thenyminute

Thermodynamics

2008-09-09T23:47:00.001-07:00

As all catalysts, enzymes do not alter the position of the chemical equilibrium of the reaction. Usually, in the presence of an enzyme, the reaction runs in the same direction as it would without the enzyme, just more quickly. However, in the absence of the enzyme, other possible uncatalyzed, "spontaneous" reactions might lead to different products, because in those conditions this different product is formed faster.

Furthermore, enzymes can couple two or more reactions, so that a thermodynamically favorable reaction can be used to "drive" a thermodynamically unfavorable one. For example, the hydrolysis of ATP is often used to drive other chemical reactions.

Enzymes catalyze the forward and backward reactions equally. They do not alter the equilibrium itself, but only the speed at which it is reached. For example, carbonic anhydrase catalyzes its reaction in either direction depending on the concentration of its reactants.
Nevertheless, if the equilibrium is greatly displaced in one direction, that is, in a very exergonic reaction, the reaction is effectively irreversible. Under these conditions the enzyme will, in fact, only catalyze the reaction in the thermodynamically allowed direction.

Nootropic

2008-08-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

Nootropics, popularly referred to as "smart drugs", "smart nutrients", "cognitive enhancers" and "brain enhancers", are a class of drugs that improve impaired human cognitive abilities (the functions and capacities of the brain). The term covers a broad range of substances including drugs, nutrients and herbs that have purported cognitive enhancing effects.

The word nootropic was coined in 1964 by the Romanian Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea, derived from the Greek words noos, or "mind," and tropein meaning "to bend/turn". Typically, nootropics are alleged to work by altering the availability of the brain's supply of neurochemicals (neurotransmitters, enzymes, and hormones), by improving the brain's oxygen supply, or by stimulating nerve growth. However the efficacy of alleged nootropic substances in most cases has not been conclusively determined. This is complicated by the difficulty of defining and quantifying cognition and intelligence.

Assisted GPS

2008-08-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

Conventional GPS has difficulty providing reliable positions in poor signal conditions. For example when surrounded by tall buildings (as a result of multipath), or when the satellite signals are weakened by being indoors or under trees. Some newer receivers are better at handling these situations.

In addition, when first turned on in these conditions, some non-assisted GPS units may not be able to download the almanac and ephemeris information from the GPS satellites, rendering them unable to function until a clear signal can be received continuously for up to one minute.

An A-GPS receiver can address these problems in several ways, using an Assistance Server:

* The Assistance Server can locate the phone roughly by what cell site it is connected to on the cellular network.
* The Assistance Server has a good satellite signal, and lots of computation power, so it can compare fragmentary signals relayed to it by cell phones, with the satellite signal it receives directly, and then inform the cell phone or emergency services of the cell phone's position.
* It can supply orbital data for the GPS satellites to the cell phone, enabling the cell phone to lock to the satellites when it otherwise could not, and autonomously calculate its position.
* By having accurate, surveyed coordinates for the cell site towers, it can have better knowledge of ionospheric conditions and other errors affecting the GPS signal than the cell phone alone, enabling more precise calculation of position. (See also Wide Area Augmentation System)

Some A-GPS solutions require an active connection to a cell phone (or other data) network to function, in others it simply makes positioning faster and more accurate, but is not required.

As an additional benefit, it can reduce both the amount of CPU and programming required for a GPS Phone by offloading most of the work onto the assistance server. (This is not a large amount for a basic GPS – many early GPSs utilized Intel 80386-class 16MHz CPUs or similar hardware.)

High Sensitivity GPS is an allied technology that addresses some of the same issues in a way that does not require additional infrastructure. However, unlike some forms of A-GPS, high sensitivity GPS cannot provide instant fixes when the phone has been off for some time.

Double-checked locking

2008-08-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

In software engineering, double-checked locking is a software design pattern also known as "double-checked locking optimization". The pattern is designed to reduce the overhead of acquiring a lock by first testing the locking criterion (the 'lock hint') in an unsafe manner; only if that succeeds does the actual lock proceed.

The pattern, when implemented in some language/hardware combinations, can be unsafe. It can therefore sometimes be considered to be an anti-pattern.

It is typically used to reduce locking overhead when implementing "lazy initialization" in a multi-threaded environment, especially as part of the Singleton pattern. Lazy initialization avoids initializing a value until the first time it is accessed.

Implicit Web

2008-08-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Implicit Web is a concept coined in 2007 to denote web sites which specialize in the synthesis of personal information gleaned from the Internet into a single, coherent picture of user behavior. Implicit data may include clickstream information, media consumption habits, location tracking or any data generated without "explicit" input from a user. Presumed advantages of implicit data include accuracy, ease of input and comprehensiveness.

The term Implicit Web was popularized by the technology investors Josh Kopelman, Fred Wilson, and Brad Feld.

Google Earth Plus

2008-07-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

Google Earth can be upgraded to a Plus edition for a $20 annual subscription fee. Google Earth Plus is an individual-oriented paid subscription upgrade to Google Earth and adds the following features:

* GPS integration: read tracks and waypoints from a GPS device. A variety of third party applications have been created which provide this functionality using the basic version of Google Earth by generating KML or KMZ files based on user-specified or user-recorded waypoints. However, Google Earth Plus provides direct support for the Magellan and Garmin product lines, which together hold a large share of the GPS market. The Linux version of the Google Earth Plus application does not include any GPS functionality.
* Higher resolution printing.
* Customer support via email.
* Data importer: read address points from CSV files; limited to 100 points/addresses. A feature allowing path and polygon annotations, which can be exported to KML, was formerly only available to Plus users, but was made free in version 4.0.2416.
* Higher data download speeds

Network model

2008-07-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

The network model is a database model conceived as a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. Its original inventor was Charles Bachman, and it was developed into a standard specification published in 1969 by the CODASYL Consortium. Where the hierarchical model structures data as a tree of records, with each record having one parent record and many children, the network model allows each record to have multiple parent and child records, forming a lattice structure.

Object database

2008-07-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

In an object database (also object oriented database), information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. When database capabilities are combined with object programming language capabilities, the result is an object database management system (ODBMS). An ODBMS makes database objects appear as programming language objects in one or more object programming languages. An ODBMS extends the programming language with transparently persistent data, concurrency control, data recovery, associative queries, and other capabilities.

Some object-oriented databases are designed to work well with object-oriented programming languages such as Python, Java, C#, Visual Basic .NET, C++ and Smalltalk. Others have their own programming languages. ODBMSs use exactly the same model as object-oriented programming languages.

Customer Data Integration

2008-07-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

Customer Data Integration (CDI) is the combination of the technology, processes and services needed to create and maintain an accurate, timely, complete and comprehensive representation of a customer across multiple channels, business lines, and enterprises typically where there are multiple sources of associated data in multiple application systems and databases.

What does that really mean? When you ask the average Joe or Jane on the street “What is customer data?” they usually answer "Name and address...maybe social security number?"

However, customer data is much more complex; for example, the number of fields that represent just a name can be anywhere from six to twelve or more (e.g., first name, last name, middle name, initials, nickname, maiden name, married name, professional title, academic title and suffix.) The address entries are almost as complex (e.g., primary address number, pre-directional (N, S, E, W,) street name, street suffix, post-directional, secondary identifier (building, suite, apt,) secondary number, city, state, ZIP, and ZIP+4(R))

MUC (Message Unlock Code)

2008-07-02T04:04:00.000-07:00

MUC (Message Unlock Code)used to initiate trust. If a message is sent to a new recipient, the system generates a random MUC. The sender communicates the MUC to the recipient by using another communication channel than email, e.g. personally, by phone or SMS for security reasons (Out-of-band). With the MUC the recipient gets access to the secure message and confidential documents and can download them. If the recipient has already been in contact with the sender through secure messaging and is enrolled, a MUC is no longer required.

EICAR test file

2008-06-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

The EICAR test file (official name: EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File) is a file, developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, to test the response of computer antivirus (AV) programs. The rationale behind it is to allow people, companies, and AV programmers to test their software without having to use a real computer virus that could cause actual damage should the AV not respond correctly. EICAR likens the use of a live virus to test AV software to setting a fire in a trashcan to test a fire alarm, and promotes the EICAR test file as a safe alternative.

A compliant virus scanner, when detecting the file, will respond in exactly the same manner as if it found genuinely harmful code. Its use can be more versatile than straightforward detection - for example, a file containing the EICAR test string can be compressed or archived, and then the antivirus software can be run to see whether it can detect the test string in the compressed file.

