempting to do chin-ups. In a third case, while attempting to tighten a net to its goal post, the victim’s father lifted the back base of the goal causing it to tip over striking his 3-year-old child on the head, causing a fatal injury.
High winds can also cause movable soccer goals to fall over. For example, a 9-year-old was fatally injured when a goal was tipped over by a gust of wind. In another incident, a 19-year-old goalie suffered stress fractures to both legs when the soccer goal was blown on top of her.

B.C.-Canada Place officially closes doors

2008-03-30T19:40:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 20, 2006 marks the official close of British Columbia-Canada Place, one of the most successful attractions of the 2006 Torino Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Over the course of the 2006 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, British Columbia-Canada Place drew more than 100,000 visitors and journalists. These visitors were able to experience first hand the province’s culture, heritage, natural beauty and bustling cities. Also, more than 80 British Columbia businesses were able to connect with an international audience and showcase some of B.C.’s best products and services.

B.C.-Canada Place will be a legacy to the people of Torino. The official transfer took place in a ceremony yesterday, with Torino Mayor Sergio Chiamparino accepting a ceremonial key to the building.

“This generous gift from British Columbia will be a constant reminder of our friends in Canada and the celebrations that took place in our city during the 2006 Winter Games,” says Mayor Chiamparino. “We are honored to have this permanent B.C. presence in our city.”

Kent Kickin' Mini-Scooters

2008-03-24T05:56:00.001-07:00

Kent is recalling about 90,000 scooters. The scooter handles can unexpectedly come out of the steering column if the clamp holding them in is not tight, causing the rider to lose control, fall and possibly suffer injuries.
Kent has received four reports of the handles coming out, resulting in four children suffering injuries, including broken arms, a broken wrist, bruises, abrasions and a cracked tooth.
These are Kickin' Mini-Scooters made of chrome-plated steel. A vertical decal on the steering column reads "KICKIN' MINI SCOOTER." The scooter's black plastic platform measures about 15 inches long, and it has 4-inch translucent in-line style wheels. "KENT" and "MADE IN CHINA" are written on the lower part of the steering column. The scooters were sold with black backpacks embroidered in white with the word "Kickin."
Toys R us stores nationwide sold the Kent scooters from May 2000 through September 2000 for about $60.
Consumers should stop riding these Kent scooters immediately, and call Kent International to receive a free replacement handlebar with pins to secure the handlebars. For more information, call Kent International at (800) 451-KENT (5368) between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.
Kent has sold other models to Toys R Us such as the Street Craze, the Street Racer and Scoot that are NOT part of this recall. Scooters that Kent sold to Wal Mart, Meijer's, Target and AAFES are also NOT part of this recall.

Trampoline Safety Alert

2008-03-17T06:46:00.001-07:00

The U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) wants you and your family to be safe when using trampolines. The CPSC estimates that in 2001 there were 91,870 hospital emergency room-treated injuries associated with trampolines. About 93 percent of the victims were under 15 years of age, and 11 percent were under 5 years of age. Since 1990, CPSC has received reports of 6 deaths of children under age 15 involving trampolines. Injuries and deaths were caused by:

* Colliding with another person on the trampoline.
* Landing improperly while jumping or doing stunts on the trampoline.
* Falling or jumping off the trampoline.
* Falling on the trampoline springs or frame.
Most of the trampolines associated with injuries were at private homes.
Here are the steps you can take to help prevent serious trampoline injuries, especially paralysis, fractures, sprains, and bruises:

* Allow only one person on the trampoline at a time.
* Do not attempt or allow somersaults because landing on the head or neck can cause paralysis.
* Do not use the trampoline without shock-absorbing pads that completely cover its springs, hooks, and frame.
* Place the trampoline away from structures, trees, and other play areas.
* No child under 6 years of age should use a full-size trampoline. Do not use a ladder with the trampoline because it provides unsupervised access by small children.
* Always supervise children who use a trampoline.
* Trampoline enclosures can help prevent injuries from falls off trampolines.

