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3711 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom%20of%20speech | Freedom of speech | Freedom of speech is the right to state one's opinions and ideas without being stopped or punished. Sometimes this is also called Freedom of expression. Freedom of speech is thought to also include freedom of the press and Freedom of information. However, new laws are usually needed to allow information to be used easily.
Most people think freedom of speech is necessary for a democratic government. In countries without free speech, people might be afraid to say what they think. Then, the government does not know what the people want. If the government does not know what they want, it cannot respond to their wants. Without free speech, the government does not have to worry as much about doing what the people want. Some people say this is why some governments do not allow free speech: they do not want to be criticised, or they fear there would be revolution if everyone knew everything that was happening in the country.
A well-known liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill, believed that freedom of speech is important because the society that people live in has a right to hear people's ideas. It's not just important because everyone should have a right to express him or herself.
Few countries with "free speech" let everything be said. For example, the United States Supreme Court said that it was against the law to shout "fire" in a crowded theater if there is no fire, because this might cause people to panic. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also says that it is not okay to cause national, racial or religious hatred. Also, some countries have laws against hate speech.
As Tocqueville pointed out, people may be hesitant to speak freely not because of fear of government punishment but because of social pressures. When an individual announces an unpopular opinion, he or she may face the disdain of their community or even be subjected to violent reactions. While this type of suppression of speech is even more difficult to prevent than government suppression is, there are questions about whether it truly falls within the ambit of freedom of speech, which is typically regarded as a legal right to be exercised against the government, or immunity from governmental action.
References
Related pages
Civil and political rights
Human rights
Freedom
Libertarianism |
3715 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana | Banana | A banana is the common name for a type of fruit and also the name for the herbaceous plants that grow it. These plants belong to the genus Musa. They are native to the tropical region of southeast Asia.
It is thought that bananas were grown for food for the first time in Papua New Guinea. Today, they are cultivated in tropical regions around the world. Most banana plants are grown for their fruits, which botanically are a type of berry. Some are grown as ornamental plants, or for their fibres.
There are about 110 different species of banana. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to the soft and sweet kind, also known as dessert bananas. Other kinds, or cultivars, of banana have a firmer, starchier fruit. Those are usually called plantains. Plantains are mostly used for cooking or fibre.
Other than being used as food, beer can be made by fermenting the juice of certain cultivars in Africa, known as beer bananas. The ash of bananas can be used to make soap. In Asia, bananas are often planted to provide shade to plants that like shade, for example coffee, cocoa, nutmeg or black pepper. Because of this, banana plants can often be found in plantations of other crops.
Banana plant
The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. Banana plants are often mistaken for trees. Bananas have a false stem (called pseudostem), which is made by the lower part of the leaves. This pseudostem can grow to be two to eight meters tall. Each pseudostem grows from a corm. A pseudostem is able to produce a single bunch of bananas. After fruiting, the pseudostem dies and is replaced. When most bananas are ripe, they turn yellow or, sometimes, red. Unripe bananas are green.
Banana leaves grow in a spiral and may grow long and wide. They are easily torn by the wind, which results in a familiar, frayed look.
Fruit
The banana fruits grow from a banana blossom in hanging clusters, also called a bunch or banana stem. The fruits grow in rows called tiers or hands. There can be as many as twenty fruits to a hand, and as many as twenty tiers in a bunch. A bunch usually weighs between 30 and 50 kilograms (65 to 110 pounds).
A single fruit weighs about 125 grams (4.4 ounces) on average; about three quarters of this is water.
Each banana (or finger) has a protective outer layer (called peel or skin). There is a fleshy part inside that readily spilts into three segments. It is the only known tri-segmented fruit in the world. Both the skin and inner part can be eaten. Western cultures generally eat the inside raw and throw away the skin. Some Asian cultures eat both the skin and the inside cooked. Each fruit has many strings that run between the skin and the inner part.
Bananas have a lot of vitamin B6, vitamin C, and potassium.
Growing and trading bananas
Bananas are grown in at least 107 countries. The banana species growing in the wild have fruits with many hard, large seeds, but almost all bananas grown to be eaten have seedless fruits. Bananas are classified either as dessert bananas or as green cooking bananas. Almost all export bananas are of the dessert types. Only about ten to fifteen percent of all production is for export. Dessert bananas change their color and usually turn yellow, when they are ripe; plantains and bananas generally used for cooking stay green. Certain bananas have other colors when ripe.
The countries that produce the most bananas include India, Brazil, China, Ecuador and the Philippines. The top five countries that exported bananas were Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala. The United States, the European Union and Japan buy the most bananas. Bananas are among the most valuable agricultural export products; They provided about sixty percent of export earnings of Saint Lucia and about twelve percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country, between 1994 and 1996.
Allergies
Some people are allergic to bananas. There are two basic forms of these allergies. The first is known as oral allergy syndrome. Within an hour of eating a banana, swelling starts inside the mouth or throat. This allergy is related to allergies caused by pollen, like that of the birch tree. The other is similar to latex allergies. It causes urticaria and potentially serious upper gastrointestinal symptoms.
Other uses of bananas
Textiles
The fibre gained from the banana plant has been used to make textiles for a long time. In Japan, bananas have been grown to be used for clothing and in the house since at least the 13th century. In the Japanese system, the leaves and shoots are cut from the plant periodically to make sure they are soft. The harvested shoots must first be boiled in lye to prepare the fibres for the making of the yarn. These banana shoots produce fibres of varying degrees of softness. They can be used for yarns and textiles of different qualties, and for specific uses. For example, the outermost fibres of the shoots are the coarsest - they are good for tablecloths. The softest innermost fibres are desirable for kimono and kamishimo. This traditional Japanese banana cloth making process has many steps, all performed by hand.
Another system is used in Nepal. There the trunk of the banana plant is harvested instead. Small pieces of this trunk are then softened. The fibres are extracted mechanically, bleached, and dried. They are then sent to the Kathmandu Valley, where high-end rugs are produced. These rugs have a texture and general qualities similar to that of silk. These banana fibre rugs are woven by traditional Nepalese hand-knotted methods.
Paper
Banana fiber is also used to make banana paper. There are two different kinds of banana paper: paper made from the bark, and paper made from the fibre and from unused fruits.
Images
Related pages
Banana bread
References
Other websites
Fruits
Musaceae |
3720 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biel/Bienne%2C%20Switzerland | Biel/Bienne, Switzerland | Biel/Bienne (official name; Biel is German, Bienne is French) is an industrial town in Switzerland. It is in the part of Switzerland named Bern and near the city also named Bern. The town is known for many companies that make watches and machines.
Description
The town of Biel, the capital of Swiss watch-making, lies at the end of Lake Biel, at the foot of the Jura Hills in the Lake Region.
The wonderful old town with its town church and its location as the gateway to the three Jura lakes (Lakes Biel, Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Murten) with vineyards on the hillsides and extensive vegetable cultivation make the town very attractive.
Biel is the only town in Switzerland in which German and French are spoken side by side We can feel the relaxed mentality here coming from the mixture of these three languages.
Biel was awarded the Wakker Prize in 2004 by the Swiss Heritage Society for the way it conserved its 20th century buildings, especially the ‘new construction’ from the 1920s and 30s.
Swatch, Rolex, Omega, Tissot, Movado and Mikron all come from this town. But Biel has also become important in the field of other industries and in communication.
It is possible to travel on various routes along the lakes on passenger boats in summer. The day trip through all three Jura lakes is especially popular. Of course there are all types of water sports on Lake Biel.
Old town
The town of Biel was built by the Prince-Bishop of Bale between 1220 and 1230. The old town is the smallest part of Biel with only . Most buildings there still look as in the 18th century. The biggest part of the old town is without any traffic. There aren’t any big stores or industries or any big companies. Each Saturday there is a market. The castle, “the ring” and the theatre are very popular. The town church is on the “Ringplatz” and was built between 1451 and 1470.There they burned the witches in the 18th century. From the 6 medieval city gates only one and two towers survived.
Heritage sites
The entire town of Biel is part of the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites. Several individual buildings in the old town have also been protected for their cultural heritage.
The Reformed City Church is one of the most important late-Gothic buildings in the Canton of Bern. The church has a main floor, two second floors and four small chapels. There are some wall-paintings in the church. Most windows are among the oldest ones in Switzerland. The church was first written about in an index in 1228. After a horrible fire in the old town the church was destroyed. It was rebuilt between 1367 and 1451. The town church got on a new organ on 6th November 2011. The church was closed for more than half a year to put the new organ in and to improve the inside of the church. It cost about 1,74 million Swiss francs. The old organ was sent to Poland.
Language
About 57% of the people in Biel speak German as their mother tongue. The remaining 43% speak French as their mother tongue. That is why the city has two names.
References
Other websites
www.biel-bienne.ch
Official website
Dickemauern |
3723 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch%20Internet%20Time | Swatch Internet Time | Swatch Internet Time is a way to measure time invented in 1998 by the Swatch manufacturing firm in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Time is shown as an "@" mark with three numerals. The day starts with @000 for midnight. Noon is @500. Just before midnight is @999. The thousand parts which make up a day are called "dot beats" (.beats). Each dot beat is one minute and 26.4 seconds long. Midnight is the same as Central European Winter Time (UTC+1)and Internet Time is the same all over the world. It does not change during the Summer. People can use it to plan phone calls or Internet meetings. Most types of Linux can show Internet Time as the desktop clock.
time |
3727 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test%20tube | Test tube | A test tube is a kind of laboratory glassware, composed of a fingerlike length of glass tubing, open at the top, usually with a rounded lip at the top, and a rounded 'U' shaped bottom.
They range in size from a couple inches to several inches long, from a few millimeters to a couple centimeters in diameter. They are designed to allow easy heating of samples, to be held in a flame, and often are made of expansion-resistant glasses, such as borosilicate glass (known by brand-names such as Pyrex and Kimax).
Tests tubes are often preferred above beakers when multiple small chemical or biological samples have to be handled and/or stored.
Vacutainers are a type of test tube that can be used for both collection and storage of blood.
Laboratory equipment |
3729 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker | Beaker | A beaker is a kind of laboratory glassware. A beaker is a cylinder with a lip and a spout (a bend in the rim of the beaker which makes it easier to pour liquids without spilling any). A beaker is usually about the same width as its height. This makes beakers very stable and easy to handle. They may be made of plastic, glass, or borosilicate glass. Some beakers have marks on them to show about how much volume of liquid they hold - these can not be used for exact measurements.
Beakers are often used to make solutions and they are probably the most used piece of laboratory glassware.
Laboratory equipment
Containers
Measuring tools |
3730 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible | Crucible | In chemistry, a crucible is a kind of laboratory equipment that is usually a small cup, about the size of a shot glass, made of porcelain or non-reactive metal. Crucibles are used to heat chemical compounds to very high temperatures using a gas burner. One of the earliest uses of platinum was as a material in crucibles. Metals such as nickel and zirconium are also used as a modern crucible material.
References
Metal Technology - a manufacturer of crucibles
Laboratory equipment |
3735 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium | Lithium | Lithium (from Greek lithos 'stone') is a soft, silver-white metal with symbol Li. It is the third chemical element in the periodic table. This means that it has 3 protons in its nucleus and 3 electrons around it. Its atomic number is 3. Its mass number is 6.94. It has two common isotopes, 6Li and 7Li. 7Li is more common. 92.5% of lithium is 7Li. Lithium is a soft silvery metal that is very reactive. It is used in lithium batteries and certain medicines.
Properties
Physical properties
Lithium is one of the alkali metals. Lithium is a silvery solid metal (when freshly cut). It is very soft. Thus it can be cut easily with a knife. It melts at a low temperature. It is very light, similar to wood. It is the least dense metal and the least dense element in a solid or liquid state. It can hold more heat than any other solid element. It conducts heat and electricity easily.
Chemical properties
It will react with water, giving off hydrogen to form a basic solution (lithium hydroxide). Because of this, lithium must be stored in petroleum jelly. Sodium and potassium can be stored in oil but lithium cannot because it is so light. It will just float on the oil and not be protected by it.
Lithium also reacts with halogens. It can react with nitrogen gas to make lithium nitride. It reacts with air to make a black tarnish and then a white powder of lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate.
Chemical compounds
Lithium forms chemical compounds with only one oxidation state: +1. Most of them are white and unreactive. They make a bright red color when heated in a flame. They are a little toxic. Most of them dissolve in water. Lithium carbonate is less soluble in water than the other alkali metal carbonates like sodium carbonate.
Lithium carbonate, used in medicine
Lithium chloride, colorless crystalline solid, red flame when heated
Lithium hydroxide, strong base, used to remove carbon dioxide in spaceships
Lithium nitrate, oxidizing agent
Lithium nitride, strong base
Lithium oxide, dissolves in water to make lithium hydroxide
Lithium peroxide, reacts with water to make oxygen
LiHe
Lithium 12-hydroxystearate
Lithium acetate
Lithium aluminate
Lithium aluminium hydride
Lithium amide
Lithium aspartate
Lithium azide
Lithium beryllide
Lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide
Lithium bis(trimethylsilyl)amide
Lithium borate
Lithium bromide
Lithium carbide
Lithium chlorate
Lithium citrate
Lithium cobalt oxide
Lithium cyanide
Lithium diisopropylamide
Lithium disilicate
Occurrence
It does not occur as an element in nature. It only is in the form of lithium compounds. The ocean has a large amount of lithium in it. Certain granites have large amounts of lithium. Most living things have lithium in them. There are some places where much lithium is in the salt. Some silicates have lithium in them.
History
Lithium (Greek lithos, meaning "stone") was discovered by Johann Arfvedson in 1817. In 1818, Christian Gmelin observed that lithium salts give a bright red color in flame. W.T. Brande and Sir Humphrey Davy later used electrolysis on lithium oxide to isolate the element. Lithium was first used in greases. Then nuclear weapons became a big use of lithium. Lithium was also used to make glass melt easier and make aluminium oxide melt easier in making aluminium. Now lithium is used mainly in batteries.
It was apparently given the name "lithium" because it was discovered from a mineral, while other common alkali metals were first discovered in plant tissue.
Preparation
It is made by getting lithium chloride from pools and springs. The lithium chloride is melted and electrolyzed. This makes liquid lithium and chlorine.
Uses
As an element
Its main use is in batteries. Lithium is used as an anode in the lithium battery. It has more power than batteries with zinc, like alkaline cells. Lithium ion batteries also have lithium in them, though not as an element. It is also used in heat transfer alloys. Lithium is used to make organolithium compounds. They are used for very strong bases.
It is used to make special glasses and ceramics, including the Mount Palomar telescope's 200 inch mirror. Lithium is the lightest known metal and can be alloyed with aluminium, copper, manganese, and cadmium to make strong, lightweight metals for aircraft.
In chemical compounds
Lithium compounds are used in some drugs known as mood stabilizers. Lithium niobate is used in radio transmitters in cell phones. Some lithium compounds are also used in ceramics. Lithium chloride can absorb water from other things. Some lithium compounds are used to make soap and grease. Lithium carbonate is used as a drug to treat manic depression disorder. Lithium carbonate is used for the treatment of bipolar disease and other mental illness conditions.
Organic chemistry
Organolithium compounds are used to make polymers and fine chemicals. Many lithium compounds are used as reagents to make organic compounds. Some lithium compounds like lithium aluminium hydride, lithium triethylborohydride, n-butyllithium and tert-butyllithium are commonly used as very strong bases called superbases.
Other uses
Lithium compounds are used as pyrotechnic colorants and oxidizers in red fireworks and flares. Lithium chloride and lithium bromide are used as desiccants for gas streams. Lithium hydroxide and lithium peroxide are used to remove carbon dioxide and purify the air in spacecrafts and submarines. Lithium hydroxide, lithium peroxide and lithium perchlorate are used in oxygen candles that supply submarines with oxygen.
Lithium aluminum hydride can also be used as a solid fuel by itself. Lithium hydride that contains lithium-6 is used in thermonuclear weapons.
Safety
Lithium reacts with water, making irritating smoke and heat. It is not as dangerous as the other alkali metals. Lithium hydroxide is very corrosive.
Isotopes
There are 5 isotopes of Lithium having respectively 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 neutrons in the nucleus. The most common isotope in nature is 3Li7 which makes up 92.58% of the total. The second isotope which is widely available is 3Li6 which makes up 7.42% of the total. The other 3 isotopes exist in very small quantities. The atomic mass of Lithium is 6.939.
Related pages
Alkaline earth metal
Beryllium
References
Alkali metals |
3736 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium | Beryllium | Beryllium is in group 2 of the periodic table, so it is an alkaline earth metal. It is grayish (slightly gray) in color. It has an atomic number of 4 and is symbolized by the letters Be. It is toxic and should not be handled without proper training.
Beryllium has 4 electrons, 4 protons, and 5 neutrons.
Beryllium has one of the highest melting points of the light metals: 1560 K (1287 °C). It is added to other metals to make stronger alloys. Beryllium-copper alloy is used in tools because it does not make sparks.
At standard temperature and pressure, beryllium resists oxidation when exposed to oxygen.
Beryllium is best known for the chemical compounds it forms. Beryllium combines with aluminium, silicon and oxygen to make a mineral called beryl. Emerald and aquamarine are two varieties of beryl which are used as gemstones in jewelry.
Since it has a very high stiffness to weight ratio, beryllium is used to make the diaphragms in some high-end speakers.
Uses
Beryllium is used to make jet aircrafts, guided missiles, spacecraft, and satellites, including the James Webb telescope. Beryllium can reflect neutrons, and thin foils of beryllium are sometimes used in nuclear weapons as the outer layer of the plutonium pits. Beryllium is also used in fuel rods for CANDU reactors. Beryllium is used to make many dental alloys.
Rarity
It is a relatively rare element in the universe. It usually occurs when larger atomic nuclei have split up. In stars, beryllium is depleted because it is fused and builds larger elements.
Related pages
Periodic table
List of common elements
References |
3741 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data%20compression | Data compression | Data compression is a set of steps for packing data into a smaller space, while allowing for the original data to be seen again. Compression is a two-way process: a compression algorithm can be used to make a data package smaller, but it can also be run the other way, to decompress the package into its original form. Data compression is useful in computing to save disk space, or to reduce the bandwidth used when sending data (e.g., over the internet).
Lossless compression
Lossless compression packs data in such a way that the compressed package can be decompressed, and the data can be pulled out exactly the same as it went in. This is very important for computer programs and archives, since even a very small change in a computer program will make it unusable.
This type of compression works by reducing how much waste space is in a piece of data. For example, if you receive a data package which contains "AAAAABBBB", you could compress that into "5A4B", which has the same meaning but takes up less space. This type of compression is called "run-length encoding", because you define how long the "run" of a character is. In the above example, there are two runs: a run of 5 A's, and another of 4 B's.
The problem with run-length encoding is that it only works on long pieces of the same value of data. If you receive a package with "ABBAABAAB" inside, that can be compressed into "1A2B2A1B2A1B"; but that's longer than the original! In this case, there's another method that can be used: checking how often a particular value comes up in the whole data package. This is often called frequency compression.
The most common kind of frequency compression is called Huffman coding, after the scientist who came up with the idea. The basic plan is to give each distinct value in a piece of data a code:- values that crop up all the time get shorter codes, and values that only show up once or twice get longer codes.
Examples of lossless compression
Archiving formats: Zip, GZip, bZip2, 7-Zip, etc.
Images/diagrams: GIF, PNG, PCX
Audio: FLAC, WavPack
Video: FFV1, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Predictive Profile
Program compressors: UPX
Lossy compression
For some types of data, lossy compression can go much further; this is most often the case with media files, like music and images. Lossy compression loses some of the data so that there's less to store. Depending on what information is lost, people do not notice it is missing. As a result, it can simply be removed from the data.
Of course, this will not work for computer programs and other such data where every piece is important; throwing away pieces of a computer program is generally unhealthy for the program.
Examples of lossy compression
Images: JPEG
Audio: MP3, Windows Media
Video: MPEG, DivX, Windows Video
Data structures |
3742 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler | Compiler | A compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language into another programming language. The first language is called the source language, and the code is called source code. The second language is called the target and can usually be understood by computers. In that case, the instructions become machine code.
If a compiler can convert the same instruction text into machine code for different computers (like smartphones or video game machines), it is a 'cross-compiler'. If the compiler can make instruction text that is easier for people to read, it is a 'de-compiler'. People who write these instructions are called programmers. Some even made programs that can translate the instructions that describe how a compiler should work, into a compiler. That kind of program is called a compiler-compiler.
A compiler usually has three steps. It reads the text and makes notes about how the instructions go together. If the instructions don't make sense, it will try to tell the programmer. Then it will use what it knows about the target language to make the instructions fit better. It then writes down the instructions in the target language. If the source instructions are on different pages, it may have to compile several before it can write everything down.
Compiling the language
A compiler has six parts :
The first piece, a lexical analyzer, reads a page of instruction text and splits it into words and sentences. It also marks the type for each word. For example, a word may be number, a variable, a verb, a math sign, or an adjective. The output of a lexical analyzer is a list of tokens.
int x = 5 + y;
(type, int) (unknown word, x) (math sign, =) (number, 5) (math sign, +) (word already seen, y)
A parser reads in the output of the lexical analyzer, and verifies the syntax of the language. If the input program is syntactically incorrect or has a type error, it generates errors and warnings. This is called semantic analysis. For example, the parser might complain about the example above, if it had not already seen y with its type adjective. The parser uses all the information to make a structure typically called an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST).
`( sentence
( write value to unknown
`( unknown
`( type, int ),
`( name, x ) ,
`( value
(add
`( number, 5 ),
`( seen
`( type, int ),
`( name, y ),
`( value, 0 )
) ) ) ) ) )
The next piece, an optimizer rearranges the tree structure so the target language is optimized. 'Optimized' includes using fewer instructions to perform the same work. This could be important if the final program needs to check a lot of data. (Like seeing how many people, in the whole country, are fifty years old and buy medicine.) An 'optimized' result might also mean breaking long instructions into smaller ones. Unused and unaccessible code will be removed at this step.
A programmer usually tries to write instructions in small, related groups. That way, they can keep track of fewer changes in the program. But, that means the code may go on several pages. When a compiler sees that the target program uses several pages to explain the whole recipe, it may use a linker. The linker will put instructions that say where to find the code that's next. Finally, the compiler writes down the instructions in the target language.
# instruction, spot, spot, target
ADD 0, 5, spot_1
LOAD location_y, , spot_2
ADD spot_1, spot_2, spot_3
SAVE spot_3, , location_x
Programmers who write compiler code try to make it as perfect as possible. If the programmer writes incorrect code, the compiler informs of them an error, but if the compiler code itself contains errors, it may be hard to tell where exactly the problem lies.
Variants
At the end of each compilation step the partial finished product could be stored and then only processed later on. A language like Java uses this successfully, where they lack the final translation step to instructions the processor understands. They only do the final translation step once the Java program is running on a computer. This is either called "interpreting" or "JIT"ting, depending on the technique used.
Example
For example, the source code might contain an equation, such as "x = 5*10 ". The lexical analyzer would separate each number and symbol (such as "*" or "+") into separate tokens. The parser would note the pattern of tokens, as being an equation. The intermediate-code generator would write a form of coding which defines a storage variable named "x" and assigns the numerical product of 5*10 plus 6 and 1. The optimizer would simplify the calculation, of 5*10+6+1, as being just 57. Hence, the target machine-code generator would set a variable named "x" and put the value 57 into that storage place in the computer's memory, using the instructions of whichever computer chip is being used.
Other websites
Compiler -Citizendium
Software
Computer programming |
3743 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye | Eye | The eye is a round organ for sensing light so organisms can see. It is the first part of the visual system. About 97 percent of animals have eyes. Image-resolving eyes are present in cnidaria, molluscs, vertebrates, annelids and arthropods.
In mammals, two kinds of cells, rods and cones, allow sight by sending signals through the optic nerve to the brain.
Some animals can see light that humans cannot see. They can see ultraviolet or infrared light.
The lens on the front part of the eye acts like a camera lens. It can be pulled flatter by muscles inside the eye, or allowed to become rounder. As some people get older, they may not be as able to do this perfectly. Many people are born with other small problems or get them later in life, and they may need eyeglasses (or contact lenses) to fix the problem.
Like different cameras, different eyes have different abilities. They may have higher or lower resolution, the ability to detect small details. They may have different performance in low light; nocturnal animals can see better at night than daytime animals. They may have different ability to distinguish colours.
Parts of the eye
The human eye is composed of several different parts. These parts may or may not be the same in other animals. They are:
Cornea: The outermost, transparent layer that protects the iris and pupil.
Pupil: The black circle in the middle of the eye, through which light passes.
Iris: The colorful circle of the eye around the pupil. It can be brown, blue, green, etc. Its main function is to regulate the amount of light coming into the eye.
Sclera: The large, white field around the iris that keeps the eyeball in shape.
Lens: Behind the cornea there is a transparent bioconvex lens of very short focal length.This lens is held in the centre of eye ball with the help of ciliary muscles .
Retina: Has the cells which turn light into nerve impulses.
Optic nerve: The nerve that connects the eye to the brain. Optical information is taken to the rear of the brain for processing: see cerebral cortex.
Types of eye
Today, ten different types of eyes are known. Most ways of capturing an image have evolved at least once.
One way to categorize eyes is to look at the number of "chambers". Simple eyes are made of only one concave chamber, perhaps with a lens. Compound eyes have many such chambers with their lenses on a convex surface.
Eyes also can be grouped according to how the photoreceptor is made. Photoreceptors are either cillated, or rhabdomic. and some annelids possess both.
Simple eyes
Pit eyes
Pit eyes are set in a depression in the skin. This reduces the angles at which light can enter. It allows the organism to say where the light is coming from.
Such eyes can be found in about 85% of phyla. They probably came before the development of more complex eyes. Pit eyes are small. They are made of up to about hundred cells, covering about 100 µm. The directionality can be improved by reducing the size of the opening, and by putting a reflective layer behind the receptor cells.
Pinhole eye
The pinhole eye is an advanced form of pit eye. It has several bits, most notably a small aperture and deep pit. Sometimes, the aperture can be changed. It is only found in the Nautilus. Without a lens to focus the image, it produces a blurry image. Consequently, nautiloids can not discriminate between objects with a separation of less than 11°. Shrinking the aperture would produce a sharper image, but let in less light.
Spherical lensed eye
The resolution of pit eyes can be improved a lot by adding a material to make a lens. This will reduce the radius of the blurring, and increase the resolution that can be achieved. The most basic form can still be seen in some gastropods and annelids. These eyes have a lens of one refractive index. It is possible to get a better image with materials that have a high refractive index which decreases towards the edges. This decreases the focal length and allows a sharp image to form on the retina.
This eye creates an image that is sharp enough that motion of the eye can cause significant blurring. To minimize the effect of eye motion while the animal moves, most such eyes have stabilizing eye muscles.
The ocelli of insects have a simple lens, but their focal point always lies behind the retina.They can never form a sharp image. This limits the function of the eye. Ocelli (pit-type eyes of arthropods) blur the image across the whole retina. They are very good at responding to rapid changes in light intensity across the whole visual field — this fast response is accelerated even more by the large nerve bundles which rush the information to the brain. Focusing the image would also cause the sun's image to be focused on a few receptors. These could possibly be damaged by the intense light; shielding the receptors would block out some light and reduce their sensitivity.
