International auxiliary languages

Some languages, most constructed, are meant specifically for communication between people of different nationalities or language groups as an easy-to-learn second language. Several of these languages have been constructed by individuals or groups. Natural, pre-existing languages may also be used in this way - their developers merely catalogued and standardized their vocabulary and identified their grammatical rules. These languages are called naturalistic. One such language, Latino Sine Flexione, is a simplified form of Latin. Two others, Occidental and Novial, were drawn from several Western languages.

To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof. It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about 2 million speakers worldwide, with a large body of literature, songs, and is the only known constructed language to have native speakers, such as the Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros. Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.

Ribosome

Ribosomes (from ribonucleic acid and "Greek: soma (meaning body)") are complexes of RNA and protein that are found in all cells. Ribosomes from bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes, the three domains of life on Earth, have significantly different structure and RNA. Interestingly, the ribosomes in the mitochondrion of eukaryotic cells resemble those in bacteria, reflecting the evolutionary origin of this organelle.

The ribosome functions in the expression of the genetic code from nucleic acid into protein, in a process called translation. Ribosomes do this by catalyzing the assembly of individual amino acids into polypeptide chains; this involves binding a messenger RNA and then using this as a template to join together the correct sequence of amino acids. This reaction uses adapters called transfer RNA molecules, which read the sequence of the messenger RNA and are attached to the amino acids.

Peanut milk

Peanut milk is a non-dairy beverage created using peanuts, water and an additional sweetener. It does not contain any lactose and is therefore suitable for people with lactose intolerance.

Peanut milk is similar to soy milk and rice milk in its production: the substance is ground, soaked, (sometimes heated) and then filtered through a fine filter -- the resulting liquid is considered the "milk".

One commercial brand which originated in San Francisco in 1999 received national attention in 2002, after a local news story reported supposed health benefits.

Trashing California’s Beaches

Californian’s love their coast and ocean — nine out of ten will visit the beach at least once this year. When they arrive at the beach, they are finding a lot more than sand and surf. During a recent summer, Orange County collected enough garbage from six miles of beach to fill ten garbage trucks full of trash every week, at a cost to taxpayers of $350,000. Other California counties spend even more.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that ocean-based sources, such as cargo ships and cruise liners, dumped 14 billion pounds of garbage into the ocean. In 1988, the U.S. signed onto MARPOL Annex V, joining 64 other countries that signed the international protocol that regulates ocean dumping and made it illegal to dump plastic into the ocean. Laws like MARPOL have reduced the amount of trash on our beaches and in our ocean. Even so, plastic pollution is still a major problem.

A recent study found an average of 334,271 pieces of plastic per square mile in the North Pacific Central Gyre, which serves as a natural eddy system to concentrate material.1 Results of more than 10 years of volunteer beach cleanup data indicate that 60 to 80 percent of beach debris comes from land-based sources. And debris in the marine environment means hazards for animals and humans. Plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide, including 86 percent of all sea turtle species, 44 percent of all sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species.

Hypertonicity

A cell is surrounded by an environment with a higher concentration of solutes than within the cell itself, resulting in water leaving the cell through osmosis.

In animal cells, being in a hypertonic environment results in crenation, where the shape of the cell becomes distorted and wrinkled as water leaves the cell. Some organisms have evolved methods of circumventing hypertonicity; for example, saltwater is hypertonic to the fish that live in it. Since they cannot isolate themselves from osmotic water loss, because they need a large surface area in their gills for gas exchange, they respond by drinking large amounts of water, and excreting the salt. This process is called osmoregulation.

In plant cells, the effect is more dramatic. The cell membrane pulls away from the cell wall, but the cell remains joined to the adjacent cells at points called plasmodesmata. Thus, the cell takes on the appearance of a pincushion, with the plasmodesmata almost ceasing to function because they have become so constricted. This condition is known as plasmolysis. The terms isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic cannot be accurately used in plant cells however as the pressure potential exerted by the cell wall affects the equilibrium point significantly.