Accumulator

2008-03-10T04:08:00.001-07:00

In a computer CPU, an accumulator is a register in which intermediary arithmetic and logic results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, shift, etc.) to main memory, possibly only to be read right back again for use in the next operation. Access to main memory is slower than access to a register like the accumulator because the technology used for the huge main memory is slower (but cheaper) than that used for a register.

The canonical example for accumulator use is adding a list of numbers. The accumulator is initially set to zero, then each number in spin is added to the value in the accumulator. Only when all numbers have been added is the result seized in the accumulator written to main memory or to another, non-accumulator, CPU register.

Mercury

2008-02-25T04:49:00.001-08:00

Mercury (pronounced /'m?kj??ri/) is the deepest and smallest planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. Mercury is bright when viewed from Earth, range from -2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude, but is not easily seen as its greatest angular separation from the Sun (greatest elongation) is only 28.3°: It can only be seen in morning and evening twilight. Comparatively little is known about it; the first of two spacecraft to move toward Mercury was Mariner 10 from 1974 to 1975, which mapped only about 45% of the planet’s surface. The second was the MESSENGER spacecraft, which mapped another 30% of the planet throughout its flyby of January 14, 2008. MESSENGER will make two more passes by Mercury, follow by orbital insertion in 2011, and will survey and map the whole planet.

Grapefruit

2008-02-19T04:04:00.000-08:00

The grapefruit is a subtropical citrus tree grown for its fruit which was initially named the "forbidden fruit" of Barbados.
These evergreen trees are frequently found at around 5-6 m tall, even though they can reach 13-15 m. The leaves are shady green, long up to 150 mm and thin. It produces 5 cm fair four-petalled flowers. The fruit is yellow-skinned, mainly oblate and ranges in diameter from 10-15 cm. The flesh is segmented and acidic, unreliable in color depending on the cultivars, which include white, pink and red pulps of varying sweetness. The 1929 US Ruby Red (of the Red blush variety) has the first grapefruit patent.
The fruit has only become popular from the late 19th century; before that it was only grown as a decorative plant. The US quickly became a major creation of fruit, with orchards in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. In Spanish, the crop is known as toronja or pomelo.

What is Spamdexing?

2008-02-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

Spamdexing has frequent methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to control the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the idea of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization; though there are numerous search engine optimization methods that get better the quality and exterior of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users. Search engines use a variety of algorithms to end relevancy ranking. Some of these contain determining whether the search term appears in the META keywords tag, others whether the search term appear in the body text or URL of a web page. Many search engines test out for instances of spamdexing and will remove believe pages from their indexes. In addition people working for a search-engine organization can quickly block the results-listing from entire websites that use spamdexing, perhaps alert by user objects of false matches. The rise of spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the majority important search engines of the time less useful.

Soil

2008-02-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

Soil, comprising the pedosphere, is located at the border of the lithosphere with the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. It consists of mineral, organic matter, as well as living organisms. Soil formation, or pedogenesis, is the combined effect of physical, chemical, biological, and anthropogenic process on soil parent material ensuing in the configuration of soil horizons.
Soil is our most important natural resources because of its position in the landscape and its dynamic, physical, chemical, and biologic functions. While the general concept of soil is well recognized, the definition of soil varies, according to the viewpoint of the discipline or occupation by means of soil as a resource.

Rotogravure

2008-01-28T20:53:00.001-08:00

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.

Multiple fruit

2008-01-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Batsman

2008-01-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Pawpaw

2008-01-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Polymer

2008-01-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

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.

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster

2007-12-28T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster is the rocket that provides 83% of liftoff thrust for the Space Shuttle. It is the largest and most powerful solid rocket ever flown, and the most powerful rocket motor of any type ever flown. Each SRB produces 1.8 times the liftoff thrust of the F-1 engine used in the Saturn V moon rocket.

