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Sequence of operations for a task
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In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing. More advanced algorithms can perform automated deductions (referred to as automated reasoning) and use mathematical and logical tests to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making). Using human characteristics as descriptors of machines in metaphorical ways was already practiced by Alan Turing with terms such as "memory", "search" and "stimulus".Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja-Silvia and Grafton, Anthony. Information: A Historical Companion, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. p. 247
In contrast, a heuristic is an approach to problem solving that may not be fully specified or may not guarantee correct or optimal results, especially in problem domains where there is no well-defined correct or optimal result.David A. Grossman, Ophir Frieder, Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics, 2nd edition, 2004,
As an effective method, an algorithm can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time,"Any classical mathematical algorithm, for example, can be described in a finite number of English words" (Rogers 1987:2). and in a well-defined formal languageWell defined with respect to the agent that executes the algorithm: "There is a computing agent, usually human, which can react to the instructions and carry out the computations" (Rogers 1987:2). for calculating a function."an algorithm is a procedure for computing a function (with respect to some chosen notation for integers) ... this limitation (to numerical functions) results in no loss of generality", (Rogers 1987:1). Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty),"An algorithm has zero or more inputs, i.e., quantities which are given to it initially before the algorithm begins" (Knuth 1973:5). the instructions describe a computation that, when executed, proceeds through a finite"A procedure which has all the characteristics of an algorithm except that it possibly lacks finiteness may be called a 'computational method (Knuth 1973:5). number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output""An algorithm has one or more outputs, i.e. quantities which have a specified relation to the inputs" (Knuth 1973:5). and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate random input.Whether or not a process with random interior processes (not including the input) is an algorithm is debatable. Rogers opines that: "a computation is carried out in a discrete stepwise fashion, without the use of continuous methods or analogue devices ... carried forward deterministically, without resort to random methods or devices, e.g., dice" (Rogers 1987:2).
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Order of monocot flowering plants
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Asparagales (asparagoid lilies) is an order of plants in modern classification systems such as the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Web. The order takes its name from the type family Asparagaceae and is placed in the monocots amongst the lilioid monocots. The order has only recently been recognized in classification systems. It was first put forward by Huber in 1977 and later taken up in the Dahlgren system of 1985 and then the APG in 1998, 2003 and 2009. Before this, many of its families were assigned to the old order Liliales, a very large order containing almost all monocots with colorful tepals and lacking starch in their endosperm. DNA sequence analysis indicated that many of the taxa previously included in Liliales should actually be redistributed over three orders, Liliales, Asparagales, and Dioscoreales. The boundaries of the Asparagales and of its families have undergone a series of changes in recent years; future research may lead to further changes and ultimately greater stability. In the APG circumscription, Asparagales is the largest order of monocots with 14 families, 1,122 genera, and about 36,000 species.
The order is clearly circumscribed on the basis of molecular phylogenetics, but it is difficult to define morphologically since its members are structurally diverse. Most species of Asparagales are herbaceous perennials, although some are climbers and some are tree-like. The order also contains many geophytes (bulbs, corms, and various kinds of tuber). According to telomere sequence, at least two evolutionary switch-points happened within the order. The basal sequence is formed by TTTAGGG like in the majority of higher plants. Basal motif was changed to vertebrate-like TTAGGG and finally, the most divergent motif CTCGGTTATGGG appears in Allium. One of the defining characteristics (synapomorphies) of the order is the presence of phytomelanin, a black pigment present in the seed coat, creating a dark crust. Phytomelanin is found in most families of the Asparagales (although not in Orchidaceae, thought to be the sister-group of the rest of the order).
The leaves of almost all species form a tight rosette, either at the base of the plant or at the end of the stem, but occasionally along the stem. The flowers are not particularly distinctive, being 'lily type', with six tepals and up to six stamina.
The order is thought to have first diverged from other related monocots some 120–130 million years ago (early in the Cretaceous period), although given the difficulty in classifying the families involved, estimates are likely to be uncertain.
From an economic point of view, the order Asparagales is second in importance within the monocots only to the order Poales (which includes grasses and cereals). Species are used as food and flavourings (e.g. onion, garlic, leek, asparagus, vanilla, saffron), in medicinal or cosmetic applications (Aloe), as cut flowers (e.g. freesia, gladiolus, iris, orchids), and as garden ornamentals (e.g. day lilies, lily of the valley, Agapanthus).
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Russian mathematician
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Andrey Andreyevich Markov (14 June 1856 – 20 July 1922) was a Russian mathematician best known for his work on stochastic processes. A primary subject of his research later became known as the Markov chain.
Markov and his younger brother Vladimir Andreevich Markov (1871–1897) proved the Markov brothers' inequality.
His son, another Andrey Andreyevich Markov (1903–1979), was also a notable mathematician, making contributions to constructive mathematics and recursive function theory.
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Creator of an original work
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An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"an author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created." [A compilation of the bibliographies and short biographies of notable authors up to 1974.]
Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work, i.e. the author. If more than one person created the work (i.e., multiple authors), then a case of joint authorship takes place. The copyright laws are have minor differences in various jurisdictions across the United States. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of 'original works of authorship.'"
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Cinematic technique
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"American shot" or "cowboy shot" is a translation of a phrase from French film criticism, , and refers to a medium-long ("knee") film shot of a group of characters, who are arranged so that all are visible to the camera. The usual arrangement is for the actors to stand in an irregular line from one side of the screen to the other, with the actors at the end coming forward a little and standing more in profile than the others. The purpose of the composition is to allow complex dialogue scenes to be played out without changes in camera position. In some literature, this is simply referred to as a 3/4 shot.
One of the other main reasons why French critics called it "American shot" was its frequent use in the western genre. This was because a shot that started at knee level would reveal the weapon of a cowboy, usually holstered at their waist. It is actually the closest the camera can get to an actor while keeping both their face and their holstered gun in frame.
The French critics thought it was characteristic of American films of the 1930s or 1940s; however, it was mostly characteristic of cheaper American movies, such as Charlie Chan mysteries where people collected in front of a fireplace or at the foot of the stairs in order to explain what happened a few minutes ago.
Howard Hawks legitimized this style in his films, allowing characters to act, even when not talking, when most of the audience would not be paying attention. It became his trademark style.
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Canadian science fiction author (1912-2000)
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Alfred Elton van Vogt ( ; April 26, 1912 – January 26, 2000) was a Canadian-born science fiction author. His fragmented, bizarre narrative style influenced later science fiction writers, notably Philip K. Dick. He was one of the most popular and influential practitioners of science fiction in the mid-twentieth century, the genre's so-called Golden Age, and one of the most complex."Although [van Vogt] catered for the pulps, he intensified the emotional impact and complexity of the stories they would bear". The Science Fiction Writers of America named him their 14th Grand Master in 1995 (presented 1996).
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Classical Greek philosopher and polymath (384–322 BC)
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Aristotle (; Aristotélēs, ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Northern Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At seventeen or eighteen years of age he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of physical science extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. He also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan.
Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. Aristotle has been called the father of logic, biology, political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, criticism, individualism, teleology, and meteorology.
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First letter of the Greek alphabet
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Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; , álpha, or ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph 20px|aleph, which is the West Semitic word for "ox". Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter А.
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Peninsula in Western Asia
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Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Turkish Straits to the northwest, the Black Sea to the north, the Armenian Highlands to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean seas through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the Balkan peninsula of Southeast Europe.
The eastern border of Anatolia has been held to be a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea, bounded by the Armenian Highlands to the east and Mesopotamia to the southeast. By this definition Anatolia comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. Today, Anatolia is sometimes considered to be synonymous with Asian Turkey, thereby including the western part of the Armenian Highlands and northern Mesopotamia and making its eastern and southern borders coterminous with Turkey's borders.
The ancient Anatolian peoples spoke the now-extinct Anatolian languages of the Indo-European language family, which were largely replaced by the Greek language during classical antiquity as well as during the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. The major Anatolian languages included Hittite, Luwian, and Lydian, while other, poorly attested local languages included Phrygian and Mysian. Hurro-Urartian languages were spoken in the southeastern kingdom of Mitanni, while Galatian, a Celtic language, was spoken in Galatia, central Anatolia. The Turkification of Anatolia began under the rule of the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century, continued under the Ottoman Empire between the late 13th and early 20th centuries, and continues today under the Republic of Turkey. However, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Neo-Aramaic, Armenian, North Caucasian languages, Laz, Georgian and Greek. Other ancient peoples in the region included Galatians, Hurrians, Assyrians, Hattians, Cimmerians, as well as Ionian, Dorian, and Aeolic Greeks.
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Practical application of moral considerations
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Applied ethics refers to the practical Computer of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership."Applied Ethics" Oxford Bibliographies.
Retrieved June 25, 2017. For example, the bioethics community is concerned with identifying the correct approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research."Disability and Health Care Rationing" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 25, 2017."Voluntary Euthanasia" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 25, 2017."Ethics of Stem Cell Research" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 25, 2017. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution."Environmental Ethics" Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 25, 2017. Business ethics includes questions regarding the duties or duty of 'whistleblowers' to the general public or their loyalty to their employers."Business Ethics" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
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Russian-American tennis player and model
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Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova (; born 7 June 1981) is a Russian former professional tennis player and American television personality. Her appearance and celebrity status made her one of the best known tennis stars worldwide. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name one of the most common search strings on Google Search.
Despite never winning a singles title, she reached No. 8 in the world in 2000. She achieved greater success playing doubles, where she was at times the world No. 1 player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002, and the WTA Championships in 1999 and 2000. They referred to themselves as the "Spice Girls of Tennis".
Kournikova retired from professional tennis in 2003 due to serious back and spinal problems, including a herniated disk. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and played in occasional exhibitions and in doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World Team Tennis before the team folded in 2011. She was a new trainer for season 12 of the television show The Biggest Loser, replacing Jillian Michaels, but did not return for season 13. In addition to her tennis and television work, Kournikova serves as a Global Ambassador for Population Services International's "Five & Alive" program, which addresses health crises facing children under the age of five and their families.
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Family of flowering plants
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Apiaceae or Umbelliferae is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus Apium and commonly known as the celery, carrot or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering plants, with more than 3,700 species in 434 generaStevens, P.F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008. including such well-known and economically important plants as ajwain, angelica, anise, asafoetida, caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, lovage, cow parsley, parsley, parsnip and sea holly, as well as silphium, a plant whose identity is unclear and which may be extinct.
The family Apiaceae includes a significant number of phototoxic species, such as giant hogweed, and a smaller number of highly poisonous species, such as poison hemlock, water hemlock, spotted cowbane, fool's parsley, and various species of water dropwort.