Inner planet Mars

Mars (1.5 AU) is smaller than Earth and Venus (0.107 Earth masses). It possesses a tenuous atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide. Its surface, peppered with vast volcanoes such as Olympus Mons and rift valleys such as Valles Marineris, shows geological activity that may have persisted until very recently. Its red color comes from rust in its iron-rich soil. Mars has two tiny natural satellites (Deimos and Phobos) thought to be captured asteroids.

Cone cell

Cone cells, or cones, are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye which function best in relatively bright light. The cone cells gradually become more sparse towards the periphery of the retina.

A commonly cited figure of six million in the human eye was found by Osterberg in 1935. Oyster's textbook (1999) cites work by Curcio et al. (1990) indicating an average closer to 4.5 million cone cells and 90 million rod cells in the human retina.

Cones are less sensitive to light than the rod cells in the retina (which support vision at low light levels), but allow the perception of color. They are also able to perceive finer detail and more rapid changes in images, because their response times to stimuli are faster than those of rods.Because humans usually have three kinds of cones, with different photopsins, which have different response curves, and thus respond to variation in color in different ways, they have trichromatic vision. Being color blind can change this, and there have been reports of people with four or more types of cones, giving them tetrachromatic vision.

Emotion

An emotion is a term for a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from a individual point of view. Emotion is often associated with mood, temperament, personality, and disposition. For example: confused, excited, guilty, anxious, angry, sad, confident, embarrassed, happy, disgusted, frightened, cautious, smug, lonely, lovestruck, joy, jealous, surprised, shy, apathetic, powerful, unfair, pleasure, and euphoric.

Ceramic plate

Ceramic plates (also known as trauma plates) are commonly used as inserts in soft body armor. Most ceramic plates used in the body armor industry can protect against a NIJ level III and IV with a IIIA vest supporting. Ceramic plates are a form of composite armor. Insert plates may also be manufactured from steel or PE.

These plates are often worn by personnel needing protection from rifle fire. In Iraq, the soft armor vest with the ceramic plate helps protect troops from small arms fire up to and including 7.62×63 mm steel rifle bullets.

A ceramic plate is usually slipped into the outer layer of a soft armor vest. There may be two plates, one in the front and one in the back, or one universal plate on either front or back.

The United States Military refer to these ceramic plates as Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts (ESAPI).

The approximate weight for one NIJ level III plate is 4 to 8 pounds (1.8-3.6 kg) for the typical size of 10" by 12". There are other types of plates that come in different sizes and offer different levels of protection. For example, the MC-Plate (maximum coverage plate) offers 19% more coverage than a standard ceramic plate.

EMV

EMV is a standard for interoperation of IC cards ("Chip cards") and IC capable POS terminals and ATM's, for authenticating credit and debit card payments. The name EMV comes from the initial letters of Europay, MasterCard and VISA, the three companies which originally cooperated to develop the standard. Europay International SA was absorbed into Mastercard in 2002. JCB (formerly Japan Credit Bureau) joined the organisation in December 2004. IC card systems based on EMV are being phased in across the world, under names such as "IC Credit" and "Chip and PIN". The EMV specification is also the basis of the Chip Authentication Program, where banks give customers hand-held card readers to perform online authenticated transactions.

The EMV standard defines the interaction at the physical, electrical, data and application levels between IC cards and IC card processing devices for financial transactions. Portions of the standard are heavily based on the IC Chip card interface defined in ISO 7816.

The system is not compatible with the original Carte Bancaire smart cards systematically deployed in France since 1992. However, the French Carte Bancaire now also uses the EMV standard.

The most widely known implementations of EMV standard are:

• VSDC - VISA

• MChip - MasterCard

• AEIPS - American Express

• J Smart - JCB

MasterCard has a Chip Authentication Program (CAP) for secure e-commerce. Its implementation is known as EMV-CAP and supports a number of Modes.