BlackBerry

2008-06-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

BlackBerry uses wireless Mail User Agent devices and a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) attached to a traditional e-mail system. The BES monitors the e-mail server, and when it sees new e-mail for a BlackBerry user, it retrieves (pulls) a copy and then pushes it to the BlackBerry handheld device over the wireless network.

BlackBerry became very popular, in part because it offers remote users "instant" e-mail experience; new e-mails appear on the device as soon as they arrive, without the need for any user intervention. The handheld becomes a mobile, dynamically updating, copy of the user's mailbox. As a result of the success of BlackBerry, other manufacturers have developed push e-mail systems for other handheld devices, such as Symbian based mobile phones.

Evolutionary robotics

2008-06-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

Evolutionary Robotics (ER) is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots. Algorithms in ER frequently operate on populations of candidate controllers, initially selected from some distribution. This population is then repeatedly modified according to a fitness function. In the case of genetic algorithms (or "GAs"), a common method in evolutionary computation, the population of candidate controllers is repeatedly grown according to crossover, mutation and other GA operators and then culled according to the fitness function. The candidate controllers used in ER applications may be drawn from some subset of the set of artificial neural networks, although some applications (including SAMUEL, developed at the Naval Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence) use collections of "IF THEN ELSE" rules as the constituent parts of an individual controller. It is theoretically possible to use any set of symbolic formulations of a control laws (sometimes called a policies in the machine learning community) as the space of possible candidate controllers. It is worth noting that artificial neural networks can also be used for robot learning outside of the context of evolutionary robotics. In particular, other forms of reinforcement learning can be used for learning robot controllers.

Robot kit

2008-06-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

A robot kit is a special construction kit for building robots, especially autonomous mobile robots.

Toy robot kits are also supplied by several companies. They are mostly made of plastics elements like Lego Mindstorms and the Robotis Bioloid, or aluminium elements like Lynxmotion's Servo Erector Set and the qfix kit.

The kits can consist of: structural elements, mechanical elements, motors (or other actuators), sensors and a controller board to control the inputs and outputs of the robot. In some cases, the kits can be available without electronics as well, to provide the user the opportunity to use his or her own.

Process psychology

2008-05-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Process psychology exists to integrate process thought with the field of psychology broadly construed.It is a new field which emerges from the application of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy to psychology. It holds the promise of integrating mind-body-spirit in a rigorous and coherent framework.

A pioneering work in this field is Toward a Process Psychology: A Model of Integration from David E. Roy publiced in 2000. Drawing from the depths of gestalt psychology and process metaphysics, David Roy sheds light on perplexing psychological questions regarding symbolism, mind-body relationship, and spiritual dimensions of human life. The meta-theory that emerges sheds light on psychology and psychotherapy alike. Such a rethinking of psychological questions and categories is invaluable for continued exploration of the human psyche and quest for health.

Cybernetics

2008-05-19T22:28:00.000-07:00

Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of complex systems, especially communication processes, control mechanisms and feedback principles. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory.

Example of cybernetic thinking. On the one hand a company is approached as a system in an environment. On the other hand cybernetic factory can be modeled as a control system.

Example of cybernetic thinking. On the one hand a company is approached as a system in an environment. On the other hand cybernetic factory can be modeled as a control system.

Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology and neuroscience in the 1940s.

Other fields of study which have influenced or been influenced by cybernetics include game theory, system theory (a mathematical counterpart to cybernetics), psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology), philosophy, and architecture.

FLOSS

2008-05-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

"FLOSS" was used in 2001 as a project acronym by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh as an acronym for Free/Libre/Open-Source Software. Later that year, the European Commission (EC) used the phrase when they funded a study on the topic.

Unlike "libre software", which aimed to solve the ambiguity problem, "FLOSS" aimed to avoid taking sides in the debate over whether it was better to say "free software" or to say "open-source software".

Proponents of the term point out that parts of the FLOSS acronym can be translated into other European languages, with for example the "F" representing free (English) or frei (German), and the "L" representing libre (Spanish or French), livre (Portuguese), or libero (Italian). However, this term is not often used in official, non-English, documents, since the words in these languages for "free as in freedom" do not have the ambiguity problem of English's "free".

Caecilius Metellus

2008-05-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

Pomponius Mela writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (died 59 BCE), proconsul in Gaul received "several Indians" (Indi) as a present from a Germanic king. The Indians were driven by a storm to the coasts of Germania (in tempestatem ex Indicis aequoribus).

Metellus Celer recalls the following: when he was proconsul in Gaul, he was given people from "India" by the king of the Sueves; upon requesting why they were in this land, he learnt that they were caught in a storm away from India, that they became castaways, and finally landed on the coast of Germany. They thus resisted the sea, but suffered from the cold for the rest of their travel, and that is the reason why they left.

It is unclear whether these castaways may have been people from India or Eastern Asia, or possibly American Indians. Edward Herbert Bunbury suggested that they were Finns. This account is open to some question, since Metellus Celer died just after his consulship, before he ever got to Gaul.

Public transport

2008-04-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Public transport, public transportation, public transit or mass transit comprise all transport systems that transport members of the general public, usually charging set fares. While the above terms are generally taken to include rail and bus services, wider definitions might include scheduled airline services, ferries, taxicab services etc. A further restriction that is sometimes applied is that transit should occur in continuously shared vehicles, which would exclude taxis that are not shared-ride taxis.

The term public transport is preferred in the British Isles and most Commonwealth countries, whereas public transportation, public transit and mass transit are used most often in North America. term transit is less likely to include long-distance forms of public transportation, such as long-distance or commuter railroads, inter-city buses, or intercity railways.

The Bering Land Bridge

2008-04-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Bering Land Bridge, the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta suggested that the peoples of the Americas arrived via a now-submerged land bridge from Asia as primitive hunters, later settling into sedentary communities and cities. In Notes on the State of Virginia (1781), Thomas Jefferson theorized that the ancestors of Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Asia, a viewpoint that came to prevail in the 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations.

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the Bering Land Bridge theory came to be viewed as proven beyond any doubt. Most archaeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been isolated from the Old World after the closing of the Bering land route, when they were still in the hunter-gatherer stage and developed without any outside influences for the next 9,000 years until the time of Columbus. It was also believed at the time that trans-oceanic travel only became possible in the 15th century, after key advances in Old World shipbuilding and navigation. This belief is supported by the lack of substantial evidence of Old World influences on American civilizations.

Computer-aided software engineering

2008-04-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is the use of software tools to assist in the development and maintenance of software. Tools used to assist in this way are known as CASE Tools.

Some typical CASE tools are:

* Code generation tools

* Data modeling tools

* UML

* Refactoring tools

* QVT or Model transformation Tools

* Configuration management tools including revision control

All aspects of the software development lifecycle can be supported by software tools, and so the use of tools from across the spectrum can, arguably, be described as CASE; from project management software through tools for business and functional analysis, system design, code storage, compilers, translation tools, test software, and so on.

Durability (database systems)

2008-04-07T22:14:00.000-07:00

In database systems, durability is the ACID property that guarantees that transactions that are successfully committed will survive permanently and will not be undone by system failure.

For example, if a flight booking database system reports that a seat has successfully been booked, then the seat will remain booked even if the system crashes. Durability also guarantees that the system will not rollback the transaction because the seat was double-booked.

The only way a transaction can be undone after it has been committed is by a compensatory transaction.

Database normalization

2008-04-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

Database normalization, sometimes referred to as canonical synthesis, is a technique for designing relational database tables to minimize duplication of information and, in so doing, to safeguard the database against certain types of logical or structural problems, namely data anomalies. For example, when multiple instances of a given piece of information occur in a table, the possibility exists that these instances will not be kept consistent when the data within the table is updated, leading to a loss of data integrity. A table that is sufficiently normalized is less vulnerable to problems of this kind, because its structure reflects the basic assumptions for when multiple instances of the same information should be represented by a single instance only.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

2008-03-24T22:09:00.001-07:00

HTTP is a request/response standard between a client and a server. A client is the end-user, the server is the web site. The client making an HTTP request - using a web browser, spider, or other end-user tool - is referred to as the user agent. The responding server - which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images - is called the origin server. In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies, gateways, and tunnels. HTTP is not constrained to using TCP/IP and its supporting layers, although this is its most popular application on the Internet. Indeed HTTP can be "implemented on top of any other protocol on the Internet, or on other networks. HTTP only presumes a reliable transport; any protocol that provides such guarantees can be used."