This fast response has led to suggestions that the ocelli of insects are used mainly in flight, because they can be used to detect sudden changes in which way is up (because light, especially UV light which is absorbed by vegetation, usually comes from above).
Refractive cornea
The eyes of most land-living vertebrates (as well as those of some spiders, and insect larvae) contain a fluid that has a higher refractive index than the air. The cornea is sharply curved and refracts light towards the focus. The lens need not do all of the refracting. This lets the lens adjust the focus more easily, for much higher resolution.
Reflector eyes
Instead of using a lens it is also possible to have cells inside the eye that act like mirrors. The image can then be reflected to focus at a central point. This design also means that someone looking into such an eye will see the same image as the organism which has them.
Many small organisms such as rotifers, copeopods and platyhelminthes use such this design, but their eyes are too small to produce usable images. Some larger organisms, such as scallops, also use reflector eyes. The scallop Pecten has up to 100 millimeter-scale reflector eyes fringing the edge of its shell. It detects moving objects as they pass successive lenses.
Compound eyes
Compound eyes are different from simple eyes. Instead of having one organ that can sense light, they put together many such organs. Some compound eyes have thousands of them. The resulting image is put together in the brain, based on the signals of the many eye units. Each such unit is called ommatidium, several are called ommatidia. The ommatidia are located on a convex surface, each of them points in a slighly different direction. Unlike simple eyes, compound eyes have a very large angle of view. They can detect fast movement, and sometimes the polarization of light.
Compound eyes are common in arthropods, annelids, and some bivalved molluscs.
Evolution of the eye
The evolution of eyes started with simplest light-sensitive patches in unicellular organisms. These eye-spots do nothing but detect if the surroundings are light or dark. Most animals have a biochemical 'clock' inside. These simple eye-spots are used to adjust this daily clock, which is called circadian rhythm. Some snails, for example, see no image (picture) at all, but they sense light, which helps them stay out of bright sunlight.
More complex eyes have not lost this function. A special type of cells in the eye senses light for a different purpose than seeing. These cells are called ganglion cells. They are located in the retina. They send their information about light to the brain along a different path (the retinohypothalamic tract). This information adjusts (synchronizes) the animal's circadian rhythm to nature's light/dark cycle of 24 hours. The system also works for some blind people who cannot see light at all.
Eyes that are a little bit better are shaped like cups, which lets the animal know where the light is coming from.
More complex eyes give the full sense of vision, including color, motion, and texture. These eyes have a round shape that makes light rays focus on the back part of the eye, called the retina.
Other
Good fliers like flies or honey bees, or prey-catching insects like praying mantis or dragonflies, have specialized zones of ommatidia organized into a fovea area which gives sharp vision. In this zone the eyes are flattened and the facets are larger. The flattening allows more ommatidia to receive light from a spot. This gives a higher resolution.
The body of Ophiocoma wendtii, a type of brittle star, is covered with ommatidia, turning its whole skin into a compound eye. The same is true of many chitons.
References
Basic English 850 words |
3745 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-twister | Tongue-twister | A tongue-twister is a phrase that is hard to say. They often use alliteration and homophones. They are commonly employed to help warm up singers and actors
Examples
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck as many wood as a woodchuck chucks if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore. The sea shells she sells are sea shells for sure.
Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.
The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue.
References
Linguistics |
3749 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbiWord | AbiWord | AbiWord is a free word processor that can be downloaded for free, it is open source and is much smaller in size than a proprietary alternative, Microsoft Word. It is available for FreeBSD, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and QNX. Its mascot is Abi the ant. It is much smaller than many other commercial word-processors of its time, only using about 15Mb on a computer's hard drive under Microsoft Windows.
Related pages
OpenOffice.org Writer
Sources
Other websites
Abiword
Free software
Word processors
GNOME |
3750 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect | Insect | Insects are a class in the phylum Arthropoda. They are small terrestrial invertebrates which have a hard exoskeleton.
Insects are the largest group of animals on Earth by far: about 926,400 different species have been described. They are more than half of all known living species. They may be over 90% of animal species on Earth.
New species of insects are continually being found. Estimates of the total number of species range from 2 million to 30 million.
All adult insects have six legs; and most have wings. Insects were the first animals capable of flight.
As they develop from eggs, insects undergo metamorphosis. Insects live all over the planet: almost all are terrestrial (live on land). Few insects live in the oceans or in very cold places, such as Antarctica. The most species live in tropical areas.
Some people call all insects "bugs", but this is not correct. Only some insects are true bugs, which is a particular order of insects. People who study insects are called entomologists.
Insect bodies
Insects have exoskeletons (skeletons on the outside). Their skeletons are made out of thin, hard pieces or plates, like armour, made of chitin. All together, these pieces make a hard layer around the insect's body. The exoskeleton protects the insect.
The body of an insect has three main parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. On the head are an insect's compound eyes, its two antennae (they feel and smell things), and its mouth.
On the thorax, insects have wings and legs. All insects have six legs (three pairs of jointed legs) and usually four wings (two pairs).
The abdomen is the back part of the insect. Inside the abdomen is the stomach, the heart, and the excretory system where body wastes pass out of the insect. Bees also have a stinger at the back of the abdomen.
Physiology
Just like our muscles connect to our bones to make us walk and stand up, the muscles of an insect connect to the exoskeleton to make it walk and move. Their muscles are on the inside of their skeleton.
Insects are cold-blooded, which means that they cannot control their body temperature. This means that insects are not good at surviving the cold, at any rate out in the open. In the winter, many insects go into something called diapause, which is the insect version of hibernation. Some insects, like cockroaches, cannot go into diapause and they will die if it gets too cold outside. This is why cockroaches love living in people's warm houses.
Respiratory and circulatory systems
Insect respiration happens without lungs. There is a system of internal tubes and sacs through which gases diffuse or are actively pumped. Air is taken in through openings on the sides of the abdomen called spiracles. Oxygen gets to tissues that need it through their trachea (element 8 in diagram).
Many insect larvae live in water. Many of those have gills that can extract oxygen dissolved in water. Others must rise to the water surface to get air which may be held or trapped in special parts of their body.
Adult insects use oxygen at a high rate when they fly. They need it for the flight muscles, the most active tissue known in biology. The flight muscles use oxygen at a huge rate: 100 ccs of oxygen for every single cc of tissue per hour. With this system, the greatest diameter a muscle could have (and still consume oxygen at this rate) is about 0.5 cm. Even with special extra arrangements, insects cannot get larger than about 11 cm long. The largest insect bodies are about as big as a mouse.
Some insects also use a molecule called haemocyanin, which does the same job as haemoglobin does in vertebrates (but less efficiently). The insect circulatory system has no veins or arteries. The 'blood' is called haemolymph, and moves around in the space called the haemocoel. The organs sit in the haemocoel and are bathed in the haemolymph. The 'heart' is little more than a single tube which pulses (squeezes).
How insects grow
Insects start life as an egg. Usually a female (mother) insect lays eggs, but a few species have live birth (the eggs develop inside the mother). The eggs are small; but they can usually be seen with the naked eye.
Although the adults are larger, they do need a magnifying glass or a binocular microscope to see the details. A professional entomologist uses a binocular microscope to identify insects, plus a printed reference work. There are far too many insects for anyone to remember them all, and most entomologists specialise in just one or two orders.
After the eggs hatch, two kinds of development may occur. Some insects have what is called 'incomplete metamorphosis'. This means that a small insect, called a nymph comes out of the egg, and the nymph looks almost the same as the adult insect. As the nymph grows, it does not change the way it looks, but only how big it is. It goes through a number of stages, called 'instars'. Grasshoppers grow in this way.
Other insects have complete metamorphosis, which means that the small larva which comes out of the egg looks very different from the adult insect. Insects that have complete metamorphosis usually come out of the egg as a larva, which usually looks like a worm. The larva eats food and gets bigger until it turns into a pupa. Butterfly pupae (plural for pupa) are often inside cocoons. Inside the cocoon the insect changes the way it looks and often grows wings. When the cocoon opens, the adult insect comes out. Many insects have complete metamorphosis, for example beetles, butterflies and moths, and flies. The adult stage of development is called the imago.
Evolutionary history
Origin of insects
The oldest known insect fossil is the Devonian Rhyniognatha, from the 411 million year old Rhynie chert. It may have superficially resembled a modern-day silverfish insect. This species already possessed mandibles of a type associated with winged insects, suggesting that wings may already have evolved at this time. Thus, anatomical records suggest the first insects may have appeared earlier, in the Silurian period. Genomic analysis puts their origin even further back in the Ordovician period.
If Rhyniognatha is not an insect, then Rhyniella from the same place is the first known insect. Also 411 mya.
Origin of wings
In 2008, researchers uncovered what they believe is the world's oldest known full-body impression of a primitive flying insect, a 300 million-year-old specimen from the Carboniferous period.
The origin of insect flight is unclear, since the earliest known winged insects appear to have been capable fliers. Some extinct insects had an additional pair of winglets attaching to the first segment of the thorax, for a total of three pairs. It seems the insects were not a particularly successful group of animals before they evolved wings.
Upper Carboniferous and Lower Permian insect orders include both living groups and a number of Palaeozoic groups, now extinct. During this era, some giant dragonfly-like forms reached wingspans of making them far larger than any living insect.
This gigantism may have been due to higher atmospheric oxygen levels, which allowed increased respiratory efficiency. The lack of flying vertebrates could have been another factor. Many of the early groups became extinct during the PermianTriassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth, around 252 million years ago.
Kinds of insects
Different kinds of insects are put into groups called orders. There are about 29 insect orders. The biggest insect orders are listed below:
Beetles (order Coleoptera) have the front pair of wings changed into a hard shell to protect the back wings.
Butterflies and moths (order Lepidoptera) have large, often colourful wings.
Flies (order Diptera) have only two wings.
Ants, bees, and wasps (order Hymenoptera) sometimes have stingers and sometimes live in large colonies (like ant hills).
True bugs (order Hemiptera) have a mouth that is long and narrow, like a drinking straw. This kind of mouth is called a beak.
Grasshoppers (order Orthoptera) can usually jump with their legs. Eat grass and grain plants.
Odonata, dragonflies and damselflies are top predators of other insects. Both aquatic nymphs and flying adults are carnivorous.
Phasmatodea, the stick and leaf insects, is an order which is entirely based on camouflage. It includes the world's longest insect, Chan's megastick.
All these groups except one (Odonata) are strongly connected with plants as a source of food.
Spiders, scorpions, and similar animals are not insects; they are arachnids. Arachnids are arthropods that have four pairs of legs. Centipedes are also arthropods, but not insects: they are in a subphylum called the Myriapoda.
Taxonomy
This taxonomy lists some of the better known groups of insects.
Archaeognatha (jumping bristletails)
Thysanura (silverfish or bristletails)
Palaeoptera (insects that cannot flex their wings over their abdomen)
Ephemeroptera (Mayflies)
Odonata
Anisoptera (dragonflies)
Zygoptera (damselflies)
Neoptera (insects that can flex their wings over their abdomen)
Exopterygota sensu stricto
Caloneurodea (extinct)
Titanoptera (extinct)
Protorthoptera (extinct)
Plecoptera (stone flies, about 1700 species)
Embioptera (webspinners, about 300 species)
Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets and locusts)
Zoraptera (one genus, about 30 species, resemble termites)
Dermaptera (earwigs)
Dictyoptera
Notoptera ~tentative~
Grylloblattidae (ice crawlers)
Mantophasmatidae (discovered in 2001, (gladiators)
Phasmatodea (stick insects, about 2500 species) ~tentative~
Blattaria (cockroaches)
Isoptera (termites)
Mantodea (mantids)
Parapneuroptera
Psocoptera (booklice)
Thysanoptera (thrips)
Phthiraptera (lice)
Hemiptera (true bugs, 80.000 species)
Endopterygota or Holometabola (850,000 living species in eleven orders)
Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps, sawflies)
Coleoptera (beetles)
Strepsiptera (parasites that mostly live inside other insects)
Raphidioptera (snakeflies)
Megaloptera
Neuroptera (net-winged insects, contains antlions for example)
Mecoptera (scorpionflies, may include fleas)
Siphonaptera (fleas)
Diptera (true flies)
Trichoptera (moth-like)
Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies)
Insects and people
Some insects can be pests to people in different ways. Some are parasites, such as lice and bed bugs. Some of these parasite insects spread diseases, for example mosquitoes spread malaria.
Many insects eat agricultural products (plants meant for people to eat). Locustss are an example of pest insects that eat plants in agriculture.
Some insects are used by us. Bees make honey. The larvae of some moths make silk, which people use to make clothing. In some parts of the world, people actually eat insects. Eating insects for food is called entomophagy.
Many bees and flies pollinate plants. This means the insects help the plants make seeds by moving pollen from one flower to another. Some good insects eat pest insects, such as lady beetles (or ladybirds or ladybugs) eating aphids. Many insects eat dead plants and animals.
Pesticides
People often use poisons called insecticides to kill pest insects. Insecticides do not always work. Sometimes the pest insects become resistant to the insecticides, which means the insecticides do not hurt them anymore. Both the Colorado potato beetle and the diamondback moth are insects that are resistant to many insecticides.
Insecticides do not only kill pest insects; sometimes many helpful insects are killed too. When helpful insects are killed, such as those that eat pest insects, the pest insects may come back in larger numbers than before because they are not being eaten by helpful insects anymore.
References
Hoell H.V; Doyen J.T. & Purcell A.H. 1998. Introduction to insect biology and diversity. 2nd ed, Oxford University Press.
Other websites
Insect -Citizendium
Basic English 850 words |
3752 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20operating%20systems | List of operating systems | This is a list of operating systems for computers.
The first operating systems
CTSS (The Compatible TimeShare System, made at MIT by Corbato and others)
Incompatible Timesharing System (The Incompatible Timeshare System, made at MIT)
Multics (project by Bell Labs, GE, and MIT)
Master programme for Leo Computers, Leo III in 1962
THE operating system (by Dijkstra and others)
The first proprietary computer operating systems
Apple Computer (first version was firmware with Integer BASIC; later versions had Microsoft BASIC)
Business Operating System (BOS) - cross platform, text-based
Commodore PET, Commodore 64, and Commodore VIC-20,
First IBM-PC had 3 OSes to start, UCSD P-system, CPM-86, PC-DOS
Flex (by Technical Systems Consultants for Motorola 6800 based computers: SWTPC, Tano, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Gimix, etc.)
FLEX9 (by TSC for Motorola 6809 based micros)
mini-FLEX (by TSC for 5.25" disks on 6800 based machines)
Sinclair Micro and QX, etc.
TRS-DOS, ROM OS's (largely Microsoft BASIC implementations with file system extensions)
TI99-4
Unix-like and other POSIX-ready systems
AIX (Unix from IBM)
Amoeba (research OS by Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
AtheOS (continued with the Syllable code-fork)
A/UX (Unix Apple OS from start of 1990s)
BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution, a type of Unix)
Cromix (Unix-emulating OS from Cromemco)
Coherent (Unix-emulating OS from Mark Williams Co.)
DNIX
Digital UNIX (later, HP's Tru64 for Digital's AXP 64-bit computers)
FreeBSD (Version of abandoned BSD with free source code)
GNU/Hurd
Haiku (operating system)
HP-UX from HP
Idris from Whitesmiths
IRIX from SGI
LainOS (FreeBSD project, a tried version of "Navi" GUI from Serial Experiments Lain)
Linux (free Unix-like kernel)
Minix (educational OS by Andrew S. Tanenbaum in the Netherlands)
NetBSD (post-CSRG open source type of BSD)
NeXTSTEP (foundation for OS X)
OS-9 (not to be confused with Mac OS 9)
OS-9/68k
OS-9000 (OS-9 written in C)
OS/360
OSF/1
OS X from Apple Inc.
OpenBSD (post-CSRG open source type of BSD)
OPENSTEP NeXTSTEP on Intel x86, HP PA-RISC, and different architectures.
Plan 9 (by Bell Labs)
QNX (POSIX, microkernel OS)
Rhapsody
RiscOS
SCO UNIX (from SCO, purchased by Caldera)
Solaris from Sun Microsystems
SunOS from Sun Microsystems (became Solaris)
System V (a release of AT&T Unix, 'SVr4' was the 4th minor release)
UNIX (OS developed at Bell Labs in 1970 first by Ken Thompson)
UNIflex (Unix emulating OS by TSC)
Ultrix (DEC's first version of Unix for VAX, PDP-11, MIPS, and Decstation computers)
UniCOS from Cray
Xenix (Microsoft's version of Unix)
z/OS (IBM mainframe OS)
Generic/commodity, non-UNIX, and other
AOS, now called Bluebottle(update to Oberon operating system)
AROS (Amiga Research Operating System)
Bluebottle (see AOS)
BS2000 by Siemens AG
Control Program/Monitor-80 (CPM operating system)
CP/M-86 (by Digital Research)
DESQView (windowing GUI for MS-DOS,1985)
DR-DOS (MS-DOS compatible OS from Digital Research)
FLEX9 (by TSC)
FreeDOS (open source, free MS-DOS alternative)
GEM (GUI for MS-DOS by Digital Research)
GEOS
MS-DOS (Microsoft purchased from Seattle Computer)
MorphOS (by Genesi)
NetWare (by Novell)
NeXTStep (Foundation for OS X)
PC-DOS (IBM's version of MS-DOS)
Pick
Plan 9, Inferno (networked OS by Bell Labs)
Primos by Prime Computer
Mach (kernel by CMU, used in NeXTStep and OS X)
MP/M-80 (by Digital Research)
NewOS
Oberon operating system (developed at ETH-Zürich by Niklaus Wirth)
OS/2 Windows/MS-DOS compatible operating system made in a Microsoft and IBM project, but later Microsoft stopped when they wanted to work on Windows NT more; which was better than early Windows versions and MS-DOS.
OS-9 (Unix emulating OS from Microware)
OS-9/68k (Unix emulating OS from Microware)
OS-9000 (portable Unix emulating OS from Microware)
SSB-DOS (by TSC for Smoke Signal Broadcasting; a variant of FLEX)
TripOS
TUNES
QDOS (made at Seattle Computer Products by Tim Paterson for new Intel 808x CPUs. Given to Microsoft—soon became MS-DOS)
UCSD P-system (OS by a student project at the University of California, San Diego; directed by Prof Ken Bowles)
VisiOn (first GUI for early PC machines, not successful)
Visopsys (hobby OS for PCs)
VME by International Computers Limited (ICL)
Randolf by United Computer inc,
Vision (first GUI for early PC machines, not successful, by Microware)
Hobby OS
Operating systems written for a hobby.
ReactOS (an open source OS that runs Windows NT applications natively)
Panalix
MenuetOS
SkyOS
Proprietary
Acorn
Arthur
ARX
RISC OS (was later open sourced under a fully free/open source license)
RISCiX
Amiga
AmigaOS
AmigaOS 4
Atari ST
MultiTOS
MiNT
TOS
Apple
Apple DOS
A/UX
Darwin
GS/OS
iOS
Macintosh/Mac OS classic
macOS
Newton OS
ProDOS
Be Incorporated
BeOS
BeIA
Zeta
Digital/Compaq/HP
AIS
ITS (for the PDP-6 and PDP-10)
OS-8
RSTS/E (ran on several machines, chiefly PDP-11s)
RSX-11 (multi-user, multitasking OS for PDP-11s)
RT-11 (single user OS for PDP-11)
TENEX (from BBN)
TOPS-10 (for the PDP-10)
TOPS-20 (for the PDP-10)
VMS (by DEC for the VAX mini-computer type; later renamed OpenVMS)
WAITS
IBM
AIX (a version of Unix)
ALCS
Basic Operating System (first system released for the System 360, as an interim)
DOS/VSE
MFT (later called OV/VS1)
MVS (latest variant of MVT)
MVT (later called OV/VS2)
OS/2
OS/360 (first OS planned for the System 360 architecture)
OS/390
OS/400
PC-DOS (IBM's version of DOS)
SVS
TPF
VM/CMS
z/OS
Microsoft
Xenix
MS-DOS
Microsoft Windows
Windows 1.0x (Mostly text interface organised into windows, because graphical hardware was expensive at the time)
Windows 2.X
Windows 3.X
Windows NT
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 9x
Windows Me
Windows 2000
Windows XP (based on code of Windows 2000, was first "non-business" version of Windows NT)
Windows Server 2003
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2008
Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows 8
Windows Server 2012
Windows 8.1
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows 10
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2019
Windows 11
Xenix
Personal digital assistants (PDAs)
EPOC, today is named Symbian OS
iOS from Apple
Newton OS from Apple, for Apple Newton MessagePad
Palm OS from Palm Inc
Pocket PC from Microsoft
Windows CE (Windows Compact Edition, from Microsoft)
Microcontroller, embedded
Little operating systems that run on small devices.
Contiki
INTEGRITY
ITRON
Nucleus RTOS
OSEK
QNX
ThreadX
TRON OS by Ken Sakamura
VxWorks
µCLinux
eCos
Fictional operating systems
Operating systems that have only appeared in fiction or as jokes.
Lcars - From Star Trek
ALTIMIT OS - From .hack
Digitronix - From The Hacker Files
Hyper OS - From the movie Patlabor
Penix - Funny word formed from Microsoft Xenix and a not great word
Wheatonix - April fool's joke.
GLADOS - Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System
Related pages
Computer software
Disk operating system
Operating systems
Computer-related lists |
3755 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer%20jargon | Computer jargon | Computer jargon means words to do with computers and surrounding topics. Knowing what these words mean can help people know more about computers. Most people use these words to discuss computer ideas, but some people use these words to impress others (also known as buzzwords).
Some examples of jargon are:
Disk - a place to store data.
Data - information stored on a computer. The amount of data that is stored on a disk is measured with the following terms:
Bit - the smallest data unit, can either be a "0" or a "1."
Nibble, sometimes nybble - there are 4 bits in a Nibble. This is the amount of data that can be expressed in one hexadecimal (base 16) character.
Byte - there are 8 bits in a byte. One byte is enough to hold one single letter or number of text.
Kilobyte - there are 1024 Bytes in a Kilobyte.
Megabyte - there are 1024 Kilobytes in a Megabyte.
Gigabyte - there are 1024 Megabytes in a Gigabyte.
Terabyte - there are 1024 Gigabytes in a Terabyte.
Petabyte - there are 1024 Terabytes in a Petabyte.
Note that some people and some companies use a different version of these numbers, replacing 1024 with 1000 in each of the above numbers.
Upload - to put data on somewhere. For example, on the internet or a website, "I uploaded my pictures to Facebook."
Download - to copy data from somewhere. For example, "I downloaded a song from iTunes."
Load - to get data from, or put it on, a disk.
Save - to put data on a disk.
RAM - random access memory.
ROM - read only memory. This is memory that does not get changed.
Hardware - the solid parts of a computer, like monitors, fans, CPU, etc.
CPU - central processing unit, another name for processor.
GHz - gigahertz. Used to describe the speed of a processor. Some processors are capable of doing more than one thing at once, as they have multiple "cores", so a bigger number is not necessarily better. The bigger the GHz number, the faster it runs and the more energy it uses.
USB - universal serial bus, a method used to plug computer tools into a machine.
Email - electronic mail.
WWW - World Wide Web, part of the Internet.
Broadband - a fast internet connection.
WiFi - a way to connect to a network wirelessly.
Plug & Play - a function from the OS that auto-recognizes any change to the hardware of the computer.
OS - operating system. The main program that controls all the computer functions, it calls other programs.
Program - set of data that tells the processor what to do and call for in the rest of PC.
Software - another name for program.
Installation - the way a software sets the place for itself in a computer.
Malware bad software made to do something to a computer or destroy data
Spyware Malware made to steal data
Computer Virus - Malware that spreads automatically
Hacker - people who search flaws in the way computers work. They can use their knowledge for evil, too.
Computers
en:Computer jargon |
3756 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million | Million | 1,000,000 (1000000, one million or one thousand thousand or million or thousand thousand for short) is a natural number between 999,999 and 1,000,001. The name is derived from Italian, where was 1,000, and 1,000,000 became a "milione", as 'a large thousand'.
In scientific notation, the number is written as 1×106 or just 106. Physical quantities can also be explained using the SI prefix when using SI units. For example, 1 megawatt is 1,000,000 watts.
The word 'million' is common to both the short-scale and long-scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.
The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in 'Never in a million years' and 'You're one in a million', or as hyperbole, as in 'I've walked a million miles'.
Il Milione is the title of Marco Polo's narration of his travels in China. The name is supposed to come from Polo's nickname after his tales of riches and multitudes.
Examples
A millionaire is someone who owns at least one million or more units of currency.
In computer science a megabyte is equal to a million bytes, or 1,048,576 (1,0242).
In measurement there are a million millimeters in a kilometer. There are a million meters in a megameter. (A person who travels completely around earth's equator travels 40 megameters). Also, the speed of light travels a million kilometers in around 3 seconds (See: light speed).
Integers |
3757 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000%20%28number%29 | 1000 (number) | 1000 (1,000, one thousand or thousand for short) is the natural number after 999 and before 1001. One thousand thousands is known as a million.
In Roman numerals, 1000 is written as M.
Examples of a thousand
The number of grams in a kilogram
The number of millimeters in a meter
The number of years in a millennium
19E03 1000 |
3759 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross%20domestic%20product | Gross domestic product | In economics, gross domestic product (GDP) is how much a place produces in an amount of time. GDP can be calculated by adding up its output (total production) inside a country.
To find the GDP of a country, one adds up all consumer spending (C), all investment (I), all government spending minus taxes (G), and the value of exports minus imports (X – M). This is shown by the equation: This measure is often used to find out how healthy a country is; a country with a high value of GDP can be called a large economy. The United States has the largest GDP in the world. Germany has the largest in Europe, Nigeria in Africa and China in Asia.
When a country's GDP is negative for two consecutive quarters it is considered to be in a recession. This is an unhealthy state for the country.
There are different ways to calculate GDP. Nominal GDP is the total amount of money spent on all the goods (new and final) in an economy; however, real GDP (adjusting for changes in prices) tries to correct this number for inflation. For example, if the prices rise by 2% (meaning, everything costs 2% more) and the nominal GDP grows by 5%, the real GDP growth is only increased by 3%.
GDP per capita
GDP per capita is the total income of a country divided by the number of people living in that country. It shows how rich people are, on average.
There are also different ways of calculating GDP per capita: nominal and purchasing power parity (PPP). Nominal does not take into account the inflation rate and the cost of living of a country, but it's more useful when comparing national economies on the international market. PPP may be more useful when comparing peoples' living standards between countries.
Gross national product
The GDP measure is different from gross national product (GNP) in that GNP = GDP + net income from assets in other countries (net income receipts).
Nominal GDP
When the gross domestic product is evaluated at the current market prices, it is called the nominal GDP. It includes changes in prices which makes it different from the real GDP due to inflation or price fluctuations. It can be measured in one of three different ways: income approach uses the total of all income from businesses and individuals in a single year; the expenditure approach uses the market value of all goods purchased in a single year; and the production approach is based on the total production in a single year.
References
Economic indicators |
3762 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket | Cricket | Cricket is a sport which is played between two teams of eleven players each (Cricket). One team, which is batting, tries to score runs, while the other team is fielding, and tries to prevent this. Runs are scored by hitting the ball, which is thrown by a player from the fielding team to a player from the batting team, across the boundary, or by the two batting players running back-and-forth between the two wickets.