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Country on the west coast of Southern Africa and Central Africa
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Angola (; ), officially the Republic of Angola (), is a country located on the west coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country in both total area and population (behind Brazil in both cases), and is the seventh-largest country in Africa. It is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Angola has an exclave province, the province of Cabinda, that borders the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and most populous city is Luanda.
Angola has been inhabited since the Paleolithic Age. Its formation as a nation-state originates from Portuguese colonisation, which initially began with coastal settlements and trading posts founded in the 16th century. In the 19th century, European settlers gradually began to establish themselves in the interior. The Portuguese colony that became Angola did not have its present borders until the early 20th century, owing to resistance by native groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama and the Mbunda.
After a protracted anti-colonial struggle, Angola achieved independence in 1975 as a Marxist–Leninist one-party Republic. The country descended into a devastating civil war the same year, between the ruling People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the insurgent National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), an originally Maoist and later anti-communist group supported by the United States and South Africa, and the militant organization National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), backed by Zaire. The country has been governed by MPLA ever since its independence in 1975. Following the end of the war in 2002, Angola emerged as a relatively stable unitary, presidential constitutional republic.
Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world, especially since the end of the civil war; however, economic growth is highly uneven, with most of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small part of the population; the largest investment and trade partners are China and the United States. The standard of living remains low for most Angolans; life expectancy is among the lowest in the world, while infant mortality is among the highest.
Since 2017, the government of João Lourenço has made fighting corruption its flagship, so much so that many individuals of the previous government are either jailed or awaiting trial. Whilst this effort has been recognised by foreign diplomats to be legitimate, some skeptics see the actions as being politically motivated.
Angola is a member of the United Nations, OPEC, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, and the Southern African Development Community. As of 2021, the Angolan population is estimated at 32.87 million. Angola is multicultural and multiethnic. Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese influence, namely the predominance of the Portuguese language and of the Catholic Church, intermingled with a variety of indigenous customs and traditions.
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U.S. state
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Alaska ( ; ; ; ; ; Yup'ik: Alaskaq; ) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., it borders the Canadian province of British Columbia and the Yukon territory to the east; it also shares a maritime border with the Russian Federation's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the west, just across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas of the Arctic Ocean, while the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest.
Alaska is by far the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the next three largest states (Texas, California, and Montana) combined. It represents the seventh largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and the most sparsely populated state, but by far the continent's most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with a population of 736,081 as of 2020—more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The state capital of Juneau is the second-largest city in the United States by area, comprising more territory than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware. The former capital of Alaska, Sitka, is the largest U.S. city by area.
What is now Alaska has been home to various indigenous peoples for thousands of years; it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state. The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ), or approximately two cents per acre ($4.74/km2). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.
While it has one of the smallest state economies in the country, Alaska's per capita income is among the highest, owing to a diversified economy dominated by fishing, natural gas, and oil, all of which it has in abundance. United States armed forces bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy; more than half the state is federally owned public land, including a multitude of national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges.
The indigenous population of Alaska is proportionally the highest of any U.S. state, at over 15 percent. Close to two dozen native languages are spoken, and Alaskan Natives exercise considerable influence in local and state politics.
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Order of flowering plants
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Arecales is an order of flowering plants. The order has been widely recognised only for the past few decades; until then, the accepted name for the order including these plants was Principes.
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Statement that is taken to be true
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An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident'.Cf. axiom, n., etymology. Oxford English Dictionary, accessed 2012-04-28.Oxford American College Dictionary: "n. a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true. ORIGIN: late 15th cent.: ultimately from Greek axiōma 'what is thought fitting,' from axios 'worthy.' HighBeam
The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question."A proposition that commends itself to general acceptance; a well-established or universally conceded principle; a maxim, rule, law" axiom, n., definition 1a. Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed 2012-04-28. Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I.2.72a18-b4. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning."A proposition (whether true or false)" axiom, n., definition 2. Oxford English Dictionary Online, accessed 2012-04-28.
As used in mathematics, the term axiom is used in two related but distinguishable senses: "logical axioms" and "non-logical axioms". Logical axioms are usually statements that are taken to be true within the system of logic they define and are often shown in symbolic form (e.g., (A and B) implies A), while non-logical axioms (e.g., ) are actually substantive assertions about the elements of the domain of a specific mathematical theory (such as arithmetic).
When used in the latter sense, "axiom", "postulate", and "assumption" may be used interchangeably. In most cases, a non-logical axiom is simply a formal logical expression used in deduction to build a mathematical theory, and might or might not be self-evident in nature (e.g., parallel postulate in Euclidean geometry). To axiomatize a system of knowledge is to show that its claims can be derived from a small, well-understood set of sentences (the axioms), and there are typically many ways to axiomatize a given mathematical domain.
Any axiom is a statement that serves as a starting point from which other statements are logically derived. Whether it is meaningful (and, if so, what it means) for an axiom to be "true" is a subject of debate in the philosophy of mathematics.See for example for a realist view.
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Continuous time-varying signal
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An analog signal or analogue signal (see spelling differences) is any continuous signal representing some other quantity, i.e., analogous to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous signal voltage varies continuously with the pressure of the sound waves.
In contrast, a digital signal represents the original time-varying quantity as a sampled sequence of quantized values which imposes some bandwidth and dynamic range constraints on the representation.
The term analog signal usually refers to electrical signals; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic and other systems may also convey or be considered analog signals.
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Country in North Africa
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Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in North Africa. Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. It is considered to be a part of the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has a semi-arid geography, with most of the population living in the fertile north and the Sahara dominating the geography of the south. Algeria covers an area of , making it the world's tenth largest nation by area, and the largest nation in Africa, being more than 200 times as large as the smallest country in the continent, The Gambia. With a population of 44 million, Algeria is the ninth-most populous country in Africa, and the 32nd-most populous country in the world. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.
Algeria produced and is linked to many civilizations, empires and dynasties, including ancient Numidians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Umayyads, Abbasids, Rustamids, Idrisids, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Zirids, Hammadids, Almoravids, Almohads, Zayyanids, Spaniards, Ottomans and the French colonial empire, with the latter expanded into its present-boundaries. After 132 years of being part of France, tensions between France and the local Algerian populace led to the start of the Algerian War which concluded with Algeria obtaining its independence on 5 July 1962 with the establishment of the People's Democratic Republic on 20 September of that year.
The vast majority of Algeria's population is Arab-Berber, practicing Islam, and using the official languages of Arabic and Berber. However, French serves as an administrative and educational language in some contexts. The main spoken language is Algerian Arabic.
Algeria is a semi-presidential republic, with local constituencies consisting of 58 provinces and 1,541 communes. Algeria is a regional power in North Africa, and a middle power in global affairs. It has the highest Human Development Index of all non-island African countries and one of the largest economies on the continent, based largely on energy exports. Algeria has the world's sixteenth-largest oil reserves and the ninth-largest reserves of natural gas. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa, supplying large amounts of natural gas to Europe. Algeria's military is one of the largest in Africa, and has the largest defence budget on the continent. It is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC, OPEC, the United Nations, and the Arab Maghreb Union, of which it is a founding member.
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Cultivation of plants and animals to provide useful products
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Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture.
The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, meat, milk, eggs, and fungi. Over one-third of the world's workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the service sector, although in recent decades, the global trend of a decreasing number of agricultural workers continues, especially in developing countries, where smallholding is being overtaken by industrial agriculture and mechanization that brings an enormous crop yield increase.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, but cause ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to global warming, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and global warming, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some are banned in certain countries.
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Japanese animation
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is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, anime refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of the English word animation) describes all animated works, regardless of style or origin. Animation produced outside of Japan with similar style to Japanese animation is commonly referred to as anime-influenced animation.
The earliest commercial Japanese animations date to 1917. A characteristic art style emerged in the 1960s with the works of cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and spread in following decades, developing a large domestic audience. Anime is distributed theatrically, through television broadcasts, directly to home media, and over the Internet. In addition to original works, anime are often adaptations of Japanese comics (manga), light novels, or video games. It is classified into numerous genres targeting various broad and niche audiences.
Anime is a diverse medium with distinctive production methods that have adapted in response to emergent technologies. It combines graphic art, characterization, cinematography, and other forms of imaginative and individualistic techniques. Compared to Western animation, anime production generally focuses less on movement, and more on the detail of settings and use of "camera effects", such as panning, zooming, and angle shots. Diverse art styles are used, and character proportions and features can be quite varied, with a common characteristic feature being large and emotive eyes.
The anime industry consists of over 430 production companies, including major studios such as Studio Ghibli, Kyoto Animation, Sunrise, Bones, Ufotable, MAPPA, Wit Studio, CoMix Wave Films, Production I.G and Toei Animation. Since the 1980s, the medium has also seen widespread international success with the rise of foreign dubbed, subtitled programming, and since the 2010s its increasing distribution through streaming services and a widening demographic embrace of anime culture, both within Japan and worldwide. As of 2016, Japanese animation accounted for 60% of the world's animated television shows.
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1947 novel by Albert Camus
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The Plague () is a novel by Albert Camus. Published in 1947, it tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.
Camus used as source material the cholera epidemic that killed a large proportion of Oran's population in 1849, but situated the novel in the 1940s.Magill 1989:683 Oran and its surroundings were struck by disease several times before Camus published his novel. According to an academic study, Oran was decimated by the bubonic plague in 1556 and 1678, but all later outbreaks (in 1921: 185 cases; 1931: 76 cases; and 1944: 95 cases) were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel.
The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label.Camus (in Thody, 1970):345. In an interview on 15 November 1945, Camus said: "No, I am not an existentialist."Forsdick 2007:119 The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to affect their destinies. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, whose individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings; the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition.
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American writer, futurist and businessman
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Alvin Eugene Toffler (October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016) was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide. He is regarded as one of the world's outstanding futurists.
Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed "information overload." In 1970, his first major book about the future, Future Shock, became a worldwide best-seller and has sold over 6 million copies.
He and his wife Heidi Toffler, who collaborated with him for most of his writings, moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another best-selling book, The Third Wave in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and mobile communication. His later focus, via their other best-seller, Powershift, (1990), was on the increasing power of 21st-century military hardware and the proliferation of new technologies.
He founded Toffler Associates, a management consulting company, and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, visiting professor at Cornell University, faculty member of the New School for Social Research, a White House correspondent, and a business consultant."Alvin Toffler Speaker Biography" , Milken Institute, 2003. Toffler's ideas and writings were a significant influence on the thinking of business and government leaders worldwide, including China's Zhao Ziyang, and AOL founder Steve Case.
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President of the United States from 1861 to 1865
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Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War and succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he returned to his successful law practice in central Illinois. In 1854 he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act that opened the territories to slavery, and re-entered politics. He soon became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen Douglas. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the Union. During this time the newly formed Confederate States of America began seizing federal military bases in the south. Just over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in South Carolina. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union.
Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. Anti-war Democrats (called "Copperheads") despised Lincoln, and irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements plotted his assassination. He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people. His Gettysburg Address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South's trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. In 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. It also directed the Army and Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service of the United States." Lincoln also pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which upon its ratification abolished slavery.
Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just days after the war's end at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife Mary when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Abraham Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.
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British playwright, poet, and author (1882–1956)
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Alan Alexander Milne (; 18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English author popular for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and children's poetry. Milne was primarily a playwright before the huge success of Winnie-the-Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, as a lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the First World War and as a captain in the Home Guard in the Second World War.
Milne was the father of bookseller Christopher Robin Milne, upon whom the character Christopher Robin is based. It was during a visit to London Zoo, where Christopher became enamoured with the tame and amiable bear Winnipeg, that inspired Milne to write the story for his son.
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View that the existence of God or the supernatural are unknown or unknowable
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Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist."
The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word agnostic in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe."
Earlier thinkers, however, had written works that promoted agnostic points of view, such as Sanjaya Belatthaputta, a 5th-century BCE Indian philosopher who expressed agnosticism about any afterlife;Bhaskar (1972). and Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher who expressed agnosticism about the existence of "the gods".
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American writer
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August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the cosmic horror genre, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography.
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing.
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German pessimist philosopher (1788–1860)
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Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind noumenal will.The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary. 'Schopenhauer': Oxford University Press. 1991. p. 1298. . Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Indian philosophy, such as asceticism, denial of the self, and the notion of the world-as-appearance.See the book-length study about oriental influences on the genesis of Schopenhauer's philosophy by Urs App: Schopenhauer's Compass. An Introduction to Schopenhauer's Philosophy and its Origins. Wil: UniversityMedia, 2014 () His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.Studies in Pessimism – audiobook from LibriVox.
Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology have influenced many thinkers and artists. Those who have cited his influence include philosophers Emil Cioran, Friedrich NietzscheAddressed in: Cate, Curtis. Friedrich Nietzsche. Chapter 7. and Ludwig Wittgenstein,Culture & Value, p. 24, 1933–34 scientists Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein,Albert Einstein in Mein Glaubensbekenntnis (August 1932): "I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,[Der Mensch kann wohl tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will]' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper." Schopenhauer's clearer, actual words were: "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing." [Du kannst tun was du willst: aber du kannst in jedem gegebenen Augenblick deines Lebens nur ein Bestimmtes wollen und schlechterdings nichts anderes als dieses eine.] On the Freedom of the Will, Ch. II. psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, writers Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse,Punsly, Kathryn (2012). The Influence of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on Hermann Hesse. CMC Senior Theses. Paper 347. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1353&context=cmc_theses Retrieved on 19 March 2021. Machado de Assis, Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel ProustShapshay, Sandra, "Schopenhauer's Aesthetics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/schopenhauer-aesthetics Retrieved on 19 March 2021. and Samuel Beckett, and composers Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler.
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First crewed Moon landing
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Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56 UTC. Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later, and they spent about two and a quarter hours together exploring the site they had named Tranquility Base upon landing. Armstrong and Aldrin collected of lunar material to bring back to Earth as pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module Columbia in lunar orbit, and were on the Moon's surface for 21 hours, 36 minutes before lifting off to rejoin Columbia.
Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16 at 13:32 UTC, and it was the fifth crewed mission of NASA's Apollo program. The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a command module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, the only part that returned to Earth; a service module (SM), which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a lunar module (LM) that had two stages—a descent stage for landing on the Moon and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit.
After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V's third stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and traveled for three days until they entered lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20. The astronauts used Eagles ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that propelled Columbia out of the last of its 30 lunar orbits onto a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space.
Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described the event as "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Apollo 11 effectively proved US victory in the Space Race to demonstrate spaceflight superiority, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
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Distance from zero to a number
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In mathematics, the absolute value or modulus of a real number x, is the non-negative value without regard to its sign. Namely, |x|=x if is a positive number, and |x|=-x if x is negative (in which case negating x makes -x positive), and For example, the absolute value of 3 and the absolute value of −3 is The absolute value of a number may be thought of as its distance from zero.
Generalisations of the absolute value for real numbers occur in a wide variety of mathematical settings. For example, an absolute value is also defined for the complex numbers, the quaternions, ordered rings, fields and vector spaces. The absolute value is closely related to the notions of magnitude, distance, and norm in various mathematical and physical contexts.
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Script used to write the Aramaic language
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The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes —a precursor to Arabization centuries later— including among Assyrians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews (but not Samaritans), who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. (The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet, which derives from Paleo-Hebrew). The letters in the Aramaic alphabet all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels.
The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant since virtually all modern Middle Eastern writing systems can be traced back to it. That is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language after it was adopted as both a lingua franca and the official language of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, and their successor, the Achaemenid Empire.
Among the descendant scripts in modern use, the Jewish Hebrew alphabet bears the closest relation to the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BC, with an identical letter inventory and, for the most part, nearly identical letter shapes. By contrast the Samaritan Hebrew script is directly descended from Proto-Hebrew/Phoenician script, which was in turn the ancestor of the Aramaic alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet was also an ancestor to the Nabataean alphabet, which in turn had the Arabic alphabet as a descendant.
Writing systems (like the Aramaic) that indicate consonants but do not indicate most vowels other than by means of matres lectionis or added diacritical signs, have been called abjads by Peter T. Daniels to distinguish them from alphabets such as the Greek alphabet that represent vowels more systematically. The term was coined to avoid the notion that a writing system that represents sounds must be either a syllabary or an alphabet, which would imply that a system like Aramaic must be either a syllabary (as argued by Ignace Gelb) or an incomplete or deficient alphabet (as most other writers had said before Daniels). Rather, Daniels put forward, this is a different type of writing system, intermediate between syllabaries and 'full' alphabets.
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Attribute of a geometric shape
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The aspect ratio of a geometric shape is the ratio of its sizes in different dimensions. For example, the aspect ratio of a rectangle is the ratio of its longer side to its shorter side—the ratio of width to height, when the rectangle is oriented as a "landscape".
The aspect ratio is most often expressed as two integer numbers separated by a colon (x:y), less commonly as a simple or decimal fraction. The values x and y do not represent actual widths and heights but, rather, the proportion between width and height. As an example, 8:5, 16:10, 1.6:1, and 1.6 are all ways of representing the same aspect ratio.
In objects of more than two dimensions, such as hyperrectangles, the aspect ratio can still be defined as the ratio of the longest side to the shortest side.
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Algebraic structure for which the fundamental theorem of algebra is true
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In mathematics, a field is algebraically closed if every non-constant polynomial in (the univariate polynomial ring with coefficients in ) has a root in .
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International association of churches
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The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million membersThe Anglican Communion official website – "Provincial Registry" within the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The traditional origins of Anglican doctrine are summarised in the Thirty-nine Articles (1571). The Archbishop of Canterbury (, Justin Welby) in England acts as a focus of unity, recognised as ("first among equals"), but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. Most, but not all, member churches of the communion are the historic national or regional Anglican churches.
The Anglican Communion was officially and formally organised and recognised as such at the Lambeth Conference in 1867 in London under the leadership of Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury. The churches of the Anglican Communion consider themselves to be part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, and to be both catholic and reformed. As in the Church of England itself, the Anglican Communion includes the broad spectrum of beliefs and liturgical practises found in the Evangelical, Central and Anglo-Catholic traditions of Anglicanism. Each national or regional church is fully independent, retaining its own legislative process and episcopal polity under the leadership of local primates. For some adherents, Anglicanism represents a non-papal Catholicism, for others a form of Protestantism though without a guiding figure such as Martin Luther, John Knox, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli or John Wesley, or, for yet others, a combination of the two.
Most of its members live in the Anglosphere of former British territories. Full participation in the sacramental life of each church is available to all communicant members. Because of their historical link to England (ecclesia anglicana means "English church"), some of the member churches are known as "Anglican", such as the Anglican Church of Canada. Others, for example the Church of Ireland and the Scottish and American Episcopal churches, have official names that do not include "Anglican".
Additionally, some churches that do use the name "Anglican" are not part of the communion. These have generally disaffiliated over disagreement with the direction of the communion.
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Neurological impairment of voluntary muscle movement
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Ataxia is a neurological sign consisting of lack of voluntary coordination of muscle movements that can include gait abnormality, speech changes, and abnormalities in eye movements. Ataxia is a clinical manifestation indicating dysfunction of the parts of the nervous system that coordinate movement, such as the cerebellum. Ataxia can be limited to one side of the body, which is referred to as hemiataxia. Several possible causes exist for these patterns of neurological dysfunction. Dystaxia is a mild degree of ataxia. Friedreich's ataxia has gait abnormality as the most commonly presented symptom.dystaxia. (n.d.). The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved 9 March 2014, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dystaxia The word is from Greek α- [a negative prefix] + -τάξις [order] = "lack of order".
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Capital of Turkey
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Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, making it Turkey's second-largest city after Istanbul.
Serving as the capital of the ancient Celtic state of Galatia (280–64 BC), and later of the Roman province with the same name (25 BC–7th century), the city is very old, with various Hattian, Hittite, Lydian, Phrygian, Galatian, Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archeological sites. The Ottomans made the city the capital first of the Anatolia Eyalet (1393 – late 15th century) and then the Angora Vilayet (1867–1922). The historical center of Ankara is a rocky hill rising over the left bank of the Ankara River, a tributary of the Sakarya River. The hill remains crowned by the ruins of Ankara Castle. Although few of its outworks have survived, there are well-preserved examples of Roman and Ottoman architecture throughout the city, the most remarkable being the 20 BC Temple of Augustus and Rome that boasts the Monumentum Ancyranum, the inscription recording the Res Gestae Divi Augusti.
On 23 April 1920, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was established in Ankara, which became the headquarters of the Turkish National Movement during the Turkish War of Independence. Ankara became the new Turkish capital upon the establishment of the Republic on 29 October 1923, succeeding in this role as the former Turkish capital Istanbul following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The government is a prominent employer, but Ankara is also an important commercial and industrial city located at the center of Turkey's road and railway networks. The city gave its name to the Angora wool shorn from Angora rabbits, the long-haired Angora goat (the source of mohair), and the Angora cat. The area is also known for its pears, honey and muscat grapes. Although situated in one of the driest regions of Turkey and surrounded mostly by steppe vegetation (except for the forested areas on the southern periphery), Ankara can be considered a green city in terms of green areas per inhabitant, at per head.
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Autoimmune disease
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Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), or acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis, is a rare autoimmune disease marked by a sudden, widespread attack of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord. As well as causing the brain and spinal cord to become inflamed, ADEM also attacks the nerves of the central nervous system and damages their myelin insulation, which, as a result, destroys the white matter. It is often triggered by a viral infection or (very rarely) vaccinations.