Electric car

2008-03-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

The electric car is a vehicle that utilizes chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs, and electric motors and motor controllers instead of an internal combustion engine (ICE).

Vehicles using both electric motors and ICEs (hybrid electric vehicles) are examples of hybrid vehicles, and are not considered pure electric vehicles (EVs) because they operate in a charge-sustaining mode. Hybrid vehicles with batteries that can be charged externally to displace some or all of their ICE power and gasoline fuel are called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and are pure BEVs during their charge-depleting mode. Electric vehicles include automobiles, light trucks, and neighborhood electric vehicles.

Material technologies

2008-03-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

OLED technology was first developed at Eastman Kodak Company by Dr. Ching W. Tang using small molecules. The production of small-molecule displays often involves vacuum deposition, which makes the production process more expensive than other processing techniques. Since this is typically carried out on glass substrates, these displays are also not flexible, though this limitation is not inherent to small-molecule organic materials. The term OLED traditionally refers to this type of device, though some are using the term SM-OLED.

Molecules commonly used in OLEDs include organo-metallic chelates (for example Alq3, used in the first organic light-emitting device) and conjugated dendrimers.

Physiology

2008-03-04T01:27:00.000-08:00

Physiology (from Greek: φυσις, physis, “nature, origin”; and λόγος, logos, "speech" lit. "to talk about the nature (of things)") is the study of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of living organisms.

Physiology has traditionally been divided between plant physiology and animal physiology but the principles of physiology are universal, no matter what particular organism is being studied. For example, what is learned about the physiology of yeast cells may also apply to human cells.

Neptune

2008-02-25T04:27:00.000-08:00

Neptune (pronounced /'n?ptju? n/[8]) is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth largest planet by diameter, and the third major by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is somewhat more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 Earth masses and less dense. The planet is named following the Roman god of the sea. Its astronomical symbol is a stylized story of Poseidon's trident.

Discovered on September 23, 1846, Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction quite than regular observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led astronomers to realize the gravitational perturbation of an unknown planet. Neptune was found within a degree of the predict position. The moon Triton was found shortly thereafter, but none of the planet's other 12 moons were discovered preceding to the twentieth century. Neptune has been visit by only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which flew by the planet on August 25, 1989.

Strawberry

2008-02-19T03:59:00.000-08:00

The strawberry (Fragaria) (plural strawberries) is a type of plants in the family Rosaceae and the fruit of these plants. There are more than 20 named types and a lot of hybrids and cultivars. The most frequent strawberries grown commercially are cultivars of the Garden strawberry. Strawberries have a taste that varies by cultivar, and range from quite sweet to slightly tartlet.

Building

2008-02-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

Buildings provide numerous needs of society. The human body can be continued and may effectively function only within a limited range of climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity, moisture, sunlight, and amount of oxygen and pollutants in the air. Along with access to food and drinking water, the need to make places that are protected from the outdoors and where one can happily live, work, eat, sleep, have children or engage in leisurely activities has always been a top concern for humans.

A building as a security represents a physical division of the human habitat into the inside (a place of comfort and safety) and the outside (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Humans have a strange drive to reproduce on their lives and express themselves through art. Ever since the first cave paintings, the buildings and everything on, inside and near buildings have become objects of creative expression. In recent years, attention on sustainable planning and building practices has improved in the U.S.

Climate

2008-02-04T21:19:00.001-08:00

The climate is commonly measured to be the weather averaged over a long period of time, naturally 30 years. Somewhat more precisely, the concept of "climate" also includes the statistics of the weather — such as the degree of day-to-day or year-to-year difference expected. IPCC is called as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the “average weather”, or more meticulously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time range from months to thousands or millions of years. The traditional period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These quantities are the majority often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a numerical description, of the climate system.

Screen-printing

2008-01-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

Screen-printing, silk-screening, or serigraphy is a printmaking system that creates a sharp-edged image using a stencil. A screen-print or serigraph is an image shaped using this technique.

It started as an industrial technology, and was adopt by American graphic artists in the early 1900s. It is currently popular both in fine arts and in commercial printing, where it is generally used to print images on T-shirts, hats, CDs, DVDs, ceramics, glass, polyethylene, polypropylene, paper, metals, and wood. The Printer's National Environmental Assistance Center says "Screen printing is possibly the most adaptable of all printing processes." Since rudimentary screen-printing materials are so affordable and readily available, it has been used normally in underground settings and subcultures, and the non-professional look of such DIY culture screen prints has become a significant cultural aesthetic seen on movie posters, record album covers, flyers, shirts, commercial fonts in advertising, and elsewhere.

Wireless Application Protocol

2008-01-21T21:08:00.001-08:00

WAP is an open global standard for application that uses wireless communication. Its main application is to allow access to the internet from a mobile phone or PDA.

A WAP browser is to grant all of the fundamental services of a computer based web browser but cut down to function within the limits of a mobile phone. WAP is now the protocol used for the mainstream of the world's mobile internet sites, known as WAP sites. Presently the Japanese i-mode system is the only other major competing wireless data protocol.

Mobile internet sites, or WAP sites, are websites written in, or vigorously transformed to, WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser. Before the introduction of WAP, service providers had enormously restricted opportunities to offer interactive data services.

Batsman

2008-01-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

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

The two batsmen have different roles:

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

Diamond

2008-01-03T22:02:00.000-08:00

Diamond is an allotrope of carbon, and it is the hardest known natural material and the third-hardest known material after aggregate diamond nanorods and ultrahard fullerite. Its hardness and high dispersal of light make it useful for industrial applications and jewelry.

Diamonds are specifically famous as a material with superlative physical qualities; they make excellent abrasives because they can be injured only by other diamonds, Borazon, ultrahard fullerite, or aggregated diamond nanorods, which also means they hold a polish tremendously well and retain their luster. Approximately 130 million carats (26,000 kg) are mined annually, with a sum value of nearly USD $9 billion, and about 100,000 kg (220,000 lb) are synthesize annually.

Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster

2007-12-28T03:20:00.000-08:00

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

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

Stock exchange

2007-12-17T22:28:00.000-08:00

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

Art of Loving

2007-12-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

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

Abraham Lincoln

2007-11-13T04:45:00.001-08:00

The brave man of the familiar People. It had been an extended time coming. Terribly separated by the issue of slavery, thirty-one million American citizens were in 1860
Called upon to vote for 16th President of the United States. The Democratic Party meets at its National Party Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to choose their candidate in favor of the presidency. Split over slavery, each section, Northern Democrats on the one hand and Southern Democrats on the other, presented its own conflicting proposal for the party platform. In February 1860, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi claimed that neither the Congress of the United States nor the territorial parliaments had the control to handle slavery.

Barge

2007-11-05T21:41:00.001-08:00

A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mostly for river and canal transport of important goods. Most barges are not self-propelled and need to be moved by tugboats towing or towboats pushing them. Barges on inland waterways (towed by draft animals on an adjacent towpath) contended with the railway in the early industrial revolution but were out competed in the carriage of high value items owing to the higher speed, falling costs, and route elasticity of rail transport.

Barges are still used today for low value bulk items, as the cost of hauling goods by barge is very low. Barges are also used for very weighty or bulky items; a typical barge events 195 feet by 35 feet (59.4 meters by 10.6 meters), and can take up to 1500 tons of cargo.

water taxi

2007-10-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

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

Technology

2007-10-24T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

Computer printer

2007-10-15T22:07:00.001-07:00

A computer printer, or more usually just a printer, is a device that produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are permanently attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a text source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces (typically wireless or Ethernet), and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user on the network.
In addition, many modern printers can directly border to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single unit.

A Need for Welfare

2007-10-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

There is an old joke that asked where you find a welfare recipient’s check under his work boots of course. For a long time now, since the expert formation of a stable government, the U.S government has had the programs and passed laws that either dealt with issues of or influenced family. Many of these family programs and laws currently in place today are often and usually debated. One of the most debated and most labored over family programs or laws are welfare.
This is because there is now a smallest amount of income so the poor no longer have the need to go out and commit crimes to attain such money.

Fruits

2007-09-27T23:16:00.001-07:00

The term fruit has special meanings depending on background. In botany, a fruit is the developed ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant. In many species, the fruit orates the matured ovary and surrounding tissues. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants distribute seeds. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the term frequently refers to those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which include plums, apples and oranges. However, the common vegetables, as well as nuts and grains, are the fruit of the plant species they come from.