The wickets are sets of three small, wooden posts that are at each end of a rectangle of short grass called 'the pitch', which is 11 yards long. The pitch is inside a much larger oval of grass called the 'area of play'. The area of play is a 30 yard circle inside the cricket ground or stadium. The fielding team can attempt to get batting players "out" in a number of ways. When a player is out, a teammate will replace them in the field. When a team no longer has two "not-out" players left to score, then the other team gets the chance to try to score. In shorter games of cricket, a team may also have to stop batting when the ball has been thrown to their players a certain number of times. After both teams have had enough chances to score, the team with the most runs wins.
The game started to gain popularity in England in the 10th century. The earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of 1598. The Guildford court heard John Derrick, a coroner, that fifty years earlier, "he and diverse of his fellows did run and play [on the common land] at cricket". Later, the game spread to countries of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Today, it is a popular sport in England, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies and several other countries such as Afghanistan, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Zimbabwe.
Cricket rules
There are two teams: The team bowling has 11 players on the field. The team batting has two players, one at each end of the pitch (also sometimes called the wicket).
The rest of the batting team are off the field.
Runs are got after a ball is bowled, mostly by hitting the ball and running, or by hitting the ball to or over the boundary.
The captain of the bowling team chooses a bowler from his team; the other players are called 'fielders'.
The bowler is trying to aim the ball at a wicket, which is made up of three sticks (called stumps) stuck into the earth, with two small sticks (called bails) balanced on them.
One of the fielders, called the 'wicket keeper', stands behind the wicket to catch the ball if the bowler misses the wicket.
The other fielders may chase the ball after the batsman has hit it.
The bowler runs towards his wicket, and bowls towards the batsman at the other wicket.
He does not throw the ball. He bowls the ball overarm with a "straight arm" (defined further in the rules and the guidance to umpires). If he bends his arm, the other teams are given one run and he has to bowl the ball again.
An 'over' is six balls, meaning he bowls six times. Then another player becomes the bowler for the next over, and bowls from the other end, and so on. The same bowler cannot bowl two overs one after the other.
The batsman is trying to defend the wicket from getting hit with the ball. He does this with a bat. When he hits the ball with his bat, he may run toward the other wicket.
To score a run:
The two batsmen must both run from their wicket to the other wicket before they can be run out. Being run out is explained below. The batsmen can run between the wickets as many times as they want, with one run scored each time they do this.
If the ball leaves the field after being hit without bouncing, six runs are scored.
If the ball rolls or bounces out, whether or not the batter hit it, it counts as four runs.
There are different ways that a batsman can get out. The most common ways are:
The batsman misses the ball and the ball hits the wicket: called bowled, or being "bowled out".
The ball hits the batsman's body when it would have hit the wicket otherwise. Called LBW (leg before wicket). The way this rule is applied is complicated; this is just the general idea.
A fielder catches the ball after the batsman hits it, and before it bounces or leaves the field: called caught.
While the batsmen are running, a fielder can throw the ball at the wicket. If the batsmen cannot finish the run in time, and the ball hits the wicket, the batsman nearer to the wicket that is hit is out: this is called run out.
When a batsman is out, another comes onto the field to take his place. The innings is over when ten wickets are taken (i.e. ten of the eleven batsmen are out). After this, the team which was the 'fielding' team becomes the 'batting' team. They now have to score more runs than the other team managed to score. If they score more runs before ten wickets are taken, they win. If they do not, the other team wins.
In a one-day game, each side has one innings, and innings are limited to a certain number of overs. In longer formats each side has two innings, and there is no specific limit to the number of overs in an innings.
Where cricket is played
Cricket is popular in many countries, mostly in Commonwealth countries.
The countries where cricket is most popular compete in international matches (games between countries) that last up to 5 days, which are called Test matches. Those countries are England, Australia, West Indies, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The West Indies are a group of Caribbean countries that play together as a team. Several other countries have more junior status. The test match idea was invented by teams from England and Australia in the 19th century.Ireland and Afghanistan are the new teams which can play Test cricket.
Cricket is also played in Kenya, Canada, Bermuda, Scotland, Holland and Namibia; the national teams of those countries can play one-day international matches, but do not play test matches.
The field
A cricket field is where cricket is played. It is circular or oval-shaped grassy ground. There are no fixed dimensions for the field. Its diameter usually varies between 450 feet (137 m) to 500 feet (152 m).
Different forms of cricket
Test matches
Test matches are the top international matches played between countries. The main point of test cricket is to test young players. The countries permitted to play test matches are accredited by the ICC: the International Cricket Council. The twelve countries are listed below, with 'West Indies',' England' counting for this purpose as a country. Tests last for up to five days (This is why many also call it "5 day cricket.") and can still end in a draw match : it is the longest format of cricket.
Test Playing Nations in order of first dates:
disapointment island
National league systems
Called counties in England, and states in Australia and islands in the West Indies. These are usually four day matches, but are sometimes played over three days.
Limited overs cricket
In these games, the length is determined by the number of overs, and each side has one innings only. A special formula, known as the 'Duckworth–Lewis System (DLS)' is applied if rain reduces the time for play. It calculates the target score for the team batting second in a limited overs match interrupted by weather or other circumstance.
One day internationals (ODI50)
ODIs are usually restricted to 50 overs batting for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 10 overs maximum. The highest team score is England 481-6 against Australia on June 19, 2018. The highest individual score is 264 off 173 balls by Rohit Sharma for India against Sri Lanka.
Twenty20 cricket (T20 Cricket)
Twenty20 cricket has 20 overs for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 4 overs maximum unlike 10 overs in an ODI match. The highest team score is 263/5 by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) against Pune Warriors India (PWI) in the 2013 IPL season. The highest individual score is 175* off 69 balls by Chris Gayle for RCB in the same match.
Averages
In cricket there are two special kinds of average, used to measure how good a player is:
A batsman's batting average is the number of runs he has scored in a period (such as a year or his whole career), divided by the number of times he was got out in the same period. A good batsman has a high batting average. The highest T20 average for a batsman who has played at least 20 innings is 70.66 by Chris Harris.
A bowler's bowling average is the number of runs that have been scored while he was bowling, in a period, divided by the number of batsmen he has got out in the same period. A good bowler has a low bowling average. The lowest T20 bowling average for a bowler who has bowled at least 500 balls is Mushtaq Ahmed with 13.80.
There is a separate set of averages for each type of cricket listed above.
Related pages
List of cricket terms
Street cricket
Comparison of baseball and cricket
References
Other websites
International Cricket Council (ICC)
Cricket statstics and records at ESPNcricinfo
What Is Cricket? Get to know the sport: a video produced by the International Cricket Council
"Cricket". Encyclopædia Britannica Online |
3763 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track%20and%20field%20athletics | Track and field athletics | Track and field is part of the sport of athletics. Athletics is a collection of sport events that includes running, jumping and throwing. Track and field events take place in a sports stadium, either on the running track, or on the field inside the running track. These tracks are generally made up of synthetic rubber – rubber particles bound with latex or polyurethane. Other athletics events that are not track and field, include cross country running, road running, marathon running, and race-walking - these events take place outside a sports stadium.
Athletics is a very common sporting event over the world. Athletics is a combination of different sports, generally running, jumping and throwing events. Running events include marathons, hurdle races, long distance and short-distance events. Some jumping events are high jump, long jump, triple jump and pole vault. Throwing events involve javelin throw, discus throw, hammer throw and shot put.
There are also events that combine parts of running, jumping, and throwing. One of these is the decathlon, which includes two short-distance races, a mile run, a hurdles race, javelin, discus, shot-put, high jump and pole vault.
All participants are timed or have a distance measured and this is their result. Participants train hard for an event and always aim to better their results.
Athletics is a sport that people take part in all over the world. It is a sport that is most common between young children up to younger adults. Athletics can be played for enjoyment, but it can also be a competitive sport. Athletics is also an event in the Olympic games.
Notes
Other websites
International Association of Athletics Federations website
USA Track & Field website
Results & Statistics for Collegiate, High School, Middle School, and Club teams |
3765 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton | Badminton | Badminton is a sport for two or four( "singles" or "doubles") people. The game is either one player against one player or a team of two players against another team of two players. Players use rackets to hit a shuttlecock over a net but if it goes too far it will be an out.
The aim of the game is to hit the shuttlecock over the net in a way that the other player or pair cannot hit it back properly before it hits the floor. Every time this is done, the player or pair gets one point. They also get to serve. The first player or pair to reach 21 points wins a set.
The winner of the match is the first to win 2 sets.
History
Badminton traces its history to a game called George Cajoles, which was played in Pune, India in the 19th century by the British military officers stationed there. This game was taken by retired officers back to England where it developed and quickly grew in popularity.
In 1877, the first set of written rules were arranged by the newly formed Bath Badminton Club. The All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, was held in 1899.
Badminton has been an Olympic sport since 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Although badminton originated in England, it is mainly played in countries of Asia such as China, Nepal, Indonesia, India, and the Republic of Korea that now dominates this sport.
The first Indian to win the All England Badminton Championship was Prakash Padukone in the year 1980
Equipment
Rackets
Shuttlecocks
Net/ court
Line Courtyard
Badminton shoes
References
Other websites
International Badminton Federation
Badminton Central
Badminton World Federation
https://www.badmintonengland.co.uk/
Pune |
3770 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical%20warfare | Chemical warfare | Chemical warfare means using chemical compounds in war to injure or kill people. The chemicals used for chemical warfare are poisonous.
Chemical warfare has been used since the Stone Age. Since 1899, several international laws have said that using chemical weapons is illegal. But chemical weapons have still been used in wars since then.
Definition
Chemical weapons are different than regular weapons (like bombs) or nuclear weapons because they do not explode. Some chemical weapons are meant to kill people; they do this by poisoning them. Other chemical weapons are meant to "incapacitate" people (make them unable to fight back). They do this by causing pain, injuries, or sickness.
Chemical warfare does not include using living organisms (like anthrax bacteria) to make people sick. That is called biological warfare.
However, some living organisms make toxins (poisons). These toxins are not alive. For example, botulinum toxin is made by a bacteria, and ricin is made by the castor oil plant. Because botulinum toxin and ricin are not alive, using them to make people sick is called chemical warfare. This is explained in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The convention also says that any toxic chemical is a chemical weapon unless it is used for legal reasons.
About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled (saved up) as chemical warfare agents during the 20th century. The Chemical Weapons Convention says that all of these chemicals should be destroyed.
The Chemical Weapons Convention lists three different groups of chemicals. These are chemicals that are poisonous enough to be used as chemical weapons, or chemicals that may be used to make chemical weapons.
Schedule 1 Substances (Chemicals): These chemicals can be used for nothing but chemical weapons (or for very few other things). Because of this, they may only be made or used for research; medicine; to make medications or antidotes; or for protective reasons (for example, to test chemical weapons sensors, which can tell when a chemical weapon is nearby, or to test protective clothing). Examples include nerve agents, ricin, lewisite, and mustard gas. If a country makes over 100 grams of any of these chemicals, the country must report this to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). A country may have a stockpile of no more than one ton of these chemicals.
Schedule 2 Substances: These chemicals have some specific uses other than chemical warfare, but not many. For example, dimethyl methylphosphonate can be used to make sarin, a nerve agent. But it is also used as a flame retardant. Another example is Thiodiglycol, which can be used to make mustard gas. But is also widely used as to make inks.
Schedule 3 Substances: These chemicals have many uses other than chemical warfare. One example is phosgene. It can be used as a chemical weapon, but it is also an important chemical used to make plastics. Another example is chloropicrin, which has also been used as a chemical weapon, but is also used as a fumigant (for example, to kill insects in a house). The OPCW must be told of, and may inspect, any company that makes more than 30 tons of these chemicals in a year.
Technology
History
Although very basic chemical warfare has been used in many parts of the world for thousands of years, "modern" chemical warfare began during World War I (see the page Chemical weapons in World War I).
Since modern chemical warfare started in World War I, countries have tried to research and make chemical weapons. They have had four main goals:
To make new, more deadly agents (types of chemical weapons)
To create ways of delivering chemical weapons that will hurt or kill even more people
To come up with better protections against chemical weapons
To create better ways of detecting chemical weapons (realizing that chemical weapons are nearby)
Ancient history
Chemical warfare was first used during the Stone Age. Stone Age people used poisoned arrows and spear-tips. These were dipped in poisons, like venom from snakes or scorpions. Sometimes they used poisonous plants.
The Ancient Chinese used different forms of poisonous smokes, when they besieged a city to try to take it over.
The Ancient Greeks used a form of burning wood, pitch from plants, and sulphur.
World War I
Poison gas was first used in World War I. France was the first country to make this type of gas. However, Germany was the first to use it in battle, on March 15th, 1915. On that day, they used tear gas against France.
The three types of gas used in World War One were:
Chlorine gas (tear gas): Tear gas makes people cough, have trouble breathing, and go blind until the tear gas wears off
Phosgene gas: Phosgene caused people to cough and choke much worse than tear gas. Phosgene gas is a very deadly chemical weapon. Historians think about 100,000 people died in World War I from chemical weapons. They also think that 85% of these people (85,000 people) were killed by phosgene.
Mustard gas: Mustard gas was almost impossible to protect against. It caused very bad, painful sores on the outside and inside of the body.
At first, very basic ways of spreading these gases were used. Even so, many soldiers could be hurt or killed. This was partly because World War I was fought using trench warfare, so many soldiers would be in the same place at the same time, and escaping from poisonous gases would be very hard.
Germany was the first country in World War I to use chemical warfare in battle. They simply opened containers of chlorine upwind of enemy soldiers, so that the wind would carry the chlorine gas to their enemies.
Soon after this, the French started using chemical weapons too. They filled artillery projectiles with phosgene and fired them at the Germans. This was a much more effective way of using chemical weapons. It would become the most common way of delivering chemical weapons during World War I.
Modern use
Chemical weapons were not used very much in World War II, except by the Japanese army during the invasion of China. This was because everybody was afraid that the other side would use weapons like theirs. Also, chemical weapons were not easy to use. They took time to use, and this made it harder for soldiers to move quickly. Also, the raw materials needed to make chemical weapons were not easy to get. This was because World War II was fought in areas which were not connected well by railroads.
During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq used chemical weapons (Iran did not). Many people believe that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurdish people.
The United States has used chemical weapons even after World War II. For example, the U.S. used Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
It has been reported that many other countries, like the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, and Serbia and Montenegro, have chemical weapons.
Laws about chemical weapons
According to international law, it is wrong to use chemical weapons. Since 1899, there have been many rules that make it illegal to make, import, and use chemical weapons.
The first international law to make chemical warfare illegal was the Hague Convention in 1899.
After World War I, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 made it illegal to use chemical or biological weapons on people.
In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was created. As of the end of 2015, 192 countries had agreed to follow the CWC. According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as of October 2015, 90% of the world's chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed.
Chemical agents
The main types of agents used in chemical warfare are:
Nerve agents, like sarin or VX
Mustard agents
Hydrogen cyanide-based agents
Arsines, like lewisite
Toxins, like Botulinum toxin
Incapacitating agents (chemicals that make large numbers of people unable to fight back, but without permanently hurting or killing them). Examples include:
Tear gases
Pepper spray
If we use chemicals (like Agent Orange or glyphosate) to destroy plants, sometimes human beings may be affected by side effects. But, we will not call it chemical warfare. Chemical warfare covers only direct attacks on human life.
References
Human rights abuses
Military tactics
Science in society
War |
3772 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran | Iran | Iran officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (), historically known as Persia, is a country in Western Asia. It is part of the Middle East region. It shares borders with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.
Tehran is the capital and biggest city. Iran is the eighteenth largest country in the world. It has more than 84.9 million people. Iran has been a member of the United Nations since 1945. It is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It is an Islamic republic.
In Iran, Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Mazandaranis, Gilaks, Lurs and Bakhtiaris make up the nations minority ethnic groups.
History
In the past, Iran was called "Persia" by people outside of the country. The people that lived there called the country "Iran". The official name was Persia, The name Persia was used when dealing with other countries and in government papers.
In 1935, Reza Shāh Pahlavi was Shah of Iran. He officially asked foreigners to call the country "Iran". This was done to show that Iran belongs to all the non-Persian Iranians as well as to Persian Iranians. The name Iran means land of the Aryans. It is used in the ancient book of the Zoroastrians, the Avesta. In the 19th and early 20th century, the name Aryan was used by Europeans to mean all Indo-Europeans. The "Aryan Race" was a term that Hitler used to describe his "Superior" or "perfect" race, but it first meant Iranians. "Aryan" means "noble" in Iranian languages.
Persian Empire
Around 500 BC, the area that is now Iran was the center of the Achaemenid Empire. The Greek city states fought against the Persian armies led by Darius the Great and Xerxes. Then Alexander the Great took the country by fighting the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. He ruled until he died,then the Greek Seleucids ruled until they were defeated by the Parthian Empire which later fought the Roman Empire.
After the Parthians, the Sassanian dynasty (224-651) took over. Other people took Persia by fi\ghting, like the Arabs (7th century), Turks (10th century) and Mongols (13th century). However, Iran has always had a different culture and continued to survive.
After the Arab Muslims conquered the Iranians, Persian women were enslaved as domestic servants while Persian men were forced to build and farm and engage hard labour. The Arab Abbasid Harun caliph had Persian concubines like Marajil al-Badghisiyya whom the later Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun descended from in the maternal line.
After World War II
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in Iran to create 1953 riots which led to the removal of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. The United States and Great Britain then made the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the most powerful person in Iran, again. The Shah left Iran in 1979 in the face of a revolt. The Iranian government was changed to an Islamic Republic by Islamic Revolution. Soon afterwards, the Iranian Students Movement (Tahkim Vahdat), with the backing of the new government, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. They held most of the diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Relations between the two countries have not been good since. For example, the United States claims that Iran supports terrorist groups against Israel. Iran does not see Israel as a country. Iran, along with many Arab League countries, believes that Israel does not have the right to co-exist. However, Iran has collaborated with the United Nations at times. These deals have been about energy or about fighting terrorism.
Iran fought the Iran–Iraq War in the 1990s-1980s. Many foreign countries supported Iraqi people’s regime.
Now, the West and United Nations is trying to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear technology country, even though Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s has reported many times that there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. However, it also says that it can not say for sure that Iran is not doing so in secret.
A December 2007 CIA report on nuclear activity in Iran said that Iran's secret program to get nuclear weapons technology was stopped in 2003. It said that Iran will probably not be able to build a nuclear weapon soon. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is a political strategy to deal with this issue.
Economy
Iran has the natural resource of oil. It is a member of OPEC. Oil is one of its main exports. Rice, handicrafts, carpets and crocus are important local products. Iran is the world's largest exporter and producer of caviar. Iran is also one of the world's biggest exporters of pistachio nuts.
Iran has factories that produce industrial products. Iran is also involved in the field of biomedical sciences.
Rial is the money used in Iran.
Religion in Iran
About 90% of Iranian people are Muslim. The state religion is Shia Islam. It has been the state religion since the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. This is the religion of about 75% of Iranians. They belong to the Twelver branch. About 9% of Iranians Muslim belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. The 9% of Iranians who are not Muslim are Bahá'ís, Mandeans, Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews. It is thought that there are between 300,000 and 310,000 Persian (Iranian) Jews.
Regions and provinces
Related pages
Ancient Armenia
References
More reading
Akbarzadeh, P. (2003) "Iran or Persia? Farsi or Persian? Which Ones Should be Called ?!". Payvand News of Iran.
Norton, K. (2002) "ARYAN" . Rhetoric of Race Dictionary Project. College of New Jersey.
Members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
1979 establishments in Asia
Current dictatorships |
3773 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama%20Buddha | Gautama Buddha | The Buddha is a title used to refer to a man named "Siddhartha Gautama". It means Fully Awakened One. He was born in a region of what is now known as the country Nepal as Prince Siddhartha Gautama in a Shakya Kingdom in Lumbini and was the person who created the religion of Buddhism. He lived from about 563 BC to about 483 BC.
He is also called Shakyamuni Buddha because he was a member of the Śākyan clan, the ruling class of an aristocratic republic in Lumbini in that region.
Early years
About 2600 years ago, a clan called the "Shakyas" in Lumbini ruled the city of Kapilavastu.
Siddhartha Gautama was born just outside the city in Lumbini as Prince Siddhartha Gautama in a Shakya clan. His father was a ruler named Shuddhodana, and his mother was named Maya. Maya died when Siddhartha was about 7 days old. His father controlled him in a very peaceful and nice way. There were home tutors for him as he was not interested in the outward things that took place at that time. Siddhartha lived in luxury; his father kept trouble and hard work far from him. A seer predicted that if Siddhartha stayed inside his palace his whole life, then he would become a great king. However, if he left the palace, then he would become a great religious leader. The king did not want his son to become a religious leader. He kept Siddhartha in the palace for his entire childhood.
When Siddhartha turned 16 years old, his father found a woman for him to marry. He married a woman named Yashodhara, and they had a son named Rahula. Although Siddhartha had everything he could want, he was still not happy. He wanted to learn about life outside his palace.
Legend says that he got out of the castle against his father's orders. He saw the "Four Great Sights": an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man with no home.
Siddhartha left his family, his land and everything else at the age of 29. He left everything to travel to neighbouring country India to be a mendicant (a wandering ascetic); eventually he became a religious leader for the people.
Seeking
Many holy men at this time were ascetics. They hurt their bodies for religious reasons. They abstain from certain pleasures so they can get rid of desire. One group of ascetics were called the Jains. They practiced self-denial and made themselves suffer very much. They believed this would free the ātman (soul) from pain and sadness. There were many types of ascetic mendicants (wanderers) throughout the region which would become known as India. Siddhartha tried these ascetic practices and meditation techniques, and eventually became better than his teachers. He still found no answer, so he left his teachers and friends to discover another way. He decided to eat only six grains of rice a day. He tried holding his breath. His body became very thin, like skin and bones, and he nearly died. Still, he had no answer.
Siddhartha began to think again about this path. He recalled sitting under a roseapple tree as a boy, and reaching a profound happy peaceful state. He thought this memory might point to a better way than hurting himself. He accepted a meal of milk-rice so he would have strength to make focussed effort. He found a fig tree (now called the Bodhi tree) and decided to meditate beneath it. He promised himself that he would not leave this spot until he had found enlightenment. He meditated under the tree (some say for 49 days). His mind is said to have become pure, and then--after a total of six years practicing--he became enlightened. He was now the Buddha the Fully Awakened
His life as a Buddha
When the Buddha became enlightened, he found the answer to suffering, and he knew how to defeat suffering. This answer was called the Four Noble Truths. He was not sure if he should teach his new ideas or not. He asked himself if the world was ready for such a deep teaching. But in the end, he decided to travel to a town called Sarnath to teach the people his new way. He taught about the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The people listened to him.
When he taught, he did not pretend to be a god. He said he was just a man who had found the meaning of life (enlightenment), and that any person can also find the meaning of life. For the rest of his life, he walked all over what is now Southern Nepal and parts of India to teach people what he believed. He started a Sangha, which is a group of Buddhist monks and nuns. Many people became enlightened because of him. At the age of 80, after 45 years teaching the Four Noble Truths, Gautama Buddha died.
The life teachings
The teachings of the Buddha are known as Buddhism. Buddhism is mostly about ending the feeling of pain that all people feel inside. Gautama Buddha taught that old age, sickness, death and suffering is a part of everyone's life. He taught that pain is caused by craving. And he showed that there is a way to end craving and end suffering by doing good things, not doing bad things, and training one's mind. When a person is able to perfect these qualities, they will gain enlightenment.
Buddhism teaches non-harm and balance – not going too far one way or the other. The Buddha taught people to meditate while sitting in the lotus position or when standing, sitting, walking, or lying down. The Buddha urged his followers to remember the Teachings, and ask questions. Some Buddhists chant (which was a way to remember and preserve the Teachings). Buddhists sometimes do these things to understand the human heart and mind. Sometimes they do these things to understand the way the world works. Sometimes they do these things to find peace.
The Buddha taught that people should not look to gods to save them or bring them enlightenment. The gods may have power over world events and they might help people, or they might not. But Buddha believed that it is up to each person to become enlightened.
Related pages
Buddhism
Seokbosangjeol
References
Other websites
A page about the Buddha's Life
A page about the Buddha and Buddhism
The Buddhist's Resource - A public resource of Buddhist prayers and chants
Eastern philosophers
Buddhist clergy
Mystics
Deaths from food poisoning
6th-century BC births
5th-century BC deaths |
3777 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/North | North | North is one of the 4 main directions on a compass. North is usually up on most maps. For Example: The United States is north of the Mexico, which is itself north of Brazil. The North Pole is the farthest north you can go. The North of the world is considered to be the top.
Basic English 850 words
Compass directions |
3779 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20football%20clubs%20in%20Portugal | List of football clubs in Portugal | These are some Portuguese football teams.
Academica
Alverca
Amadora
Beira Mar
Belenenses
Benfica
Boavista
Braga
Gil Vicente
Guimaraes
Leiria
Maritimo
Moreirense
Nacional
Pacos Ferreira
FC Porto
Rio Ave
Sporting
References
www.PortuGOAL.net The definitive Portuguese football site
Lists of football teams
Portugal-related lists
ru:Список футбольных клубов Португалии |
3787 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany%20%28software%29 | Epiphany (software) | Epiphany is a Web browser for GNOME. It is also available for Mac OS X and was made from Galeon.
It uses the Gecko layout engine from the Mozilla project to show web pages; however, the Epiphany developers have a new but less stable version of Epiphany 2.21.4 using the WebKit engine instead of Gecko. The Epiphany team wants to stop using Gecko and only use the WebKit engine, by the time they release Epiphany 2.24 or 2.26. Epiphany has tabbed browsing, cookie management, popup blocking and an extensions system. Epiphany can be extended with the Epiphany-extensions package in GNU/Linux Operating Systems.
Epiphany was made from Galeon by Marco Pesenti Gritti (also the creator of Galeon) with the aim of making a web browser with a very simple user experience. Because of that, Epiphany does not have its own themes, instead, it uses GNOME’s settings that are set in the GNOME Control Center.
References
Other websites
Epiphany Homepage
Galeon History homepage covering the decision to split development
GNOME Human Interface Guidelines
Epiphany WebKit Project
Mozilla
Web browsers
GNOME
Cross-platform software |
3788 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video%20game%20console | Video game console | A video game console is a machine that is used to play video games. Video game consoles usually connect to a television.
Special controllers are attached to the console to control the game. Some video game consoles are handheld. They can be carried around and have their own screens. The Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable are examples of handheld consoles. Some video game consoles can also run general software, such as Linux.
Video game consoles
Atari
Bandai
Coleco
Commodore
GamePark
Magnavox
Mattel
Microsoft
NEC
Nintendo
Sega
SNK
Sony
The 3DO Company
VTech
Other consoles |
3789 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation | PlayStation | The PlayStation (often known as the PS1 or the PSX) is a video game console made by Sony released in December 1994. At the time, it was competing against the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. PlayStation games were stored on CDs. The controllers that were first released with the console had no analog joysticks on them, but analog joysticks and a vibration feature were added to later controllers.
A slimmer version of the console called the PS one was released in 2000. It was white instead of grey.
It was succeeded by the PlayStation 2 in March 2000 and was discontinued on March 23, 2006 (eight months before the PlayStation 3 was released).
Sales
The PlayStation and the PSOne have sold over 120 million consoles.