ADEM's symptoms resemble the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), so the disease itself is sorted into the classification of the multiple sclerosis borderline diseases. However, ADEM has several features that distinguish it from MS. Unlike MS, ADEM occurs usually in children and is marked with rapid fever, although adolescents and adults can get the disease too. ADEM consists of a single flare-up whereas MS is marked with several flare-ups (or relapses), over a long period of time. Relapses following ADEM are reported in up to a quarter of patients, but the majority of these 'multiphasic' presentations following ADEM likely represent MS. ADEM is also distinguished by a loss of consciousness, coma and death, which is very rare in MS, except in severe cases.
It affects about 8 per 1,000,000 people per year. Although it occurs in all ages, most reported cases are in children and adolescents, with the average age around 5 to 8 years old. The disease affects males and females almost equally. ADEM shows seasonal variation with higher incidence in winter and spring months which may coincide with higher viral infections during these months. The mortality rate may be as high as 5%; however, full recovery is seen in 50 to 75% of cases with increase in survival rates up to 70 to 90% with figures including minor residual disability as well. The average time to recover from ADEM flare-ups is one to six months.
ADEM produces multiple inflammatory lesions in the brain and spinal cord, particularly in the white matter. Usually these are found in the subcortical and central white matter and cortical gray-white junction of both cerebral hemispheres, cerebellum, brainstem, and spinal cord, but periventricular white matter and gray matter of the cortex, thalami and basal ganglia may also be involved.
When a person has more than one demyelinating episode of ADEM, the disease is then called recurrent disseminated encephalomyelitis or multiphasic disseminated encephalomyelitis (MDEM). Also, a fulminant course in adults has been described.
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Long projection on a neuron that conducts signals to other neurons
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An axon (from Greek ἄξων áxōn, axis), or nerve fiber (or nerve fibre: see spelling differences), is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, in vertebrates, that typically conducts electrical impulses known as action potentials away from the nerve cell body. The function of the axon is to transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands. In certain sensory neurons (pseudounipolar neurons), such as those for touch and warmth, the axons are called afferent nerve fibers and the electrical impulse travels along these from the periphery to the cell body and from the cell body to the spinal cord along another branch of the same axon. Axon dysfunction can be the cause of many inherited and acquired neurological disorders that affect both the peripheral and central neurons. Nerve fibers are classed into three typesgroup A nerve fibers, group B nerve fibers, and group C nerve fibers. Groups A and B are myelinated, and group C are unmyelinated. These groups include both sensory fibers and motor fibers. Another classification groups only the sensory fibers as Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV.
An axon is one of two types of cytoplasmic protrusions from the cell body of a neuron; the other type is a dendrite. Axons are distinguished from dendrites by several features, including shape (dendrites often taper while axons usually maintain a constant radius), length (dendrites are restricted to a small region around the cell body while axons can be much longer), and function (dendrites receive signals whereas axons transmit them). Some types of neurons have no axon and transmit signals from their dendrites. In some species, axons can emanate from dendrites known as axon-carrying dendrites. No neuron ever has more than one axon; however in invertebrates such as insects or leeches the axon sometimes consists of several regions that function more or less independently of each other.
Axons are covered by a membrane known as an axolemma; the cytoplasm of an axon is called axoplasm. Most axons branch, in some cases very profusely. The end branches of an axon are called telodendria. The swollen end of a telodendron is known as the axon terminal which joins the dendron or cell body of another neuron forming a synaptic connection. Axons make contact with other cellsusually other neurons but sometimes muscle or gland cellsat junctions called synapses. In some circumstances, the axon of one neuron may form a synapse with the dendrites of the same neuron, resulting in an autapse. At a synapse, the membrane of the axon closely adjoins the membrane of the target cell, and special molecular structures serve to transmit electrical or electrochemical signals across the gap. Some synaptic junctions appear along the length of an axon as it extends; these are called en passant ("in passing") synapses and can be in the hundreds or even the thousands along one axon. Other synapses appear as terminals at the ends of axonal branches.
A single axon, with all its branches taken together, can innervate multiple parts of the brain and generate thousands of synaptic terminals. A bundle of axons make a nerve tract in the central nervous system, and a fascicle in the peripheral nervous system. In placental mammals the largest white matter tract in the brain is the corpus callosum, formed of some 200 million axons in the human brain.
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Province of Canada
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Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories (NWT) to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. It is one of the only two landlocked provinces in Canada (Saskatchewan being the other). The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains. The province has a predominantly continental climate but experiences quick temperature changes due to air aridity. Seasonal temperature swings are less pronounced in western Alberta due to occasional Chinook winds.
Alberta is the fourth largest province by area at , and the fourth most populous, being home to 4,262,635 people. Alberta's capital is Edmonton, while Calgary is its largest city. The two are Alberta's largest census metropolitan areas. More than half of Albertans live in either Edmonton or Calgary, which contributes to continuing the rivalry between the two cities. English is the official language of the province. In 2016, 76.0% of Albertans were anglophone, 1.8% were francophone and 22.2% were allophone."Census 2016 Language of Albertans" (consulted April 2021)
Alberta's economy is based on hydrocarbons, petrochemical industries, livestock and agriculture. The oil and gas industry has been a pillar of Alberta's economy since 1947, when substantial oil deposits were discovered at Leduc No. 1 well. It has also become a part of the province's identity. Since Alberta is the province most rich in hydrocarbons, it provides 70% of the oil and natural gas exploited on Canadian soil. In 2018, Alberta's output was billion, 15.27% of Canada's GDP.
In the past, Alberta's political landscape hosted parties like the centre-left Liberals and the agrarian United Farmers of Alberta. Today, Alberta is generally perceived as a conservative province. The right-wing Social Credit Party held office continually from 1935 to 1971 before the centre-right Progressive Conservatives held office continually from 1971 to 2015, the latter being the longest unbroken run in government at the provincial or federal level in Canadian history.
Before becoming part of Canada, Alberta was home to several First Nations like Plain Indians and Woodland Cree. It was also a territory used by fur traders of the rival companies HBC and NWC. The Dominion of Canada bought the lands that would become Alberta as part of the NWT in 1870. From the late 1800s to early 1900s, many immigrants arrived to prevent the prairies from being annexed by the US. Growing wheat and cattle ranching also became very profitable. In 1905, the Alberta Act was passed, creating the province of Alberta. Massive oil reserves were discovered in 1947. The exploitation of oil sands began in 1967.
Alberta is renowned for its natural beauty, richness in fossils and for housing important nature reserves. Alberta is home to six UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites: The Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Wood Buffalo National Park and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. Other popular sites include Banff National Park, Elk Island National Park, Jasper National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park, and Drumheller.
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Species of fish
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The northern cavefish or northern blindfish (Amblyopsis spelaea) is found in caves through Kentucky and southern Indiana. It is listed as a threatened species in the United States and the IUCN lists the species as near threatened.
During a 2013 study of Amblyopsis spelaea, scientists found that the species was divided into two distinct evolutionary lineages: one north of the Ohio River, in Indiana, and one south of the river, in Kentucky. The southern population retained the name A. spelaea and the northern was re-designated Amblyopsis hoosieri in a 2014 paper published in the journal ZooKeys. Neither species is found north of the White River, flowing east to west south of Bedford, Indiana.
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Fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels
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Miss Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Jane Marple lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterized as an elderly spinster,agathachristie.com: Facts about Miss Marple she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.
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Japanese filmmaker (1910–1998)
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was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in film history.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata. After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another fifteen films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957) and Yojimbo (1961). After the 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim.
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media.
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French philosopher, author, and journalist (1913–1960)
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Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.
Camus was born in French Algeria to Pieds Noirs parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating for a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that caused controversy and was rejected by most parties.
Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Some consider Camus's work to show him to be an existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.
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Scottish-American scientist and inventor (1847–1922)
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Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1885.
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf; profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, on March 7, 1876. Bell considered his invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Bell also had a strong influence on the National Geographic Society and its magazine while serving as the second president from January 7, 1898, until 1903.
Beyond his work in engineering, Bell had a deep interest in the emerging science of heredity.
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Natural objects within Jupiter's orbit
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An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
Of the roughly one million known asteroids the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 AU from the Sun, in the main asteroid belt. Asteroids are generally classified to be of three types: C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are generally identified with carbonaceous, metallic, and silicaceous compositions, respectively. The size of asteroids varies greatly; the largest, Ceres, is almost across and qualifies as a dwarf planet. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is only 3% that of Earth's Moon. The majority of main belt asteroids follow slightly elliptical, stable orbits, revolving in the same direction as the Earth and taking from three to six years to complete a full circuit of the Sun.
Asteroids have been historically observed from Earth; the Galileo spacecraft provided the first close observation of an asteroid. Several dedicated missions to asteroids were subsequently launched by NASA and JAXA, with plans for other missions in progress. NASA's NEAR Shoemaker studied Eros, and Dawn observed Vesta and Ceres. JAXA's missions Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 studied and returned samples of Itokawa and Ryugu, respectively. OSIRIS-REx studied Bennu, collecting a sample in 2020 to be delivered back to Earth in 2023. Lucy, launched in 2021, has an itinerary including eight different asteroids, one from the main belt and seven Jupiter trojans. Psyche, to be launched in 2023 or 2024, will study a metallic asteroid of the same name.
Near-Earth asteroids can threaten all life on the planet; an asteroid impact event resulted in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction. Different asteroid deflection strategies have been proposed; the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, was launched in 2021 and intentionally impacted Dimorphos in September 2022, successfully altering its orbit by crashing into it.
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Egyptian civilization from the 31st century BC to the 1st century BC
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa situated in the Nile Valley. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer). The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled Egypt until 30BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy.
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Organic compound with at least one hydroxyl (–OH) group
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In chemistry, an alcohol is a type of organic compound that carries at least one hydroxyl () functional group bound to a saturated carbon atom. The term alcohol originally referred to the primary alcohol ethanol (ethyl alcohol), which is used as a drug and is the main alcohol present in alcoholic drinks. An important class of alcohols, of which methanol and ethanol are the simplest examples, includes all compounds which conform to the general formula . Simple monoalcohols that are the subject of this article include primary (), secondary () and tertiary () alcohols.
The suffix -ol appears in the IUPAC chemical name of all substances where the hydroxyl group is the functional group with the highest priority. When a higher priority group is present in the compound, the prefix hydroxy- is used in its IUPAC name. The suffix -ol in non-IUPAC names (such as paracetamol or cholesterol) also typically indicates that the substance is an alcohol. However, some compounds that contain hydroxyl functional groups have trivial names which do not include the suffix -ol or the prefix hydroxy-, e.g. the sugars glucose and sucrose.
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Architect and Minister of War Production in Nazi Germany
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Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. Using misleading statistics, he promoted himself as having performed an armaments miracle that was widely credited with keeping Germany in the war. In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft. It became instrumental in exploiting slave labor for the benefit of the German war effort.