Bluetooth 2.1

Bluetooth Core Specification Version 2.1 is fully backward-compatible with 1.1, and was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on July 26, 2007. This specification includes the following features:

• Extended inquiry response: provides more information during the inquiry procedure to allow better filtering of devices before connection. This information includes the name of the device, a list of services the device supports, plus other information like the time of day and pairing information.

• Sniff subrating: reduces the power consumption when devices are in the sniff low-power mode, especially on links with asymmetric data flows. Human interface devices (HID) are expected to benefit the most, with mouse and keyboard devices increasing the battery life by a factor of 3 to 10. It lets devices decide how long they will wait before sending keepalive messages to one another. Previous Bluetooth implementations featured keep alive message frequencies of up to several times per second. In contrast, the 2.1 specification allows pairs of devices to negotiate this value between them to as infrequently as once every 5 or 10 seconds.

Direction finding

Direction finding (DF) refers to the establishment of the direction from which a received signal was transmitted. This can refer to radio or other forms of wireless communication. By combining the direction information from two or more suitably spaced receivers, the source of a transmission may be located in space via triangulation. This is called a cross-cut or fix.

For the purpose of direction finding, a large so-called "Iron Horse" worldwide network of FLR-9 antennas was built during the early Cold War.

Some academic research has centered on the use of software-defined radios to perform the DF operations using receivers with one or more separate channels in conjunction with multiple antenna arrays.

Taste

Taste or gustation is one of the two main "chemical" senses. There are at least four types of tastes that "buds" (receptors) on the tongue detect, and hence there are anatomists who argue[citation needed] that these constitute five or more different senses, given that each receptor conveys information to a slightly different region of the brain[citation needed]. The inability to taste is called ageusia.

The four well-known receptors detect sweet, salt, sour, and bitter, although the receptors for sweet and bitter have not been conclusively identified. A fifth receptor, for a sensation called umami, was first theorised in 1908 and its existence confirmed in 2000. The umami receptor detects the amino acid glutamate, a flavor commonly found in meat and in artificial flavourings such as monosodium glutamate.

Note that taste is not the same as flavor; flavor includes the smell of a food as well as its taste.

Paleolithic

Paleolithic means "Old Stone Age." This was the earliest period of the Stone Age. The Lower Paleolithic predates Homo sapiens, beginning with Homo habilis and the earliest use of stone tools some 2.5 million years ago. Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Paleolithic.

Sometime during the Middle Paleolithic, humans also developed language, music, early art, as well as systematic burial of the dead.

Humans spread from East Africa to the Near East some 80 millennia ago, and further to southern Asia and Australasia some 60 millennia ago, northwestwards into Europe and eastwards into Central Asia some 40 millennia ago, and further east to the Americas from ca. 15 millennia ago. The Upper Paleolithic is taken to begin some 40 millennia ago, with the appearance of "high" culture. Expansion to North America and Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent Ice Age, when today's temperate regions were extremely inhospitable. By the end of the Ice Age some 12,000 BP, humans had colonised nearly all the ice-free parts of the globe.

Throughout the Paleolithic, humans generally lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer societies have tended to be very small and egalitarian, though hunter-gatherer societies with abundant resources or advanced food-storage techniques have sometimes developed a sedentary lifestyle, complex social structures such as chiefdoms, and social stratification; and long-distance contacts may be possible, as in the case of Indigenous Australian "highways."

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a type of anxiety disorder primarily characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions. Obsessions are distressing, repetitive, intrusive thoughts or images that the individual often realizes are senseless. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that the person feels forced or compelled into doing, sometimes, in order to relieve anxiety. The OCD thought pattern may be likened to superstitions: if X is done, Y won't happen—in spite of how unlikely it may be that doing X will actually prevent Y, if Y is even a real threat to begin with. A common example of this behavior would be obsessing that one's door is unlocked, which may lead to compulsive constant checking and rechecking of doors. Another example is obsession with the state of one's personal items, such as eyeglasses, leading to their excessive cleaning or adjustment. Often the process seems much less logical. For example, the compulsion of walking in a certain pattern may be employed to alleviate the obsession that something bad is about to happen. More often, though, the compulsion is inexplicable, simply an urge to complete a ritual triggered by nervousness. Light switches and other household items are also common objects of obsession.