No single terms really fits the huge variety that is found among plant fruits. The food terminology for fruits is inexact and will remain so. The term false fruit (pseudo carp, accessory fruit) is sometimes applied to a fruit like the fig (a multiple-accessory fruit; see below) or to a plant structure that resembles a fruit but is not resulting from a flower or flowers.

Adam Sandler: the Funniest man Alive!

2007-09-10T03:13:00.001-07:00

With a hazardous brand of humor that has brought him legions of dedicated fans, Sandler's hit as an actor, stand-up comic, writer and producer is matched by his performance and songwriting skills. It is an shocking gift for lyric and melody that is front and center on Adam Sandler's very funny new Warner Bros. Records release What is Your surname featuring 14 new Sandler originals include such classics as The Goat Song, the Lonesome Kicker, Bad Boyfriend and Corduroy Blues.

What is Your Name continues the musical tradition Sandler began with at a standard Pace, Ode to My Carnd the extremely popular The Chanukah Song. With two platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated albums - They're All Gonna Laugh at you and What the Hell Happened to Me - Already to his credit, Sandler goes for a comedy-three peat with what’s Your Name. The move to an all-music format is a normal one, following his 21 city tour last summer, when he perform both creative material and his favorite childhood tunes, backed by a finest rock and roll band.

Microscope

2007-09-03T23:13:00.001-07:00

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

Flowers

2007-08-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

Count wheel

2007-08-20T23:38:00.001-07:00

Count wheel striking: the unequally spaced notches in the external count wheel on the right side of this tower clock movement regulate the number of times the bell is struck. Two technologies have been devised by clockmaker's to enable striking clocks to correctly count out the hours. The earlier technology is called count wheel striking. This uses a wheel that contains notches on its side, spaced by unequal, increasing arc segments. This count wheel governs the rotation of the striking train. When the striking train is released by the timekeeping train, a lever is lifted from a notch on the count wheel; the uneven notches allow the striking train to move only far enough to sound the correct number of times, after which the lever falls back into thatch and stops the striking train from turning further.

Donkey jacket

2007-08-13T21:53:00.001-07:00

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

Neck ring

2007-08-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

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

Supra-aural

2007-07-31T23:39:00.000-07:00

Supra-aural headphones are much like circumaural; only the pads go away on top of the ear, making them lighter and smaller. They may have circled pads, much like circumaural headphones, only smaller and go on top of the ear. They may also have basic, "open" pads. They were commonly bundled with personal stereos during the 1980s.

Fashionable watches

2007-07-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

At the end of the 20th century, Swiss watch makers were seeing their sales go down as analog clocks were considered outmoded. They joined forces with designers from many countries to reinvent the Swiss watch.
The result was that they could considerably decrease the pieces and production time of an analog watch. In fact it was so cheap that if a watch broke it would be cheaper to fling it away and buy a new one than to repair it. One of these Swiss watch manufacturers started a new brand, Swatch, and called graphic designers to redesign a new annual collection.

Grape

2007-07-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

A grape is the non-climacteric fruit that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the folks Vitaceae. Grapes grow up in clusters of 6 to 300, and can be black, blue, golden, green, purple, red, pink, brown, peach or white. They can be eaten raw or used for producing jam, grape juice, and jelly, wine and grape seed oil. Cultivation of grapevines occurs in vineyards, and is called viticulture. One who studies and practices growing grapes for wine is called a viticulturist. The leaves of the grape vine itself are considered safe to eat and are used in the production of dolmades.

2007-07-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

Marketing

Marketing is one of the most significant functions in business. It is the regulation required to understand customers' needs and the benefits they seek. Academia does not have one commonly agreed upon description. Even after a better part of a century the dispute continues. In a nutshell it consists of the social and managerial processes by which goods or services and value are exchanged in order to fulfill the needs and wants of individuals or groups. Although many people appear to think that "marketing" and "advertising" are synonymous, they are not. Advertising is simply one of the lots of processes that together constitute marketing.

Grafting

2007-07-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation

2007-06-26T22:18:00.001-07:00

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

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

Watercraft

2007-06-23T02:07:00.001-07:00

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

Ras malai

2007-06-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Ras Malai is a sweet dish found in the Indian subcontinent consisting of sugary, cream to yellow-colored balls or flattened balls of cottage or ricotta cheese soaked in sweetened, thickened, creamy milk.The milk is flavoured with pistachios, saffron, and rosewater.Rasmalai originated somewhere in the coastal parts of the Indian state of Orissa. Sometimes shown as Rassmalai . or Ras Malai.

Star

2007-06-11T21:37:00.001-07:00

A star is an enormous, luminous ball of plasma. Stars cluster together to form galaxies, and they dominate the visible universe. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth, together with daylight. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun. A star shines because nuclear fusion in its core releases energy which traverses the stars internal and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were produced inside the cores of stars.

Astronomers can establish the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its development and eventual fate. Other individuality of a star that is determined by its evolutionary history includes the diameter, rotation, movement and temperature. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertz sprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram), allows the current age and evolutionary state of a particular star to be determined.

Prawn

2007-06-06T22:30:00.001-07:00

Prawns are shrimp-like crustaceans, belonging to the sub-order Dendrobranchiata .Prawns are illustrious from the superficially similar shrimp by the gill structure which is branching in prawns, but is lamellar in shrimp. The sister taxon to Dendrobranchiata is Pleocyemata, which contains all the true shrimp, crabs, lobsters, etc.
In various forms of English, the name "prawn" is often applied to shrimp as well, generally the larger species, such as Leander serratus. In the United States, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia, the word "prawn" usually indicates a freshwater shrimp or prawn. In Middle English, the word "prawn" is recorded as prayne or prane; no cognate form can be found in any other language. It has often been connected to the Latin perna, a ham-shaped shellfish, but this is due to an old scholarly error that linked perna and parnocchie with prawne-fishes or shrimps. In fact, the Old Italian perna and pernocchia meant a shellfish that yielded nacre, or mother-of-pearl.

Historical usage of Basket

2007-05-27T22:34:00.001-07:00

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

Description of Quick Ring

2007-05-19T00:02:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

Protein

2007-05-14T00:20:00.001-07:00

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

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

Basket

2007-05-09T01:04:00.000-07:00

A basket is a container which is usually constructed from stiff fibers, often made of willow. The top is either left open or the basket may be fitted with a lid.
Contents
1 chronological usage
2 contemporary usages
3 metaphorical and legendary usages
4 verandas of baskets
5 observe also
Historical usage
Wood, bamboo, wheat, other grasses, osiers or wicker are often used to make baskets, but they are also made today from plastic. The first baskets were natural fiber by gatherers to collect fruits, grains, nuts and other edible plant materials, as well as for holding fish by early fishing peoples. A creel is a basket made particularly to hold fish. The plant life available in a region affects the choice of material, which in turn influences the weaving technique. Rattan and other members of the Arecaceae or palm tree family, the thin grasses of temperate regions and broad-leaved tropical bromeliads each require a different method of twisting and braiding to be made into an effective basket. Although baskets were usually created to serve men in bed rather than an artistic purpose, the practice of basket making has evolved into an art.

Lens construction

2007-05-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

The majority type of lenses are spherical lenses, which are fashioned from surfaces that have spherical curvature, that is, the front and back surfaces of the lens can be anticipated to be part of the surface of two spheres of given radii, R1 and R2, which are called the radius of curvature of each surface. The sign of R1 gives the form of the front surface of the lens: if R1 is positive, the surface is convex. If R1 is negative, the front surface is concave. If R1 is infinite, the surface is flat, or has zero curvature, and is said to be plane. The same is true for the back surface of the lens; apart from that the sign conversion is reversed: if R2 is positive, it is concave, and if R2 is negative, the back surface is convex. The line joining the centers of the spheres making up the lens surfaces is called the axis of the lens; in almost all cases the lens axis passes through the physical centre of the lens.

Lenses are divided by the bend of these two surfaces. A lens is biconvex if both surfaces are convex; similarly, a lens with two concave surfaces is biconcave. If one of the surfaces is flat, the lens is termed Plano-convex or Plano-concave depending on the curvature of the other surface. A lens with one convex and one concave side is named convex-concave, and in this case if both curvatures are equal it is a meniscus lens. If the lens is biconvex or Plano-convex, a collimated or parallel beam of light passing along the lens axis and through the lens will be converged to a spot on the axis, at a certain distance behind the lens. In this case, the lens is called a constructive or converging lens.