Peripherals
PocketStation
The PocketStation was a very small games console released as a peripheral (an extra accessory) for the PlayStation. It had a clock, an LCD display and four buttons. It could be used as a memory card. It wasn't released in the United States, because it did not sell well.
References |
3790 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election | Election | An election is a way people can choose their candidate or their preferences in a representative democracy or other form of government.
Most democratic countries hold new elections for their national legislature every few years. What elections do is select representatives for the local areas. These are called MPs (Members of Parliament) in the British parliamentary system. Parliamentary systems may have a head of government and a head of state, but sometimes the two posts are held by the same person.
The legislature chooses the government, usually by majority vote in the legislature. Some democracies elect a president, who then selects the government. Many democratic countries also have regional, provincial or state elections.
There are different ways to organize an election in different countries. Voters might vote for an individual, or they might vote for a political party (party list). This is because different countries use different voting systems.
As a foundation of democracy, voting in elections has been adopted in most countries around the world. Whilst the process of electing an individual as a representative in a government can be simple, many election candidates spend mass amounts of money on their campaigns. The past decade has seen a consistent trend of politicians and election candidate spending more and more on their campaigns. Higher household incomes, inflation and population growth are all factors that have contributed to this trend of higher election spend.
Every country around the world has different rules and regulations when it come sot voting in elections. The biggest differences amongst most major countries is, the age in which an individual may vote and whether voting in an election is compulsory or not. Argentina, Brazil and Austria are among the few countries where the legal voting age is 16.
Countries that are not democracies can also hold elections. This is usually done to let the people choose a local representative (like a mayor). Also many countries call themselves democracies, but behind the scenes have a more autocratic form of government.
Vatican City is a theocracy: The pope (and a few high-ranking clerics) run the state. When the pope dies, or steps down, a number of high-ranking priests (called cardinals) select a new pope, through an election. When they are done, they will announce the result in a speech, called Habemus Papam (Latin: We have a pope)
Elections keep a democratic country functioning, as they give people the right to select their own government. However, there are ways a government can "fix" elections. Opposition candidates are permitted in former USSR countries, but they are usually prevented from using broadcasting or the newspapers. This means that, in effect, the ruling president is never challenged. Elections which are fixed are sometimes called sham elections or show elections.
Countries where the candidates are elected with a very high approval rating usually use elections to hide a more autocratic form of government. When Saddam Hussein was elected president of Iraq in 1995, he got 99.96% approval. There were about 8.4 million valid votes, 3,052 people voted against him. 99.47% of all people allowed to vote did so (this is called voting turnout). Another example: Kim Jong-un was elected the leader of North Korea, in 2014, with 100% of the vote.
Psephology is the study of elections.
Related pages
Political polarization
References
Voting systems |
3793 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine | Medicine | Medicine is the science that deals with diseases (illnesses) in humans and animals, the best ways to prevent diseases, and the best ways to return to a healthy condition.
People who practice medicine are most often called medical doctors or physicians. Often doctors work closely with nurses and many other types of health care professionals.
Many doctors specialize in one kind of medical work. For example, pediatrics is the medical specialty about the health of children.
Specialties in Medicine
Anaesthesiology
In this specialty, the doctor is trained to provide anaesthesia and sedation. This is important for surgeries and certain medical procedures. Anaesthesiologists also provide pre-operative assessments, ensuring the patient is safe during the operation and successfully awakens from anaesthesia after the operation. They assess for medical conditions and suitability for anaesthesia. They screen for risk factors prior to surgery and try to optimize the operative environment for the patient and the surgeon. They are the doctors who give epidurals during labor and delivery, provide spinal blocks, local nerve blocks, and general anaesthesia for procedures. They are the doctors who are especially trained in intubation (putting a tube into the lungs to help a person artificially breathe when the person is paralyzed and asleep during surgery). Hence, due to their skill in intubation, they are often the first line responders for emergencies. They help people who are in distress with their breathing, who have lost their airway or when their airway has become obstructed.
Cardiology
A cardiologist is a doctor with special training on the heart. The doctor in this field ensures the heart is healthy and functions properly. The heart is a vital organ whose role is to pump blood to the rest of the body. The purpose of blood is to deliver oxygen to the tissues. Without the heart functioning well, our tissues and organs would die and not function properly. Cardiologists treat heart attacks, sudden cardiac arrests, arrhythmias (rhythm issues related to a faulty electrical system of the heart), heart failure (where the heart fails to pump blood forward properly) and many other heart related illnesses. They specialize in life saving procedures like cardiac stents and cardiac ablation. There is a subspecialty within cardiology called "Interventional cardiology." These are cardiologists who specialize in interventions or procedures to save the function of the heart, such as cardiac stenting or angiography.
Cardiovascular surgery
This specialty consists of well trained doctors who practice cardiac surgery. They are best known for their role in cardiac bypass surgeries. In cardiac bypass, the surgeon restores blood flow to the area of the heart that was deficient due to a blocked coronary artery. This is usually done by taking a vein, most commonly the saphenous vein from the leg, to create a pathway of blood flow to the heart region that needs it.
Dermatology
Emergency Medicine
Emergency room doctors are in charge of sudden important or life-threatening emergencies. In addition to dealing with heart attacks, strokes, traumas, issues that require immediate medical attention or surgeries, they also deal with a wide range of other health conditions, such as mental health and drug overdoses. Their training is broad and diverse as anyone can walk through the door seeking help. They see patients of all ages and walks of life. However, unlike a general practitioner or family doctor, their immediate goal is to make sure the patient is stable and exclude any serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions.
Family medicine
A family doctor, otherwise known as general practitioner, is trained to provide medical service to people of all ages, demographics, and walks of life. Their training is diverse to deal with a variety of conditions including all non surgical specialties. They also follow the patient from birth to death and are trained to treat an individual as a whole, in the context of their social setting and also their family situation and mental health. Unlike specialists who mainly deal with problems of one organ or system, family doctors deal with all parts of the body and synthesize this information for the patient's general health. They provide a global perspective of the person's health in the patient's unique life situation. They are an individual's regular doctor who knows the patient in their social and family context. They can refer to specialists for issues that require more detailed or specialized treatments unavailable to them as an outpatient or beyond their expertise.
Gastroenterology
Gastroenterologists are doctors who specialize in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and upper abdominal organs. The GI tract is consists of the esophagus all the way down to the anus. The upper abdominal organs include the liver, gallbladder, pancreas and spleen. In addition to dealing with medical conditions associated with these organs, doctors in this speciality also perform endoscopies. This is where a camera is placed to visualize the esophagus and stomach (upper endoscopy) or the colon (lower endoscopy or colonoscopy). Gastroenterologists that specialize in the liver is called a Hepatologist. They are responsible for treating patients with liver failure or cirrhosis. They also treat patients with viral Hepatitis (A,B,C) and many other forms of liver disease.
Infectious Disease
Infectious disease specialists are MDs who study and treat
difficult infections, such as rare tropical diseases, antibiotic resistant bacterial infections, dangerous viruses and other highly contagious diseases.
Internal Medicine
Doctors in this specialty are trained to recognize and treat a variety of different conditions involving the internal organs. They have wide knowledge in a number of specialties including, but not limited to: Respirology, Nephrology, Gastroenterology, Cardiology. Doctors who practice broadly in this field are known as General Internists (or General Internal Medicine doctors). Internists can go to receive further training beyond residency in a particular field. For example, Gastroenterologists are internists that have chosen to specialize in GI medicine. Internal medicine doctors are in charge of inpatient units when patients are admitted for a general reason. Unlike family doctors and emergency doctors, although their training is diverse and they have broad knowledge in many organ systems, they do not treat or manage children, babies, or pregnant women. (Those patients are instead cared for by Pediatricians and Obstetrics/gynecology, respectively.)
Gynecology and obstetrics
Doctors in this field, abbreviated OBGYN or Obs/Gyn, specialize in women's health covering conditions of the female reproductive organs, and pregnancy care and delivery. Some examples of gynecological issues they deal with include contraceptive medicine, fertility workup and treatments, prolapse and incontinence, sexual health, ovarian tumors/ cysts, gynecological oncology. They are also surgeons in their fields, capable of performing numerous gynecological surgeries. Doctors in this field also practice obstetrical medicine, specializing in maternal fetal care and deliveries, complications related to deliveries, assisted deliveries (such as vacuum and forceps deliveries) and Caesarian sections.
Nephrology
Nephrologists are MDs who specialize in health and diseases of the kidneys.
Neurology
Neurologists are MDs who study and treat the nervous system, which includes the brain, the spinal cord and it's branches.
Oncology
Oncology is the field of medicine that studies and treats cancer.
Ophthalmology
This medical specialty consists of well trained doctors who recognize and treat medical conditions associated with the eyes. Some common complaints they see include red eye, eye pain, visual changes and trauma. They deal with many eye diseases including conjunctivitis, iritis, blepharitis, hordeolum, chalazion, glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, retinal detachments, papilloedema, central retinary artery occlusion. They are trained to perform surgery.
Orthopedics
Orthopedists are bone doctors. They treat broken bones, musculo-skeletal and other bone problems such as osteoporosis.
Otolaryngology
These are doctors with special training to treat the ears, nose and throat. These are the doctors who will very commonly remove an organ call the "tonsils" from a patient.
Pathology
Pathologist study the reasons things go wrong with the body. They examine tissue samples, look for cancer cell types under a microscope, evaluate DNA samples and many other specimens with advanced laboratory techniques.
Psychiatry
Psychiatrists are MDs who study and treat behavioral and thinking disorders.
Pulmonary
This medical area, commonly known as chest medicine or respiratory medicine, deals with the respiratory system. It usually involves patients who require intensive care including life support and mechanical ventilation. Doctors of this field usually are knowledgeable in diseases and conditions of the chest, such as pneumonia or asthma. Doctors in this field tend to perform minor procedures in surgery of the respiratory tract. Pulmonary specialists often practice critical care medicine. They also manage complicated chest infections.
Radiology
Radiologists are physicians who read and explain medical images such as x-ray pictures, CT scans, MRIs, Ultrasound images and other diagnostic movies and pictures. They also direct radiation treatments for cancer patients and others.
Urology
Urologists are doctors who study and treat the urinary tract.
Related pages
Health
Health care
Public health
Medical school
References |
3794 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport | Transport | Transport, or transportation, is moving people or things from one place to another place. Transport can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations.
Infrastructure includes roads, railways, airports, canals and pipelines. The infrastructure is the network where things are carried. Infrastructure also includes airports, railway stations, bus stations and seaports (docks). Infrastructure is usually built by governments and paid for by taxes from the citizens of a country or region. Infrastructure such as roads and railways are designed by civil engineers and urban planners.
Vehicles or vessels travel on the infrastructure. Vehicles include cars, trucks, trains and airplanes. Vehicles are usually designed by mechanical engineers. Vessels include boats, ferries, and barges which travel on canals and use docks and seaports. In the same way that trains use train stations, airplanes use airports. In the same way that trains use railway lines (train tracks), airplanes use flight paths and then fly in the sky.
Operations control the system. Operations include traffic signals, railway signals and air traffic control. Operations also include the government policies (a policy is a plan of action to guide decisions and actions) and regulations (a set or group of laws and rules) used to control the system, such as tolls, fuel taxes, and traffic laws.
Transport and communications
Transport and communication can be used instead of each other (someone could telephone a person rather than visit them). Transport traffic also needs communication. For example, air traffic control lets more airplanes fly. So, an increase of either transport or communication usually leads to an increase in the other one.
Transport, energy, and the environment
Transport uses a lot of energy. Most transport uses hydrocarbons (oil and gas). This can create pollution. Environmental regulations (laws) and low-pollution fuels (for example liquified natural gas) can reduce pollution. But as more vehicles are used, more pollution is created. Ethanol and biodiesel pollute less than petroleum.
Kinds of transportation
Transport can be by land, water or air:
Land transport using walking, roads and railway tracks by bicycles and other vehicles
Water transport using ships and barges in canals and in rivers and seas
Air transportation using airplanes and airports and helicopters
References
Other websites
Basic English 850 words |
3795 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road | Road | A road is a piece of land which connects two or more places. Usually, a road has been made easy to travel on, for example by removing trees and stones so the ground is more level. Although many roads are made of gravel and dirt, some are paved with concrete or bricks or stones.
People have been making roads for a long time. Roman roads in Britain and the Inca road system are famous. Transport by boats on waterways was usually easier and faster than transport by road. In the industrial revolution, the railway was invented. A railway is a special type of road, using railway tracks. Roads are now usually made for wheeled vehicles, like cars, to travel on.
When traffic congestion becomes a frequent problem, the road may be made wider or other roads built.
Road building and care is usually paid for by taxes. Some roads are toll roads, where people pay to use the road.
Other kinds of road
Bicycle path
Tracks
Trails
Freeways
Highways
Basic English 850 words |
3796 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004 | 2004 | 2004 (MMIV) was .
2004 was the Chinese Year of Wood Monkey based on the 12-year Chinese Zodiac cycle.
Events
January
January 1 - Deiss becomes President of the Confederation in Switzerland.
January 2 - Several British Airways flights from London Heathrow Airport to Washington D.C. and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are cancelled due to security fears.
January 3 - Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashes into the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt. All 148 aboard are killed.
January 3 - NASA's MER-A (Spirit) lands on Mars.
January 3 - Blair goes to Basra, Iraq and talks to the British soldiers there. Very few people are told before he comes.
January 4 - Dr. Mikhail Saakashvili wins Presidential Elections in the Republic of Georgia.
January 4 - A NASA rover lands on Mars and starts sending back photos of Mars.
January 5 - Britney Spears's marriage to childhood sweetheart Jason Allen Alexander is annulled (declared invalid) by a Las Vegas court following a surprise 55-hour marriage.
January 5 - China has confirmed that a sick man in southern China has the SARS virus.
January 6 - An official look into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales begins in London. It is held by Michael Burgess, the coroner of The Queen's Household.
January 12 - More than 100 000 people come together in Tel Aviv against their Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from parts of Gaza and the West Bank.
January 13 - An Uzbekistan Airways plane crashes in Uzbekistan's capital of Tashkent. 37 are killed.
January 14 - The shock site Goatse.cx is placed on registry lock for violating the AUP.
January 15 - The South Korean Foreign Minister, Yoon Young-kwan resigns after he says he supports American policy towards North Korea.
January 20 - India signs a $1.5 billion deal with Russia to buy the 45,000 tonne aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov along with 28 MiG-29k fighter planes.
January 22 - The European Union bans the import of poultry from Thailand, as bird flu spreads throughout Southeast Asia.
January 24 - NASA's MER-B (Opportunity) lands on Mars.
January 28 - The findings of the Hutton Inquiry are published in London. The British Government is found not to have falsified information in the "sexed up dossier". The report criticises the BBC's role in the death of David Kelly, a weapons expert on Iraq.
January 28 - At a hearing of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, it is revealed that the September 11, 2001 terrorists used mace (a brand of tear gas) or pepper spray to overpower the flight crew of American Airlines Flight 11.
January 31 - Mystery Science Theatre 3000 ends its run on the Sci-Fi Channel.
February
February 1 - A Hajj stampede in Mina, Saudi Arabia kills 251 pilgrims.
February 2 - An apartment building falls apart in Konya, Turkey, killing 92.
February 3 - The CIA admits that there was no immediate threat from weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
February 6 - A suicide bomber kills 41 people on a subway train in Moscow.
February 7 - His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales begins a tour of the Middle East, visiting troops in Iraq, the Iranian earthquake zone at Bam and Saudi Arabia.
February 10 - At least 50 people are killed in a car bomb attack at a center for hiring police officers south of Baghdad.
February 10 - The French National Assembly votes to pass a law banning religious items and clothing from schools.
February 11 - Up to 47 people are killed in a car bomb attack on an army recruiting center in Baghdad.
February 12 - Same sex marriage in the United States: The City and County of San Francisco begins giving out marriage licenses to homosexual couples as an act of civil disobedience.
February 13 - Scientists in South Korea announce the cloning of 30 human embryos.
February 17 - 90482 Orcus is discovered (found)
February 18 - A train carrying a convoy of gas, fertiliser and sulphur derails and explodes in Iran, killing 320 people.
February 20 - Iranian parliament election is held. Many reformist candidates are not allowed to run, resulting in a win by conservatives.
February 22 - A suicide bomber kills eight bus passengers in Jerusalem.
February 22 - Rebels capture Haiti's second-largest city, Cap-Haïtien.
February 24 - An earthquake in Morocco kills 571 people.
February 26 - Former British cabinet minister, Clare Short reveals that British Intelligence bugged the phone calls of United Nations officials, including Kofi Annan.
February 26 - The United States lifts a ban on travel to Libya, ending travel restrictions to the nation that had lasted for 23 years.
February 29 - 2004 Haiti Rebellion: Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns as president of Haiti. The chief justice of the Haitian Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, is sworn in as interim (short-term) president. Aristide later says he was made to resign, and that he was taken from the country by U.S. soldiers.
March
March 1 - Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie blasted ongoing Israeli extrajudicial executions of Palestinian activists, which claimed two more lives on Sunday, and blamed Israel for the weekend of violence, whilst accusing his Israeli counterpart’s government of trying "to kill any possibility for (achieving a) mutual cease-fire".
March 1 - Jean-Bertrand Aristide claims that his resignation as President of Haiti was forced and that he was kidnapped by American forces and forced to leave the country against his will. United States Vice President Dick Cheney rejects the accusation.
March 1 - President of Russia Vladimir Putin names Mikhail Fradkov as his new prime minister.
March 1 - Several hundred United States, French and Canadian troops are sent to Haiti.
March 2 - The Palestinian Authority's prisoners' affairs ministry states in its monthly statistical report that the number of Palestinian prisoners has risen to around 7,500. Of those 336 are children, 75 female and 943 in need of medical treatment. Of the 166 prisoners who died, 41% died as a result of medical negligence, while 18% died as a result of torture.
March 2 - Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reports 1,850 new housing units in the Jewish settlements Israel built in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2003, up by 35 percent from the previous year.
March 2 - John Kerry wins the Super Tuesday primaries in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island and caucus in Minnesota, effectively winning the nomination. Howard Dean wins in his home state of Vermont even though he is no longer actively campaigning. John Edwards is reported to be withdrawing from the race three hours before polls close in California and just as the caucuses begin in Minnesota.
March 2 - Jason West, mayor of New Paltz, New York is charged with 19 criminal counts of solemnizing marriages without a license. If convicted, he faces up to a $500 fine and a year in jail on each count.
March 2 - Exploration of Mars: NASA announces that Mars rover Opportunity landed in an area where "liquid water once drenched the surface".
March 2 - Bernard Ebbers, ex-CEO of Worldcom, is indicted on three counts of conspiracy for his alleged role in that company's $11 billion accounting scandal in 2002. Worldcom's CFO Scott Sullivan pleads guilty and is expected to cooperate with prosecutors against Ebbers.
March 2 - Multiple explosions hit Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala on the Shia festival of Ashura. Over 180 people are reported killed. A three-day long period of national mourning is announced.
March 2 - Iraq gets a Bill of Rights, including guarantees of freedom of religion and press, in the form of the Law of Administering the Iraqi State for the Transitional Period.
March 2 - The U.S. declares its 2,000-man force to have leadership over all foreign military forces in Haiti. President Bush chose not to wait for the UN Security Council but, instead, to intervene immediately to "restore order" in the western hemisphere's poorest country.
March 2 - The European Union imposes additional 5% tariffs on a wide range of goods imported from the United States, such as Honey, paper, and nuclear reactors. The tariffs were sanctioned by the World Trade Organization in 2002 as punitive measures after a ruling declaring that United States tax law unfairly favors U.S.-based companies.
March 2 - The European Space Agency's Rosetta space probe is successfully launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket on a mission to investigate the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
March 3 - At the Walt Disney Company's Annual General Meeting, about 43% of Walt Disney stockholders, including several prominent pension funds, vote to oppose the re-election of chairman and CEO Michael Eisner. The board of directors replaces him as chairman with George J. Mitchell.
March 3 - Researchers at Harvard University announce that they will give scientists free access to 17 human embryonic stem cell lines created without U.S. federal funding. This move is expected to boost stem cell research in the face of federal funding restrictions announced in 2001 by the Bush administration.
March 3 - A new government of Serbia, headed by Vojislav Kostunica, is approved by parliament.
March 3 - March 3 - Israeli aircraft destroy a car in the Gaza strip with missile fire, killing three people acknowledged by Palestinian officials as members of the militant group Hamas.
March 3 - March 3 - A group of Israelis join a court challenge against the Israeli West Bank barrier out of concern it could turn their good Palestinian neighbors into deadly enemies.
March 3 - New claims of bubble fusion are made, claiming that the results of previous experiments have been replicated under more stringent experimental conditions.
March 4 - bomb blasts in Iraq threaten to de-stabilise the country.
March 4 - The guilty verdict for Moroccan al-Qaeda suspect Mounir el Motassadeq's involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks is overturned by the German appeals court, which orders a retrial.
March 4 - Three American Muslims accused of using paintball games to train for a jihad holy war are found guilty of conspiracy charges.
March 4 - Chinese authorities release Wang Youcai, a day after Rabiya Kadeer's release
March 4 - Israeli tanks around 15 armoured vehicles escorted by several bulldozers enter the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, exchanging gunfire with resistance and later demolishing a four-storey building, claiming "anti-terrorist operations".
March 4 - The Prime Minister of Malaysia dissolves the national parliament and all state assemblies except Sarawak's, paving the way for the general election to be held within 60 days as dictated by the constitution.
March 5 - CBS broadcasts tape recordings of Diana, Princess of Wales as she describes suicide attempts while pregnant with Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.
March 5 - The National People's Congress convenes in Beijing. Premier Wen Jiabao makes his first state address, saying that "solving the problems of agriculture, villages and farmers is one of the most crucial parts of our entire work".
March 5 - Last minute disagreement delays signing of Iraq's interim constitution.
March 5 - The Russian polar station will be evacuated. Russia launches rescue operation to evacuate 12 of its scientists stranded on a research station which partially sank near the North Pole.
March 5 - Tony Blair defends the war in Iraq, stating that "global threat we face in Britain and round the world is real and existential and it is the task of leadership to expose it and fight it, whatever the political cost."
March 5 - Police hold a Haifa man, Eliran Golan, and his 54-year-old father in custody on suspicion of involvement in making and planting bombs over the last three years. Haifa Magistrate court extends for five days the remand of Yivgeny Grossman. Grossman denies any connection.
March 5 - Martha Stewart is found guilty by a jury on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and two counts of making false statements regarding alleged insider trading in December 2001. She faces up to 20 years in prison, though it is considered unlikely that she would be sentenced to that maximum. Sentencing is set for June 17.
March 5 - Nunavut general election, 2004: the new legislature returns Paul Okalik to office as premier of Nunavut, the largest territory of Canada.
March 5 - Key Tokyo stock indexes Nikkei 225 and Topix hit 21-month highs.
March 5 - The trial of former Finnish Prime Minister Anneli Jäätteenmäki ends. She has been accused of leaking secret foreign ministry documents referring to her predecessor Paavo Lipponen's meetings with George W. Bush.
March 6 - Tens of thousands demonstrate in Caracas, Venezuela, against what they see as the government's fraud committed by the Consejo Nacional Electoral related to the realization of a presidential referendum in mid-2004.
March 6 - The United States puts forth a UN Security Council resolution seeking to freeze the assets of Charles Taylor, the exiled former president of Liberia. The U.S. also announces that it is pledging $35 million to help rebuild Liberia's armed forces and that it supports the cancellation of Liberia's international debt, providing that economic reforms are implemented.
March 6 - Palestinians are killed and wounded in attack on the main crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claim responsibility.
March 6 - Up to 80,000 people march through the Turkish capital Ankara against plans to reform the country's civil service. The marchers fear that the reforms could lead to the civil service becoming politicised or losing its secular status.
March 6 - The scientists of the Russian polar research station near the North Pole are evacuated from their shifting and cracking ice floe by two Russian helicopters via Norway's Spitzbergen island.
March 7 - The New York City medical examiner reveals that a body pulled from the East River is that of actor/writer Spalding Gray, who had been missing since January.
March 7 - Greek legislative election, 2004: New Democracy, led by Costas Karamanlis, wins over the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, led by George Papandreou.
March 7 - An explosion rocks a Moscow apartment block. Initial reports from police suggest that the explosion was caused by a bomb, in spite of increased security in the run-up to the presidential election on March 14. Later reports state that the explosion was due to a gas leak.
March 7 - The White House reports that all of Libya's remaining nuclear weapons-related equipment has been sent to the United States.
March 7 - Palestinian sources say that 14 people died after an Israeli raid into the refugee camps of al-Bureij and Nusseirat. Israeli sources say it was a "pinpoint" operation against the "terrorist infrastructure".
March 7 - The 2004 Formula One championship gets under way with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Michael Schumacher wins.
March 7 - In Sweden some 15,500 skiers compete in the 80th installment of Vasaloppet, the oldest and longest cross-country ski race in the world. Norwegian Anders Aukland wins.
March 7 - In Austria there are elections in the states of Salzburg and Carinthia. In Salzburg, the SPÖ earns a majority for the first time. In Carinthia, the election is an unexpected success for Jörg Haider FPÖ.
March 7 - It is announced that Peter Maxwell Davies is to be the United Kingdom's next Master of the Queen's Music.
March 7 - The headquarters of the United States-led coalition in Baghdad come under rocket attack from Iraqi guerillas, the day before the new Iraqi temporary constitution is due to be signed.
March 8 - Dr. Jiang Yanyong, who exposed the SARS coverup in the People's Republic of China, sends a letter to the National People's Congress calling the forceful suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 a "mistake."
March 8 - Iraq's governing council unanimously approves the country's new constitution.
March 8 - On International Women's Day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai encourages men to allow their female relatives to vote in the upcoming election, but also suggests that they control those votes.
March 9 - March 9, 2004 attack of Istanbul restaurant in Turkey by two Islamic suicide bombers killing one, injuring five.
March 9 - New hubble Space Telescope images show deepest view of the universe yet.
March 9 - John Allen Muhammad is sentenced to death by a Virginia judge because he was part of the Beltway sniper attacks.
March 9 - A genetically modified crop, Bayer's Chardon LL maize, is approved for growing in England for animal feed from 2005 until October 2006. The Scottish Executive also approves the move, but asks Scottish farmers to hold off. MPs and farmers protest in anger as the science is questioned. The Welsh National Assembly's Environment Minister announces he is still opposed to approving the crop.
March 9 - Pakistan announces a successful first flight test of its Hatf VI / Shaheen II long-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile. The missile has a range of 2,000 km 1,250 mi and can carry a payload of 1,000 kg 2,200 lb.
March 9 - Five of the nine Britons held by American authorities at Guantanamo Bay under suspicion of having links to terrorist organisations are returned to Britain. They are to be questioned by British anti-terrorism police on arrival.
March 9 - The FBI arrests William Cottrell, a Caltech student and alleged member of the Earth Liberation Front, in connection with last summer's spate of arson attacks at a car dealerships which destroyed or damaged over one hundred vehicles, including many Hummer H2 luxury SUVs.
March 10 - Five British men released from detention at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay land at RAF Brize Norton. Four are immediately arrested by the Metropolitan Police and taken to Paddington Green high security police station in Central London for questioning.
March 10 - Lee Boyd Malvo is sentenced to life in prison without parole by a Virginia judge for his role in the Beltway Sniper Attacks.