The two reusable SRBs provide the main thrust to lift the Space Shuttle off the pad and up to an altitude of about 150,000 feet . In addition, the two SRBs carry the entire weight of the external tank and orbiter and transmit the weight load through their structure to the mobile launcher platform. Each booster has a liftoff thrust of approximately 2,800,000 lbf at launch. They are ignited after the three space shuttle main engines' thrust level is verified. The two SRBs provide 83 % of the thrust at lift-off. Seventy five seconds after SRB separation, SRB apogee occurs at an altitude of approximately 220,000 feet , after which they land on parachutes; impact occurs in the ocean approximately 122 nautical miles downrange, after which the two are recovered.

Stock exchange

2007-12-17T22:32:00.001-08:00

A stock exchange, share market or bourse is a corporation or mutual organization which provides services for stock brokers and traders, to trade company stocks and further securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for the issue and redemption of securities as well as other financial instruments and capital events as well as the payment of income and dividends. The securities traded on a stock exchange consist of: shares issued by companies, unit trusts and further pooled investment products and bonds. To be able to do business in security on a certain stock exchange, it has to be listed there. Trade on an exchange is made by members only. The initial offering of stocks and bonds to investors is by definition done in the primary market and subsequent trading is completed in the secondary market. A stock exchange is frequently the most important component of a stock market. Supply and demand in stock markets are determined by various factors which, as in all free markets, affect the price of stocks (see stock valuation).

Art of Loving

2007-12-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

According to Erich From, love is the most excellent reaction to the problem of human being. Love is the most satisfying accomplishment of humanity’s most powerful objective the desire of interpersonal union. Having a capability of grave thinking and self-awareness, humans realize their aloneness and separateness, their individuality and their short life span. The aspiration for interpersonal combination is the most powerful motivated in man. It is the most basic excitement; it is the force which keeps the human race together family, clan, society, nation, and world. As mentioned above, love, turns out to be the most fulfilling of all approach to go beyond limits of individual life. All forms of orgiastic unions are controlling and even violent; they are temporary and periodical. It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large amount and where the aim is to belong to the group. There is orgiastic condition, which may have the form of sexual orgasm, alcohol, drugs and etc. Regrettably, equality today means similarity, rather that oneness. Orgiastic unions result in a rising sense of separateness. People try to be equal by performing tasks and feelings agreed by the system and trying to follow the similar rules, the same model of life from the age three or four. Union by consistency is calm and it is permanent.

Technology

2007-11-13T04:31:00.001-08:00

Mobile phones and the network they operate under vary significantly from provider to provider, and nation to nation. However, all of them communicate through electromagnetic microwaves with a cell site base station, the antennas of which are usually mounted on a tower, pole, or building.

The phones have a low-power transceiver that transmits voice and data to the nearest cell sites, usually 5 to 8 miles away. When the cellular phone or data device is turned on, it registers with the mobile telephone exchange, or switch, with its unique identifiers, and will then be alerted by the mobile switch when there is an incoming telephone call. The handset constantly listens for the strongest signal being received from the surrounding base stations. As the user moves around the network, the mobile device will "handoff" to various cell sites during calls, or while waiting between calls it will reselect cell sites.

Cell sites have relatively low-power radio transmitters which broadcast their presence and relay communications between the mobile handsets and the switch. The switch in turn connects the call to another subscriber of the same wireless service provider or to the public telephone network, which includes the networks of other wireless carriers.