If the lens is biconcave or Plano-concave, a collimated beam of light passing through the lens is diverged; the lens is thus called a negative or diverging lens. The beam after passing through the lens appears to be emanating from a particular point on the axis in front of the lens; the detachment from this point to the lens is also known as the focal length, although it is negative with respect to the focal length of a converging lens.
If the lens is convex-concave, whether it is converging or diverging depends on the relative curvatures of the two surfaces. If the curvatures are equal, then the beam is neither converged nor diverged.

Information Technology

2007-04-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

Information technology (IT), is the study, design, development, implementation, support or administration of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. In short, IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to transfer, store, protect, process, transmit and get back information, securely.

In this definition, the term "information" can frequently be replaced by "data" without loss of meaning. Recently it has become popular to widen the term to explicitly consist of the field of electronic communication so that people tend to use the abbreviation ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Strictly speaking, this name contains some redundancy.

Today, the term Information Technology has distended to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term is more identifiable than ever before. The Information Technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals achieve a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases.

Artificial intelligence (Intelligence, IQ, and g)

2007-04-24T23:38:00.000-07:00

Intelligence, IQ, and g are unusual. Intelligence is the word used in normal discourse to refer to cognitive capability. However, it is generally regarded as too vague to be useful for a scientific treatment of the subject. The intelligence quotient is an index calculated from the scores on test items judged by experts to include the abilities enclosed by the term intelligence. IQ measures a multidimensional quantity: it is an amalgam of different kinds of abilities, the proportions of which may differ between IQ tests. The dimensionality of IQ scores can be studied by factor analysis, which reveals a single dominant factor underlying the scores on all IQ tests. This factor, which is a hypothetical construct, is called g. Variation in g corresponds closely to the innate notion of intelligence, and thus g is sometimes called general cognitive ability or common intelligence.

Videophone

2007-04-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

A videophone is a telephone which is able of both audio and video duplex transmission.AT&T conducted experiments and demonstrations of a "Picturephone" product and service in the early 1960s. Among the first manufacturers of commercially viable videophones was Toshiba.Videotelephony is frequently used in large corporate setups, and are supported by systems such as Cisco CallManager. Other companies such as Tandberg, Radvision, and Polycom also offer similar solutions. Videoconferencing has usually been limited to the h.323 protocol (notably Cisco's SCCP implementation is an exception), however newly a shift towards SIP implementations is seen. In accordance with the adoption of SIP telephony for home users, videotelephony is also slowly becoming available to home users.Another protocol using videophones is H.324; this allows videophones to work in regular phone lines, since the bandwidth is limited by the phone line. The quality is about fifteen Frames per second. This type of videophone is generally used because of the affordable price.Today the principles, if not the precise mechanisms of a videophone are employed by thousands of users world-wide in the form of webcam conferences using cheaply available webcams and microphones employed using software over the internet.

Willamette River

2007-04-09T00:40:00.001-07:00

100 The Willamette River is a tributary of the Columbia River, approximately 240 mi long, in northwestern Oregon in the United States. Flowing northward between the Coastal Range and Cascade Range, the river and its tributaries form a basin called the Willamette Valley containing the largest inhabitants centers of Oregon, including Portland, which sits along both sides of the river near its mouth on the Columbia. Its lush valley is fed by prolific precipitation on the western side of the Cascades, forming one of the most productive agricultural regions of North America that was the destination for many if not most of the emigrants along the Oregon Trail. The river was an important transportation route throughout much of the early history of the state, furnishing a means of conveying the vast timber and agricultural resources of the state to the outside world.

Description

The Willamette rises in three separate forks in the mountains south and southeast of Eugene, at the southern end of the Willamette Valley. The Middle Fork and North Fork raise on the western side of the Cascades between Three Sisters south to Diamond Peak, with the Middle Fork in receipt of the North Fork northwest of Oakridge and flowing northwest from side to side the mountains to the southern end of the Willamette Valley. The Coast Fork rises in the lower mountains south of Cottage Grove, flowing north to join the Middle Fork 2 mi southeast of Eugene.

From Eugene, the joint river flows NNW across the plain of the southern Willamette Valley to Corvallis, and then follows a zigzag course past Albany and around the isolated hills in the central valley, passing west of downtown Salem. From Salem it flows north in a roundabout course across the northwest plain of the valley, reaching the hills at Newberg, where it turns sharply ENE along the hills, passing through an opening in the hills at Oregon City, the position of the Falls of the Willamette and the head of navigation. From Oregon City it flows northwest, past Lake Oswego and Milwaukie on the south edge of Portland, then passing between east and west Portland, where it is spanned by a series of urban bridges. Downstream of downtown Portland it flows northwest through the industrial port area of Portland Harbor, then splitting into two channels around Sauvie Island, both of which hook around to enter the Columbia from the west, with the main channel entering on the north edge of Portland and the smaller Multnomah Channel entering just about 15 mi NNW at St.Helens.

Ultraviolet

2007-04-02T23:48:00.001-07:00

Ultraviolet radiation is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength shorter than that of the able to be seen region, but longer than that of soft X-rays. It can be subdivided into near UV and tremendous or vacuum UV.

When allowing for the effects of UV radiation on human health and the surroundings, the range of UV wavelengths is often subdivided into UVA, also called Long Wave or "black light"; UVB, also called Medium Wave; and UVC, also called Short Wave or "germicidal". See 1 E-7 m for a list of objects of similar sizes.

In photolithography, in laser technology, etc., the term cavernous ultraviolet or DUV refers to wavelengths below 300nm.

The name means "beyond violet", violet being the color of the unswerving wavelengths of able to be seen light. Some of the UV wavelengths are colloquially called black light, as it is imperceptible to the human eye. Some animals, including birds, reptiles, and insects such as bees, can see into the near ultraviolet. Many fruits, flowers, and seeds situate out more strongly from the background in ultraviolet wavelengths as compared to human color vision. Many birds have patterns in their plumage that are imperceptible at usual wavelengths but seen in ultraviolet, and the urine of some animals is much easier to spot with ultraviolet.

The Sun emits ultraviolet radiation in the UVA, UVB, and UVC bands, but because of amalgamation in the atmosphere's ozone layer, 99% of the ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth's surface is UVA.
Ordinary glass is see-through to UVA but is opaque to shorter wavelengths. Silica or quartz glass, depending on quality, can be see-through even to vacuum UV wavelengths.

The onset of vacuum UV, 200 nm, is defined by the fact that normal air is opaque below this wavelength. This opacity is due to the strong amalgamation of light of these wavelengths by oxygen in the air. Pure nitrogen is see-through to wavelengths in the range of about 150–200 nm. This has wide practical significance now that semiconductor manufacturing processes are using wavelengths shorter than 200 nm. By working in oxygen-free gas, the apparatus does not have to be built to withstand the pressure differences necessary to work in a vacuum. Some other scientific instruments, such as circular dichroism spectrometers, are also normally nitrogen purged and operate in this spectral region.

Unmanned space missions

2007-03-29T22:04:00.001-07:00

100 Unmanned space missions are those using remote-controlled spaceship. The first such assignment was the Sputnik I assignment, launched October 4, 1957. Some missions are more appropriate for unmanned missions rather than manned space missions, due to minor cost and lower risk factors. Since the early 1970s, most unmanned space missions have been based on space probe with built-in assignment computers, and as such may be classified as entrenched systems.

Most American unmanned missions have been synchronized by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and European missions by the European Space Operations Centre, part of ESA. ESA has conducted comparatively few space examination missions. ESA has, however, launched a variety of spacecraft to carry out astronomy, and is a coworker with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope. There have been a great number of very winning Russian space missions. There were also a small number of Japanese and Chinese missions.

Clock

2007-03-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

A clock is an instrument for measuring time.Those used for technical purposes, of extremely high accuracy, are sometimes called chronometers. A portable clock is called a watch. The clock in its most common modern form displays the hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds that pass over a twelve or twenty-four-hour period.
The world's first self-striking clock was said to be invented by Chang Yeong-Sil, a chief enginner of Korea, in Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. It was called Chagyongru, which means "self-striking clock" in Korean
The development of electronics in the twentieth century led to clocks with no clockwork parts at all. Time in these cases is measured in several ways, such as by the behaviour of quartz crystals, or the decay of radioactive elements. Even mechanical clocks contain since come to be largely powered by batteries, removing the need for winding.