March 11 - The Spirit rover takes first picture of Earth ever made from the surface of another planet.
March 11 - March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks: 10 bombs on Madrid commuter trains kill at least 180 people and hurt more than 1400, the most people ever hurt in any bombing in Europe the 1988 Lockerbie bombing killed more but wounded fewer.
March 11 - Four British prisoners who had been arrested on their return from Guantanamo Bay are released without charge. A fifth was not arrested on arrival. A further four remain in the Cuban camp. British newspapers vie for the rights to their stories, with offers in the range of £300,000. These five people are expected to sue the United States and UK governments.
March 11 - Same-sex marriage in the United States: The California Supreme Court issues an rule ordering San Francisco officials to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court said it would hear oral arguments regarding the controversy in May or June. The state says it did not register any of the thousands of recent gay marriages.
March 11 - UN inspectors find weapons-grade uranium in Iran. Iran objects to UN and United States policy, considering it "unrealistic."
March 11 - A Maryland woman and former Democratic congressional aide, Susan Lindauer, is arrested on charges of conspiracy against the United States, acting as an Iraqi spy before and during last year's invasion.
March 11 - An Australian Senate report on poverty is immediately dismissed by Prime Minister John Howard. The report shows between 2 and 3.5 million Australians, or up to 19 per cent of the population, are living in poverty.
March 12 - A Utah woman is charged with murder when her child is stillborn because she did not want to have a Caesarean section.
March 12 - Millions of people pack rainy streets across Spain in protest against the recent Madrid bombings.
March 12 - The parliament of South Korea votes to impeach President Roh Moo-hyun, saying he "breached election rules" by calling for support for the Uri party. Prime Minister Goh Kun will run the country until the Constitutional Court rules on the issue. Roh's supporters dismiss the move as a power play to influence the upcoming April elections. Thousands protest in support of Roh.
March 12 - Guantanamo Bay: Recently released British Camp X-Ray inmate Jamal al-Harith is interviewed by the Daily Mirror, alleging physical assaults and psychological torture.
March 13- His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester and the Spanish Ambassador to the United Kingdom attend the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace where the Spanish national anthem is played to honour the victims of the Madrid train bombings. The death toll in the bombings rises to 200; investigators continue search for perpetrators, with suspicions against ETA complemented by the apprehension of five foreign citizens connected to terror attacks in Morocco.
March 13 - Fifteen teams that qualified for the DARPA Grand Challenge start on a 150–200 mile robotic race to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a $1 million prize. All of the teams break down within seven miles of the start line; none collect the prize.
March 13 - Nine people, including eight children, are found dead in Fresno, California. One of their family members is arrested for the deaths. The police speculate that the deaths may have been part of a ritual.
March 14 - The Spanish parliamentary elections of 2004 take place. The incumbent government led by Jose Maria Aznar is defeated by the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
March 14 - Two suicide bombers kill 10 people in Ashdod, Israel.
March 14 - Madrid bombings: Spanish police receives a videotape where a man identifying himself as an al-Qaeda spokesman says the organisation claims responsibility for the attack, according to an announcement from the country's interior minister. The authenticity of the video has not been verified. The al-Qaeda claim overshadows voting in the general election.
March 14 - Occupation of Iraq: Six United States soldiers are killed over the weekend in three separate insurgent roadside bomb attacks, two in Baghdad and one in Tikrit. This occurs amidst the largest U.S. troop rotation since World War II.
March 14 - The people of Russia have a presidential election. Current president Vladimir Putin wins by a lot of votes. The election is widely criticised by external observers who said Russian state television was very biased towards Putin during the campaign.
March 14 - Pope John Paul II becomes the third-longest reigning pope in history, the other two being Saint Peter and Pope Pius IX.
March 14 - Several Kurds storm the Syrian embassy in Brussels protesting about violence and deaths in north-east Syria over the weekend.
March 14 - Presidential elections in Russia are held. Vladimir Putin easily wins a second term.
March 15 - Four U.S. Baptist missionaries working on a water purification project are killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
March 15 - The city of Aliso Viejo, California, nearly bans foam cups when they learn they are produced from a substance known as Dihydrogen monoxide (water), a substance that could "threaten human health and safety."
March 15 - Pavlo Lazarenko, former prime minister of Ukraine, stands trial in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco for money laundering.
March 15 - Same-sex marriage in the United States: Commissioners of Multnomah County, Oregon dismiss state attorney general Hardy Myers' non-binding opinion that same-sex marriages are illegal and vow to continue issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
March 15 - Newly elected Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announces his government's opposition to the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq and his intention to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30, unless they are part of a U.N. force.
March 15 - Astronomers announce the discovery of Sedna, a Pluto-like planetoid which is the most distant individual object known to orbit the Sun.
March 15 - Exiled Syrian Kurds storm the Syrian consulate in Geneva and other Kurds protest in Turkey and Germany at weekend violence in northeast Syria.
March 16 - Spanish police identify six Moroccans suspected to have carried out the March 11 Madrid attacks. Five of the suspects are still at large but one is in custody.
March 16 - An explosion at an apartment building in Arkhangelsk, Russia, kills 32.
March 16 - The Federal Reserve votes to keep interest rates the same, primarily since there are not many new jobs in the United States.
March 17 - Unrest in Kosovo: After two Albanian children are found drowned in the Ibar river in Kosovo and Metohia, with a third still missing, riots erupt in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica and later spread to the entire province. Mitrovica Serbs are blamed by Albanian media for forcing the children into the river, but this is later denied by United Nations officials. At least 22 people are killed by the end of the day with hundreds injured in clashes between Serbs and Albanians; enclaves of Kosovo Serbs elsewhere in the province experience attacks by Kosovo Albanians as well as offices of UN officials which were abandoned. In reaction to the violence in Kosovo, demonstrators in Serbia march in Belgrade and set ablaze mosques in Belgrade and Nish.
March 17 - Occupation of Iraq: A car bomb flattens the Mount Lebanon Hotel in central Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and hurting 45 more people.
March 17 - Utah bans execution by firing squad.
March 18 - Howard Dean announces plans to form Democracy for America, a political organization intended to help progressive candidates holding similar views.
March 18 - Unrest in Kosovo: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) announces that it will reinforce its Kosovo peacekeeping force, following ethnic fighting there that has killed at least 31 people over the past two days. More Serbian Orthodox Churches have been set on fire by Albanians and violence has continued in and around Kosovo Serb enclaves. Russia and Serbia-Montenegro call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. United Nations officials attempt to restore order in the province and blame the unrest on nationalist extremists on both sides. More demonstrations have taken place across Serbia, so far without the violence seen the previous day.
March 18 - Near-Earth asteroid 2004 FH is making the closest approach of an asteroid ever recorded. At 22:08 UTC it will pass 43,000 km above Earth's surface.
March 18 - Cleanup work at Love Canal has been completed, federal officials said. The EPA says it should be taken off the Superfund list.
March 18 - The United States House of Representatives all agree to double the reward for Osama bin Laden's capture to US$50 million.
March 19 - ICANN announces that a Toronto, Canada organization, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR), has applied to sponsor the .xxx top-level domain. IFFOR claims that a special domain would help stop children from seeing pornography. However, in February the Internet Engineering Task Force released RFC 3675, ".sex Considered Dangerous", detailing technical and administrative concerns with such proposals.
March 19 - The U.S. military drops all charges of alleged mishandling of classified information against Muslim Army chaplain Yousef Yee at Guantanamo Bay.
March 19 - Same-sex marriage in Canada: The Quebec Court of Appeal upholds a Quebec superior court ruling that same-sex marriages are valid under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It joins Ontario and British Columbia in permitting same-sex marriage. The couple which brought the suit is scheduled to be wed on April 10, after a required 20-day waiting period.
March 19 - Äänekoski bus disaster: At least 24 young people are killed and 15 hurt, several of them seriously, in a collision on an icy road between a coach and a lorry carrying rolls of paper on Highway 4 near Äänekoski in Central Finland. The accident happened at around 2 a.m. local time (UTC +2).
March 19 - The newspaper USA Today admits that a former reporter, Jack Kelley, invented or distorted important parts of at least eight major stories. He was, for example, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 on the basis of an eyewitness account of a suicide bombing that, could not have happened as he described it.
March 20 - ROC presidential election: Chen Shui-bian is declared the winner over Lien Chan by fewer than 30,000 votes of nearly 13,000,000 cast (0.25%). Lien calls the result unfair and demands it be voided. A controversial referendum is invalidated by low turnout.
March 20 - Former Queen Juliana of the Netherlands dies aged 94.
March 20 - On the first anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, millions join protests in cities across the world to demonstrate against the war and the continued occupation. In London two Greenpeace protesters evade newly tightened security and scale the Houses of Parliament's Clock Tower to unfurl a banner calling for the truth to be told by the UK government.
March 20 - Stephen Harper is elected as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, winning 56% of the possible points on the first ballot.
March 20 - A Methodist church jury in Bothell, Washington acquits a lesbian minister of violation of church rules.
March 21 - Malaysian general election: Secular ruling coalition Barisan Nasional wins a two-thirds majority and wrests back the state of Terengganu from Islamist party PAS. A recount is pending for the closely contested state of Kelantan.
March 21 - Measurements taken at Mauna Loa Observatory show carbon dioxide readings of 379 parts per million, up by 3 ppm in one year; average increase for the past decade has been 1.8 ppm. The reason for this accelerated buildup in a greenhouse gas requires further analysis.
March 21 - Al-Qaeda claims to have purchased "smart briefcase bombs" with nuclear capabilities on the black market.
March 21 - Salvadoran presidential election: Voting takes place to elect a new president of El Salvador.
March 21 - ROC presidential election: Taiwan's High Court has ordered all ballot boxes to be sealed, in order to preserve evidence. However, a recount of votes was not ordered. Various protests are held throughout the island.
March 22 - Palestinians protest in the streets after an Israeli helicopter gunship fires a missile at the entourage of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City, killing Yassin and 7 others.
March 22 - ROC presidential election, 2004: Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party submits a bill to the Legislative Yuan to allow an immediate recount, per Lien Chan's demand, but the majority Pan-Blue Coalition says it is not necessary, because the President could issue an executive order instead.
March 22 - Salvadoran presidential election: Tony Saca of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) declares victory over a former Communist Party guerrilla leader, with 60% of the votes.
March 22 - Israel assassinates Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual head of Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. It then seals off both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Kofi Annan, and the British, French, and German governments, amongst others, condemn the killing.
March 22 - The former chief counter-terrorism aide to United States President Bush, Richard A. Clarke, claims that Bush diverted attention towards Iraq, ignoring the main threat of Al-Qaeda. Clarke was the administration's senior counter-terrorism official when 9/11 took place.
March 22 - Mijailo Mijailovic is sentenced to life imprisonment for the equivalent of First-degree murder, found guilty of assassination of Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, September 10, 2003.
March 22 - Same-sex marriage in the U.S.: Benton County, Oregon commissioners, after receiving a letter from state attorney general Hardy Myers, reverse their earlier vote to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples this Wednesday. But, stating they will observe the principal of equal treatment under the law, the commissioners decide that the county will stop issuing any marriage licenses until the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of the law.
March 23 - Unrest in Kosovo: an UNMIK police patrol is attacked on the road Pristina-Podujevo. A UN police officer from Ghana is killed, a local police officer later dies of his wounds, and their translator is also wounded but in stable condition.
March 23 - United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell defend their pre-September 11th actions, saying that even if Osama Bin Laden had been killed, the attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon would have still happened. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen also testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
March 23 - Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is chosen to lead Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the movement's exiled politburo chief Khaled Meshaal is chosen as its overall leader.
March 24 - The World Trade Organization makes a preliminary ruling that United States laws prohibiting Internet gambling violate international trade agreements, in response to a complaint by Antigua and Barbuda. The Bush administration vows to appeal, while some members of the United States Congress say they would rather allow a trade war or withdraw from future WTO talks than undo laws against online gambling.
March 24 - Danish artist Marco Evaristti paints an iceberg in Greenland red, using 780 gallons of paint.
March 24 - Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow: The United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments over the constitutionality of the "under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance.
March 24 - The British explorer David Hempleman-Adams sets an altitude record for a flight in a wicker basket balloon.
March 24 - The leader of Hamas states that the group has no plans to attack United States targets, retreating from earlier threats by its armed wing. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is announced as a new target, instead.
March 24 - Sharon states that Israel has a "natural right" to pursue those who would destroy it.
March 24 - Hussam Abdo, a 14-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber fails to detonate his bomb-vest at an Israeli checkpoint outside Nablus. The child was paid $23 and promised sex in heaven as his reward. An armed wing of Fatah takes responsibility for sending the boy.
March 25 - The 2004 Abel Prize in mathematics is announced to be awarded to Michael F. Atiyah and Isadore M. Singer for their index theorem.
March 25 - The terrorist group AZF suspends its bombing campaign in France but continues to demand money from the government. News agencies report that the government placed notices in Libération newspaper to contact the terrorists.
March 25 - Novelist and movie maker Alain Robbe-Grillet is elected to the Académie française.
March 25 - Five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) array across the evening sky in a night show that will not happen again for another three decades.
March 25 - A prototype of a mechanized five-ton disaster-rescue robot, the T-52 Enryu, is unveiled in Japan.
March 26 - United Nations electoral expert and security support arrive in Baghdad.
March 26 - The first South Atlantic hurricane ever recorded forms 275 miles off the coast of Brazil.
March 26 - ROC presidential election, 2004: The controversial victory of Chen Shui-bian is confirmed by the state electoral commission, with a margin of only 29,518 votes – 0.2% of the total – separating the candidates. Pan-Blue protestors storm and hurl eggs at the Central Electoral Commission building.
March 26 - Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The United States vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution (sponsored by Algeria and Libya) condemning the killing by Israel of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin along with six other Palestinians outside a mosque in Gaza City and calling for the end of executions. The veto is publicly motivated by the resolution making no mention of suicide bombings committed by Hamas and attributed to Yassin. 11 votes are recorded in favour, with three (United Kingdom, Germany, and Romania) abstaining and one (the United States) against.
March 27 - John F. Kerry joins other Democrats calling for National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify before the September 11 commission and states the White House should learn from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's openness during an inquiry after Pearl Harbor.
March 27 - ROC presidential election, 2004: 500,000 Pan-Blue protesters take to the streets in Taipei to demand a recount.
March 27 - NASA succeeds in a second attempt to fly its X-43A experimental airplane from the Hyper-X project, attaining speeds in excess of Mach 7, the fastest ever air-breathing Hypersonic flight.
March 27 - A powerful cyclone hits the coast of southern Brazil. Brazilian and United States meteorologists disagree over whether Cyclone Catarina is a Hurricane, the first ever recorded in the South Atlantic.
March 28 - Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, leader of Hamas, states that God has declared war on the United States.
March 28 - The University of Cambridge wins a controversial victory in the 150th Boat Race by 6 lengths, with a total time of 18:47 minutes.
March 28 - The Arab League summit is postponed. The meeting was put off indefinitely because people disagreed about ways to change things in the region, including democratization.
March 28 - Israeli State Attorney Edna Arbel recommends that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted for taking bribes.
March 28 - The French regional elections result in massive losses for the governing conservative parties and victories for socialist-green alliances in at least 20 of 22 regions, leading to Raffarin's resignation on March 30.
March 28 - A coup attempt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo fails.
March 29 - Dominica switches diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China.
March 29 - An explosion occurs close to the main bazaar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, killing two and injuring around twenty. Also in the capital, three police officers are shot dead. In the city of Bukhara, another explosion at a suspected terrorist bomb factory kills ten people. (Reuters) (BBC)
March 29 - The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country to ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces (including bars and restaurants). People who break this law risk a large fine.
March 29 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) welcomes seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
March 29 - Beauty company Dove is to use "real women" in advertising after a survey finds two-thirds of UK women feel depressed about their figures and have low body confidence as a result of beauty advertising.
March 29 - Scientists discover methane in the Martian atmosphere and believe it could mean there is life on the Red Planet.
March 30 - New Jersey physicist Greg Olsen pays $20 million to conduct environmental research for eight days aboard the International Space Station.
March 30 - Police in Uzbekistan raid a Hideout south of the capital, Tashkent. Fighting has caused 23 deaths in the area.
March 30 - The Philippines police stop a big bomb attack after arresting four members of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group.
March 30 - The White House allows Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security advisor, testify under oath about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
March 30 - Eight men are arrested after a series of raids in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000. Half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was found during the raids.
March 31 - Nine Americans are killed during the war in Iraq.
March 31 - The International Court of Justice rules that the USA was wrong to sentence 51 Mexicans to death for murder and says their trials must be reviewed.
March 31 - A Canadian court rules that the Canadian Recording Industry Association did not prove that downloading music from the Internet breaks the rules of copyright.
April
April 2 - A bomb found on the Madrid to Seville train line is defused by Spanish police.
April 3 - A bomb explosion in a Madrid flat kills five suspected terrorists responsible for the Madrid train bombings on March 11, and a Spanish policeman.
April 5 - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom begins a state visit to France to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale
April 8 - Three Japanese citizens are taken Hostage in Iraq.
April 16 - India defeats Pakistan in their historic first cricket tour in 14 years.
April 17 - Israeli helicopters fire missiles at a convoy of vechiles in the Gaza Strip, killing the leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi
April 20 - Tony Blair announces that the UK will hold a referendum on the European constitution.
April 21 - Mordechai Vanunu is released from prison in Israel after an 18-year term for treason.
April 21 - The American TV network, CBS broadcasts pictures of Diana, Princess of Wales as she lay dying moments after the fatal car crash that killed her.
April 22 - Two trains carrying explosives and fuel collide in the North Korean town of Ryongchon, killing 161 people, injuring 1,300 and destroying thousands of homes.
April 22 - The last coal mine in France closes, ending nearly 300 years of coal mining.
April 24 - The christening of Lady Louise Windsor takes place at Windsor Castle.
April 25 - Greek Cypriots reject a United Nations plan to unite the island of Cyprus in a referendum.
May
May 1 - An enlargement of the European Union takes place, expanding the Union by 10 member-states: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta, and Cyprus.
May 2 - After 3 weeks of captivity, American contractor Thomas Hamill escapes from his captors in Iraq with just a gunshot wound to the arm and makes it to US Military personnel.
May 5 - Parliament grounds in New Zealand host 15,000 people protesting about the proposed law that would change the ownership of foreshore and seabed.
May 6 - The president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, announces that Adzharian leader Aslan Abashidze has left the country, ending a political crisis there.
May 6 - The final episode of Friends airs on NBC. Advertisers pay $2 million for 30 second ads.
May 9 - Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed by landmine placed under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.
May 10 - Canadian Sponsorship Scandal - The RCMP arrest Chuck Guite and Jean Brault in connection with the scandal.
May 10 - Final phase of elections to the Lok Sabha in India
May 10 - National election takes place in the Philippines for the presidency and almost all other elective positions.
May 11 - Explosion destroys a plastics factory in Glasgow, UK, killing nine people and injuring over a hundred.
May 11 - A bomb explodes in a crowded market in Iraq. It kills three people and wounds at least 23.
May 11 - Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov is buried in his home village.
May 12 - An American civilian contractor in Iraq, Nick Berg, is shown being decapitated by a group with links to al-Qaida on a web-distributed video. They state it is retaliation for the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
May 12 - Semi final takes place in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 in Turkey.
May 13 - In India, the Congress Party wins a shock victory in the elections to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament).
May 13 - The season finale for Frasier is aired.
May 14 - The editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper in the UK, Piers Morgan, is sacked after the British army proves photographs in the newspaper, allegedly showing British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees, to be fake.
May 14 - Danish Crown Prince Frederik has married Australian Mary Konadson in Copenhagen, Denmark.
May 15 - FIFA announces that South Africa will host the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament, making it the first African nation to do so.
May 20 - A 6.5-magnitude earthquake hits Taiwan. There is no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
June
June 5 - Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan dies of pneumonia at the age of 93.
June 11 - state funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan is held.
June 12 - Former U.S. President Bush celebrates his 80th birthday by skydiving.
July
July 1 – The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft arrives at Saturn.
July 4 – Groundbreaking for the Freedom Tower begins at Ground Zero in New York City.
July 4 – In football, Greece wins the European Championships, after being rated as an 80-1 rank outsider.
August
August 13–August 29 – The 2004 Summer Olympics are held in Athens, Greece.
August 16 – The village of Boscastle in Cornwall is hit by a flash flood.
September
September 1 – Many schoolchildren are taken hostage at a school in Beslan, southern Russia. Many of them are massacred on September 3.
September 23 – Mount St. Helens becomes active again.
October
October 29 – King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia abdicates in favour of his son, Norodom Sihamoni.
November
November 2 – George W. Bush is reelected as President of the United States.
November 21 – The Orange Revolution begins in Ukraine.
December
December 26 - A strong earthquake from the Indian Ocean kills at least 140,000 people.
December 26 – In the wake of the Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko is elected President of Ukraine.
December 31 – The Taipei 101 tower is opened in Taipei, Taiwan.
Nobel prize winners
Chemistry – Aaron Ciechanover
Chemistry – Avram Hershko
Chemistry – Irwin Rose
Economics – Finn E. Kydland
Economics – Edward C. Prescott
Literature – Elfriede Jelinek
Medicine – Richard Axel
Medicine – Linda B. Buck
Peace – Wangari Maathai
Physics – David J. Gross
Physics – H. David Politzer
Physics – Frank Wilczek
Births
January 21 – Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway
January 27 – Fancine Diaz, Filipina actress
February 19 – Millie Bobby Brown, English actress and producer
May 1 – Charli D'Amelio, American dancer and social media personality
June 4 – Mackenzie Ziegler, American dancer and social media personality
June 8 – Francesca Capaldi, American actress
July 17 – Lindokuhle Modi, South African actor
October 3 – Noah Schnapp, American actor
October 6 – Bronny James, American basketball player
November 13 – Elijah Alejo, Filipina actress
Deaths
January
January 4 – John Toland, American writer (b. 1912)
January 6 – Pierre Charles, Prime Minister of Dominica (b. 1954)
January 7 - Ingrid Thulin, Swedish actress (b. 1926)
January 7 – Mario Zatelli, French footballer (b. 1912)
January 7 – Jaap Kraaier, Dutch canoe racer (b. 1913)
January 10 – Princess Kira of Prussia, daughter of Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia (b. 1943)
January 11 – Spalding Gray, American actor, screenwriter, and monologue artist (b. 1941)
January 11 – Asrul Sani, Indonesian writer (b. 1927)
January 12 – Olga Ladyzhenskaya, Russian mathematician (b. 1922)
January 13 – Harold Shipman, British doctor and serial killer (b. 1946)
January 14 – Uta Hagen, German-American actress (b. 1919)
January 16 – Kalevi Sorsa, former Prime Minister of Finland (b. 1930)
January 17 – Czesław Niemen, Polish rock musician (b. 1939)
January 22 – Ann Miller, American dancer, singer and actress (b. 1923)
January 23 – Helmut Newton, German-Australian photographer (b. 1920)
January 24 – Leônidas da Silva, Brazilian footballer and manager (b. 1913)
January 25 – Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch athlete (b. 1918)
January 25 – Miklós Fehér, Hungarian footballer (b. 1979)
January 27 – Salvador Laurel, Vice President of the Philippines (b. 1928)
January 27 – Jack Paar, American television show host (b. 1918)
January 28 – Eeva Joenpelto, Finnish writer (b. 1921)
January 29 – O. W. Fischer, Austrian actor (b. 1915)
January 29 – Janet Frame, New Zealand writer (b. 1924)
January 29 – Louie Nunn, American politician (b. 1924)
January 31 – Eleanor Holm, American swimmer (b. 1913)
February
February 13 – Zelimchan Jandarbiejev, President of Chechnya (b. 1952)
February 14 – Marco Pantani, Italian cyclist (b. 1970)
February 15 – Jens Evensen, Norwegian minister and International Court of Justice judge (b. 1917)
February 15 - Hasse Ekman, Swedish actor and director (b. 1915)
February 17 – José López Portillo, 51st President of Mexico (b. 1920)
February 25 – Jacques Georges, President of UEFA (b. 1916)
February 26 – Boris Trajkovski, President of Macedonia (b. 1956)
March
March 2 - Mercedes McCambridge, American actress (b. 1918)
March 7 - Paul Winfield, American actor (b. 1941)
March 9 - Albert Mol, Dutch actor (b. 1917)
March 20 – Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (b. 1909)
March 28 – Peter Ustinov, British actor (b. 1921)
March 29 - Simone Renant, French actress (b. 1911)
March 30 – Alistair Cooke, British-born American journalist (b. 1908)
April
April 19 – Volodymyr Kaplychnyi, Ukrainian footballer (b. 1944)
April 19 – John Maynard Smith, British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist (b. 1920)
April 23 – Pat Tillman, American football player (b. 1976)
April 24 – Estée Lauder, American cosmetics entrepreneur (b. 1906)
May
May 9 – Akhmad Kadyrov, President of Chechnya (b. 1951)
May 9 – Alan King, American actor and comedian (b. 1927)
May 17 – Ezzedine Salim, Iraqi politician (b. 1943)
May 17 – Tony Randall, American actor (b. 1920)
June
June 5 – Ronald Reagan, American actor and politician, 40th President of the United States (b. 1911)
June 10 – Ray Charles, American singer (b. 1930)
June 16 – Thanom Kittikachorn, Prime Minister of Thailand (b. 1911)
June 27 – Fred Ramdat Misier, President of Suriname (b. 1926)
July
July 1 – Marlon Brando, American actor (b. 1924)
July 6 – Thomas Klestil, President of Austria (b. 1932)
July 16 – George Busbee, American politician (b. 1927)
July 19 – Zenkō Suzuki, Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1911)
July 28 – Tiziano Terzani, Italian journalist (b. 1938)
July 28 – Francis Crick, English chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1916)
August
August 12 – Sein Lwin, President of Myanmar (b. 1924)
August 12 – Godfrey Hounsfield, English engineer and inventor (b. 1919)
September
September 20 – Brian Clough, English football manager (b. 1935)
September 22 – Ray Traylor, American professional wrestler (b. 1963)
September 24 - Françoise Sagan, French writer (b. 1935)
September 29 – Christer Pettersson, Swedish murder suspect (b. 1947)
October
October 3 – Janet Leigh, American actress (b. 1927)
October 10 – Christopher Reeve, American actor (b. 1952)
October 25 – John Peel, British disc jockey (b. 1939)
November
November 2 – Theo van Gogh, Dutch movie maker (b. 1957)
November 2 - Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates (b. 1918)
November 9 – Emlyn Hughes, English footballer (b. 1947)
November 9 – Stieg Larsson, Swedish writer (b. 1954)
November 11 – Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority (b. 1929)
December
December 1 – Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (b. 1911)
December 28 – Jerry Orbach, American actor (b. 1935)
December 28 – Susan Sontag, American writer, feminist, activist (b. 1933)
December 30 – Artie Shaw, American jazz musician (b. 1910)
References
2004 |
3797 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian%20Islands | Hawaiian Islands | From west to east, Hawaii is made up of the following Hawaiian Islands:
Niihau
Kauai
Oahu
Moloka'i
Lana'i
Kaho'olawe
Maui
Hawaii
Hawaii has been a U.S. state since 1959.