Mainframes

Through the 1960s, many major features were pioneered in the field of operating systems. The development of the IBM System/360 produced a family of mainframe computers available in widely differing capacities and price points, for which a single operating system OS/360 was planned (rather than developing ad-hoc programs for every individual model). This concept of a single OS spanning an entire product line was crucial for the success of System/360 and, in fact, IBM`s current mainframe operating systems are distant descendants of this original system; applications written for the OS/360 can still be run on modern machines. In the mid-70's, the MVS, the descendant of OS/360 offered the first[citation needed] implementation of using RAM as a transparent cache for disk resident data.

OS/360 also pioneered a number of concepts that, in some cases, are still not seen outside of the mainframe arena. For instance, in OS/360, when a program is started, the operating system keeps track of all of the system resources that are used including storage, locks, data files, and so on. When the process is terminated for any reason, all of these resources are re-claimed by the operating system. An alternative CP-67 system started a whole line of operating systems focused on the concept of virtual machines.

Control Data Corporation developed the SCOPE operating system in the 1960s, for batch processing. In cooperation with the University of Minnesota, the KRONOS and later the NOS operating systems were developed during the 1970s, which supported simultaneous batch and timesharing use. Like many commercial timesharing systems, its interface was an extension of the Dartmouth BASIC operating systems, one of the pioneering efforts in timesharing and programming languages. In the late 1970s, Control Data and the University of Illinois developed the PLATO operating system, which used plasma panel displays and long-distance time sharing networks. Plato was remarkably innovative for its time, featuring real-time chat, and multi-user graphical games.

Burroughs Corporation introduced the B5000 in 1961 with the MCP, (Master Control Program) operating system. The B5000 was a stack machine designed to exclusively support high-level languages with no machine language or assembler, and indeed the MCP was the first OS to be written exclusively in a high-level language – ESPOL, a dialect of ALGOL. MCP also introduced many other ground-breaking innovations, such as being the first commercial implementation of virtual memory. MCP is still in use today in the Unisys ClearPath/MCP line of computers.

Human population density

For humans, population density is the number of people per unit of area (which may include or exclude cultivated or potentially productive area). Commonly this may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world.

The world population is 6.6 billion, and Earth's area is 510 million square kilometers (200 million square miles). Therefore the world-wide human population density is 6.6 billion / 510 million = 13 per km² (33 per sq mi), or 43 per km² (112 per sq mi) if only the Earth's land area of 150 million km² (58 million sq mi) is taken into account. This density rises when the population grows. It also includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. Considering that over half of the earth's land mass consists of areas inhospitable to human inhabitation, such as deserts and high mountains, and that population tends to cluster around seaports and fresh water sources, this number by itself does not give the most accurate measurement of human population density.

Several of the most densely-populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates, micronations, or dependencies. These territories share a relatively small area and a high urbanization level, with an economically specialized city population drawing also on rural resources outside the area, illustrating the difference between high population density and overpopulation.

Cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though the extent to which this is the case depends on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure or access to resources. Most of the most densely-populated cities are in southern and eastern Asia, though Cairo and Lagos in Africa also fall into this category.

City population is however, heavily dependent on the definition of "urban area" used: densities are typically higher for the central municipality itself, than when more recently-developed and administratively unincorporated suburban communities are included, as in the concepts of agglomeration or metropolitan area, the latter including sometimes neighbouring cities.

Types of Web caches

Web caches can be deployed in a variety of ways. User agent caches, such as those in web browsers, are private caches, operating on behalf of a single user. Intermediaries can also implement shared caches that serve more than one person.