Peach

2007-03-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

The peach (Prunus persica) is a tree that bears a juicy fruit of the same name. It has a single large seed enclosed in hard wood (called the "pit" or "stone"), yellow or whitish flesh, a delicate aroma, and a velvety skin. Peaches, along with cherries, plums and apricots, are stone fruits (drupes). Cultivated peaches are separated into freestone and clingstone varieties, depending on whether the flesh sticks to the pit; both kinds can be any color. Peaches with white flesh characteristically are very sweet with little acid flavor, while yellow-fleshed peaches classically have an acidic tang coupled with sweetness. Both colors often have some red on their skin. Low-acid white-fleshed peaches are the most popular kinds in China, Japan, and neighboring Asian countries, while Europeans and North Americans have historically favored the acidic, yellow-fleshed kinds.

Kashmir

2007-03-14T21:53:00.001-07:00

Kashmir is known as heaven on the earth. In the seventeenth century the Mughal emperor Jahangir set his eyes on the valley of Kashmir. He said that if paradise is anywhere on the earth, it is here, while living in a house boat on the mesmerizing Dal Lake. The pleasure of the Mughal gardens makes every minute one spends in Kashmir a joy to the soul. In Jammu and Kashmir the most significant tourist places are Kashmir, Srinagar, Mughal gardens, Gulmarg, Pahalgam-the valley of shepherds, Jammu, Ladakh.
Because of the quite tolerable climate on the higher planes of Jammu and Kashmir, and also because of its scenic beauty and bodies of water, Jammu and Kashmir are a tourist attraction. Until a few decades ago, "Going to Kashmir" was synonymous in India with going on a honeymoon, or for a tour to a cold place during hot summers.
Some areas need a special permit for non-indians to visit.

Manga

2007-03-09T23:02:00.001-08:00

Manga is the Japanese word for comics and print cartoons. Outside of Japan, it generally refers specifically to comics initially published in Japan. As of 2007, manga represents a multi-billion dollar global market.Manga developed from a mixture of ukiyo-e and foreign styles of drawing, and took its current form shortly after World War II. It comes primarily in black and white, except for the covers and sometimes the first few pages; in some Animanga (Anime printed in Manga style) all the pages are colored.
Popular manga are frequently adapted into anime (Japanese for animation) once a market interest has been established (Manga is sometimes mistakenly called "anime" by those not familiar with the term). Adapted stories are often modified to appeal to a more mainstream market. Although not as general, original anime is sometimes adapted into manga (such as the Gundam franchise, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop and Tenchi Muyo).

Deafness

2007-03-05T21:52:00.000-08:00

The word deaf is used in a different way in different contexts, and there is some controversy over its meaning and implications. In scientific and medical terms, deafness normally refers to a physical condition characterized by lack of sensitivity to sound. Notated as deaf with a lowercase d, this refers to the audiological experience of someone who is partly or wholly lacking hearing In legal terms, deafness is defined by degree of hearing loss. These degrees include profound or total deafness (90 dB - 120 dB or more of hearing loss), severe (60 dB - 90 dB), moderate (30 dB - 60 dB), and mild deafness(10 dB - 30 dB of hearing loss). Both severe and moderate deafness can be referred to as partial deafness or as hard of hearing, while mild deafness is usually called hard of hearing.
Within the Deaf community, the term "Deaf" is often capitalized when written, and it refers to a tight-knit cultural group of people whose primary language is signed, and who practice social & cultural norms which are different from those of the surrounding hearing community. This community does not mechanically include all those who are clinically or legally deaf, nor does it exclude every hearing person. According to Baker & Padden, it includes any person or persons who "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community"

Traditional animation

2007-03-01T01:53:00.000-08:00

This animation called cel animation, the frames of a traditionally animated movie are hand-drawn. The drawings are traced or copied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are then located over a painted background and photographed one by one on a rostrum camera. Nowadays, the use of cels (and cameras) is mostly obsolete, since the drawings are scanned into computers, and digitally transferred directly to 35 mm film. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animator's work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Because of the digital influence over modern cel
animation, it is also known as tradigital animation.Examples: The Lion King, Spirited Away, Les Triplettes de Belleville
Full animation
The most common style in animation, known for its realistic and often very detailed art.
Examples: All Disney feature length animated films, The Secret of NIMH, The Iron Giant
Limited animation
A cheaper process of creating animated cartoons that does not follow a "realistic" approach.
Examples: The Flintstones, Yellow Submarine
Rubber hose
The characters are usually cartoony, and the animators have a lot of artistic freedom as rubber hose animations don't have to follow the laws of physics and anatomy in the same degree as the other main styles in animation.
Examples: Early Mickey Mouse cartoons, Ren and Stimpy, Popeye
Rotoscoping
A technique where animators trace live action movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films.
Examples: Gulliver's Travels, American Pop

Manhattan

2007-02-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

Manhattan refers to both the Island of Manhattan and encompasses most of the Borough of Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City. The viable, financial, and cultural center of the city, Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums and universities. It is also home to the control center of the United Nations and the seat of city government.
The borough of Manhattan is coterminous with New York County, which is also the most densely populated county in the United States. Postal addresses within the borough are typically chosen as "New York, NY."
Manhattan has the biggest central business district in the United States and is the site of most of the city's corporate headquarters and the New York Stock Exchange. Although its population is third biggest of the five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and it is geographically the smallest, Manhattan is the borough that many visitors most personally associate with New York City.

Education

2007-02-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

Education is a term often used to refer to prescribed education. The word's broader meaning covers a variety of experiences, from formal learning to the building of understanding and knowledge throughout day to day experiences. Ultimately, it might be and has been said that all that we experience serves as a form of education. It is a generally held belief that education is lifelong. Individuals receive informal education from a mixture of sources. Family members, peers, books and mass media have a strong authority on the informal education of the individual.
Education also refers to a regulation, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to understanding and improving the processes of teaching and learning. It draws on additional disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.

Gardening

2007-02-13T23:54:00.001-08:00

Gardening is the art of growing plants with the aim of crafting a purposeful landscape. Residential gardening most often takes place in or about a residence, in a space referred to as the garden. Although a garden naturally is located on the land near a residence, it may also be located in a roof, in an entrance, on a balcony, in a windowbox, or on a yard.
Gardening also takes place in non-residential green areas, such as parks, public or semi-public gardens (botanical gardens or zoological gardens), pleasure and theme parks, along transportation corridors, and around tourist attractions and hotels. In these situations, a staff of gardeners or groundskeepers maintains the gardens.
Indoor gardening is concerned with the increasing of houseplants within a residence or building, in a conservatory, or in a greenhouse. Indoor gardens are sometimes included as part of air conditioning or heating systems.
Water gardening is concerned with growing plants adapted to pools and ponds. Bog gardens are also considered a type of water garden. These all require extraordinary conditions and considerations. A simple water garden may consist simply of a tub containing the water and plant(s).
Container gardening is concerned with growing plants in any type of container either indoors or outdoors. Common containers are pots, hanging baskets, and planters. Container gardening is usually used in atriums and on balconies, patios, and roof tops.

Software

2007-02-06T21:11:00.001-08:00

Software basically is the distinct image or representation of physical or material position that constitute configuration to or functional identity of a machine, usually a computer. As a substance of memory, software in principle can be changed without the alteration to the static paradigm of the hardware thus without the remanufacturing thereof. generally software is of an algorithmic form which translates into being to a progression of machine instructions. Some software, however, is of a relational form which translate into being the map of a recognition network.
Software is a program that enables a computer to achieve a specific task, as contrasting to the physical components of the system (hardware). This include application software such as a word processor, which enables a user to achieve a task, and system software such as an operating system, which enables other software to run suitably, by interfacing with hardware and with other software.
The term "software" was first used in this intellect by John W. Tukey in 1957. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all computer program. The perception of reading different sequences of instructions into the memory of a apparatus to control computations was invented by Charles Babbage as part of his difference engine. The theory that is the source for most modern software was first projected by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungs problem.
TypesPractical computer systems partition software into three major classes: system software, programming software and application software, although the division is subjective, and often blurred.
* System software is one of the major class helps run the computer hardware and computer system. It includes working systems, device drivers, analytical tools, servers, windowing systems, utilities and more. The intention of systems software is to protect the applications programmer as much as possible from the details of theexacting computer complex being use, especially memory and other hardware features, and such accessory procedure as communications, printers, readers, displays, keyboards, etc.
* Programming software usually provide tools to support a programmer in writing computer programs and software with different programming languages in a more suitable way.The tools comprise text editors, compilers, interpreters, linkers, debuggers, and so on, An incorporated development environment (IDE) merge those tools into a software bundle, and a programmer may not need to type various command for compiling, interpreter, debugging, tracing, and etc., because the IDE typically has an sophisticated graphical user interface, or GUI.
* Application software allows humans to complete one or more explicit (non-computer related) tasks. typical applications include manufacturingautomation, business software, educational software, medical software, databases and computer games. Businesses are possibly the biggest users of application software, but approximately every field of human action now uses some form of application software. It is used tocomputerizeall sorts of functions.