After the war, Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" arrested and charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime at the Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966. He used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success; the public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Speer died of a stroke in 1981. Little remains of his personal architectural work.
Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer carefully constructed an image of himself as a man who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. He continued to deny explicit knowledge of, and responsibility for the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth": the perception of him as an apolitical technocrat responsible for revolutionizing the German war machine. The myth began to fall apart in the 1980s, when the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that much of the increase in Germany's arms production was actually due to systems instituted by Speer's predecessor (Fritz Todt) and furthermore that Speer was intimately involved in the "Final Solution".
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Fourth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
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April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. It is the first of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the second of five months to have a length of less than 31 days.
April is commonly associated with the season of autumn in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, and spring in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa.
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Municipality in Nordjylland region of Denmark
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Aalborg Municipality is a municipality (Danish, kommune) in Region Nordjylland on the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark.Bridgwater, W. & Beatrice Aldrich. (1966) The Columbia-Viking Desk Encyclopedia. Columbia University. p. 11. The municipality straddles the Limfjord, the waterway which connects the North Sea and the Kattegat east-to-west, and which separates the main body of the Jutland peninsula from the island of Vendsyssel-Thy north-to-south. It has a land area of 1,143.99 km2, population 217,094 (2020) and belongs to Region Nordjylland ("North Jutland Region").
It is also the name of the municipality's main city Aalborg and the site of its municipal council, as well as the name of a seaport.
The municipality and the town have chosen to retain the traditional spelling of the name as Aalborg, although the new spelling Ålborg is used in other contexts, such as Ålborg Bight (Ålborg Bugt), the body of water which lies to the east of the Jutland peninsula.
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Island off the western coast of Ireland, in County Mayo
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Achill Island (; ) in County Mayo is the largest of the Irish isles, and is situated off the west coast of Ireland. It has a population of 2,594. Its area is . Achill is attached to the mainland by Michael Davitt Bridge, between the villages of Gob an Choire (Achill Sound) and Poll Raithní (Polranny). A bridge was first completed here in 1887. Other centres of population include the villages of Keel, Dooagh, Dumha Éige (Dooega), Dún Ibhir (Dooniver), and Dugort. The parish's main Gaelic football pitch and secondary school are on the mainland at Poll Raithní. Early human settlements are believed to have been established on Achill around 3000 BC.
The island is 87% peat bog. The parish of Achill consists of Achill Island, Achillbeg, Inishbiggle and the Corraun Peninsula.
Roughly half of the island, including the villages of Achill Sound and Bunacurry are in the Gaeltacht (traditional Irish-speaking region) of Ireland, although the vast majority of the island's population speaks English as their daily language.
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Eighth month in the Julian and Gregorian calendars
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August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and the fifth of seven months to have a length of 31 days."August." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 September 2008. Its zodiac sign is Leo and was originally named Sextilis in Latin because it was the 6th month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, with March being the first month of the year. About 700 BC, it became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave it 29 days. Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Julian calendar in 46 BC (708 AUC), giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC, it was renamed in honor of Emperor Augustus. According to a Senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, he chose this month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs, including the conquest of Egypt. Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sextilis in fact had 31 days before it was renamed, and it was not chosen for its length. Sacrobosco's theory is discussed on pages 585–587.
In the Southern Hemisphere, August is the seasonal equivalent of February in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, August falls in the season of summer. In the Southern Hemisphere, the month falls during the season of winter. In many European countries, August is the holiday month for most workers. Numerous religious holidays occurred during August in ancient Rome.Supplicia canum was held on August 3, Lychnapsia on August 12, Nemoralia was held from August 13–15 (or on the full moon of August), Tiberinalia and Portumnalia on August 17, Consuales Ludi on August 18, Vinalia rustica on August 19, Vulcanalia on August 23, Opiconsivia on August 25, and Volturnalia on August 27. These dates do not correspond to the modern Gregorian calendar.
Certain meteor showers take place in August. The Kappa Cygnids take place in August, with the dates varying each year. The Alpha Capricornids meteor shower takes place as early as July 10 and ends at around August 10, and the Southern Delta Aquariids take place from mid-July to mid-August, with the peak usually around July 28–29. The Perseids, a major meteor shower, typically takes place between July 17 and August 24, with the days of the peak varying yearly. The star cluster of Messier 30 is best observed around August.
Among the aborigines of the Canary Islands, especially among the Guanches of Tenerife, the month of August received in the name of Beñesmer or Beñesmen, which was also the harvest festival held this month.
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A person that participates in activities on a nonprofessional basis
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An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, self-taught, user-generated, DIY, and hobbyist.
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U.S. state
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Alabama () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered by Tennessee to the north; Georgia to the east; Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south; and Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by areahttps://beef2live.com/story-ranking-states-area-89-118259 and the 24th-most populous of the U.S. states. https://worldpopulationreview.com/states With a total of of inland waterways, Alabama has among the most of any state.
Alabama is nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the state bird. Alabama is also known as the "Heart of Dixie" and the "Cotton State". The state tree is the longleaf pine, and the state flower is the camellia. Alabama's capital is Montgomery, and its largest city by population and area is Huntsville. Its oldest city is Mobile, founded by French colonists in 1702 as the capital of French Louisiana. Greater Birmingham is Alabama's largest metropolitan area and its economic center.
Originally home to many native tribes, present-day Alabama was a Spanish territory beginning in the sixteenth century until the French acquired it in the early eighteenth century. The British won the territory in 1763 until losing it in the American Revolutionary War. Spain held Mobile as part of Spanish West Florida until 1813. In December 1819, Alabama was recognized as a state. During the antebellum period, Alabama was a major producer of cotton, and widely used African American slave labor. In 1861, the state seceded from the United States to become part of the Confederate States of America, with Montgomery acting as its first capital, and rejoined the Union in 1868. Following the American Civil War, Alabama would suffer decades of economic hardship, in part due to agriculture and a few cash crops being the main driver of the states economy. Similar to other former slave states, Alabamian legislators employed Jim Crow laws which disenfranchised and discriminated against African Americans and also Alabama's French Creole population from the late 19th century up until the 1960s.
In the early 20th century, despite the growth of major industries and urban centers, white rural interests dominated the state legislature through the mid-20th century. During this time, urban interests and African Americans were markedly under-represented. High-profile events such as the Selma to Montgomery march made the state a major focal point of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. During and after World War II, Alabama grew as the state's economy diversified with new industries. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville would help Alabama's economic growth in the mid-to-late 20th century, by developing an aerospace industry. Alabama's economy in the 21st century is based on automotive, finance, tourism, manufacturing, aerospace, mineral extraction, healthcare, education, retail, and technology.
The state's geography is diverse, with the north dominated by the mountainous Tennessee Valley and the south by Mobile Bay, a historically significant port. Politically, as part of the Deep South, Alabama is predominantly a conservative state, and is known for its Southern culture. Within Alabama, American football, particularly at the college level at schools such as the University of Alabama, Auburn University, Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, Troy University, the University of South Alabama, and Jacksonville State University, plays a major part of the state's culture.
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Country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies
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Antigua and Barbuda (, ) is a sovereign country in the West Indies. It lies at the juncture of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in the Leeward Islands part of the Lesser Antilles, at 17°N latitude. The country consists of two major islands, Antigua and Barbuda, approximately 40 km. (25 mi.) apart; and several smaller islands, including Great Bird, Green, Guiana, Long, Maiden, Prickly Pear, York Islands, and Redonda. The permanent population is approximately 97,120 (2019 est.), 97% residing in Antigua. St. John's, in Antigua, is the country's capital, major city, and largest port. Codrington is Barbuda's largest town.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus reconnoitred the island of Antigua, which he named for the Church of Santa María La Antigua.Crocker, John. "Barbuda Eyes Statehood and Tourists". The Washington Post. 28 January 1968. p. E11. Great Britain colonized Antigua in 1632 and Barbuda in 1678. A part of the Federal Colony of the Leeward Islands from 1871, Antigua and Barbuda joined the West Indies Federation in 1958.Fleck, Bryan. "Discover Unspoiled: Barbuda". Everybody's Brooklyn. 31 October 2004. p. 60. With the breakup of the federation in 1962, it became one of the West Indies Associated States in 1967. Following a period of internal self-governance, it received full independence from the United Kingdom on 1 November 1981. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Commonwealth and a Commonwealth realm; it is a constitutional monarchy with Charles III as its head of state.
The economy of Antigua and Barbuda is largely dependent on tourism, which accounts for 80% of GDP. Like other island nations, Antigua and Barbuda is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, and increased intensity of extreme weather like hurricanes. These cause coastal erosion, water scarcity, and other challenges.
Antigua and Barbuda has the world's 23rd most powerful passport as of 2022 and offers a citizenship by investment program. The country levies no personal income tax.
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Prophet, high priest, and the brother of Moses in the Abrahamic religions
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According to Abrahamic religions, Aaron ( or ; ’Ahărōn) was a prophet, a high priest, and the elder brother of Moses. Knowledge of Aaron, along with his brother Moses, exclusively comes from religious texts, such as the Bible and the Quran.
The Hebrew Bible relates that, unlike Moses, who grew up in the Egyptian royal court, Aaron and his elder sister Miriam remained with their kinsmen in the eastern border-land of Egypt (Goshen). When Moses first confronted the Egyptian king about the enslavement of the Israelites, Aaron served as his brother's spokesman ("prophet") to the Pharaoh (). Part of the Law given to Moses at Sinai granted Aaron the priesthood for himself and his male descendants, and he became the first High Priest of the Israelites.
Aaron died before the Israelites crossed the Jordan river. According to the Book of Numbers, he died and was buried on Mount Hor, ) Deuteronomy however places these events at Moserah. Aaron is also mentioned in the New Testament of the Bible (Luke, Acts, and Hebrews). ()
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Armed forces of Antigua and Barbuda
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The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force (ABDF) is the armed forces of Antigua and Barbuda. The ABDF has responsibility for several different roles: internal security, prevention of drug smuggling, the protection and support of fishing rights, prevention of marine pollution, search and rescue, ceremonial duties, assistance to government programs, provision of relief during natural disasters, assistance in the maintenance of essential services, and support of the police in maintaining law and order.
The ABDF is one of the world's smallest militaries, consisting of 245 personnel. It is much better equipped for fulfilling its civil roles, as opposed to providing a deterrence against would-be aggressors or in defending the nation during a war.
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French author and journalist (1844–1924)
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(; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie Française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel's literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
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National demographics
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This article is a demography of the population of Antigua and Barbuda including population density, ethnicity, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
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Russian chess champion (born 1951)
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Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov (; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, and politician. He was the 12th World Chess Champion from 1975 to 1985, a three-time FIDE World Champion (1993, 1996, 1998), twice World Chess champion as a member of the USSR team (1985, 1989), and a six-time winner of Chess Olympiads as a member of the USSR team (1972, 1974, 1980, 1982, 1986, 1988). The International Association of Chess Press awarded him nine Chess Oscars (1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984).