Proxy caches, also known as forward proxy caches, are usually deployed by internet service providers, schools and corporations to save bandwidth. Interception proxy caches (sometimes called "transparent caches") are a variant that doesn't require clients to be explicitly configured to use them.

Gateway caches, sometimes known as reverse proxy caches, surrogate caches, or web accelerators, operate on behalf of the origin server, and to clients are indistinguishable from it. A number of gateway caches can work together to implement a Content Delivery Network.

Intermediaries that cache often perform other duties, such as user authentication and content filtering. Multiple caches can also be coordinated using peering protocols like Internet Cache Protocol and HTCP.

Cytokinesis

Cytokinesis is the process whereby the cytoplasm of a single cell is divided to spawn two daughter cells. It usually initiates during the late stages of mitosis, and sometimes meiosis, splitting a binucleate cell in two, to ensure that chromosome number is maintained from one generation to the next. In animal cells, one notable exception to the normal process of cytokinesis is oogenesis (the creation of an ovum in the ovarian follicle of the ovary), where the ovum takes almost all the cytoplasm and organelles, leaving very little for the resulting polar bodies, which then die. In plant cells, a dividing structure known as the cell plate forms across the centre of the cytoplasm and a new cell wall forms between the two daughter cells.

During normal proliferative divisions, animal cell cytokinesis begins shortly after the onset of sister chromatid separation in the anaphase of mitosis. A contractile ring, made of non-muscle myosin II and actin filaments, assembles equatorially (in the middle of the cell) at the cell cortex (adjacent to the cell membrane). Myosin II uses the free energy released when ATP is hydrolysed to move along these actin filaments, constricting the cell membrane to form a cleavage furrow. Continued hydrolysis causes this cleavage furrow to ingress (move inwards), a striking process that is clearly visible down a light microscope. Ingression continues until a so-called midbody structure (composed of electron-dense, proteinaceous material) is formed and the process of abscission then physically cleaves this midbody into two. Abscission depends on septin filaments beneath the cleavage furrow, which provide a structural basis to ensure completion of cytokinesis. After cytokinesis, non-kinetochore microtubules reorganize and disappear into a new cytoskeleton as the cell cycle returns to interphase (see also cell cycle).

Organic Society

The 14th century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun concluded that societies are living organisms that experience cyclic birth, growth, maturity, decline, and ultimately death due to universal causes several centuries before the Western civilisation developed the science of sociology. Nonetheless, theories of social and cultural evolution were common in modern European thought. Prior to the 18th century, Europeans predominantly believed that societies on Earth were in a state of decline. European society held up the world of antiquity as a standard to aspire to, and Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome produced levels of technical accomplishment which Europeans of the Middle Ages sought to emulate. At the same time, Christianity taught that people lived in a debased world fundamentally inferior to the Garden of Eden and Heaven. During The Age of Enlightenment, however, European self-confidence grew and the notion of progress became increasingly popular. It was during this period that what would later become known as "sociological and cultural evolution" would have its roots.

Historical significance of writing systems

Historians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent language directly.

Writing systems always develop and change based on the needs of the people who use them. Sometimes the shape, orientation and meaning of individual signs also changes over time. By tracing the development of a script it is possible to learn about the needs of the people who used the script as well as how it changed over time.

Breeding back

Breeding back can be described as either a natural or a human attempt to assemble or re-assemble the genes of an extinct subspecies or of a domesticated breed, which may still be present in the larger gene pool of the overall species or other interbreedable species.

In Domestic animals breeding back has occurred with the Utonagan and the Northern Inuit dogs in an attempt to recreate the 'wolf-look' without actually cross breeding with wolves. Other selectively bred examples of breeding back include that of the aurochs, the extinct forerunner of domestic cattle. The product of these attempts is called the Heck cattle. Another prominent breeding back effort is the Quagga Project to bring back the extinct subspecies of the Plains Zebra called Quagga. The Heck horse, a phenotypic copy of the tarpan has also been produced, although it lacks the upright manes.