Aerial tramway

2007-11-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

An aerial tramway is one or two set cables (called track cables), one endless loop of cable (called a haulage rope), and two passenger cabins. The fixed cables give support for the cabins. The haulage rope, by means of a grip, is solidly linked to the truck (the wheel set that rolls on the cables). The haulage rope is frequently driven by an electric motor and being connected to the cabins, moves them up or down the mountain.
Two-car tramways use a jig-back system: A large electric motor is situated at the bottom of the tramway so that it successfully pulls one cabin down, using that cabin's weight to help pull the extra cabin up. A similar system of cables is use in a funicular railway. The two passenger cabins, which carry from 4 to over 100 people, are positioned at opposite ends of the loops of cable. Thus, as one is coming up, the other is going down the mountain, and they pass each other midway on the cable span.
Some aerial trams have only one cabin, which lends itself better for systems with small altitude changes along the cable run.

water taxi

2007-10-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

A water taxi or river taxi or aquatically disposed taxi is a boat used for public transportation in cities with plentiful water channels. Many cities, including New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Fort Lauderdale, Winnipeg, Vancouver, London, and Tokyo have planned water taxis that operate in a similar manner to ferries or buses. Others, like Venice, have for-hire boats like to traditional taxis. Venice also has a vaporetto or waterbus system that operates in the same way to American water taxis.
Water taxis also activate in cottage areas where some cottages are available only by water. Visitors can drive to a local marina and take a water taxi to the final purpose.On March 6, 2004, a "Seaport Taxi," a water taxi service operated by the Living Classrooms Foundation, capsized through a storm near Baltimore's Inner Harbor; 5 passengers died in the accident.

Chemistry

2007-10-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Chemistry is the science of matter at the atomic to molecular scale, production mainly with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. Chemistry deals with the composition and statistical properties of such structures, as well as their transformations and interactions to become materials encountered in daily life. Chemistry also deals with sympathetic the properties and interactions of individual atoms with the purpose of applying that knowledge at the macroscopic level. According to contemporary chemistry, the physical properties of materials are usually determined by their structure at the atomic scale, which is itself defined by interatomic forces.

Computer printer

2007-10-15T21:57:00.001-07:00

A computer printer, or more usually just a printer, is a device that produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are permanently attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a text source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces (typically wireless or Ethernet), and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user on the network.

In addition, many modern printers can directly border to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single unit.

A Need for Welfare

2007-10-07T21:32:00.000-07:00

There is an old joke that asked where you find a welfare recipient’s check under his work boots of course. For a long time now, since the expert formation of a stable government, the U.S government has had the programs and passed laws that either dealt with issues of or influenced family. Many of these family programs and laws currently in place today are often and usually debated. One of the most debated and most labored over family programs or laws are welfare.

This is because there is now a smallest amount of income so the poor no longer have the need to go out and commit crimes to attain such money.

E commerce

2007-09-27T23:09:00.001-07:00

It is also referred to as EC, e-commerce or ecommerce. It consists first and foremost of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The information technology industry might see it as an electronic business application aimed at commercial transactions; in this background, it can involve electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Electronic commerce typically uses electronic communications technology of the World Wide Web, at some position in the transaction's lifecycle, although of course electronic commerce often depends on computer technologies other than the World Wide Web, such as database, and e-mail, and on other non-computer technologies, such as transportation for physical goods sold via e-commerce.

A cold winter morning

2007-09-10T02:38:00.000-07:00

I am lying on a white, sandy beach with the glowing sun beating down directly on my tanned summer body. I notice the beautiful, Puerto Rican Cabana boy heading over to replenish my newly empty Margarita glass. I look around my private beach and at the crystal clear, sparkling ocean water tempting me warmly in to its open arms. I get up from my bed on the sand, walking gradually to the water. The sand is flaming my bare feet with such passion that I speed my walk up almost into a jog. As I reach the waterfront I stop, as a falling wave is heading toward my glazing body; I step closer to be in its direct path. I move smoothly in with such grace; I prepare myself for the cool, refreshing bath. I hear an alarm bell screaming, I look around in a panic as it is hurting my ears and giving me a powerful headache. My beach is wandering away, and then it is gone. The ‘warmness my body feels is gone. I open my eyes; I am gloomy, lifeless room. My alarm clock is going off and the sound can only be compared with exhausted your fingernails across a chalkboard.