Karpov's chess tournament successes include over 160 first-place finishes. In his 1994 book My Best Games, Karpov says he played some 200 tournaments and matches, and won more than 100. He had a peak Elo rating of 2780, and his 102 total months at world number one is the third-longest of all time, behind Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov, since the inception of the FIDE ranking list in 1970.
Karpov is also an elected Member of the State Duma in Russia. Since 2006, he has chaired the Commission for Ecological Safety and Environmental Protection of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, and since 2007, he has been a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defence.
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German automotive manufacturer
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Audi AG (), commonly referred to as Audi, is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. As a subsidiary of its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
The origins of the company are complex, going back to the early 20th century and the initial enterprises (Horch and the Audiwerke) founded by engineer August Horch (1868–1951); and two other manufacturers (DKW and Wanderer), leading to the foundation of Auto Union in 1932. The modern Audi era began in the 1960s, when Auto Union was acquired by Volkswagen from Daimler-Benz. After relaunching the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103 series, Volkswagen merged Auto Union with NSU Motorenwerke in 1969, thus creating the present-day form of the company.
The company name is based on the Latin translation of the surname of the founder, August Horch. , meaning "listen", becomes in Latin. The four rings of the Audi logo each represent one of four car companies that banded together to create Audi's predecessor company, Auto Union. Audi's slogan is , meaning "Being Ahead through Technology". Audi, along with German brands BMW and Mercedes-Benz, is among the best-selling luxury automobile brands in the world.
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Unpleasant complex combination of emotions
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Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.
Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue, inability to catch one's breath, tightness in the abdominal region, nausea, and problems in concentration. Anxiety is closely related to fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat (fight or flight response); anxiety involves the expectation of future threat including dread. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past.
Though anxiety is a typical human response, when excessive or persisting beyond developmentally appropriate periods it may be diagnosed as an anxiety disorder. There are multiple forms of anxiety disorder (such as generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder) with specific clinical definitions. Part of the definition of an anxiety disorder, which distinguishes it from everyday anxiety, is that it is persistent, typically lasting 6 months or more, although the criterion for duration is intended as a general guide with allowance for some degree of flexibility and is sometimes of shorter duration in children.
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Overview of the geography of Armenia
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Armenia is a landlocked country in West Asia, situated in the Transcaucasus region of the South Caucasus, bordered on the north and east by Georgia and Azerbaijan and on the south and west by Iran, Azerbaijan's exclave Nakhchivan, and Turkey.
The terrain is mostly mountainous and flat, with fast flowing rivers and few forests but with many trees. The climate is highland continental: hot summers and cold winters. The land rises to 4,090 m above sea-level at Mount Aragats.
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English mathematician (1815–1852)
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Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.
Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and Lady Byron. All of Byron's other children were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. Four months later, he commemorated the parting in a poem that begins, "Is thy face like thy mother's my fair child! ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?" He died in Greece when Ada was eight. Her mother remained bitter and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in him, naming her two sons Byron and Gordon. Upon her death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.
Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)".
When she was eighteen, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who is known as "the father of computers". She was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him in June 1833, through their mutual friend, and her private tutor, Mary Somerville.
Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea about the Analytical Engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of notes, simply called "Notes". Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, containing what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from the years 1836/1837 contain the first programs for the engine. She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of "poetical science" led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes) examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool..
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Fictional detective character created by Agatha Christie
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Hercule Poirot (, ) is a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (Black Coffee and Alibi), and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.
Poirot has been portrayed on radio, in film and on television by various actors, including Austin Trevor, John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, Orson Welles, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh, and John Malkovich.
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Comic book series
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The Amazing Spider-Man is an ongoing American comic book series featuring the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man as its main protagonist. Being in the mainstream continuity of the franchise, it began publication in 1963 as a bimonthly periodical (as Amazing Fantasy had been), quickly being increased to monthly, and was published continuously, with a brief interruption in 1995, until its second volume with a new numbering order in 1999. In 2003, the series reverted to the numbering order of the first volume. The title has occasionally been published biweekly, and was published three times a month from 2008 to 2010.
After DC Comics' relaunch of Action Comics and Detective Comics with new No. 1 issues in 2011, it had been the highest-numbered American comic still in circulation until it was cancelled. The title ended its 50-year run as a continuously published comic with the landmark issue #700 in December 2012. It was replaced by The Superior Spider-Man as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch of Marvel's comic lines.
Volume 3 of The Amazing Spider-Man was published in April 2014, following the conclusion of The Superior Spider-Man story arc. In late 2015, the series was relaunched with a 4th volume, following the 2015 Secret Wars event. The 5th volume began in 2018, as part of Marvel's Fresh Start series of comic relaunches. The 6th volume began in April 2022 to celebrate Spider-Man's 60th anniversary.
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Motorsport involving the racing of cars for competition
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Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition.
Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organised, with the first recorded as early as 1867. Many of the earliest events were effectively reliability trials, aimed at proving these new machines were a practical mode of transport, but soon became an important way for automobile makers to demonstrate their machines. By the 1930s, specialist racing cars had developed.
There are now numerous different categories, each with different rules and regulations.
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Politics of a U.S. territory
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Politics of American Samoa takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic dependency, whereby the governor is the head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. American Samoa is an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior. Its constitution was ratified in 1966 and came into effect in 1967. Executive power is discharged by the governor and the lieutenant governor. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of the legislature. The party system is based on the United States party system. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
There is also the traditional village politics of the Samoan Islands, the and the , which continues in American Samoa and in independent Samoa, and which interacts across these current boundaries. The is the language and customs, and the the protocols of the (council) and the chiefly system. The and the take place at all levels of the Samoan body politic, from the family, to the village, to the region, to national matters. The (chiefs) are elected by consensus within the of the extended family and village(s) concerned. The and the (which is itself made of ) decide on distribution of family exchanges and tenancy of communal lands. The majority of lands in American Samoa and independent Samoa are communal. A can represent a small family group or a great extended family that reaches across islands, and to both American Samoa and independent Samoa.
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Overview of the geography of Azerbaijan
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Azerbaijan is a country in the Caucasus region, situated at the juncture of Europe and Western Asia. Three physical features dominate Azerbaijan: the Caspian Sea, whose shoreline forms a natural boundary to the east; the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north; and the extensive flatlands at the country's center. About the size of Portugal or the US state of Maine, Azerbaijan has a total land area of approximately 86,600 square kilometers, less than 1% of the land area of the former Soviet Union. Of the three Transcaucasian states, Azerbaijan has the greatest land area. Special administrative subdivisions are the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a strip of Armenian territory, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, entirely within Azerbaijan. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh is disputed by Armenia.
Located in the region of the southern Caucasus Mountains, Azerbaijan borders the Caspian Sea to the east, Georgia and Russia to the north, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the southwest and west. A small part of Nakhchivan also borders Turkey to the northwest. The capital of Azerbaijan is the ancient city of Baku, which has the largest and best harbor on the Caspian Sea and has long been the center of the republic's oil industry.
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Demographics of the territory
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This article is about the demographics of American Samoa, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean.
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Swedish pop group
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ABBA ( , , formerly named Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid or Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida) are a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. One of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, they became one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982, and in 2021.
In 1974, ABBA were Sweden's first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Waterloo", which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition's history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band's main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with latter compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics.Comments about this period start around time 1:10 . YouTube.com (30 July 2013). Retrieved 19 April 2014. After ABBA separated in December 1982, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for multiple audiences including stage, musicals and movies, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers.
Ten years after the group broke up, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA's music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a stage musical that toured worldwide and, as of April 2022, is still in the top-ten longest running productions on both Broadway (closed in 2015) and the West End (still running). A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018.
In 2016, the group reunited and started working on a digital avatar concert tour. Newly recorded songs were announced in 2018. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released on 5 November 2021 to positive critical reviews and strong sales in numerous countries. ABBA Voyage, a concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars, opened in May 2022 in London.
ABBA are among the best-selling music artists in history, with record sales estimated to be between 150 million to 385 million sold worldwide and the group were ranked 3rd best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom with a total of 11.3 million singles sold by 3 November 2012. ABBA were the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Republic of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and the best-selling band originating in continental Europe. ABBA had eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group also enjoyed significant success in Latin America and recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish. ABBA were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, the first and only recording artists to receive this honour from outside an Anglophonic country. In 2015, their song "Dancing Queen" was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame.
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French surgeon and biologist (1873–1944)
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Alexis Carrel (; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. His positive description of a miraculous healing he witnessed during a pilgrimage earned him scorn of some of his colleagues. This prompted him to relocate to the United States, where he lived most of his life. He had a leading role in implementing eugenic policies in Vichy France.Sade, Robert M. MD. Alexis Carrel, Pioneer Surgeon Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina.(see Reggiano (2002) as well as Caillois, p. 107)
A Nobel Prize laureate in 1912, Alexis Carrel was also elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
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Important algorithms in numerical statistics
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Algorithms for calculating variance play a major role in computational statistics. A key difficulty in the design of good algorithms for this problem is that formulas for the variance may involve sums of squares, which can lead to numerical instability as well as to arithmetic overflow when dealing with large values.
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French author and Nobel laureate (1869–1951)
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André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars. The author of more than fifty books, at the time of his death his obituary in The New York Times described him as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti."
Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposed to public view the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively), which a strict and moralistic education had helped set at odds. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritanical constraints, and centers on his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. As a self-professed pederast, his self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without at the same time betraying one's values. His political activity was shaped by the same ethos, as indicated by his repudiation of communism after his 1936 journey to the USSR.
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Group of highly reactive chemical elements
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The alkali metals consist of the chemical elements lithium (Li), sodium (Na), potassium (K),The symbols Na and K for sodium and potassium are derived from their Latin names, natrium and kalium; these are still the origins of the names for the elements in some languages, such as German and Russian. rubidium (Rb), caesium (Cs), and francium (Fr). Together with hydrogen they constitute group 1, which lies in the s-block of the periodic table. All alkali metals have their outermost electron in an s-orbital: this shared electron configuration results in their having very similar characteristic properties. Indeed, the alkali metals provide the best example of group trends in properties in the periodic table, with elements exhibiting well-characterised homologous behaviour. This family of elements is also known as the lithium family after its leading element.