Breeding back is controversial, especially claims that an extinct animal has been recreated. Phenotypical reconstruction (similar appearance) does not assure behavioral similarity. For some of the species that are being bred back, questions remain about the ecological niche, hardiness, and disease resistance of the original species. For instance, the aurochs died out almost 400 years ago and the records kept cannot definitively answer some of these questions.

Side-sword

A side-sword was a type of war sword used by infantry during the Renaissance of Europe. This sword was a direct descendant of the arming sword. Quite popular between the 16th and 17th centuries, they were ideal for handling the mix of armored and unarmored opponents of that time. Early versions look very much like an arming sword with an ornate hilt and ricasso. A new technique of placing ones finger on the ricasso to improve the grip (a practice that would continue in the rapier) led to the production of hilts with a guard for the finger. The term is a recently-coined calque of the Italian spada da lato and will not be found in any actual sources from the 16th or 17th centuries.

This sword design eventually led to the development of the civilian rapier, but it was not replaced by it, and the Side-sword continued to be used during the rapier's lifetime. As it could be used for both cutting and thrusting, the term cut and thrust sword is sometimes used interchangeably with side-sword. Also of note is that as rapiers became more popular, attempts were made to hybridize the blade, sacrificing the effectiveness found in each unique weapon design. These are still considered side-swords and are sometimes labeled sword rapier or cutting rapier by modern collectors. See European dueling sword for further history.

Also of note, side-swords used in conjunction with bucklers became so popular that it caused the term swashbuckler to be coined. This word stems from the new fighting style of the side-sword and buckler which was filled with much "swashing and making a noise on the buckler".

Melanin

Melanin is a class of compounds found in the plant, animal and protista kingdoms, where it serves predominantly as a pigment. The most common form of biological melanin is eumelanin, a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole (also known as hydroquinone), dihydroxyindole carboxylic acid, and their reduced forms. Another common form of melanin is pheomelanin, a red-brown polymer of benzothiazine units largely responsible for red hair and freckles. The presence of melanin in the archaea and bacteria kingdoms is an issue of ongoing debate amongst researchers in the field. The increased production of melanin in human skin is called melanogenesis. It is stimulated by the DNA damages that are caused by UVB-radiation, and it leads to a delayed development of a tan. This melanogenesis-based tan takes more time to develop, but it is long lasting.

The photochemical properties of melanin make it an excellent photoprotectant. It absorbs harmful UV-radiation and transforms the energy into harmless amounts of heat through a process called "ultrafast internal conversion". This property enables melanin to dissipate more than 99.9% of the absorbed UV radiation as heat and it keeps the generation of free radicals at a minimum (see photoprotection). This prevents the indirect DNA damage which is responsible for the formation of malignant melanoma.

Meiosis

In biology or life science, meiosis (pronounced my-oh-sis or mee-oh-sis) is a process of reduction division in which the number of chromosomes per cell is cut in half. In animals, meiosis always results in the formation of gametes. The word "meiosis" comes from the Greek verb meioun, meaning "to make small," since it results in a reduction in chromosome number in the gamete cell.

Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction and therefore occurs in all eukaryotes (including single-celled organisms) that reproduce sexually. A few eukaryotes, notably the Bdelloid rotifers, have lost the ability to carry out meiosis and have acquired the ability to reproduce by parthenogenesis. Meiosis does not occur in archaea or bacteria, which reproduce via asexual processes such as mitosis or binary fission. Each cell has half the number of chromosomes as the parent cell.