Microscope

2007-09-03T22:33:00.001-07:00

A microscope is a device for viewing objects that are too small to be seen by the bare or unaided eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy. The word microscopic means minute or very small, not noticeable with the eye unless aided by a microscope. The microscopes used in schools and homes sketch their history back almost 400 years.

Flowers

2007-08-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

A flower also recognized as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive configuration establish in flowering plants. The flower's structure contains the plant's reproductive organs, and its role is to make seeds. After fertilization, portions of the flower build up into a fruit containing the seeds. For the high plants, seeds are the next production, and serve up as the primary means by which individuals of a variety are dispersed across the scenery. The grouping of flowers on a place is called the inflorescence.

Many flowers in natural world have evolved to magnetize animals to pollinate the flower, the actions of the pollinating means contributing to the chance for genetic recombination within a dispersed plant population. Flowers commonly have glands called nectarines on their various parts that attract these birds.

Auditory clocks

2007-08-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

For expediency, distance, telephony or blindness, auditory clocks here the time as sounds. The sound is either spoken normal language, or as auditory codes (e.g. numbers of sequential bell rings on the hour represent the number of the hour like the clock Big Ben). Most telecommunication companies also supply a Speaking clock service as well.

Donkey jacket

2007-08-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

A Donkey jacket is a tiny buttoned coat, normally made of unlined black or dark blue woollen stuff; originally worn as a work jacket in the United Kingdom.
When used as a work jacket, it occasionally bears the name of the company which supplies the jacket, or the name of the company for which the wearer works. The jacket usually has two large hip pockets, and at times an inside poacher's pocket.
The donkey jacket is regarded as characteristic of the British manual worker.

Neck ring

2007-08-07T22:50:00.001-07:00

A neck ring is a group of metal worn as an ornament around the neck of an individual. In a few African and Asian cultures multiple neck rings are worn usually to stretch the neck. The Kayan people from the country of Myanmar and Thailand begin to wear neck rings when they are children. Gradually with age the number of "brass coils” worn increases to elongate the neck. The girls of the Ndebele people of South Africa wear neck rings to signify their marriages.

Sunglasses

2007-07-31T23:16:00.001-07:00

Sunglasses may be made with either prescription or non-prescription lenses that are darkened to offer protection against bright visible light. Good quality sunglasses should also protect against ultraviolet light. Due to changes in the atmosphere, ultraviolet levels are much elevated than in the past and ultraviolet protection for eyes and skin is even more important. It is possible to have lenses that seem very dark and yet offer little ultraviolet protection. Sunglasses fluctuate greatly and many offer more style than protection.

Clock synchronization

2007-07-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Clock synchronization is a problem from computer science and engineering which deals with the idea that internal clocks of several computers may be different. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift, caused by clocks counting time at slightly different rates. There are several problems that occur as a consequence of rate differences and several solutions, some being more appropriate than others in certain contexts.

2007-07-08T22:56:00.001-07:00

A Personal portal

A Personal portal is a site on the World Wide Web that characteristically provides personalized capabilities to its visitors, given that a pathway to other content. It is intended to use distributed applications, different numbers and types of middleware and hardware to provide services from a number of different sources. In addition, business portals are intended to share collaboration in workplaces. A further business-driven requirement of portals is that the content be able to work on multiple platforms such as personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and cell phones.

Grafting

2007-07-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

Grafting is a method of plant propagation extensively used in horticulture, where the tissues of one plant are encouraged to fuse with those of another. It is most usually used for the propagation of trees and shrubs grown commercially. In most cases, one plant is chosen for its roots, and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is chosen for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion.In stem grafting, a common grafting method, a shoot of a chosen, desired plant cultivar is grafted onto the stock of another type. In another common form called budding, a dormant side bud is grafted on the stem of another stock plant, and when it has fused successfully, it is encouraged to grow by cutting out the stem above the new bud.For successful grafting to take place, the vascular cambium tissues of the stock and scion plants must be located in contact with each other. Both tissues must be kept alive till the graft has taken, typically a period of a few weeks. Successful grafting only requires that a vascular connection takes place between the two tissues. A physical weak point often still occurs at the graft, because the structural tissue of the two distinct plants, such as wood may not fuse.