The alkali metals are all shiny, soft, highly reactive metals at standard temperature and pressure and readily lose their outermost electron to form cations with charge +1. They can all be cut easily with a knife due to their softness, exposing a shiny surface that tarnishes rapidly in air due to oxidation by atmospheric moisture and oxygen (and in the case of lithium, nitrogen). Because of their high reactivity, they must be stored under oil to prevent reaction with air, and are found naturally only in salts and never as the free elements. Caesium, the fifth alkali metal, is the most reactive of all the metals. All the alkali metals react with water, with the heavier alkali metals reacting more vigorously than the lighter ones.
All of the discovered alkali metals occur in nature as their compounds: in order of abundance, sodium is the most abundant, followed by potassium, lithium, rubidium, caesium, and finally francium, which is very rare due to its extremely high radioactivity; francium occurs only in minute traces in nature as an intermediate step in some obscure side branches of the natural decay chains. Experiments have been conducted to attempt the synthesis of ununennium (Uue), which is likely to be the next member of the group; none were successful. However, ununennium may not be an alkali metal due to relativistic effects, which are predicted to have a large influence on the chemical properties of superheavy elements; even if it does turn out to be an alkali metal, it is predicted to have some differences in physical and chemical properties from its lighter homologues.
Most alkali metals have many different applications. One of the best-known applications of the pure elements is the use of rubidium and caesium in atomic clocks, of which caesium atomic clocks form the basis of the second. A common application of the compounds of sodium is the sodium-vapour lamp, which emits light very efficiently. Table salt, or sodium chloride, has been used since antiquity. Lithium finds use as a psychiatric medication and as an anode in lithium batteries. Sodium, potassium and lithium are essential elements, having major biological roles as electrolytes, and although the other alkali metals are not essential, they also have various effects on the body, both beneficial and harmful.
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Day for commemoration of all the faithful departed
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All Souls' Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for the faithful departed, observed by certain Christian denominations on 2 November. Through prayer, intercessions, alms and visits to cemeteries, people commemorate the poor souls in purgatory and gain them indulgences.
In Western Christianity, including the Roman Catholicism and certain parts of Lutheranism and Anglicanism, All Souls' Day is the third day of Allhallowtide, after All Saints' Day (1 November) and All Hallows' Eve (October 31). Before the standardization of Western Christian observance on 2 November by St. Odilo of Cluny in the 10th century, many Catholic congregations celebrated All Souls Day on various dates during the Easter season as it is still observed in some Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic and Eastern Lutheran churches. Churches of the East Syriac Rite (Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East) commemorate all the faithful departed on the Friday before Lent.
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Termination of a pregnancy
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Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregnancies. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion. The reasons why women have abortions are diverse and vary across the world. Reasons include maternal health, an inability to afford a child, domestic violence, lack of support, feeling they are too young, wishing to complete education or advance a career, and not being able or willing to raise a child conceived as a result of rape or incest.
When properly done, induced abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine. In the United States, the risk of maternal mortality is 14 times lower after induced abortion than after childbirth. Unsafe abortions—those performed by people lacking the necessary skills, or in inadequately resourced settings—are a major cause of maternal death, especially in the developing world, though self-managed medication abortions are highly effective and safe. Public health data shows that making safe abortion legal and accessible reduces maternal deaths.
Modern methods use medication or surgery for abortions. The drug mifepristone in combination with prostaglandin appears to be as safe and effective as surgery during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. The most common surgical technique involves dilating the cervix and using a suction device. Birth control, such as the pill or intrauterine devices, can be used immediately following abortion. When performed legally and safely on a woman who desires it, induced abortions do not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems. In contrast, unsafe abortions performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities cause 47,000 deaths and 5 million hospital admissions each year. The World Health Organization states that "access to legal, safe and comprehensive abortion care, including post-abortion care, is essential for the attainment of the highest possible level of sexual and reproductive health".
Around 73 million abortions are performed each year in the world, with about 45% done unsafely. Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for at least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased. , 37% of the world's women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason. Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed. Abortion rates are similar between countries that ban abortion and countries that allow it.
Historically, abortions have been attempted using herbal medicines, sharp tools, forceful massage, or through other traditional methods. Abortion laws and cultural or religious views of abortions are different around the world. In some areas, abortion is legal only in specific cases such as rape, fetal defects, poverty, risk to a woman's health, or incest. There is debate over the moral, ethical, and legal issues of abortion. Those who oppose abortion often argue that an embryo or fetus is a person with a right to life, and thus equate abortion with murder. Those who support the legality of abortion often argue that it is part of a woman's right to make decisions about her own body. Others favor legal and accessible abortion as a public health measure.
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Binary relation such that if A is related to B and is different from it then B is not related to A
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In mathematics, a binary relation R on a set X is antisymmetric if there is no pair of distinct elements of X each of which is related by R to the other. More formally, R is antisymmetric precisely if for all a, b \in X,
\text{if } \,aRb\, \text{ with } \,a \neq b\, \text{ then } \,bRa\, \text{ must not hold},
or equivalently,
\text{if } \,aRb\, \text{ and } \,bRa\, \text{ then } \,a = b.
The definition of antisymmetry says nothing about whether aRa actually holds or not for any a. An antisymmetric relation R on a set X may be reflexive (that is, aRa for all a \in X), irreflexive (that is, aRa for no a \in X), or neither reflexive nor irreflexive. A relation is asymmetric if and only if it is both antisymmetric and irreflexive.
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none
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The politics of Armenia take place in the framework of the parliamentary representative democratic republic of Armenia, whereby the President of Armenia is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Armenia the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the President and the Government. Legislative power is vested in both the Government and Parliament.
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Bijective homorphism of an object and itself
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In mathematics, an automorphism is an isomorphism from a mathematical object to itself. It is, in some sense, a symmetry of the object, and a way of mapping the object to itself while preserving all of its structure. The set of all automorphisms of an object forms a group, called the automorphism group. It is, loosely speaking, the symmetry group of the object.
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Greek god of music, prophecy and healing
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Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Seen as the most beautiful god and the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo is considered to be the most Greek of all the gods. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.Krauskopf, I. 2006. "The Grave and Beyond." The Religion of the Etruscans. edited by N. de Grummond and E. Simon. Austin: University of Texas Press. p. vii, p. 73-75.
As the patron deity of Delphi (Apollo Pythios), Apollo is an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Apollo is the god who affords help and wards off evil; various epithets call him the "averter of evil".
Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius. Apollo delivered people from epidemics, yet he is also a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague with his arrows. The invention of archery itself is credited to Apollo and his sister Artemis. Apollo is usually described as carrying a silver or golden bow and a quiver of silver or golden arrows. Apollo's capacity to make youths grow is one of the best attested facets of his panhellenic cult persona. As a protector of the young (), Apollo is concerned with the health and education of children. He presided over their passage into adulthood. Long hair, which was the prerogative of boys, was cut at the coming of age () and dedicated to Apollo.
Apollo is an important pastoral deity, and was the patron of herdsmen and shepherds. Protection of herds, flocks and crops from diseases, pests and predators were his primary duties. On the other hand, Apollo also encouraged founding new towns and establishment of civil constitution. He is associated with dominion over colonists. He was the giver of laws, and his oracles were consulted before setting laws in a city.
As the god of mousike, Apollo presides over all music, songs, dance and poetry. He is the inventor of string-music, and the frequent companion of the Muses, functioning as their chorus leader in celebrations. The lyre is a common attribute of Apollo. In Hellenistic times, especially during the 5th century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, the personification of the Sun.For the iconography of the Alexander–Helios type, see H. Hoffmann, 1963. "Helios", in Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 2, pp. 117–23; cf. Yalouris 1980, no. 42. In Latin texts, however, there was no conflation of Apollo with Sol among the classical Latin poets until 1st century CE.Joseph Fontenrose, "Apollo and Sol in the Latin poets of the first century BC", Transactions of the American Philological Association 30 (1939), pp 439–55; "Apollo and the Sun-God in Ovid", American Journal of Philology 61 (1940) pp 429–44; and "Apollo and Sol in the Oaths of Aeneas and Latinus" Classical Philology 38.2 (April 1943), pp. 137–138. Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 5th century CE.
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Smallest unit of a chemical element
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Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma is composed of neutral or ionized atoms. Atoms are extremely small, typically around 100 picometers across. They are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using classical physics, as if they were tennis balls for example, is not possible due to quantum effects.
More than 99.94% of an atom's mass is in the nucleus. The protons have a positive electric charge, the electrons have a negative electric charge, and the neutrons have no electric charge. If the number of protons and electrons are equal, then the atom is electrically neutral. If an atom has more or fewer electrons than protons, then it has an overall negative or positive charge, respectively – such atoms are called ions.
The electrons of an atom are attracted to the protons in an atomic nucleus by the electromagnetic force. The protons and neutrons in the nucleus are attracted to each other by the nuclear force. This force is usually stronger than the electromagnetic force that repels the positively charged protons from one another. Under certain circumstances, the repelling electromagnetic force becomes stronger than the nuclear force. In this case, the nucleus splits and leaves behind different elements. This is a form of nuclear decay.
The number of protons in the nucleus is the atomic number and it defines to which chemical element the atom belongs. For example, any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. The number of neutrons defines the isotope of the element. For example, a copper atom with 34 neutrons is copper-63 (29+34), and with 36 neutrons is copper-65; natural copper is about 70% Cu-63 and the rest is Cu-65.
Atoms can attach to one or more other atoms by chemical bonds to form chemical compounds such as molecules or crystals. For example, New York City's Statue of Liberty was originally made of pure copper, but over the years, the surface combined with oxygen, carbon and sulfur atoms to make a green patina on the copper. The ability of atoms to attach and detach is responsible for most of the physical changes observed in nature. Chemistry is the discipline that studies these changes.
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German-born scientist (1879–1955)
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Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are the two pillars of modern physics. His mass–energy equivalence formula , which arises from relativity theory, has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation". His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in "Einstein" becoming synonymous with "genius".
In 1905, a year sometimes described as his annus mirabilis ('miracle year'), Einstein published four groundbreaking papers. These outlined the theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced special relativity, and demonstrated mass-energy equivalence. Einstein thought that the laws of classical mechanics could no longer be reconciled with those of the electromagnetic field, which led him to develop his special theory of relativity. He then extended the theory to gravitational fields; he published a paper on general relativity in 1916, introducing his theory of gravitation. In 1917, he applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light and the quantum theory of radiation, which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
However, for much of the later part of his career, he worked on two ultimately unsuccessful endeavors. First, despite his great contributions to quantum mechanics, he opposed what it evolved into, objecting that "God does not play dice". Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from the mainstream of modern physics.
Einstein was born in the German Empire, but moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of 17, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss Federal polytechnic school in Zürich, graduating in 1900. In 1901, he acquired Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life, and in 1903 he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. In 1914, Einstein moved to Berlin in order to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1917, Einstein became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; he also became a German citizen again, this time Prussian.
In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Einstein, as Jewish, objected to the policies of the newly elected Nazi government; he settled in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally denounced the idea of nuclear weapons.