During meiosis, the genome of a diploid germ cell, which is composed of long segments of DNA packaged into chromosomes, undergoes DNA replication followed by two rounds of division, resulting in four haploid cells. Each of these cells contain one complete set of chromosomes, or half of the genetic content of the original cell. If meiosis produces gametes, these cells must fuse during fertilization to create a new diploid cell, or zygote before any new growth can occur. Thus, the division mechanism of meiosis is a reciprocal process to the joining of two genomes that occurs at fertilization. Because the chromosomes of each parent undergo genetic recombination during meiosis, each gamete, and thus each zygote, will have a unique genetic blueprint encoded in its DNA. Together, meiosis and fertilization constitute sexuality in the eukaryotes, and generate genetically distinct individuals in populations.

In all plants, and in many protists, meiosis results in the formation of haploid cells that can divide vegetatively without undergoing fertilization. In these groups, gametes are produced by mitosis.

Meiosis uses many of the same biochemical mechanisms employed during mitosis to accomplish the redistribution of chromosomes. There are several features unique to meiosis, most importantly the pairing and genetic recombination between homologous chromosomes.

Chip art

Chip art, also known as silicon art, chip graffiti or silicon doodling, refers to microscopic artwork built into integrated circuits, also called chips or ICs. Since ICs are printed by photolithography, not constructed a component at a time, there is no additional cost to include features in otherwise unused space on the chip. Designers have used this freedom to put all sorts of artwork on the chips themselves, from designers' simple initials to rather complex drawings. Given the small size of chips, these figures cannot be seen without a microscope. Chip graffiti is sometimes called the hardware version of software easter eggs.

Prior to 1984, these doodles also served a practical purpose. If a competitor produced a similar chip, and examination showed it contained the same doodles, then this was strong evidence that the design was copied (a copyright violation) and not independently derived. A 1984 revision of the US copyright law (the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984) made all chip masks automatically copyrighted, with exclusive rights to the creator, and similar rules apply in most other countries that manufacture ICs. Since an exact copy is now automatically a copyright violation, the doodles serve no useful purpose.

Post-popular trance

As an alternative evolution some artists have attempted to fuse trance with other genres such as drum'n'bass. Others have experimented with more minimalist sounds. Frustrated, extreme versions of trance have mutated through gabba into fringe genres of "hard trance" or "hardstyle" overlapping with hardcore and terrorcore.

Trance more loyal to its roots has begun to rear its head on the internet with the abundance of legal music download sites - including the likes of Juno Download, and Beatport, - enabling enthusiasts to avoid having to track down hard to find vinyl by downloading mp3s and uncompressed wavs, updated on a weekly basis. As a result, both commercial and progressive trance now have a much more global, if not chart-bound, presence, with big-draw artists such as Tiësto, ATB, Markus Schulz, Armin van Buuren, BT, Paul van Dyk, Ferry Corsten, Above & Beyond, Paul Oakenfold, Enigma, Schiller, Solarstone and the US's Christopher Lawrence and George Acosta able to maintain their esteemed positions while upcoming producers and DJs can also breakthrough into the public domain.

Anatomy and morphology

Sponges have several cell types:

* Choanocytes (also known as "collar cells") function as the sponge's digestive system, and are remarkably similar to the protistan choanoflagellates. The collars are composed of microvilli and are used to filter particles out of the water. The beating of the choanocytes’ flagella creates the sponge’s water current.

* Porocytes are tubular cells that make up the pores into the sponge body through the mesohyl.

* Pinacocytes which form the pinacoderm, the outer epidermal layer of cells. This is the closest approach to true tissue in sponges

* Myocytes are modified pinacocytes which control the size of the osculum and pore openings and thus the water flow.

* Archaeocytes (or amoebocytes) have many functions; they are totipotent cells which can transform into sclerocytes, spongocytes, or collencytes. They also have a role in nutrient transport and sexual reproduction.

* Sclerocytes secrete calcareous siliceous spicules which reside in the mesohyl.

* Spongocytes secrete spongin, collagen-like fibers which make up the mesohyl.

* Collencytes secrete collagen.

* Spicules are stiffened rods or spikes made of calcium carbonate or silica which are used for structure and defense.