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation

2007-06-26T22:00:00.001-07:00

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation is a fables semiconductor company scheming network and embedded Power Architecture, optical transport and storage solutions. They bought assets, IP and engineers concerning the PowerPC 400 microprocessors from IBM in 2004 for $227 million and they now market the processors under their own name. The deal also included access to IBM's SoC design methodology and advanced CMOS process technology.

3ware is a producer of RAID controllers and storage products. Founded as an self-governing company in 1997, it was acquired by AMCC in April 2004.This division has usually been focused on SATA and PATA RAID devices. They were one of the pioneers in implementing "multi-lane" cabling for RAID systems which greatly reduced cable difficulty in systems with many hard drives.

Watercraft

2007-06-23T01:50:00.001-07:00

A watercraft is a vehicle, vessel or craft designed to move across water for pleasure, recreation, physical exercise, commerce, transport of people and goods, and military missions. It is resulting from the term "craft" which was used as term to describe all types of water going vessels. Most watercraft would be described as either a ship or a boat. However, there are a number of craft which many people would consider neither a ship nor a boat, such as: canoes, kayaks, rafts, barges, catamarans, hydrofoils, windsurfers, surfboards (when used as a paddle board), underwater robots, torpedos and jet skis.

Fire

2007-06-17T21:50:00.001-07:00

Fire is a rapid oxidation procedure that creates light, heat, smoke, and releases energy in varying intensities. It is commonly used to explain either a fuel in a state of combustion or a violent, destructive and uncontrolled burning (e.g., in buildings or a wildfire). The discovery of how to make fire is considered one of humankind's most important advances, allowing higher hominids to ward off wild animals, cook food, and control their own source of light and warmth.

Nanotechnology

2007-06-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Nanotechnology is a pasture of applied science and technology covering a wide range of topics. The main unifying premise is the control of matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometer, normally between 1-100 nanometers, as well as the manufacture of devices on this same length scale. It is a highly multidisciplinary field, drawing from fields such as colloidal science, device physics, and supramolecular chemistry. Much hypothesis exists as to what new science and technology might result from these lines of research. Some view nanotechnology as a marketing term that describes pre-existing lines of research applied to the sub-micron size scale.

In spite of the apparent ease of this definition, nanotechnology actually encompasses diverse lines of inquiry. Nanotechnology cuts across many disciplines, together with colloidal science, chemistry, applied physics, materials science, and even mechanical and electrical engineering. It could variously be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more recent term. Two major approaches are used in nanotechnology: one is a "bottom-up" approach where materials and devices are built from molecular components which gather themselves chemically using principles of molecular gratitude; the other being a "top-down" approach where nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control.

Common System Interface

2007-06-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

The Common System Interface is a processor interconnect standard being developed by Intel, as a competitor to HyperTransport. It will replace the front-side bus for Xeon and Itanium 2 platforms. It is expected to release in 2008 and will first be used by Intel's Nehalem and Tukwila.Performance numbers for CSI are reported to be 6.4 Gig transfers per second per direction.
Many of the people that have worked on either the initial structural design of CSI or its implementation have decided to leave Intel. Some of the people include Brannon Batson, Benjamin Tsein, William Welch, Michael Pachos, and Brian Lilly .It was reported that Intel has renamed Common System Interface as "QuickPath" early May 2007.

Historical usage of Basket

2007-05-27T22:01:00.001-07:00

Wood, bamboo, wheat, other grasses, osiers or wicker are often used to make baskets, but they are also made today from plastic. The first baskets were natural fiber by gatherers to collect fruits, grains, nuts and other edible plant materials, as well as for holding fish by early fishing peoples. A creel is a basket made particularly to hold fish. The plant life available in a region affects the choice of material, which in turn influences the weaving technique. Rattan and other members of the Arecaceae or palm tree family, the thin grasses of temperate regions and broad-leaved tropical bromeliads each require a different method of twisting and braiding to be made into an effective basket. Although baskets were usually created to serve men in bed rather than an artistic purpose, the practice of basket making has evolved into an art.