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Process of understanding a complex topic or substance
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Analysis (: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.
The word comes from the Ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (analysis, "a breaking-up" or "an untying;" from ana- "up, throughout" and lysis "a loosening"). From it also comes the word's plural, analyses.
As a formal concept, the method has variously been ascribed to Alhazen, René Descartes (Discourse on the Method), and Galileo Galilei. It has also been ascribed to Isaac Newton, in the form of a practical method of physical discovery (which he did not name).
The converse of analysis is synthesis: putting the pieces back together again in new or different whole.
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American artist, film director, and producer (1928–1987)
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Andy Warhol (;Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: "Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in several galleries in the late 1950s, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. He promoted a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with inspiring the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". In the late 1960s he managed and produced the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founded Interview magazine. He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. He lived openly as a gay man before the gay liberation movement. In June 1968, he was almost killed by radical feminist Valerie Solanas, who shot him inside his studio. After gallbladder surgery, Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia in February 1987 at the age of 58 in New York City.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. Warhol has been described as the "bellwether of the art market". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. His works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. In 2013, a 1963 serigraph titled Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold for $105 million. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million, which is the most expensive work of art sold at auction by an American artist.
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Classical Athenian comic playwright (c. 446 – c. 386 BC)
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Aristophanes (;. , ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion (),; cf. was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Intro. p. x.
Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; PlatoApology, Greek text, edited by J. Burnet, section 19c singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.
Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."." "Knights" line 516
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Major mountain range system in Central Europe
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The Alps () are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia."Alpine Convention" . Alpine Conferences; retrieved 3 August 2012.
The Alpine arch generally extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 128 peaks higher than .
The altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of , and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.
Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man, determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991.
By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romantics, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks.
The Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. The traditional culture of farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still exists in Alpine villages, although the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded greatly after World War II to become the dominant industry by the end of the century.
The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010, the region is home to 14 million people and has 120 million annual visitors.Chatré, Baptiste, et al. (2010), 8
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English filmmaker (1899–1980)
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", he became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director despite five nominations.
Hitchcock initially trained as a technical clerk and copy writer before entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. His directorial debut was the British-German silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925). His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller genre, and Blackmail (1929) was the first British "talkie". His thrillers The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, he had international recognition and producer David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films followed, including Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and Notorious (1946). Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Hitchcock nominated as Best Director; he was also nominated for Lifeboat (1944) and Spellbound (1945). After a brief commercial lull, he returned to form with Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954); he then went on to direct four films often ranked among the greatest of all time: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960), the first and last of these garnering him Best Director nominations. The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) were also financially successful and are highly regarded by film historians.
The "Hitchcockian" style includes the use of editing and camera movement to mimic a person's gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear. The film critic Robin Wood wrote that the meaning of a Hitchcock film "is there in the method, in the progression from shot to shot. A Hitchcock film is an organism, with the whole implied in every detail and every detail related to the whole." Hitchcock made multiple films with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including four with Cary Grant in the 1940s and 1950s, three with Ingrid Bergman in the second half of the 1940s, four with James Stewart over a decade commencing in 1948, and three consecutive with Grace Kelly in the mid-1950s. Hitchcock became an American citizen in 1955.
In 2012, Hitchcock's psychological thriller Vertigo, starring Stewart, displaced Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) as the British Film Institute's greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics. , nine of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, including his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, and was knighted in December that year, four months before his death on 29 April 1980.
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Union Army general (1819–1893)
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Abner Doubleday (June 26, 1819 – January 26, 1893) was a career United States Army officer and Union major general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. His relief by Major general George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men. In San Francisco, after the war, he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there. In his final years in New Jersey, he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society.
In 1908, 15 years after his death, Doubleday was declared by the Mills Commission to have invented the game of baseball, even though he had never claimed to have done so. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by baseball historians.Kirsch, pp. xiii–xiv.
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Radio modulation via wave amplitude
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Amplitude modulation (AM) is a modulation technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting messages with a radio wave. In amplitude modulation, the amplitude (signal strength) of the wave is varied in proportion to that of the message signal, such as an audio signal. This technique contrasts with angle modulation, in which either the frequency of the carrier wave is varied, as in frequency modulation, or its phase, as in phase modulation.
AM was the earliest modulation method used for transmitting audio in radio broadcasting. It was developed during the first quarter of the 20th century beginning with Roberto Landell de Moura and Reginald Fessenden's radiotelephone experiments in 1900. This original form of AM is sometimes called double-sideband amplitude modulation (DSBAM), because the standard method produces sidebands on either side of the carrier frequency. Single-sideband modulation uses bandpass filters to eliminate one of the sidebands and possibly the carrier signal, which improves the ratio of message power to total transmission power, reduces power handling requirements of line repeaters, and permits better bandwidth utilization of the transmission medium.
AM remains in use in many forms of communication in addition to AM broadcasting: shortwave radio, amateur radio, two-way radios, VHF aircraft radio, citizens band radio, and in computer modems in the form of QAM.
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Religious title
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Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The female equivalent is abbess.
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Person who designs buildings and oversees construction
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An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that have human occupancy or use as their principal purpose. Etymologically, the term architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek (arkhi-, chief + tekton, builder), i.e., chief builder.
The professional requirements for architects vary from place to place. An architect's decisions affect public safety, and thus the architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum (or internship) for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. Practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction, though the formal study of architecture in academic institutions has played a pivotal role in the development of the profession as a whole.
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Branch of astronomy involving positioning and movements of celestial bodies
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Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way.
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Small software application
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In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in."AskOxford: applet", Oxford Dictionaries. Accessed on July 21, 2009 The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program written in the Java programming language that is designed to be placed on a web page. Applets are typical examples of transient and auxiliary applications that don't monopolize the user's attention. Applets are not full-featured application programs, and are intended to be easily accessible.
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Field of physics
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Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. Atomic physics typically refers to the study of atomic structure and the interaction between atoms. It is primarily concerned with the way in which electrons are arranged around the nucleus and
the processes by which these arrangements change. This comprises ions, neutral atoms and, unless otherwise stated, it can be assumed that the term atom includes ions.
The term atomic physics can be associated with nuclear power and nuclear weapons, due to the synonymous use of atomic and nuclear in standard English. Physicists distinguish between atomic physics—which deals with the atom as a system consisting of a nucleus and electrons—and nuclear physics, which studies nuclear reactions and special properties of atomic nuclei.
As with many scientific fields, strict delineation can be highly contrived and atomic physics is often considered in the wider context of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Physics research groups are usually so classified.
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British world music band
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Afro Celt Sound System is a British musical group who fuse electronic music with traditional Gaelic and West African music. Afro Celt Sound System was formed in 1995 by producer-guitarist Simon Emmerson, and feature a wide range of guest artists. In 2003, they temporarily changed their name to Afrocelts before reverting to their original name.
Their albums have been released through Peter Gabriel's Real World Records, and they have frequently performed at WOMAD festivals worldwide. Their sales on the label are exceeded only by Gabriel himself. Their recording contract with Real World was for five albums, of which Volume 5: Anatomic was the last.
After a number of festival dates in 2007, the band went on hiatus. In 2010, they regrouped to play a number of shows (including a return to WOMAD), releasing a re-mastered retrospective titled Capture.
On 20 May 2014, Afro Celt Sound System announced the release of the album Born. In January 2016, a posting to that website revealed that due to a dispute with Emmerson, who announced his departure from the band in 2015, there were two active versions of the band, a version led by Emmerson and a separate line-up headed by James McNally and Martin Russell. Emmerson's version of the band released the album The Source in 2016. The dispute ended on 21 December 2016, with an announcement on social media.
The band released their eighth studio album, Flight, on 23 November 2018.
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Demographics of the country
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After registering steady increases during the Soviet period, the population of Armenia declined from its peak value of 3.633 million in 1992 to 2.986 million in 2017.
Whilst the country's population increased steadily during the Soviet Union as a result of periods of repatriation and low emigration rates, it has declined in recent times due to the exodus of peoples following the Soviet break-up. The rates of emigration and population decline, however, have decreased in recent years, and there has been a moderate influx of Armenians returning to Armenia.
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Manufacturing process
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An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a progressive assembly) in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequence until the final assembly is produced. By mechanically moving the parts to the assembly work and moving the semi-finished assembly from work station to work station, a finished product can be assembled faster and with less labor than by having workers carry parts to a stationary piece for assembly.
Assembly lines are common methods of assembling complex items such as automobiles and other transportation equipment, household appliances and electronic goods.
Workers in charge of the works of assembly line are called assemblers.
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School of economic thought
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The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. Austrian school theorists hold that economic theory should be exclusively derived from basic principles of human action.Carl Menger, Principles of Economics, online at Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, p. 11, "Purposeful Action and Animal Reaction". Referenced 2011-11-23.
The Austrian School originated in late-19th- and early-20th-century Vienna with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and others.Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of economic analysis, Oxford University Press 1996, . It was methodologically opposed to the Historical School (based in Germany), in a dispute known as Methodenstreit, or methodology struggle. Current-day economists working in this tradition are located in many different countries, but their work is still referred to as Austrian economics. Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of the Austrian School are the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory and the formulation of the economic calculation problem, each of which has become an accepted part of mainstream economics.
Since the mid-20th century, mainstream economists have been critical of the modern-day Austrian School and consider its rejection of mathematical modeling, econometrics and macroeconomic analysis to be outside mainstream economics, or "heterodox". In the 1970s, the Austrian School attracted some renewed interest after Friedrich Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal.
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French-German physician, theologian, musician, and philosopher (1875–1965)
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Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view. His contributions to the interpretation of Pauline Christianity concern the role of Paul's mysticism of "being in Christ" as primary and the doctrine of Justification by Faith as secondary.
He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life",. becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize. His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung).
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Extinct genus of hominins
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Ardipithecus is a genus of an extinct hominine that lived during the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene epochs in the Afar Depression, Ethiopia. Originally described as one of the earliest ancestors of humans after they diverged from the chimpanzees, the relation of this genus to human ancestors and whether it is a hominin is now a matter of debate. Two fossil species are described in the literature: A. ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago during the early Pliocene, and A. kadabba, dated to approximately 5.6 million years ago (late Miocene). Initial behavioral analysis indicated that Ardipithecus could be very similar to chimpanzees, however more recent analysis based on canine size and lack of canine sexual dimorphism indicates that Ardipithecus was characterised by reduced aggression, and that they more closely resemble bonobos.
Some analyses describe Australopithecus as being sister to Ardipithecus ramidus specifically. This means that Australopithecus is distinctly closer related to Ardipithecus ramidus than Ardipithecus kadabba. Cladistically, then, Australopithecus (and eventually Homo sapiens) indeed emerged within the Ardipithecus lineage, and this lineage is not literally extinct.
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