The Hawaiian islands, plus former islands now below sea level (guyots), make up the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. |
3798 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna%20Kea | Mauna Kea | Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano in the Hawaiian Islands. It is the highest point in Hawaii at 4,205 meters. If measured from top to bottom, below sea level, it is 10,200 meters high and would be the tallest mountain in the world. It is around 1,000,000 years old. Mauna Kea means 'white mountain' because in winter it often has snow at the summit.
Astronomy
Mauna Kea is an important site for astronomy. Many different countries or institutions have an observatory there, including the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The W. M. Keck Observatory with its 10-meter mirror is one of the most powerful in the world. Mauna Kea is an important site, especially for infrared astronomy, because of its height and clear skies.
High altitude is important because atmosphere causes an effect called seeing, which limits the quality of images by blurring them. At high altitude, there is less atmosphere between the observatories and space and this lessens the effect.
References
Volcanoes of Hawaii |
3799 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna%20Loa | Mauna Loa | Mauna Loa is an active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands of the United States.
Name
“Mauna Loa” is Hawaiian for “long mountain”.
Size
The volcano is at least in volume and over 4 kilometers above sea level. Measured from its base on the ocean floor it reaches above 8 kilometers making it the tallest mountain on Earth, but not the highest. That distinction is reserved for Mount Everest.
Measured from sea level Mauna Loa is 4,169 meters high. It is also one of the largest volcanoes measuring 60 miles long and 30 miles wide.
The world's biggest volcano is named Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Mauna Loa is part of the five volcanoes on Hawaii's 'Big Island'. The most recent time this volcano erupted was in 1984. It erupted 33 times in the last 170 years. Like all the other Hawaiian volcanoes, Mauna Loa was created by the movement of the Pacific tectonic plate which moved over the Hawaii hotspot in the Earth's mantle. It is a shield volcano. The largest recent eruption from Mauna Loa left a lava trail 51 kilometres (32 miles) long.
References
Volcanoes of Hawaii |
3800 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilauea | Kilauea | Kīlauea is an active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands. It is a shield volcano. The volcano is 1,277 meters high. Kīlauea is a large lake of lava. The crater of Kīlauea is named Pu'u'O'o. The first eruption of Kīlauea is estimated as 300 to 600 thousand years ago. Its first recorded eruptions were in 1823. Its most recent eruption was March 3 2018. It is still erupting now. The Hawaiian name Kīlauea means "spewing" or "much spreading". It refers to the constant flow of lava. Kīlauea lies on the curve of volcanoes on the island of Hawaii that includes Mauna Loa and Kohala. The volcano of Kīlauea is one of the youngest and also is said to be the home of an ancient volcano goddess Pele. The oldest dated rocks are said to be about 23,000 years old. It has its own magma plumbing under the Earth that goes down under the Earths crust by 60 km. Kīlauea has a basalt-based lava rock type hot-spot.
In May 2018, the volcano erupted causing damage in nearby homes and strets.
References
Other websites
Volcanoes of Hawaii |
3809 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van | Van | A van is a type of vehicle. A van can carry either goods or people. A van is usually bigger than the regular sized car. Panel vans (= vans whose cargo space has no side windows) are used for deliveries and carrying goods. These usually have large cargo space and few windows. A van which is used to carry people is often called a minibus. It can usually carry many people, sometimes up to a total of 15.
Many companies make vans, including: Chevrolet, Daihatsu, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Isuzu, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota, Vauxhall, and Volkswagen.
A minivan is smaller and usually carries up to seven people.
You may usually drive a van with the same driver's license as an ordinary car, but the heaviest and largest vans may require a truck licence.
The demand for minivans is decreasing due to the introduction of crossovers. However, some companies still make minivans. The most popular minivans are the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey.
Related pages
Ambulance
Pickup truck
Truck |
3810 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luggage | Luggage | People use luggage to carry their possessions when travelling. In the United States luggage is often called baggage.
Types of luggage
A valise is a small bag. It is usually for carrying clothes or accessories. Some other words for this size of luggage are overnight bag, overnight case, and overnighter
A suitcase is a larger bag, most often for carrying clothes
A trunk, also known as a travelling chest or steamer trunk, is a very large, rigid chest that was mostly used when moving across the ocean on a ship; they are much less common in the 21st century
Travel |
3811 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan | Pan | Pan can mean:
Pan (mythology), a god in Greek mythology
Pan (moon), one of Saturn's moons
Pan (genus), genus of apes
A type of cookware, for example a frying pan |
3813 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph | Pantograph | A pantograph is a machine. It is used in drawing or planning. It makes it easy to copy diagrams.
The device that an electric train uses to get its electricity is also called a pantograph, because it looks a bit like the drawing instrument.
tools |
3814 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperback | Paperback | A paperback is a type of book. It has a cover of thick paper or thin cardboard. Paperback book covers can bend and be folded. The covers are laminated (have layers), and some of the methods are more durable (lasting) than others. Another name for paperback is soft cover.
Paperback books may be glued or held by sewing. If the pages are held only by adhesive, the book will eventually come apart. The quality of the paper also varies. It is generally less white than bound hardback books because it is less bleached.
Usually, paperback books cost less money than hardback books. In the middle 20th century a "mass market" type of paperback became commonplace, having a standard size, fitting a standard display rack, and glued.
Book terminology |
3815 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palette | Palette | A palette is used for mixing colours.They are usually made out of plastic or wood but can be made out of other materials. An artist often uses one of these and is in fact an essential item in art, when painting.
Painting |
3816 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow-worm | Glow-worm | A glow-worm, or glowworm, is an insect.
Other names for glow-worms are fire-fly and lightning bug.
There are several insects given this name. Most are beetles, but one is a fly, Arachnocampa. They are nocturnal, active during the night. They have special organs that can produce light. This is used to find mates. The patterns in which the beetles flash is unique to each species.
The major families are
Lampyridae (Fireflies). The adult female of this family has no wings. It is the glow worm of the literature.
Phengodidae (Glow-worm beetles, glow-worms), found in North and South America. One species, the railroad worm features two colors.
Arachnocampa, flies found in Australia and New Zealand
Beetles
Flies |
3817 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palette%20knife | Palette knife | A palette knife is not actually a knife. It has a very flexible steel blade and no sharpened cutting edge. It is a tool.
Uses
A palette knife is used for mixing paint colors. It may be used for mixing and applying a whole range of semi-fluid mixtures.
Cutting tools |
3819 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foolscap | Foolscap | Foolscap is paper cut to the size of , sometimes . This was a traditional paper size used in Europe and the British Commonwealth, before the adoption of the international standard A4 paper, the most common standard size in the world. Foolscap was so called because, in the 18th century, folio-sized paper had the watermark of a fool's cap on it. Basically, it is taller than A4.
In North America, foolscap is lined, legal-size paper. In some South American countries it is called "oficio", because it is or was used for official documents.
Paper of the size is now very rarely used, being superseded by A4 (297 x 210). However, some ring binders, lever arch files, suspended files, and other filing related things still use the size.
Paper |
3821 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer | Polymer | A polymer is a molecule, made from joining together many small molecules called monomers. The word "polymer" can be broken down into "poly" (meaning "many" in Greek) and "mer" (meaning "unit"). This shows how the chemical composition of a polymer consists of many smaller units (monomers) bonded together into a larger molecule. A chemical reaction bonding monomers together to make a polymer is called polymerization.
Some polymers are natural and made by organisms. Proteins have polypeptide molecules, which are natural polymers made from various amino acid monomer units. Nucleic acids are huge natural polymers made up of millions of nucleotide units. Cellulose and starch (two types of carbohydrate) are also natural polymers made up of glucopyranose monomer bonded together in different ways. Rubber is a mixture of polymers. Plastics are man-made polymers. Many fibers are made of polymers.
If the "units" called monomers in a polymer are all the same, then the polymer is called a "homopolymer". Homopolymers are named by adding the prefix poly- before the monomer name from which the polymer is made. For example, a polymer made by bonding styrene monomer molecules together is called polystyrene.
If the monomers are not all the same, the polymer is called a "copolymer" or a "heteropolymer".
Many polymer molecules are like chains where the monomer units are the links. Polymer molecules can be straight-chain, have branching from the main chain, or cross-linking between chains. As an example of cross-linking, sulfhydryl (-S-H) groups in two cysteine amino acid units in polypeptide chains can bond together to make a disulfide bridge (-S-S-) joining the chains together.
In the same way how large hydrocarbon molecules in crude oil can be broken down in smaller molecules e.g. ethylene by applying heat (a process called cracking), the monomer ethylene can then be turned into the polymer polyethylene by applying pressure and adding catalysts. Polyethelene is the basis of many plastic objects.
Related pages
Macromolecule
Synthetic fabric
Polymer chemistry |
3823 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium | Medium | Medium might mean:
Medium, a size between small and large
Medium (spirituality), a person who claims to communicate with the dead
Interstellar medium, the matter between stars
Optical gain medium
Storage medium, a device for storing information
Transmission medium, a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma that can transmit energy
Growth medium, a solid or liquid material in which an organism can grow.
Entertainment
Medium (TV series), a television series that starred Patricia Arquette
The Medium, a 1946 opera by Gian Carlo Menotti
Related pages
Media, the way information is sent or received |
3825 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase | Phrase | A phrase is a group of words that adds meaning to a sentence. A phrase is not a sentence because it is not a complete idea with a subject, verb and a predicate.
In English there are five different kinds of phrases, one for each of the main parts of speech. In a phrase, the main word, or the word that is what the phrase is about, is called the head. In these examples, it is printed in bold. The other words in the phrase do the work of changing or modifying the head.
In a 'Noun phrase', one or more words work together to give more information about a noun.
all my dear children
the information age
seventeen hungry lions in the rocks
In an Adjective phrase, one or more words work together to give more information about an adjective.
so very sweet
earnest in her desire
very happy with his work
In a Verb phrase, one or more words work together to give more meaning to a verb. In English, the verb phrase is very complex, but a good description of its many forms can be found here.
In an Adverb phrase, one or more words work together to give more information about an adverb.
especially softly
formerly of the city of Perth
much too quickly to see clearly
In a Prepositional phrase, one or more words work together to give information about time, location, or possession, or condition. The preposition always appears at the front of the phrase (preposition = pre-position).
after a very long walk
behind the old building
for all the hungry children
in case it should happen again
Grammar |
3826 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preposition | Preposition | Prepositions often describe the position of something, the time when something happens or the way in which something is done. The prepositions "of", "to" and "for" have other functions.
Prepositions may sometimes be used to end sentences. For example, "What did you put that there for?" (better English is the alternative: "Why did you put that there?") Example 2: "A pen is a device to write with" (better English is "A pen is a writing device"). In general, because they are links, prepositions belong in the middle of sentences, rather than at the end.
The table below shows some examples of how prepositions are used in sentences.
Here is a list of common prepositions:
About
Above
Across
After
Along
Amid
Among
Around
As
At
Before
Behind
Below
Beneath
Between
Because of
Down
During
Except
For
From
In
Into
Inside
Instead of
Near
Next to
Of
Off
On
Outside
Out of: unusual in needing two words, e.g. "The bat flew out of the cave".
Past
Round
Since
Than
Through
Till
To
Towards
Under
Underneath
Until
Unto
Upon
Without
With
References
Parts of speech |
3828 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun | Pronoun | A pronoun is traditionally a part of speech in grammar, but many modern linguists call it a type of noun. In English, pronouns are words such as me, she, his, them, herself, each other, it, what.
Pronouns are often used to take the place of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. For example, instead of saying
Tom has a new dog. Tom has named the dog. Max and Tom lets the dog sleep by Tom's bed.
it is easier to say
Tom has a new dog. He has named him Max and he lets him sleep by his bed.
When a pronoun replaces a noun, the noun is called the antecedent. For example, in the sentence: The dog that was walking down the street, the relative pronoun is the word that referring back to the antecedent, the word 'dog'. In the sentence The spy who loved me, the relative pronoun is the word 'who' and its antecedent is the word 'spy'.
Differences and similarities to nouns
Pronouns are different from common nouns because pronouns normally do not come after articles or other determiners. For example, people do not say "the it". Pronouns rarely come after adjectives. They are also different because many of them change depending on how they are used. For example, "we" is a 'subject' in grammar, but the word changes to us when used as an object.
Pronouns are the same as nouns because they both change for number (singular & plural), case (subject, object, possessive, etc.), and gender (male, female, animate, inanimate, etc.) Nouns and pronouns can be used in almost all the same places in sentences, and they name the same kinds of things: people, objects, etc. Even though they can not normally come after determiners, or adjectives, neither can proper nouns.
Kinds of pronouns
There are different kinds of pronouns: personal, reciprocal, interrogative, and relative.
Personal pronouns in English
This table shows all the personal pronouns in English that are commonly used today.
A subject pronoun can replace a noun that is the subject of a sentence. Refer to the table above; the subject pronouns are: I, You, He, She, It, We, They. An object pronoun can replace a noun that is the object of a sentence. A possessive pronoun shows who or what a noun belongs to.
Another type of personal pronoun is called the 'reflexive pronoun'. Reflexive pronouns are the words ending in '-self' or '-selves', such as: myself, itself, themselves. One of the primary functions of reflexive pronouns is for situations in which a single agent is both the doer of the action and the receiver of the action. For example, if I cut my finger, we don't typically say "I cut me." in English; we use the reflexive pronoun and say "I cut myself."
"It" and its other forms "its", and "itself" only refer to objects, not people. "They" and its other forms "them", "their", and "theirs" can be used as a singular, for a person whose gender is unknown at the time, or for a person who does not identify with either the "she/her" or "he/him" pronouns. For example: "The patient will be told how much they will be required to pay."
References
Parts of speech |
3829 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverb | Adverb | An adverb is a word used to tell more about a verb, and it almost always answers the questions how?, when?, where?, how often?, and in what way?. Words like slowly, loudly, carefully, quickly, quietly or sadly are all adverbs. Adverbs usually, but not always, end in -ly.
Examples of adverbs in a sentence (with the adverb in italics):
How did the man walk? The man walked slowly.
How did the dogs bark? The dogs barked loudly.
An adverb can also modify (describe) an adjective or another adverb
Examples:
Adverb modifying a verb: He writes well
Adverb modifying another adverb: He writes very well
Adverb modifying an adjective: He is very well
In the first two examples the word 'well' is an adverb. In the last example, it is an adjective. This is one example in which the same word can be both an adjective and an adverb but not in the same sentence.
As a rule, the same word can play different roles but not in the same sentence. It all depends on what the word is doing in the sentence. It could be a noun, an adjective, an adverb, a verb, etc. Example: take the word 'cool'. In the sentence, "he walks cool", the word 'cool' is an adverb. In the sentence, "cool the hot dish", the word 'cool' is a verb. In the sentence, "it is a cool evening", the word 'cool' is an adjective. In the first example, "he walks cool", the word 'cool' really means 'coolly' as in "play it cool" (do not get excited; be calm).
Adverb form
Most adverbs are formed by adding ly to the end of an adjective. To see 100 adjectives used in Basic English, click here ---> : adjective
Parts of speech |
3837 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday | Sunday | Sunday is one of the seven days of the week. It is part of the weekend, along with Saturday. Sunday is the Sabbath or day of worship for most Christians (for example, Easter is celebrated on Sunday). Sunday is the beginning of the week in the United States, but is the end of the week in the United Kingdom.
07 |
3838 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa | Ottawa | Ottawa is the capital of Canada and is part of the province of Ontario. It is south of the Ottawa River. In 2004, there were about 808,391 people in the city. The region has about 1,146,790 people. The mayor of the city today (since December 2010) is Jim Watson. Ottawa is in the Ottawa Valley on the border with the province of Quebec which is divided by the Ottawa River. Ottawa is the fourth largest city in Canada and the second largest city in Ontario (after Toronto). Ottawa is the only officially bilingual city in Canada, where the English language and the French language are official languages and have equal status. Every official sign in the city is, as a result bilingual. The reason for this bilingual status, is not only because Ottawa borders the French-speaking province of Quebec, the city itself has a large French-speaking minority.
When people talk about Ottawa, they are sometimes using the name as an eponym meaning the highest government in Canada, and not its local government or the city.
The cities of Ottawa, Kanata, Nepean, Gloucester and Vanier and the villages of Manotick and Rockcliffe Park joined in the year 2000 to form the new city of Ottawa. Ottawa also includes Orléans, which joined at that same time.
The city began with the name Bytown and became the city of Ottawa in 1855. The Rideau Canal ends in Ottawa.
Ottawa has many museums, many buildings for the government of Canada and many parks. There is a market area downtown.
There are many festivals during the year including Winterlude in February, The Tulip Festival in May, and BluesFest in the summer. There is also a large celebration on July 1st for Canada Day.
The Ottawa Senators play ice hockey in an arena called The Canadian Tire Centre.
Media
CFRA 580
CKKL Kool 93.9
Climate
Ottawa has a hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfa).
Rain and snow
The average yearly precipitation in Ottawa is 943 millimetres.
2017 was a record year in Ottawa because there was precipitation of 1,213 millimetres during the first ten months of the year. The old record was in 1972, when the precipitation was 1,174 millimetres.
Related pages
List of bridges in Ottawa
List of Ottawa neighborhoods
References
1826 establishments in North America
1820s establishments in Canada |
3845 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/News%20agency | News agency | A news agency is a kind of company. It supplies information to newspapers, radio and television.
In the United Kingdom and some other countries a news agency or newsagent is a shop which sells newspapers, magazines and cigarettes.
Although there are many news agencies around the world, three global news agencies, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), and Reuters have offices in most countries of the world, cover all areas of information, and provide the majority of international news printed by the world's newspapers.
References
Other websites
Brainpix - Portugal/Brasil
Agentia
1EnGoogle
Companies
News media
Journalism |
3846 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudguard | Mudguard | A mudguard, fender or wing is a part covering the wheels of a vehicle to stop it from throwing off mud, water or objects from the road. It protects people and property from dirtiness, dampness, and damage.
Mudguards protect in several ways:
They protect brakes and lights.
They protect the bicycle from getting rusted by mud and water.
They protect clothes from being dirty.
They protect from injuries.
Auto parts |
3847 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para%20rubber%20tree | Para rubber tree | A Para rubber tree (or simply, rubber tree) is the tree which naturally produces rubber. It is native to tropical areas from South America, in the Amazon (Brazil), but was spread by European farmers to the Far East.
Para Rubber trees belong to the Euphorbiaceae family. In the wild they may reach heights of 100 to 125 ft (30-38 m) with large cylindrical trunks with or without buttresses. Crop trees reach a width of about 20 in. (50 cm), usually with a short bole, and with a sloped taper.
Most rubber plantations are in South Asia and Southeast Asia. When trees reach 5-6 years old, they are harvested. Their trunks are cut just deep enough to tap the vessels without harming the tree's growth, and the sap is collected in small buckets. This process is known as rubber tapping. Older trees produce more latex, but they stop producing it after 30-40 years.
Euphorbiaceae |
3848 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety%20curtain | Safety curtain | A safety curtain is a curtain in theatre at the front of the stage. It is made of material that will not burn. The safety curtain may be lowered during the intermission and after the performance. A safety curtain is there in case there is a fire on stage. It will stop the fire from spreading to the auditorium where the audience sits.
Theater
Opera terminology |
3849 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety%20lamp | Safety lamp | A safety lamp is a miner's lamp with a covered flame that used to be used in coal mines.
Types of safety lamps
The first safety lamp was invented by William Reid Clanny. It used bellows and water to separate gasses. Later, two newer designs were invented. One newer design was the Geordie lamp, made by George Stephenson, and the other was the Davy lamp, made by Sir Humphry Davy. In 1815, Davy discovered that if a flame was in a lamp, it would not ignite the flammable gases in mines.
How it works
Coal mines are dangerous because of flammable gasses like methane that can accumulate (gather together). A lamp with a naked (exposed) flame might make these flammable gasses catch fire, causing an explosion, which could kill people. The safety lamp prevents the hot flame of the lamp touching the flammable gasses, reducing the chance of an explosion.
References
Safety
Lamps |
3850 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas%20stocking | Christmas stocking | A Christmas stocking is a long sock hung by a fireplace or bed on Christmas Eve. Christmas presents are put into it for children. It came from an old legend. Stockings are now a European Christmas tradition.
Christmas |
3853 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20football%20clubs%20in%20Austria | List of football clubs in Austria | These are the Austrian football teams and the leagues they played in for the 2022/23 season.
Admiral Bundesliga (First Division)
S.K. Sturm Graz from Styria
F.C. Red Bull Salzburg from Salzburg
FK Austria Wien from Vienna
S.K. Rapid Wien from Vienna
WSG Tirol from Tyrol
SV Ried from Upper Austria
SK Austria Klagenfurt from Carinthia
Wolfsberger AC from Carinthia
TSV Hartberg from Styria
SC Austria Lustenau from Vorarlberg
SCR Altach from Vorarlberg
LASK from Upper Austria
Admiral Zweite Liga (Second Division)
The champion of the league promotes to the Austrian Bundesliga.
FC Blau-Weiß Linz from Upper Austria
FC Liefering from Salzburg
First Vienna FC from Vienna
SKN St. Pölten from Lower Austria
FC Dornbirn from Vorarlberg
Floridsdorfer AC from Vienna
SV Lafnitz from Styria
Grazer AK from Styria
SKU Amstetten from Lower Austria
SK Sturm Graz II from Styria
Kapfenberger SV from Styria
SK Rapid Wien II from Vienna
SV Horn from Lower Austria
Young Violets Austria Wien from Vienna
FC Admira Wacker Mödling from Lower Austria
SK Vorwärts Steyr from Upper Austria
Regionalliga (Third Division)
The Regionalliga is divided into three sections.
Regionalliga Ost (East)
ASK-BSC Bruck/Leitha from Lower Austria
ASV Draßburg from Burgenland
SV Leobendorf from Lower Austria
FC Marchfeld Mannsdorf from Lower Austria
Kremser SC from Lower Austria
FC Karabakh from Vienna
SR Donaufeld Wien from Vienna
SC Neusiedl am See from Burgenland
SV Stripfing from Lower Austria
USV Scheiblingskirchen-Warth from Lower Austria
TWL Elektra from Vienna
First Vienna from Vienna
Wiener Sport-Club from Vienna
SC Wiener Viktoria from Vienna
1. Wiener Neustädter SC from Lower Austria
ASV Siegendorf from Burgenland
Regionalliga Mitte (Middle)
SV Allerheiligen from Styria
TuS Bad Gleichenberg from Styria
Deutschlandsberger SC from Styria
FC Gleisdorf 09 from Styria
Union Gurten from Upper Austria
SC Kalsdorf from Styria
Junge Wikinger Ried from Upper Austria
USV St. Anna from Styria
SK Treibach from Carinthia
Union Vöcklamarkt from Upper Austria
SC Weiz from Styria
WSC Hertha Wels from Upper Austria
Wolfsberger AC II from Carinthia
LASK Amateure from Upper Austria
DSV Leoben from Styria
SAK Klagenfurt from Carinthia
Regionalliga West (West)
The league plays three separate rounds with twelve clubs. The first and the second of each league plays a play off for promotion to 2. Liga. The other teams play against relegation to the Landesliga.
Eliteliga Salzburg
SV Kuchl
SV Austria Salzburg
TSV St. Johann
SV Seekirchen
SAK 1914
FC Pinzgau Saalfelden
SK Bischofshofen
SV Wals-Grünau
SV Grödig
USK Anif
SC Golling
UFC Hallein
Regionalliga Tirol
SC Schwaz
FC Kitzbühel
SV Wörgl
SV Telfs
SVG Reichenau
FC Kufstein
SC Imst
SV Hall
SV Fügen
WSG Tirol Amateure
SPG Silz/Mölz
SC Kundl
Eliteliga Vorarlberg
VfB Hohenems
Admira Dornbirn
FC Wolfurt
RW Rankweil
SC Röthis
Dornbirner SV
FC Rotenberg
FC Lauterach
SW Bregenz
FC Egg
SCR Altach Amateure
SC Göfis
Austrian
Football in Austria
football |
3854 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001 | 2001 | 2001 (MMI) was .
Events
January
January 1 – Strictly speaking, it was the first day of the 3rd millennium and 21st century in the Gregorian calendar, but according to Popular Culture, the first day of these two distinctions was January 1, 2000. A nine foot tall rock was placed by an artist in Seattle's Magnuson Park, like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
January 13 – A strong earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 800 (See also February 13).
January 15 – Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, goes online.
January 20 – Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo becomes the 14th President of the Republic of the Philippines, replacing Joseph Estrada.
January 20 – George W. Bush replaces Bill Clinton and becomes the 43rd President of the United States.
January 22 – Four of the "Texas 7" are caught at a store in Woodland Park, Colorado and a fifth kills himself.
January 24 – The last two of the "Texas 7" are caught by police in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
January 26 – A 50-year-old DC-3 crashes near Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela and kills 24 people.
January 26 – An earthquake happens in Gujarat, India; more than 20,000 die.
January 29 – Thousands of students in Indonesia tell President Abdurrahman Wahid that he should give up his job because he was caught doing something bad.
January 31 – A court finds one Libyan guilty and another innocent in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
February
February 5 – Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced that they are not together anymore.
February 6 – Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon wins election as Prime Minister of Israel.
February 9 – American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally hits and sinks Japanese fishing ship Ehime-Maru.
February 12 – NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lands on 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
February 13 – An earthquake hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
February 16 – Iraq disarmament crisis: British and U.S. forces carry out bombing raids attempting to destroy Iraq's air defense network.
February 16 – Baghdad suburb bombed by US and UK war planes, killing 3 people.
February 18 – During the Daytona 500 race, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt is killed in a car crash.
February 18 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for being a spy.
February 19 – An Oklahoma City bombing museum is dedicated at the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
February 26 – Treaty of Nice was signed.
March
March 24 – Apple Computer's Mac OS X version 10.0 is released.
April
April 1 – An American EP-3E spyplane collides with a Chinese F-8 fighter jet and is forced to make an emergency landing in Hainan, China. The U.S. crew was jailed for 10 days and the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, went missing and thought to be dead.
April 1 – Former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.
April 26 – Junichiro Koizumi becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
April 28 – American Dennis Tito becomes the first space tourist.
May
May 1 – The Japanese cities of Urawa, Omiya, and Yono become one to form the city of Saitama.
May 10 – In Ghana, a sudden rush at a soccer game kills over 120.
May 24 – Mountain climbing: Sherpa Temba Tsheri, 16, becomes the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest.
May 25 – Mountain climbing: Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the top of Mount Everest. A 64-year old Sherman Bull, of New Canaan, Connecticut, becomes the oldest person to reach the top.
June
June 5-9 – Houston, Texas is devastated by flooding when Tropical Storm Allison hits the city. Texas Medical Center lost years of research and data and thousands of lab animals. Twenty-two people die; damage exceeds five billion American dollars.
June 7 – Tony Blair's Labour Party were selected for second term in UK General Election
June 11 – Timothy McVeigh is executed for the Oklahoma City Bombing.
June 19 – An American missile hits a soccer field in northern Iraq, killing 23 people and wounding 11.
June 20 – Andrea Yates drowns her children in a bathtub and confesses to her crime. She would get life in prison for it.
June 21 – Total solar eclipse.
June 23 – An earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, hits the south of Peru.
July
July 2 – The world's first self-contained artificial heart is implanted in Robert Tools.
July 16 – The FBI arrests Dmitry Sklyarov at a meeting in Las Vegas for violating a condition of the DMCA.
July 18 – In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derails in a tunnel, causing a fire that last for days and virtually shuts down downtown Baltimore.