Description of Quick Ring

2007-05-18T23:42:00.001-07:00

The basic Quick Ring system consisted of seven serial links, six of them carrying data, and one a 50 MHz clock signal. Two physical media were specified, sets of twisted-pair copper wiring embedded in a thin plastic strip for use inside a computer, or the same signals using frequency-division multiplexing in a single fiber optic cable for longer links between machines.

The data lines were clocked at seven times the clock signal, so each clock "tick" moved 42 bits of data over the bus for a raw data rate of 2.1 Gbit/s. Ten bits of the 42 were used for signaling and control, leaving the other 32 for data, resulting in a net data transfer rate of 1.6 Gbit/s, or 200 MBytes/s.

Each Quick Ring interface enclosed two of these 200 MB/s links, one for "upstream" and one for "downstream" connections in a point-to-point ring. Since the system was not a bus, machines could talk up and downstream at the same time without interfering with other users. The drawback was that each hop over an intervening point added a latency of up to 1.3 µs.

Since Quick Ring was built in a ring topology there was no need for a dedicated switch, or router, making the system lower cost. It used a circuit switching system, in which the message path is set up before the data is sent, and once set up the connection is very lightweight. This is as opposed to packet switching, in which every message contains all of the data needed to reach the destination, this is more flexible, but adds overhead. Of the 10 bits of control data, four were used to specify a circuit number, allowing for a total of 16 devices per ring.

Protein

2007-05-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

Proteins are large organic compounds made of amino acids arranged in a linear chain and joined together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of adjacent amino acid residues. The sequence of amino acids in a protein is defined by a gene and encoded in the genetic code. Although this genetic code specifies 20 "standard" amino acids, the residues in a protein are often chemically altered in post-translational modification: either before the protein can function in the cell, or as part of control mechanisms. Proteins can also work together to achieve a particular function, and they often associate to form stable complexes.

Like other biological macromolecules such as polysaccharides and nucleic acids, proteins are essential parts of all living organisms and participate in every process within cells. Many proteins are enzymes that catalyze biochemical reactions, and are vital to metabolism. Other proteins have structural or mechanical functions, such as the proteins in the cytoskeleton, which forms a system of scaffolding that maintains cell shape. Proteins are also important in cell signaling, immune responses, cell adhesion, and the cell cycle. Protein is also a necessary component in our diet, since animals cannot synthesis all the amino acids and must obtain essential amino acids from food. Through the process of digestion, animals break down ingested protein into free amino acids that can be used for protein synthesis.

Shoe

2007-05-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

A shoe is a thing of footwear worn on the foot or feet of a human, dog, cat, horse, or doll. Shoes may vary from a simple flip-flop to a multifaceted boot. Shoes may have high or low heels, although in western cultures, high heels are considered a woman's style. Shoe materials include leather or image. Athletic shoe soles may be made of rubber.
Dress and casual shoes
Casual shoes, made of leather Dress shoes are categorized by smooth and supple leather uppers, leather soles, and narrow sleek shape. Casual shoes are characterized by sturdy leather uppers, non-leather outsoles, and wide profile. Some designs of dress shoes can be worn by either gender. The majority of dress shoes have an upper covering, commonly made of leather, enclosing most of the lower foot, but not covering the ankles. This upper part of the shoe is often made without apertures or openings, but may also be made with openings or even itself consist of a series of straps, e.g. an open toe featured in women's shoes. Shoes with uppers made high to cover the ankles are also available; a shoe with the upper rising above the ankle is usually considered a boot but certain styles may be referred to as high-topped shoes or high-tops. Usually, a high-topped shoe is secured by laces or zippers; although some styles have elastic inserts to ease slipping the shoe on.