* Cells are arranged in a gelatinous non-cellular matrix called mesohyl

Sponges have three body types: asconoid, syconoid, and leuconoid.

Asconoid sponges are tubular with a central shaft called the spongocoel. The beating of flagella forces water into the spongocoel through pores in the body wall. Choanocytes line the spongocoel and filter nutrients out of the water.

Syconoid sponges are similar to asconoids. They have a tubular body with a single osculum, but the body wall is thicker and more complex than that of asconoids and contains choanocyte-lined radial canals that empty into the spongocoel. Water enters through a large number of dermal ostia into incurrent canals and then filters through tiny openings called prosopyles into the radial canals. Their food is ingested by the choanocytes. Syconoids do not usually form highly branched colonies as asconoids do. During their development, syconoid sponges pass through an asconoid stage.

Leuconoid sponges lack a sperm and instead have flagellated chambers, containing choanocytes, which are led to and out of via canals.

It should be noted that these 3 body grades are useful only in describing morphology, and not in classifying sponge species, althought the asconoid and syconoid construction is present in Calcarea only

Real-time operating systems

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is a multitasking operating system intended for applications with fixed deadlines (real-time computing). Such applications include some small embedded systems, automobile engine controllers, industrial robots, spacecraft, industrial control, and some large-scale computing systems.

An early example of a large-scale real-time operating system was Transaction Processing Facility developed by American Airlines and IBM for the Sabre Airline Reservations System.

Understanding the Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview of the Click Thinking Pack

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

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

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

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

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

BACK TO SCHOOL SAFETY ALERT:

CPSC Urges Bicyclists to Wear Helmets

CPSC Document #5002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All-Terrain Vehicle Safety

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never drive an ATV on paved roads.

Never drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

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

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

J-Hook Shaped Stake style (Anchor Types)

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

Anchoring/Securing/Counterweighing Guidelines

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

Soccer Goal Injuries and Deaths

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

B.C.-Canada Place officially closes doors

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

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

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

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

Kent Kickin' Mini-Scooters

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

Trampoline Safety Alert

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

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

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

Accumulator

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

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

Typewriter-Derived Printers

Several different computer printers were simply computer-controllable versions of offered electric typewriters. The Friden Flexowriter and IBM Selectric typewriter were the most-general examples. The Flexowriter printed with a conservative typebar method while the Selectric used IBM's well-known "golf ball" printing mechanism. In either case, the letter form then struck a ribbon which was pushed beside the paper, printing one character at a time. The maximum speed of the Selectric printer (the faster of the two) was 15.5 characters per second.

Beaver Coins

Beaver Coins, also identified in Pioneer days as Beaver Money, were gold coins temporarily minted by the Provisional Government of the Oregon Territory in the late 1840's. The coins were available in $5 and $10 dollar denominations. Their name comes from the well-known Beaver depicted on the face of the coins. Today these coins are moderately rare and valuable.
The invasion of settlers into the Oregon Country produced a shortage of circulating currency. The population at the moment in time resorted to using gold specks or minting their own gold coins for use in trading. Many settlers began lobbying the territory's new government to accurate this situation.
The Provisional Territorial Legislature at Champoeg then gave the endorsement for the Oregon Exchange Company to mint currency. Although the Oregon Exchange Company was generally a private organization, the territorial legislature set the coin's values, authorized a mint, and appointed the officers to the mint.

Caribbean Sea

The Caribbean Sea is a hot sea in the Western Hemisphere, part of the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of the Gulf of Mexico. A Mediterranean sea, it covers most of the Caribbean Plate and is surrounded on the south by South America, on the west and south by Mexico and Central America, and on the north and east by the Antilles: the Greater Antilles islands of Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba and Puerto Rico lie to the north, and a plethora of Lesser Antilles bound the sea on the east. The entire area of the Caribbean Sea, the numerous islands of the West Indies, and adjacent coasts, are collectively known as the Caribbean.