July 19 – UK politician and novelist Jeffrey Archer is sentenced to four years in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
July 23 – Megawati Sukarnoputri becomes the new president of Indonesia, replacing Abdurrahman Wahid.
August
August 9 – US President George W. Bush announces his support for federal funding of limited research on embryonic stem cells.
August 9 – In the Comoros, the military seizes power in the island of Anjouan that had declared independence. They plan to rejoin the Comoros.
August 31 – PBS airs the final episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood with host Fred Rogers retiring
September
September 5 – Peru's attorney general files homicide charges against ex-President Alberto Fujimori.
September 6 – United States v. Microsoft: The United States Justice Department announces that it was no longer seeking to break-up software maker Microsoft and will instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
September 9 – Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan.
September 11 – Almost 3,000 people are killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and rural Pennsylvania.
September 14 – The Nintendo GameCube is released in Japan.
September 15 – President George W. Bush says that the United States of America is at war against terror.
October
October 4 – The first case of anthrax in the U.S. is announced by federal officials.
October 7 – The 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan begins.
October 10 – War on Terrorism: US President George W. Bush presents a list of 22 most wanted terrorists.
October 15 – NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.
October 23 – Apple Inc. releases the iPod.
October 25 – Microsoft releases Windows XP.
November
November – The Doha Declaration relaxes the international intellectual property law by a bit.
November 4 – Hurricane Michelle hits Cuba, destroying crops and thousands of homes.
November 7 – The super-sonic commercial aircraft Concorde starts flying again after a 15-month break.
November 10 – The People's Republic of China became a member of the World Trade Organization.
November 12 – In New York City, an Airbus A300 crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board.
November 12 – 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as the Northern Alliance troops are coming (Northern Alliance fighters took Kabul on November 14).
November 13 – Doha Round: The World Trade Organization ends a four-day conference in Doha, Qatar.
November 13 – War on Terrorism: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against any foreigners suspected of having connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.
November 16 – The first Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is released, earning US $975.8 million, becoming the second highest earning movie around the world of all time, behind Titanic.
November 24 - Melanie Thornton, the German/American Pop singer, also the former member of La Bouche, dies in a plane crash going to Zürich, Switzerland, along with Maria Serreno-Serreno and Nathaly Van Het Ende of the German dance band Passion Fruit (band).
November 29 - George Harrison, former lead guitarist of The Beatles, dies of lung cancer at the age of 58.
December
December 2 – Enron scandal: Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection five days after Dynegy canceled a US$8.4 billion buyout bid (At the time this was the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States).
December 13 – The United States withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
December 13 – Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin, Raja of Perlis becomes the 12th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
December 14 – Annular solar eclipse.
December 22 – 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai became head of the interim government in Afghanistan.
December 27 – The People's Republic of China is granted permanent normal trade status with the United States.
Births
Deaths
January
January 27 – Marie-José of Belgium, Queen of Italy (b. 1906)
February
February 18 – Dale Earnhardt, American racing driver (b. 1951)
February 25 – Sir Donald Bradman, Australian cricketer (b. 1908)
March
March 12 – Robert Ludlum, American writer (b. 1927)
March 15 – Ann Sothern, American actress (b. 1909)
March 22 – William Hanna, American animator and studio founder (b. 1910)
April
April 15 – Joey Ramone, American musician and singer-songwriter (b. 1951)
May
May 11 – Douglas Adams, English writer (b. 1952)
June
June 1 – King Birendra of Nepal (b. 1945)
June 2 – Imogene Coca, American comic actress (b. 1908)
June 3 – Anthony Quinn, Mexican-American actor (b. 1915)
June 4 – King Dipendra of Nepal (b. 1971)
June 7 – Víctor Paz Estenssoro, 45th President of Bolivia (b. 1907)
June 11 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist (b. 1968)
June 21 - John Lee Hooker, American blues musician (b. 1916)
June 21 – Carroll O'Connor, American actor (b. 1924)
June 27 – Jack Lemmon, American actor and movie director (b. 1925)
June 27 – Tove Jansson, Finnish writer of the Moomin books (b. 1914)
July
July 5 – Hannelore Kohl, wife of Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl (b. 1933)
July 10 – Álvaro Magaña, President of El Salvador (b. 1925)
July 29 – Edward Gierek, 4th First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party (b. 1913)
July 31 – Poul Anderson, American science fiction writer (b. 1926)
August
August 6 – Jorge Amado, Brazilian writer (b. 1912)
August 24 – Jane Greer, American actress (b. 1924)
August 25 – Aaliyah, American singer (b. 1979)
September
September 2 – Christiaan Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon (b. 1922)
September 11 – People killed in the September 11 attacks, including:
David Angell, American sitcom creator (b. 1946)
Berry Berenson, widow of the actor Anthony Perkins (b. 1948)
Daniel M. Lewin, American technician (b. 1970)
Mychal Judge, American priest (b. 1933)
Garnet Bailey, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1948)
Carolyn Beug, American movie maker (b. 1953)
Charles Burlingame, American pilot (b. 1949)
William M. Feeham, American firefighter (b. 1929)
Peter J. Ganci, American firefighter (b. 1946)
Timothy Maude, American military officer (b. 1947)
Barbara Olson, American political commentator (b. 1955)
Mohamed Atta, Egyptian terrorist (b. 1968)
Wail al-Shehri, Saudi terrorist (b. 1973)
Nawaf al-Hazmi, Saudi terrorist (b. 1973)
Majed Moqed, Saudi terrorist (b. 1977)
Abdulaziz al-Omari, Saudi terrorist (b. 1979)
September 29 – Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, 2nd President of South Vietnam (b. 1923)
October
October 13 – Olga Oleinik, Russian mathematician of Ukrainian origin (b. 1925)
October 15 – Chang Hsueh-liang, Ruler of Manchuria (b. 1901)
November
November 21 – King Salahuddin of Selangor, Yang di-Pertuan Agong (b. 1926)
November 29 – George Harrison, English musician (The Beatles) (b. 1943)
December
December 10 – Ashok Kumar, Indian actor (b. 1911)
December 20 – Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1st President of Senegal (b. 1906)
Nobel prize winners
Chemistry – William S. Knowles
Chemistry – Ryoji Noyori
Chemistry – K. Barry Sharpless
Economics – George A. Akerlof
Economics – A. Michael Spence
Economics – Joseph E. Stiglitz
Literature – V. S. Naipaul
Medicine – Leland H. Hartwell
Medicine – Tim Hunt
Medicine – Sir Paul Nurse
Peace – United Nations
Peace – Kofi Annan
Physics – Eric A. Cornell
Physics – Wolfgang Ketterle
Physics – Carl E. Wieman
Fictional references to the year
Arthur C. Clarke set the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in this year, the first year of the 21st century.
Other websites
2001 Year-End Google Zeitgeist – Google's Yearly List of Major Events and Top Searches for 2001
Nisqually Earthquake Clearinghouse – Information on the February 28th earthquake from the University of Washington
References |
3856 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex | Sex | Sex is a type of reproduction common among living things. Sex is used by plants and animals, and also by fungi and various single-celled organisms. It usually needs two individuals which are different sexes from the same species. It works by combining genes from more than one source.
Biological type
Organisms may have more than one kind of reproduction:
Asexual reproduction: an example is the binary fission of an amoeba. Sometimes jellyfish, and many insects split or produce eggs without fertilisation. These are all methods of asexual reproduction.
Sexual reproduction: most plants and animals reproduce by a union of two different sexes. Each sex makes the special cells used for reproduction. The new organism is made when both types of cells are united in a fertilised egg or zygote. Organisms that can make both kinds of cells for reproduction are called hermaphrodites. For example, most snails are hermaphrodite.
Those organisms that produce sperm are called male, those that produce ova (eggs) are called female.
Some animals and plants are capable of reproducing either sexually or asexually.
Benefits and drawbacks
Asexual reproduction is easier than sexual reproduction, but there are benefits and drawbacks to both:
An offspring produced asexually inherits genes only from its parent.
Offspring produced sexually are genetically somewhat different from either parent. They inherit genes from both parents.
Humans
In humans, sex is normally either male or female. For example: John's sex is male. Jane's sex is female. Most of the time, the sex of a person depends on what sex chromosomes that person got from his or her parents. A woman's ovum (egg cell) contains one X chromosome. A man's sperm contains either an X or a Y chromosome. When a sperm and ova combine to form a fertilised egg, the baby may get either of these chromosomes from its father. If the baby gets two X chromosomes, it will develop into a female. If the baby gets one X and one Y, it will develop into a male. Before babies are born, their sex parts are already formed, but not ready yet. During Puberty, the sex parts finish developing as well as other parts of the body like breasts and body hair.
There are some exceptions to this rule. Sometimes, the process of meiosis, which makes the sex cells, can go differently. This can result in a person having 3 X chromosomes, or 2 Y chromosomes or XXY instead of XY. Other times, the body may not follow exactly what their chromosomes are telling it to do.
Evolution
Sexual reproduction first appeared about a billion years ago. It evolved within single-celled eukaryotes. The scientific community still discusses why it appeared, and why it still exists. Reasons commonly given include:
Sex creates variation in offspring. If there are traits that give an advantage to the organism, they spread more easily. Traits that give a disadvantage tend to be removed quickly.
Sexual reproduction is a process that can only be found in eukaryotes. These cells have a nucleus and mitochondria. There are other kinds of organisms (other than animals, plants and fungi), the other eukaryotes – such as the malaria parasite – that also engage in sexual reproduction. Some bacteria use conjugation to transfer genetic material between bacteria. This is not the same as sexual reproduction, but it results in a similar mixture of genetic traits.
In sexual reproduction the cells used for reproduction, called gametes, are either eggs or sperms. Fertilisation needs two different such cells. The mechanism of cell division only works when one sperm alone enters the egg. Once it is in, a fast reaction goes through the egg cell wall to shut off all other sperm.
Sex determination
Sex determination in biology is about the function of sex, not what individuals look like. In humans, males and females usually look different. In many species they do not, except for the sex organs.
Sex can be determined in different ways:
Hermaphrodites produce both male and female gametes. This system can be found in some animals, for example snails, and in most flowering plants.
In most cases there are separate sexes. This means that an organism either produces male gametes or eggs, but not both at the same time. The biological cause for an organism developing into one sex or the other is called sex determination.
As a result of sex determination, the organism is either male, or female.
When there is sex determination there are basically two cases:
The sex is determined through the genes the organism inherits from its parents.
The sex is determined through the environment.
Genetic
Usually, sex is determined by an organism's genes. With genetic sex determination, most alleles or genes that influence sexual development are on the same chromosome. That chromosome is then called the sex chromosome. Because genetic sex determination is controlled by a pair of sex chromosomes (or if of one of the chromosomes is there or not), there are usually the same number of male and female offspring. In humans, for instance, sperms carry either an X or a Y chromosome, and they occur in roughly equal numbers.
Nongenetic
For some species sex is not determined by inheritance, but instead by environmental factors experienced during development or later in life. Many reptiles have temperature-dependent sex determination: the temperature embryos experience during their development determines the sex of the organism. In some turtles, for example, males are produced at lower incubation temperatures than females; this difference in critical temperatures can be as little as 1-2 °C.
Some fish change sex over the course of their life. This phenomenon is called sequential hermaphroditism. In clownfish, smaller fish are male, and the dominant and largest fish in a group becomes female. In many wrasse the opposite is true—most fish are female at birth and become male when they reach a certain size. Sequential hermaphrodites may produce both types of gametes over the course of their lifetime, but at any given point they are either female or male.
In some ferns the default sex is hermaphrodite. Ferns which grow in soil which has previously supported hermaphrodites are influenced by hormones remaining to develop as male.
Related pages
Asexual reproduction
The evolution of sex
Gender
Nudity
Sexual intercourse
Sexual reproduction
References
Biological reproduction |
3857 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksaw | Hacksaw | A hacksaw is a tool for sawing. A hacksaw is designed for cutting materials like very thin metals and plastic. It has a handle on one end, and can be either pushed or pulled across the object being cut. There are manual and electric hacksaws.
Cutting tools |
3858 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spade | Spade | In gardening, a spade is a tool for digging. It is similar to a shovel. It has a straight handle, usually of wood and a blade, usually of steel.
For some purposes the difference between a spade and a shovel is important. For example, spade more easily digs in hard soil; a shovel more easily moves gravel.
In card games a spade is one of the four shapes or "suits" of cards.
Basic English 850 words
Gardening tools |
3859 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe%20%28tool%29 | Hoe (tool) | A hoe is a tool in farming and gardening. It has a blade, usually metal, attached to a long handle, usually wood. There are many types of blade and several uses, probably the most common of which is weeding. Other uses include shaping the soil and harvesting root crops such as potatoes. Along with the spade and fork, the hoe is considered a basic, essential hand farming implement.
Gardening tools |
3860 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovel | Shovel | A shovel is a tool used for moving loose material. Shovels have a flat bottom head which is angled slightly from the handle to enable scooping and moving of material.
Although a shovel can be used for digging, it is much less efficient than a spade. Spades are straight, and transmit force straight downwards. Shovels move loose material, such as coal, snow, gravel etc. They are usually made of metal at the bottom, and wood is sometimes used for the handle.
References
Gardening tools
Tools |
3861 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plunger | Plunger | A plunger is a tool. It is used to get rid of things that are blocking pipes. The plunger is placed over one end of the pipe, and the handle is pushed up and down. Doing this creates a sucking force, which makes the thing blocking the pipe move and unclog.
Tools |
3862 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder | Ladder | A ladder is a tool which is made for people to climb up or down. Ladders have two vertical supports that go along the whole length of the ladder. Between these supports are the horizontal rungs. The rung is what the climber can put his foot on. The climber can use his hands to hold on to the rungs above him, or to the supports at the side.
Ladders can be made of metal, wood or even rope. There are different types of ladders.
Some ladders are made in one piece. They can be carried around and made to lean against something such as the wall of a house. There should be a good distance between the bottom of the ladder and the wall so that the ladder is not too vertical, otherwise the ladder might fall backwards and the climber would fall off. Sometimes these ladders are extension ladders. Extension ladders are made in two or more sections so that the ladder can fold up to make it easier to carry about and to store. To open up the ladder, each section slides up almost to the top of the next section.
Step ladders are useful in the home or the garden to reach things that are not too high, e.g. ceilings or the tops of hedges. They have two parts which are joined together by a hinge, so that they are shaped like an upside down V. There is usually a platform at the top to stand on, but this can be dangerous unless great care is taken that the ladder will not wobble or fall down.
Some ladders are vertical (they go straight up or down). These are fixed onto something. Examples are: ladders in a swimming pool for climbing in and out of the water, small ladders to climb up to a top bunk bed, ladders at the side of a big boat or at the side of a canal lock or of any other high or low construction where workmen may need to get up or down to do repairs.
Fire engines always have ladders. They often have a turntable ladder which makes it possible for the ladder to be facing in any direction.
Rope ladders can be folded away easily. They may be used for climbing trees or for rock climbing or in caves.
References
Tools
Construction |
3867 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral%20history | Oral history | Oral history is history that is told rather than written down. It is given through talking rather than reading a book. It is usually passed from generation to generation in order to explain events that have occurred.
Though today oral history is not as popular as written history, it is still used in many places as a way of transferring knowledge about the past. |
3868 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation | Generation | A generation can mean any group that is sorted by the time they were created.
In a family, a generation means all the people on one level of a family tree. For example, your brothers, sisters and cousins are in the same generation as you.
In populations of people, a “generation” means groups of people born in different periods of time. Each generation lasts for the average amount of time between the birth of parents, and the birth of their children.
”Generation” can also mean a wave or series of something, like a generation of car model (2nd generation for example). Anything that is created in waves can have generations or editions.
Family
Time |
3870 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene | Gene | Genes are parts of DNA. DNA is a molecule inside a cell that carries the instructions for making the proteins the cell will need. Each gene contains a single set of instructions. These instructions usually code for a particular protein. Humans have about 20,000 genes that code proteins and many more that are non-coding. Half of a person's genes come from the mother. The other half come from the father.
The definition
Originally: a hereditary unit which occupies a specific position (locus) on a chromosome. Other definitions are ways the gene showed itself:
1. A unit which has one or more specific effects on the phenotype of an organism;
2. A unit that can mutate to various alleles;
3. A unit which recombines with other such units.
Modern definitions must take note of later discoveries. There are now two classes of genes:p173
1. genes that are transcribed into RNAs and are translated into polypeptide chains.
2. genes whose transcripts (tRNAs, rRNAs, snRNAs) are used directly. These are operators which serve as 'regulatory sequences' during transcription and translation of the DNA."The building blocks of life."
What genes do?
Genes are passed on from parent to child and are an important part of what decides how children look and act (their biological properties). Genes affect the way our bodies work, including how we look. Our eye, hair and skin color are decided by genes. It is said that genes cause genetic effects in our bodies.
A gene may be dominant or recessive. These terms refer to the effect a gene has on the offspring who carry it in their genome.
For example, let's say a mother only has genes for brown hair and a father only has genes for red hair. The child will inherit – receive – genes for red hair (from her father) and brown hair (from her mother). The brown hair gene is 'dominant' to the red hair gene. This means the child will have brown hair even though she has genes for both red and brown hair. This means only one dominant gene is needed for the child to receive that particular trait, while two recessive genes are needed for one.
A recessive trait might stay hidden for many generations. Let us use the child from the last example. We will call her "Mary". Mary has brown hair but has genes for both red and brown hair. Let us say Mary grew up and married Tom. Tom also has brown hair, but like Mary one of his parents had red hair. This means Tom has genes for both red and brown hair. Mary and Tom would each have a chance of passing either brown or red hair genes to their children. This means that the children of Mary and Tom could have either red or brown hair. This explains why a person might look different from their parents, but look like their grandparents or great-grandparents.
Structure and function
The structure of a gene has many elements: the actual protein coding sequence is only a small part. There are DNA regions that are not transcribed as well as untranslated regions of the RNA.
Related pages
Allele#Dominance
Sequence analysis
Genetics
ENCODE, the complete analysis of the human genome
Gene therapy
References
Cell biology
DNA
Classical genetics |
3872 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration | Alliteration | Alliteration is when a sentence or phrase has words that start with the same sound. It is commonly used in advertising, poetry, headlines, and tongue-twisters. Basically the first consonant repeats itself throughout the sentence.
Alliteration is common for poetry. It was used one thousand years ago in Anglo-Saxon poems. A fine example is a strophe from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Robert Browning used alliteration many times, too. he employed it in the poem Summum bonum. This is a Latin expression and means "all the best".
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
Alliteration is most commonly used in modern music but is also seen in magazine article titles, advertisements, business names, comic strip or cartoon characters, common sayings, and a variety of other titles and expressions.
One example of alliteration is "Sally sold sea shells by the sea shore". In Death Note, the pseudonym of the detective, L, is Ryuzaki Ryuga, his real name is L Lawliet.
Often, characters in books are named with alliteration. Many names in Harry Potter feature alliterations (for example, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin). Similarly, in Hairspray, most characters' names feature alliterations (e.g. Tracy Turnblad, Link Larkin, Corny Collins, Dan Dougherty, Penny Pingleton, and Seaweed Stubbs).
Titles of books sometimes use alliteration, including the titles of all thirteen books (except the last one) in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Author Jeff Lindsay's novels about serial killer Dexter Morgan all feature alliteration in their titles: for example, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Another example is William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.
A common application of alliteration is in books intended for children learning about letters. Animalia by Graeme Base famously applies alliteration within a storybook, going in order through each letter of the English alphabet and providing many sentences with alliteration.
Places in books: Bat Barn, Terror Tombs, Vampire Village, etc.
Code names: The release names of the Linux distribution, Ubuntu (e.g. Breezy Badger, Hoary Hedgehog, Feisty Fawn, etc.).
Game Titles: Prince of Persia (also the tag: Prince of Persia – Warrior Within).
Brand Names and Alliteration
Companies company use this alliterative effect all the time. The major reason companies use this technique is to ensure that their brand name is memorable. Think, for example, of all of the famous and well known brands and companies that have used alliteration in their names:
•Dunkin’ Donuts
•PayPal
•Best Buy
•Coca-Cola
•LifeLock
•Park Place
•American Apparel
•American Airlines
•Chuckee Cheese’s
•Bed Bath & Beyond
•Krispy Kreme
•The Scotch and Sirloin
Famous People and Alliteration
Alliterative names can also help you stand out in the crowd and can make you more memorable. For example, both fictional characters and real people may stand out in your head as a result of the alliterative effect of their name. Think of:
•Ronald Reagan
•Sammy Sosa
•Jesse Jackson
•Michael Moore
•William Wordsworth
•Mickey Mouse
•Porky Pig
•Lois Lane
•Marilyn Monroe
•Fred Flintstone
•Donald Duck
•SpongeBob SquarePants
•Seattle Seahawks
•Katie Courec (Remember, alliterative words don’t even necessarily have to start with the same letter, they simply have to have the same first sound).
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Phrases and quotes
Finally, many famous phrases, quotes and saying also make use of alliteration:
•Busy as a bee
•Dead as a doornail
•Get your goat
•Give up the ghost
•Good as gold
•Home sweet home
•Last laugh
•Leave in the Lurch
•Living the life
•Look to your laurels
•Mad as a March hare
•Make a mountain out of a molehill
•Method to the madness
•Moaning Minnie
•Neck and neck
•Not on your nelly
•Out of order
•Pleased as punch
•Pooh-pooh
•Primrose path
•Right as rain
•Right roughshod
•Round Robin
Alliteration is commonly used since it adds interest to a sentence and can be a great way to help you remember names and phrases that you might other wide forget. Enjoy alliteration. It is a very fun and useful literary device.
References
Figures of speech |
3873 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone | Homophone | Homophones are words that sound the same as another word but have a different meaning, and often a different spelling.
Examples include:
one, won
pail, pale
fore, four, for
it's, its
there, their, they're
Knight, night
which, witch
pore, pour
pear, pair, pare
see, sea, C
high, hi
wear, where
hare, hair
air, heir
whether, weather
too, to, two
ate, eight
no, know
by, buy, bye
flour, flower
right, write
be, bee
week, weak
rains, reins
higher, hire
fare, fair
Related pages
Homonym
Homograph
Polysemy
Synonym -a different word for the same or very similar meaning
Language
References |
3874 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensation | Condensation | Condensation is how gas changes into a liquid when it touches a cooler surface. Condensation is part of the water cycle. It is the opposite of evaporation.
Process
Condensation of water is when water changes from gas to a liquid or crystal shape. Any gas can condense, either because the temperature is dropping or the pressure is increasing. In either case the pressure of the condensing gas is higher than the vapor pressure of the gas, at that temperature).
During condensation, the molecules in the matter slow down. Heat energy is taken away, causing the state of matter to change. Condensation is exothermic. This means that condensation makes the temperature go up. Evaporation is the opposite and causes a temperature loss.
It is a useful process. One use is in distillation. The gas made from a boiling liquid mix is sent to a condenser, where the different parts condense differently. This can purify a liquid, such as alcohol or water. The condensing liquid makes heat, which must be removed for the condensation to continue.
Related pages
Desalination
References
Other websites
International Consortium of Advanced Technologies and Security at SDSU
ScienceDirect - Heat transfer and evaporation in geothermal desalination units
[[kinematics
]] |
3875 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation | Precipitation | Precipitation is a form of water from the atmosphere. It is a term in meteorology, and includes rain, snow, sleet, ice pellets dew, frost, and hail. These form by condensation from atmospheric water vapor, and fall under gravity.
Fog and mist are not precipitation but suspensions. In that case, the water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate.
If liquid, precipitation can be measured using a rain gauge. The most common form of solid precipitation is snow. Snow is made when temperatures are so cold that water vapor changes directly to solid crystals. Frozen rain is hail or ice pellets.
Meteorology
Words |
3878 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative%20humidity | Relative humidity | Relative humidity is a way of describing how much humidity is present in the air, compared to how much there could be. Meteorologists often use the relative humidity as a measurement to describe the weather at various places.
When the temperature is warm, more water vapor can be in the air than when it is cold. If the actual amount of vapor is compared to the total amount there could be as a fraction, then the number tells if the air feels dry or moist. The value is usually written in percent, where 0% means that the air is totally dry, and 100% means that it is so moist that mist or dew is about to form.
When the temperature is lowered to the dew point, relative humidity become 100% and the water vapor condenses, making precipitation as dew, rain or snow (etc.).
Weather measurements
Meteorology |
3880 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin%20C | Vitamin C | Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is a vitamin. It is found in fresh fruits, berries and vegetables. It is one of the water-soluble vitamins.
Vitamin C is important in wound healing. Without enough vitamin C, a person can get a sickness called scurvy. Lack of vitamin C was a serious health problem on long ocean trips where supplies of fresh fruit were quickly used up. Many people died from scurvy on such trips.
Most animals make their own vitamin C. Some mammals cannot. Those that cannot include the main suborder of primates, the Haplorrhini: these are the tarsiers, monkeys and apes, including humans. Others are bats, capybaras and guinea pigs.
Vitamin C was first discovered in 1928. In 1932, it was proved to stop the sickness called scurvy. That fruit was a cure for scurvy was known long before vitamins were known to exist.
History
Through history the need for people to eat fresh plant food to help them get through long sieges or long sea trips was known by some wise people but was often forgotten.
The first attempt to prove this idea was by a ship's doctor in the British Royal Navy called James Lind, who at sea in May 1747 gave some crew members lemon juice as well as their normal ships food, while others continued on normal food alone.
The results showed that lemons prevented the disease. Lind wrote up his work and published it in 1753.
Lind's work was slow to be noticed. In 1795 the British navy adopted lemon or lime juice as food for sailors.
As well as lemons, limes and oranges; sauerkraut, salted cabbage, malt, and soup were tried with different effects. James Cook relied on sauerkraut to prevent the disease on his long voyages of exploration.
It was believed that only humans got scurvy but in 1907, Alex Holst and Theodore Frohlich, two Norwegian chemists found that guinea pigs could also get it if not given fresh food.
In 1928 the Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson proved that Eskimo (Inuit) people are able to avoid scurvy with almost no plant food in their diet by eating raw meat.
In 1912 the Polish American scientist Casimir Funk first used the word vitamin for something present in food in small amounts that is essential to health. He named the unknown thing that prevented scurvy Vitamin C.
From 1928 to 1933, the Hungarian research team of Joseph L Svirbely and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, and separately the American Charles Glen King, first took out vitamin C from food and showed it to be an acid they called ascorbic acid.
In 1933/1934, the British chemists Norman Haworth and Edmund Hirst, and separately the Polish Tadeus Reichstein, successfully synthesized the vitamin.
It was the first man-made vitamin. This made it possible to make lots of vitamin C cheaply in factories. Haworth won the 1937 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this work.
In 1959 the American J.J. Burns showed that the reason why some animals get scurvy is because their liver cannot make one chemical enzyme that other animals have.
Sources
Plant sources
Citrus fruits (such as lime, Indian gooseberry, lemon, orange, and grapefruit) are good sources of vitamin C.
Other foods that are good sources of vitamin C include papaya, broccoli, brussels sprouts, blackcurrants, strawberries, cauliflower, spinach, cantaloupe, sweet peppers, and kiwifruit.
The following table is to give an idea of how much vitamin C is in different plant foods. Each individual fruit will vary.