A Way of Life

2006-12-11T21:54:00.000-08:00

Many people use this manifestation as a way to talk about their survival and how they examine their everyday life. What they fail to distinguish, however, is the fact that their way of living is allied in a much broader type than they think. Anthropologists study these categories large, narrow, present, and past to try and find out what accurately a "way of life" was for individual cultures.
By studying these cultures Anthropologists try and realize different methods of survival. They have also exposed a few major social institutions that all cultures have a common link together. These social institution are the root for which culture is founded. In order for a culture to become distinct from other cultures it has to pertain different rules and change around these institutions. Anthropologists use these social institutional changes to appreciate the development of a culture and their way of being. They research these processes through fieldwork regularly. By using fieldwork as a means of research they can directly examine, interview, survey, and then analyze the situation. This gives them to lead of seeing with their own eyes what take place within a culture.

Seedless Fruits

2006-12-05T03:28:00.000-08:00

Seedlessness is an important feature of some fruits of commerce. Commercial cultivars of bananas and pineapples are examples of seedless fruits. Some cultivars of citrus fruits (especially navel oranges and mandarin oranges), table grapes, grapefruit, and watermelons are valued for their seedlessness. In some species, seedlessness is the result of parthenocarpy, where fruits set without fertilization. Parthenocarpic fruit set may or may not require pollination. Most seedless citrus fruits require a pollination stimulus; bananas and pineapples do not. Seedlessness in table grapes results from the abortion of the embryonic plant that is produced by fertilization, a phenomenon known as stenospermocarpy which requires normal pollination and fertilization.

Economy of Kerala

2006-11-29T21:58:00.000-08:00

Since its amalgamation as a state, Kerala's financial system largely operated under welfare-based democratic communist principles; nevertheless, the state is increasingly along with the rest of India liberalizing its economy, thus moving to a more mixed market with a greater role played by the free marketplace and foreign direct investment. Kerala's supposed gross domestic product is an estimated 89451.99 crore INR, while recent GDP growth has been vigorous compared to historical averages.

Nevertheless, relatively few major corporations and developed plants choose to operate in Kerala; this is mitigated by remittances sent home by abroad Keralites, which contributes around 20% of state GDP. Kerala's per capita GDP 11,819 INR is significantly senior than the all-India average, even though it still lies far below the world average. Additionally, Kerala's Human Development Index and normal of living statistics are the nation's best.

Morphology

2006-11-26T21:24:00.000-08:00

The basic parts of a tree are the roots, trunk, branches, twigs and leaves. Tree stems consist mainly of carry and transport tissues. Wood consists of xylem cells, and woof is made of phloem and other tissues outside to the vascular cambium.

Trees may be generally grouped into exogenous and endogenous trees according to the way in which their stem diameter increases. Exogenous trees, which include the great bulk of contemporary trees, grow by the addition of new wood outwards, right away under the bark. Endogenous trees, mostly in the monocotyledons, grow by addition of new material inwards.

As an exogenous tree grows, it creates growth rings. In temperate climates, these are usually visible due to changes in the rate of growth with heat variation over a yearly cycle. These rings can be counted to conclude the age of the tree, and used to date cores or even timber taken from trees in the past; this perform is known as the science of dendrochronology. In some humid regions with constant year-round weather, growth is continuous and different rings are not formed, so age resolve is impossible. Age willpower is also impossible in endogenous plants.

Synthetic rubber

2006-11-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

Another plastic that was critical to the war attempt was "synthetic rubber", which was produced in a range of forms.The first synthetic rubber polymer was obtained by Lebedev in 1910. Practical imitation rubber grew out of studies published in 1930 written separately by American Wallace Carothers, Russian scientist Lebedev and the German scientist Hermann Staudinger. These studies led in 1931 to one of the first winning synthetic rubbers, known as "neoprene", which was residential at DuPont under the direction of E.K. Bolton. Neoprene is highly unwilling to heat and chemicals such as oil and gasoline, and is used in fuel hoses and as an insulating material in machinery.

Worldwide natural rubber goods were limited and by mid-1942 most of the rubber-producing regions were under Japanese control. Military trucks wanted rubber for tires, and rubber was used in almost every other war machine. The U.S. government launched a major effort to expand and refine synthetic rubber. A principal scientist concerned with the effort was Edward Robbins.

Volcanic activity

2006-11-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

A trendy way of classifying magmatic volcanoes goes by their occurrence of eruption, with those that erupt regularly called active, those that have erupted in historical times but are now quiet called latent, and those that have not erupted in historical times called extinct. However, these popular classifications vanished in particular are practically meaningless to scientists. They use classifications which refer to a particular volcano's formative and eruptive processes and ensuing shapes, which was explained above.
There is no actual consensus among volcanologists on how to define an "active" volcano. The natural life of a volcano can vary from months to several million years, making such a distinction sometimes worthless when compared to the life spans of humans or even civilizations. For example, many of Earth's volcanoes have erupted dozens of times in the past few thousand years but are not at present showing signs of eruption. Given the long lifespan of such volcanoes, they are very vigorous. By our life spans, however, they are not. Complicating the definition are volcanoes that become restless but do not actually erupt.

Colossus of Rhodes

2006-11-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

The Colossus of Rhodes was a giant sculpture of the god Helios, erected on the Greek island of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippos, between 292 BC and 280 BC. It was approximately the same size as the Statue of Liberty in New York, although it stood on a lower platform. It is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Alexander the Great died at an early age in 323 BC without having had occasion to put into place any plans for his succession. Fighting broke out among his generals, the Diadochi, with three of them ultimately divides up much of his empire in the Mediterranean area. During the fighting Rhodes had sided with Ptolemy, and when Ptolemy eventually took organize of Egypt, Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt formed an alliance which controlled much of the trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

Architectural history

2006-11-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Architecture first evolves out of the dynamics between needs and means. Prehistoric and primordial construction. As human’s progress and knowledge began to be formalized through oral traditions and practices, architecture evolved into a craft. Here there is first a process of trial and error, and later making do or duplication of a victorious trial.
Early human settlements were essentially rural. As surplus of production began to occur, rural societies malformed into urban ones and cities begin to evolve. In much ancient civilization such as the Egyptians' and Mesopotamians' architecture and urbanism reflected the constant appointment with the divine and the mystical, while in other ancient cultures such as Iran architecture and urban preparation was used to exemplify the command of the state.
Islamic construction has a long and complex history beginning in the seventh century CE. Examples can be found throughout the countries that are, or were, Islamic - from Morocco and Spain to Turkey other examples can be found in areas where Muslims are a underground. Islamic architecture includes mosques, madras as, caravanserais, palaces, and mausoleum of this large district.

Flower evolution

2006-11-07T21:12:00.000-08:00

While land plants have exist for about 425 million years, the first ones reproduced by a simple variation of their aquatic counterpart; spores. In the sea, plants and some animals can simply scatter out little living copies of themselves to float left and grow elsewhere. This is how early plants, such as the modern fern, are thought to have reproduced. But plants soon began protecting these copies to deal with ventilation out and other abuse which is even more possible on land than in the sea. The protection became the seed...but not, yet, flowers. Early seed-bearing plants include the ginkgo, conifers and fir trees. But the first fossil proof of actual flowers appears only 130 million years ago.
Unfortunately, there is no fossil evidence of exactly how flowers evolved; the confirmation has them springing in advanced form into the fossil record. This was recognized almost immediately during the development of progress theory, the strange appearance of flowers in the fossil record being called by Charles Darwin the Abominable Mystery.

spear

2006-11-04T02:09:00.000-08:00

A spear is an ancient weapon used for hunting and war, consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a sharpened head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be of another material fastened to the shaft. The most common design is of a metal spearhead, shaped somewhat like a dagger.
Spears were arguably one of the most common personal weapons from the late Bronze Age until the advent of firearms. They may be seen as the ancestor of such weapons as the lance, the halberd, the naginata and the pike. One of the earliest weapons fashioned by human beings and their ancestors, it is still used for hunting and fishing, and its influences can still be seen in contemporary military arsenals as the rifle mounted bayonet.
Spears can be used as both melee and ballistic weapons. Spears used primarily for thrusting tend to have heavier and sturdier designs than those intended exclusively for throwing. Two of the most noted throwing spears are the javelin thrown by the ancient Greeks and the pilum used by the Romans.