The amount of vitamin C in foods of plant origin depends on the kind of plant, the kind of soil where it grew, how much rain and sun it got, the length of time since it was picked, and how it was stored since then.
Cooking food destroys vitamin C.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Table Showing Relative Abundance of Vitamin C in Principal Fruits and some Raw Vegetables
|-----
! Fruit
mg vitamin C per 100 grams of fruit
! Fruit Continued
mg vitamin C per 100 grams of fruit
! Fruit Continued
mg vitamin C per 100 grams of fruit
|-----
| CamuCamu || 2800 || Lemon
| 40 || Grape || 10
|-----
| Rose hip || 2000 || Melon, cantaloupe
| 40 || Apricot || 10
|-----
| Acerola || 1600 || Cauliflower
| 40 || Plum || 10
|-----
| Jujube || 500 || Grapefruit
| 30 || Watermelon || 10
|-----
| Baobab || 400 || Raspberry
| 30 || Banana || 9
|-----
| Blackcurrant || 200
| Tangerine/ Mandarin oranges
| 30 || Carrot || 9
|-----
| Indian gooseberry || 445 || Passion fruit
| 30 || Avocado || 8
|-----
| Guava || 100
|-----
| Kiwifruit || 90 || Spinach
| 30 || Crabapple || 8
|-----
| Broccoli (raw) || 90 || Cabbage (raw green)
| 30 || Peach || 7
|-----
| Loganberry || 80 || Lime
| 20 || Apple || 6
|-----
| Redcurrant || 80 || Mango
| 20 || Blackberry || 6
|-----
| Brussels sprouts || 80 || Melon, honeydew
| 20 || Beetroot || 5
|-----
| Lychee || 70 || Raspberry
| 20 || Pear || 4
|-----
| Persimmon || 60 || Tomato
| 10 || Lettuce || 4
|-----
| Papaya || 60 || Blueberry
| 10 || Cucumber || 3
|-----
| Strawberry || 50 || Pineapple
| 10 || Fig || 2
|-----
| Orange || 50 || Pawpaw || 10 || Bilberry
| 1
|}
Animal sources
Most species of animals synthesise their own vitamin C. It is therefore not a vitamin for them. Synthesis is achieved through a sequence of enzyme driven steps, which convert glucose to ascorbic acid. It is carried out either in the kidneys, in reptiles and birds, or the liver, in mammals and perching birds. The loss of an enzyme concerned with ascorbic acid synthesis has occurred quite frequently in evolution and has affected most fish, many birds; some bats, guinea pigs and most but not all primates, including humans. The mutations have not been lethal because ascorbic acid is so prevalent in the surrounding food sources.
It was only realised in the 1920s that some cuts of meat and fish are also a source of vitamin C for humans. The muscle and fat that make up the modern western diet are however poor sources. As with fruit and vegetables cooking destroys the vitamin C content.
{| class="wikitable"=
|+ Table Showing Relative Abundance of Vitamin C in Foods of Animal Origin
|-----
! Food of animal origin
mg vitamin C per 100 grams food
! Food of animal origin (contd)
mg vitamin C per 100 grams food
! Food of animal
! mg vitamin C per 100 grams food
|-----
| Calf liver (raw) || 36 || Chicken liver (fried )
| 13 || Goats milk (fresh) || 2
|-----
| Beef liver (raw) || 31 || Lamb liver (Fried)
| 12 || Beef steak (fried) || 0
|-----
| Oysters (raw) || 30 || Lamb heart (roast)
| 11 || Hens egg (raw ) || 0
|-----
| Cod Roe (fried) || 26 || Lamb tongue (stewed)
| 6 || Pork Bacon (fried) || 0
|-----
| Pork liver (raw) || 23
| Human milk (fresh)
| 4 || Calf veal cutlet (fried) || 0
|-----
| Lamb brain (boiled) || 17
| Cows milk (fresh) || 2 || Chicken leg (roast)
| 0
|}
Artificial chemical synthesis
Vitamin C is produced from glucose by two main routes. The Reichstein process developed in the 1930s uses a single pre-fermentation followed by a purely chemical route. The more modern Two-Step fermentation process was originally developed in China in the 1960s, uses additional fermentation to replace part of the later chemical stages. Both processes yield approximately 60% vitamin C from the glucose feed.
In 1934, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche was the first to mass-produce synthetic vitamin C, under the brand name of Redoxon.
Main producers today are BASF/ Takeda, Roche, Merck and the China Pharmaceutical Group Ltd of the People's Republic of China.
Functions of vitamin C in the body
In living organisms, ascorbate is an antioxidant, since it protects the body against oxidative stress. It is also a cofactor in at least eight enzymatic reactions, including several collagen synthesis reactions that cause the most severe symptoms of scurvy when they are dysfunctional. In animals, these reactions are especially important in wound-healing and in preventing bleeding from capillaries.
Vitamin C is needed for the production of collagen in the connective tissue. These fibres are in many places throughout the body; providing firm but flexible structure. Some tissues have a greater percentage of collagen, especially: skin, mucous membranes, teeth, and bones.
Vitamin C is required for making of dopamine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline in the nervous system or in the adrenal glands.
Vitamin C is also needed to make carnitine, important in the transfer of energy to the cell mitochondria.
It is a strong antioxidant.
The tissues with greatest percentage of vitamin C—over 100 times the level in blood plasma—are the adrenal glands, pituitary, thymus, corpus luteum, and retina.
The brain, spleen, lung, testicle, lymph nodes, liver, thyroid, small intestinal mucosa, leukocytes, pancreas, kidney, and salivary glands usually have 10 to 50 times the concentration present in plasma.
Vitamin C deficiency
Lack of ascorbic acid in the daily diet leads to a disease
called scurvy, a form of avitaminosis that is characterized by:
Loose teeth
Superficial bleeding
Fragility of blood vessels
Poor healing
Compromised immunity
Mild anemia.
Daily requirement
A healthy person on a balanced western diet should be able to get all the vitamin C needed to prevent the symptoms of scurvy from their daily diet. People who smoke, those under stress and women in pregnancy have a slightly higher requirement.
The amount of vitamin C needed to avoid deficiency symptoms and maintain health has been set by variously national agencies as follows:
40 mg per day UK Food Standards Agency
60–95 mg per day US Food and Nutrition Board 2001 revision.
Some researchers have calculated the amount needed for an adult human to achieve similar blood serum levels as Vitamin C synthesising mammals as follows:
200 mg per day - Linus Pauling Institute and US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Recommendation.
3000 mg per day - Vitamin C Foundation's recommendation.
6000–12000 mg per day–Thomas Levy, Colorado Integrative Medical Centre recommendation.
6000–18000 mg per day - Linus Pauling's daily recommendation
High doses (thousands of mg) may result in diarrhoea, which is harmless if the dose is reduced immediately. Some researchers (Cathcart) claim the onset of diarrhoea to be an indication of where the body’s true vitamin C requirement lies.
The small size of the ascorbic acid molecule means the kidneys cannot retain it in the body. Quite a low level in the blood serum will cause traces to be present in the urine. All vitamin C synthesising mammals have traces in the urine at all times.
In April 1998 Nature reported alleged carcinogenic and teratogenic effects of excessive doses of vitamin C. This was given great prominence in the world's media. The effects were noted in test tube experiments and on only two of the 20 markers of free radical damage to DNA. They have not been supported by further evidence from living organisms. Almost all mammals manufacture their own vitamin C in amounts equivalent to human doses of thousands of milligrams per day. Large amounts of the vitamin are used in orthomolecular medicine and no harmful effects have been observed even in doses of 10,000 mg per day or more.
Therapeutic uses
Vitamin C is needed in the diet to prevent scurvy. It also has a reputation for being useful in the treatment of colds and flu. The evidence to support this idea, however, is ambiguous and the effect may depend on the dose size and dosing regime. The Vitamin C Foundation recommends 8 grams of vitamin C every half hour to show an effect on cold symptoms.
Vitamin C advocacy
Fred R. Klenner, a doctor in Reidsville, North Carolina reported in 1949 that poliomyelitis yielded to repeated megadoses of intravenous vitamin C.
Nobel Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling began actively promoting vitamin C in the 1960s as a means to greatly improve human health and resistance to disease.
A minority of medical and scientific opinion continues to see vitamin C as being a low cost and safe way to treat infectious disease and to deal with a wide range of poisons.
A meta-study of the published research claimed that relatively high levels of vitamin C must be maintained in the body for it to function effectively as an antioxidant.
Some research shows that there are veterinary benefits of vitamin C as well.
One meta-study of the published research examined the effectiveness of ascorbic acid in the treatment of infectious disease and toxins. It was conducted in 2002 by Dr. Thomas Levy, medical director of the Colorado Integrative Medical Center in Denver. It claimed that overwhelming scientific evidence exists for its therapeutic role.
Some vitamin C advocates say that vitamin C is not used therapeutically because it cannot be patented. Pharmaceutical companies seek to generate revenue and profit their shareholders. They may be reluctant to research or promote something that will make them little money.
References
Vitamins |
3881 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorphenolindophenol | Dichlorphenolindophenol | DCPIP (its full name is 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol) is a blue chemical used as a dye because when it is oxidized it is blue. Once DCPIP is reduced (by addition of electrons) it does not have a color anymore. This reaction can be reversed, and the colourless DCPIP will turn blue again, when it is oxidized.
Purpose
DCPIP is often used to measure the electron transport chain in plants. It has a higher redox potential (electron affinity) than the Fe-S complex in cytochrome b and will therefore "steal" electrons from it. This means that cytochrome c does not receive them. The process cuts off the electron supply of photosystem I. A common way to illustrate this change is by the addition of vitamin C solution. This reduces the 'jelly' by transforming it to a colourless mass. This experiment can be carried out to illustrate the effect of changing cell sizes on SA/V (surface area:volume ratio). This is known as Titration.
References
Mathews, Ahern, Van Holde, Biochemistry, Addison Wesley Longman Inc., 2000 pp534–5
Organochlorides
Organonitrogen compounds |
3882 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy%20diet | Healthy diet | A healthy diet or balanced diet is a diet (what you eat) that contains the right amounts of all the food groups. It includes fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and protein. It does not include too much or too little of any kind of food. Eating wrong amounts of a food group, whether it be too much or too little, is called an 'unhealthy diet' or an 'imbalanced diet'. A healthy diet is one that includes more foods that come from plants and fewer convenience foods.
Basic nutrition
What is known about nutrition and diet keeps changing as more is learned. However, basic nutrition remains much the same. The best advice is to talk to a doctor or dietitian for personalized information based on an individual's lifestyle, health, and food likes and dislikes.
Basic nutrition begins with a diet based on the major food groups that includes vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products. It should also have lean protein such as beans, legumes, nuts and seeds plus healthy fats.
A basic nutrition plan should include guidelines for how much food from each group to eat.
Foods should be those that can be found in local grocery stores instead of specialty and gourmet food stores.
A basic food plan should be based on an individual's budget, lifestyle and (healthy) preferences.
Drink plenty of water. Drink fewer Soft drinks, energy drinks and sports drinks which usually have sugar.
Read the food labels to see what is in the foods. For example, labels usually show what foods are lower in sodium such as in soup, bread, and frozen meals.
A healthy diet should include seafoods (such as salmon, tuna, and trout) and shellfish (such as crab, mussels, and oysters). Seafood has protein, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids which are heart-healthy.
Basic nutrition should contain balanced amounts of macronutrients for energy. Carbohydrates are one of the three macro-nutrients in the human diet (fat and protein are the other two).
A healthy diet can replace dieting for weight loss. Eating healthy, along with physical exercise and practicing moderation, can lead to better health in the long run.
Special diets
There are some diets made for people with some diseases. Here are some examples:
DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension)
Gluten-free diet (Coeliac disease)
Ketogenic diet (Epilepsy)
Related pages
Food pyramid
Diet (nutrition)
References
Nutrition
Diets |
3883 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye | Dye | Dye is a substance used to color materials. It is often used to color the fabric used to make clothing. It has low solubility. A pigment won't do this because it won't stick to the fibers of the fabric and color them. A dye can be natural, usually made from plant material such as berries, or artificial, meaning that it is made by humans from chemicals such as petrochemicals.
Most natural dyes are gotten from different parts of a plant like the roots, fruits, bark, leaves, wood, fungi and lichens. Most dyes are synthetic and are made from petrochemicals.
Classification
Dyes can be classified based on their solubility and chemical properties.
Acid dyes can dissolve in water. They are used on fibers such as silk, wool, nylon. Most food coloring that are made by man are acid dyes. Examples of acid dye are Alizarine Pure Blue B, Acid red 88, etc.
Basic dyes can dissolve in water. They are mainly used on acrylic fibers. They may also be used on wool and silk. Basic dyes are also used to make paper colourful.
Related pages
Pigment
Food coloring#Natural food dyes
Hair coloring
References
Color
Cloth
Chemicals |
3886 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry | Poetry | Poetry is a type of art form and a type of literature.
Poetry uses the qualities of words, in different ways, to be artistic.
Poetry can be as short as a few words, or as long as a book. A poem as short as one line is called a monostich. A poem that is as long as a book is an epic.
There are many "poetic forms" (forms of poetry). Some of forms are: Sonnet, Haiku, Ballad, Stev, Prose poem, Ode, Free verse, Blank verse, thematic, limerick and nursery rhymes.
Poetry can be used to describe (comparing, talking about, or expressing emotion) many things. It can make sense or be nonsense, it can rhyme or not. It can have many shapes and sizes; it can be serious or funny.
"To say something poetically" means to give information in an artistic way.
Digital Poetry
A more modern approach is digital poetry. Computers and webtechnology is used to express poetry and make it interactive. So called interdisciplinary poetry (wich means combination of different forms of poetry) are made possible by linking the poetic texts with audio, video or web-animation (e.g. with CSS) or among themselves via hyperlinks. Modern artists use digital poetry to not only express artistic intention, but also to design a layout around their texts. An example for this use of interdisciplinary art, which combines abstract text and abstract visuals is the German project "Schwarzer Flamingo". It uses digital poetry to collect pieces of written art but also to give different artists a plattform. So some projects of digital art can be described as a form of an artwork as well as an exhibition.
Related pages
Acrostic
Sonnet
Poet
Free verse |
3887 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature | Literature | Literature is a group of works of art made up of words. Most are written, but some are passed on by word of mouth. Literature usually means a work of poetry, theatre or narrative. There are many different kinds of literature, such as poetry, plays, or novels. They can also be put into groups through their language, historical period, origin, genre, and subject. The word "Literature" comes from the Latin word "Literatura" (English: "Learning", "Writing", "Grammar").
Most of the earliest works were epic poems. Epic poems are long stories or myths about adventures. Ramayana and Mahabharta, two Indian epics, are still read today. Odyssey and Iliad are two famous Greek poems by Homer. They were passed down through speaking and written down around the 8th century BC.
Literature can also mean imaginative or creative writing, which is looked at for its artistic value.
Related pages
Branko Mikasinovich
English literature
Enid Blyton
References
Other websites
Wikisource |
3888 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination | Imagination | Imagination is the ability to form images of things or events in one's mind. When someone imagines something, they are trying to picture something in their mind that they are not experiencing at the moment or that is not really happening.
Related pages
Fiction
Science fiction
Fantasy
Everyday life
Psychology |
3889 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter | Calorimeter | A calorimeter is a tool that measures the amount of thermal energy contained in a substance, or released in a reaction. A commonplace use is to measure heat of combustion.
Laboratory equipment
Measuring tools |
3890 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolus | Bolus | In biology, a bolus (from the Latin word for ball), is a ball-shaped living thing.
In medicine, a bolus is a large amount of a drug given to patients to raise the blood level before treatment.
A bolus can also refer to a ball of food after it has been chewed. It passes down the oesophagus by peristalsis.
Physiology
Medicine
Biology |
3891 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oesophagus | Oesophagus | The oesophagus (or esophagus) is also called the gullet. It is the part of the gastrointestinal system between the mouth and the stomach. It connects the pharynx and the stomach. It is about long.
The oesophagus is lined with muscle, and is lubricated. Its muscle pushes food down into the stomach. The oesophagus can contract or expand to allow for the passage of food. The muscular movement that pushes the food down the oesophagus is called peristalsis. At the entrance to the stomach there is a ring of muscle called a sphincter. This is usually closed, but relaxes as food approaches, allowing it to enter the stomach. In the stomach, the food is churned until it turns into a soupy mixture called chyme.
Anatomy of the digestive system |
3892 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protease | Protease | A protease is a digestive enzyme. It breaks down long chains of proteins into shorter amino acids. Proteases have evolved a number of times. We know this because different kinds of protease can do the same reaction in completely different ways. Proteases are found in animals, plants, bacteria, archaea and viruses.
Now more than 50 types of protease are known. Each is a separate evolutionary origin of proteolysis.
Protease can be divided into 6 types :
serine proteases
threonine proteases
cysteine proteases
aspartate proteases
metallo proteases
glutamic acid proteases
References
Enzymes |
3894 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental%20floss | Dental floss | Dental floss is a special type of thread. It is used for cleaning spaces between teeth which cannot be reached by toothbrushes. It is important to floss before brushing teeth and to floss at least once a day. Tooth brushing will not clean food that is packed between teeth. This 'food packing' can lead to unhealthy teeth and gums. Bacteria grow in this 'packed food' between teeth. These bacteria cause the surface of teeth (enamel) to break down. Then the teeth and gums and sometimes even the jaw can become seriously diseased.
These bacteria that come from the food on the teeth and between the teeth are called "plaque" or "bacterial plaque" and also can cause the gums to become less healthy. "Gingivitis" which means gum disease is one type of disease that flossing helps to prevent. Very serious diseases can start on the teeth and move to the bone of the jaw, damaging the jaw badly. Flossing your teeth reduces the danger of these serious diseases of the jaw bone. These hard-to-cure jaw bone diseases are called "periodontal disease".
Food that is trapped between the teeth can be uncomfortable and even cause pain. Some food is hard, for example meat, apple. Ground meat is soft and so is apple sauce. Chicken and turkey meat are hard and full of fibres and very often get trapped between the teeth. When hard food is trapped between the teeth it can cause discomfort and sometimes pain. When hard food is pressed by the teeth against the gum it can cause pain. Some people use toothpicks to try to remove trapped food from between the teeth and other people use dental floss to do this.
Dental floss can do most things that a toothpick can do but dental floss is much thinner than a toothpick and can thus get to places that most toothpicks cannot reach. So floss presumably does a better job at getting bits of food out from between the teeth, relieving discomfort and pain quicker.
When a person first starts flossing, bleeding can happen. This is normal and happens because teeth and gums that are not flossed are less healthy. It will stop as the teeth and gums get healthier with flossing.
Hygiene
Teeth |
3895 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickets | Rickets | Rickets is a disease that happens in young children. It happens in children who do not get enough vitamin D and calcium. It causes larger spaces inside bones, and makes them dry, like sponges. It can make the legs curve toward each other (so the knees touch) or away from each other.
Rickets in adults is called osteomalacia.
The word "rickets" comes from the Greek word rhakhis, which means "spine."
Cause
People need both vitamin D and calcium to make their bones strong.
Vitamin D helps the bones absorb (take up) calcium. Low vitamin D makes it hard to absorb calcium.
The human body makes vitamin D3 in the skin, from cholesterol. Then the liver changes vitamin D3 into calcitriol, which sends calcium from the blood into the bones. The bones need calcium to stay strong. However, the skin will not make vitamin D3 unless enough ultraviolet light shines on it. Sunlight contains ultraviolet light, so getting enough sun is one way of getting enough D3.
People need calcium for calcification. Calcification uses calcium to help make bones bigger and stronger. Low calcium makes bones delicate and easier to break.
Prevention
Rickets can be prevented if a person gets plenty of calcium and vitamin D.
The best way to do this is to get a lot of sunlight, and eat foods that have a lot of vitamin D and calcium in them. However, people who cannot get enough vitamin D and calcium this way can take supplements (vitamin pills that have calcium and vitamin D in them).
Calcium
Foods that have a lot of calcium in them include:
Milk and other dairy products like cheeses
Some green vegetables, like broccoli, spinach, and kale
Today, many products are "fortified" with vitamin D: the vitamin was added when the food was made. These foods include some kinds of orange juice, breakfast cereals, breads, and even bottled water. The food's label will say how much calcium it has in it.
Calcium is absorbed best by the bones when it is taken in amounts of 1000mg or less. Because of this, doctors suggest eating smaller amounts of foods with calcium in them, at different times in the day, instead of all at once.
Vitamin D
There are three ways to get vitamin D: sunlight, foods, or supplements (vitamin pills that have vitamin D in them). However, many people cannot get enough vitamin D just from their diet.
There are only a few foods that have a lot of vitamin D in them. They include:
"Fatty fish" that were caught in the wild, like mackerel, salmon, and tuna
Cooked egg yolk
Vitamin D is added to some foods, like some kinds of dairy products, cereals, and orange juices
Breast milk may not have enough vitamin D in it to prevent rickets. Babies who are only breastfed, and not fed any other foods, may be given vitamin D drops to make sure they do not get rickets. However, this is not a significant risk if mothers and child have some exposure to sunlight. Children with dark skin are more likely to need additional vitamin D.
Risk factors
These things make a person more likely to get rickets:
They are between three and 36 months old. Children this age are at the. greatest risk for rickets because their bones are growing so quickly, and are supposed to get bigger and stronger during this time
They were born prematurely (earlier than normal)
They live in the Northern parts of the world, where there is less sunshine
They spend too little time outside
They always wear sunscreen when going out
Even mild sunscreen decreases the amount of vitamin D the body makes by 95% (by stopping the body from taking in vitamin D from sunlight)
However, people should still wear sunscreen when they might get sunburned
They do not eat enough food that has calcium or vitamin D in it, because of lactose intolerance or a strict vegan diet
They cannot make or use vitamin D because of a medical disorder, like coeliac disease, or because they take certain anti-seizure medications
Symptoms
Signs and symptoms of rickets include:
Brittle (easily broken) bones or teeth
Bleeding more than normal
Stunted growth (not growing like a healthy child would)
Sweating
Weakness (feeling tired all the time)
Body pain
Related pages
Vitamin D
Calcium
References
Diseases
Diseases and disorders of bones
Vitamin deficiencies |
3896 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile | Bile | Bile or gall is a green-yellow fluid. It is secreted from the liver of most vertebrate animals, and is often stored in the gall bladder. Bile helps digest fat.
The components of bile are
Water
Cholesterol
Bile pigments
Bile salts
The name gall comes from the Greek word cholè meaning green or yellow.
The term cholesterol and the illness cholera were named after gall.
Bile is also stored in bile ducts. Often after liver transplants, bile comes out of the body.
Physiology |
3897 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental%20pulp | Dental pulp | The dental pulp is the part in the center of a tooth (pulp cavity). It is made up of living soft tissue and cells. It is surrounded by dentine and contains nerves and blood and lymph vessels.
Teeth |
3898 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplasm | Protoplasm | Protoplasm is an old term, which means the living substance that makes up a cell. It is no longer much used. Biologists prefer to talk about the cytoplasm and the cell nucleus.
In plant cells, it is surrounded by a cell wall. In animal cells, the whole cell is made of protoplasm, surrounded by a cell membrane. Protoplasm in living beings is made up of about 7580% water. However, this is rather misleading because the cytoplasm is full of structures called organelles, which do various tasks. The endoplasmic reticulum is the largest of these structures; there are many other organelles.
The word "protoplasm" was first used in 1846 by Hugo von Mohl to describe the substance in plant cells, apart from the cell wall, the cell nucleus and the vacuole. After the invention of the electron microscope it was clear that a living cell is much more complicated than von Mohl knew.
Cells |
3899 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amylase | Amylase | Amylase is an enzyme which breaks down starch into sugars which the body can use.
More accurately, it is a family of similar enzymes which work in a wide range of animals, plants and fungi. There are two variants in humans: alpha-amylase, and gamma-amylase.
Alpha-amylase is a major digestive enzyme. Its optimum pH is 6.7–7.0. It is found in saliva and pancreatic juice. It takes starch chains and breaks them into smaller pieces with two or three glucose units. It can break down starch into maltose. It works in the mouth and stomach during digestion.
The gamma-amylase has most acidic optimum pH of all amylases because it is most active around pH 3. Therefore, it works best in the stomach, which does have an acidic pH.
Human evolution
Apparently, early humans did not possess salivary amylase. The closest evolutionary relatives of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, have either one or no copies of the gene for producing salivary amylase. A duplication event of the AMY1 gene led to the production of amylase in the saliva. The same event occurred independently in rodents. This shows the importance of salivary amylase in organisms that eat relatively large amounts of starch.
Carbohydrates are a food source rich in energy. After the agricultural revolution, human diet began to rely more on plant and animal domestication in place of hunting and gathering. This shift marked the beginning of a diet composed of 49% carbohydrates as opposed to the previous 35% observed in Paleolithic humans. As such, starch became a staple of human diet. Humans that contained amylase in the saliva would benefit from increased ability to digest starch more efficiently and in higher quantities.
Not all humans have the same number of copies of the AMY1 gene. Populations which rely on carbohydrates have a higher number of AMY1 copies than populations that eat little starch. The number of AMY1 gene copies in humans can range from six copies in agricultural groups such as European-American and Japanese (two high starch populations) to only 2-3 copies in hunter-gatherer societies such as the Biaka, Datog, and Yakuts.
The correlation between starch consumption and number of AMY1 copies suggests that more AMY1 copies in high starch populations is caused by natural selection. It is a favorable phenotype for those individuals. Therefore, it is likely that having more copies of AMY1 in a high starch population increases fitness and produces healthier, fitter offspring. Geographically close populations with different eating habits possess a different number of copies of the AMY1 gene. This offers strong evidence that natural selection has acted on this gene.
References
Enzymes
Evolution |
3900 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variegated%20leaf | Variegated leaf | A variegated leaf is a type of leaf.
Uses
A variegated leaf is useful in conducting experiments to show that chlorophyll is needed for photosynthesis to happen. They are also popular in horticulture.
Experiments
The easiest of these experiments is to stain the places where starch is produced (starch is a more compact form of glucose).
Place the leaves in boiling water for six minutes to soften the cells, and then in ethanol (alcohol). When the leaves are drained of colour, spread them out on a flat surface. Soak the leaves in iodine and the green parts will turn blue/black and the non green parts will stay the yellowish brown colour of iodine liquid. The green parts contain starch, which makes iodine turn blue/black. The blue/black stain is what shows starch is present. You could take "before & after" photos to prove the black areas were green at the start.
Plant anatomy
Experiments |
3902 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seam%20ripper | Seam ripper | A seam ripper is a cutting tool. It is used for removing stitches in sewing and cutting open buttonholes made on a sewing machine. Sometimes it is also called a thread ripper.
The tool usually has a handle, shaft, and head. The head has two points: one flattened to form a pointed blade and the other forming a small point.
To use a seam ripper to remove sewn threads, the blade is placed underneath the thread to be cut. The thread slips down between the two points, and the tool is then lifted upwards allowing the blade to cut through the thread. Then the loose thread ends can be removed.
Cutting tools
Needlework |
3904 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaque | Plaque | Plaque: a word meaning a flat, plate-like object.
a plaque in biology is a flat growth-form, as for example,
the growth of bacterial colonies on an agar plate
a sticky, white film or fluid on the teeth, a mixture of bacteria and food
in atherosclerosis, a fat layer inside an artery.
a flat man-made object, such as a memorial plaque or other flat object |