Cultural Landscape

2006-10-31T23:17:00.000-08:00

Cultural landscape is the true meaning of all of the provisions to be clear in this paper. The meaning of a term is not theoretical to enclose the same word being distinct; however in this case, all five terms can be summed under the main description of cultural landscape. Given this indecent method of crucial terms, cultural landscape will be definite properly first with the residual terms being clear following. The five terms are cultural region, cultural diffusion, cultural ecology, cultural integration, and cultural landscape.

As it applies to this paper, cultural landscape is the individual geographer’s term for perspective on the position of humans, their income, significant geographic landmarks, socio-economic status, belief systems, and why they evolved to what they are today. There are many other factors that are a part of the explanation of cultural landscape. The focus will be on the aforementioned terms.

Ethnic diversity

2006-10-14T00:50:00.000-07:00

The Affirmative action can be defined as action taken to compensate for past unfairness in the education of minorities. The present system of affirmative action allows universities to admit applicants from certain ethnic and minority groups with lower credentials. The main aim of affirmative action is to produce a diverse campus population that is comparable to today's society. The use of race as a main factor by which someone is admitted to college in the long run will compromise the quality of the university. By Implicating affirmative action to solve the problem of diversity on today's campuses has lead to the creation of problems. The discrimination which is against Caucasian and Asian American students a long with the toleration of lower quality work produced by African American students and other minority students is an example of the problems caused by the Affirmative Action. Though the affirmative action intends to do good, which lowers the standards by which certain racial groups are admitted to college is not the way to solve the problem of diversity in America's universities. The present condition of America's public schools is directly responsible for the poor academic achievement of minority children.

Successful college student:

2006-10-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

All over life people are faced with a variety of hurdles. Let us try to know How they choose to overcome these hurdles determines whether they become successful or not, it would be nice if there was an instruction manual to tell one how to be successful, how to overcome these hurdles. Among the most difficult hurdles facing people today is college. For Often times people go into college with their eyes closed tightly, meaning they are totally unprepared for what lye’s ahead. There may be a variety of aspects that determine whether students are successful in college. To meet the basic requirements to enter college, selecting the right courses, learning how to study on the college level, and managing time are all key factors in becoming a successful college student.
And for the enrolment in college, one must first meet the basic requirements of that institution. The requirements for some colleges are more difficult than others. To become a successful student in college, one must choose a college in which they meet the basic requirements. For the most all academically based colleges, a basic requirement is a high school diploma or G.E.D. Some of the colleges base acceptance on the student’s high school grade point average. The colleges with difficult admission requirements are looking not only for the meritorious and intelligent students.
More often, student feels that there just are not enough hours in a day. Often in the time the counselors can send students in the right direction for achieving their goals, as well as helping them to select courses to go along with their intended major.
College courses may require more effort and studying than high school.
When a student is accepted into a college, one of the most difficult decisions is ahead, course selection. BY having a talk with a counselor at this point is extremely helpful for a student. The above are just four examples of the various skills it takes to become successful. And also many classes require several hours per day of studying. Various classes require different methods of studying. The languages English requires writing essays and elaborate reading. Now he or she may faces with choosing his or her major. It all depends upon the students’ interest.

Women and Education:

2006-10-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

Acceding women and men equal access to education in light of the Fourteenth Amendment’s pledge of equal protection.
Although taken for granted by many, co-sex educational institutions for higher learning are really just recent occurrences. And For the most part, in the colleges and universities, particularly elite ones, taught either men or women. So the reasons for this separation date back to early American history, when a woman’s place was seen as “in the home.” And In addition, education was seen, though ridiculously, as having detrimental effects on the woman.
And the some of these ludicrous, yet back then “scientific” beliefs, included that women’s brains were smaller than men’s were therefore, making them “less capable of academic learning.” And It was also said that if women utilized their brains at the time of their adolescent years, then their reproductive organs would not develop correctly causing possible sterility.
The motherhood has always been seen as a strong link for women to their personal identities. However, the greatest oppression would be to threaten its existence.
Take an example, in 1971 after a congressional hearing reported that in Virginia 21,000 women and no men were turned down for admission to state schools. The court usually applies this test with gender-based classifications and those involving illegitimate children. And it was not until recent decades that the Court finally let up with the concept that the equal protection clause was the “last resort of constitutional arguments”, as stated by Justice Holmes in 1927 (Buck v Bell). Though the intermediate scrutiny test is based on a substantive evaluation reviewing the governmental policy’s wisdom and intentions. And from as early as 1955 when Adlai Stevenson; addressed the Smith College graduating class and urged them not to define themselves by “any profession and to participate in politics through the role of wife and mother. Whether an institution did not comply with the law, the government might delay awards of money and the revoke current awards or debar institutions from eligibility for future awards. As to the emergence of the Women’s Liberation groups in 1968 as a “spin-off” of the male- run student movement. So VMI was founded in 1839 with the mission of producing “citizen-soldiers. So a situation came as women have had to prove that they are equals of men.

Women on television

2006-10-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

The quality of television programme has become a national disgrace. The Young women who are displeased with their appearance more likely then not can trace those feelings directly back to images from the media on television. Those unrealistic representations of women that the media bombards young women with indicates that the television has become a source for a distorted understanding of gender roles among adolescent women. The images which are warping the young women's views of their own gender identity. The media on television which should in an attempt to provide more positive gender identities for adolescent women depict women on television in more realistic ways, should stop reinforcing negative stereotypes of women, and stop portraying women as sex objects in advertising.

Subsequently, the advertisers see women as parts. Teenage girls – they should be represented on television as being able to have serious conversations and feeling that their brains are as important as their looks. The result of these images is that these ideas create competition among women and divides women. Women should be represented as more than the standard stereotypical negative and simplified character viewers who generally see. The media especially television often focus on legs, breasts and mouth of a woman, so in essence women are looked at in pieces. Women are need to be shown in occupations that are not the stereotypical, such as the occupations of nurse, maid, sales assistant, or models. Although, the girls who are coming in advertisements are often seen playing house while little boys are seen with trucks and action figures. The television should represent traditional views of society. For all the above said reasons, society should have a deep concern with the gender roles that young women are learning from television. Often Women has been shown as only being able to get what they want by using sexuality

Early Stages of a pregnant woman and her health

2006-09-29T03:04:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy is not an easy job for a woman. Starting from conception to birth, a woman's body carries out the most miraculous process of fertilization, implantation and the maturity and growth of her baby (or babies). Her body is her baby's dwelling place for the next nine months (or around 40 weeks) and the occurrences of pregnancy turn into a journey of many new physical feelings. Whether it is first, second, third (or more) pregnancy, her body will respond in a different way to each individual pregnancy. So health of a pregnant woman is very important to be taken care of.

Throughout the first 12 weeks of pregnancy called the '1st trimester’, a woman's body adjust to present a fostering and protective environment for her baby to grow and develop. Seldom, the early signs of pregnancy can make a woman feel puzzled. This may be for the reason that many of the physical signs of in the early hours of pregnancy such as enlarged tender breasts, sensitivity of tiredness, overstuffed and perhaps experiencing spasms and/or pelvic uneasiness can be considered as normal pre-menstrual signs. In all these stages the health of the woman declines because she is not only feeding herself, also her little developing fetus.

They may also sense disgusted or sick, due to morning sickness. It is not unusual to feel unsure about what is 'normal' during the early stages of pregnancy development, and unfamiliar signs or sensations may trigger concerns about the health, of her and baby. It’s been proved by the Gynecologists that every woman's body will react in a different way to being pregnant. Many women find their early pregnancy symptoms very difficult to cope with, both at work and generally.

Due to continuous vomiting and nourishing the fetus the pregnant woman may be exhausted very easily. She has to constantly keep her energetic by maintaining a healthy diet schedule as prescribed by the physicians. She can have more fresh green vegetables and fruit juices to make her feel fresh and energetic. It’s always significant to make sure that she avoids drinking and smoking because whatever she has will be directly absorbed by the baby. Once the fetus starts developing she has to get primed for all the obstacles she has to experience throughout pregnancy. Many psychologists predict that a healthy pregnancy is not only from taking care of the nutrition for the pregnant women, more than that she has to be taken care from all the hassles in her family. It’s the duty of a loving husband to caress her comfortably and keep her happy always throughout the gestation period. This will not only make the woman feel happy and hopeful it will directly lead to the good development of the fetus.