Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
Psychokinesis or telekinesis is the supposed ability to change matter, energy, space or time by using your mind. It is often mentioned and performed in science fiction movies and video games.

Abilities 
Psychokinesis is the word used to describe many different abilities. These abilities include:
 moving objects (this is called telekinesis; see below)
 changing the shape of objects (this includes melting or bending metal)
 influencing events
 healing
 teleportation (disappearing and reappearing in a different place)
 traveling through objects, like a wall
 changing an object into something else
 changing oneself into something else
 putting an energy field around oneself
 control of magnetism
 control of photons (light waves/particles)

Telekinetic abilities 
 moving objects (move, lift, shake, vibrate, spin, bend, or break large and small objects)
 lifting oneself up off of the ground (including flying)
Elemental control 
 Ability to control fire, water, air, and earth which air is already ready used during telekinesis
 You can use water and you can use it to control the blood on others or yourself

Age control 
 with telekinesis and blood control you can become immortal or instant age change on command

Vibration 
 With telekinesis you can send extreme vibration to an object like glass to shatter

Parapsychology
Science fiction
Cartoon Network is an international cartoon television channel for children owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Channels

Current

Americas
Cartoon Network Canada
Cartoon Network Latin America

Europe
Cartoon Network Europe
Cartoon Network Central & Eastern Europe
Cartoon Network Russia and Southeastern Europe
Cartoon Network France
Cartoon Network Germany
Cartoon Network Italy
Cartoon Network Nordic
Cartoon Network Turkey
Cartoon Network United Kingdom

Asia
Cartoon Network India
Cartoon Network Southeast Asia
Cartoon Network Japan
Cartoon Network Korea
Cartoon Network Pakistan
Cartoon Network Philippines
Cartoon Network Taiwan
Cartoon Network Thailand
Cartoon Network Vietnam

Pacific
Cartoon Network Australia
Cartoon Network New Zealand

Former

Cartoon Network Spain - closed in 2013 along with Cartoonito to make way for Boing

Other websites
Cartoon Network America
Cartoon Network South America
Cartoon Network Europe
Cartoon Network Asia

Cartoon Network-related lists
An autobiography is a biography in which the author writes about his or her own life. It is a self-written account of one's own life.

It is one of the earliest form of literature, but the word itself is quite modern.

The word comes from the Greek stems "auto" (meaning "self"), "bio“ (meaning "life"), and "graph" (meaning "write").

References

Related pages
 Biography

Literary terms
Penjing (盆景 pinyin: pén jǐng, literally tray scenery), also known as penzai is the ancient Chinese art of growing trees and plants in containers. The plants are kept small by skilled pruning.

Penjing is similar to the Japanese art of bonsai.

History
The first historical reference to penjing is from the 9th century.

Related pages
 Bonsai
 Chinese scholar's rocks

 Suiseki

References

Agriculture
Art
Brian Eno (born 15 May 1948) is an English musician. He was one of the original members of the band Roxy Music. He makes music called electronic music, which is music made using computers and other electronic devices, like the synthesizer. Brian Eno has worked with other famous musicians and groups like David Bowie and U2.

References 

1948 births
Living people
British record producers
English rock musicians
Grammy Award winners
Musicians from Suffolk
Kirby is the main character of the Kirby franchise. Kirby has appeared in many video games made for Nintendo game systems.  

Kirby's appearance is simply a pink ball with red shoes and nubs for arms. Kirby has black oval eyes, blushing cheeks, and a small mouth.  

Kirby has the power to fly over obstacles by puffing up into a large ball. Kirby can also eat enemies by inhaling them, and he can spit them out to shoot other enemies.  

In most of the series, Kirby has the power to copy the abilities of enemies by swallowing them. When Kirby eats an enemy with a power to copy, he changes his look to show his new power.  

Kirby also appears in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting video games.  

Anime characters
Animated television series
Fictional characters introduced in 1992
 
Nintendo video game characters
A capacitor (also called condenser, which is the older term) is an electronic device that stores electric energy. It is similar to a battery, but can be smaller, lightweight and a capacitor charges or discharges much quicker.  Capacitors are used in many electronic devices today, and can be made out of many different types of material. The Leyden jar was one of the first capacitors invented.

Capacitors are usually made with two metal plates that are on top of each other and near each other, but that do not actually touch.  When powered, they allow energy to be stored inside an electrical field.  Because the plates need a lot of area to store even a small amount of charge, the plates are usually rolled up into some other shape, such as a cylinder.  Sometimes, other shapes of capacitors are used for special purposes. A capacitor-like effect can also result just from two conductors being close to each other, whether you want it to exist or not.
The type of capacitor used depends on the application. Capacitors come in many sizes. They can be as small as an ant or as large as a dustbin. A few capacitors are adjustable. 

All capacitors have two connections, or leads. Most kinds of capacitors can be replaced easily by someone who has basic skills in electronics. However, one of the more powerful types - the electrolytic capacitor - must be used the correct way, or they can explode violently.

While capacitors can store energy, as batteries do, capacitors can release all their stored energy very quickly, even faster than a second. A defibrillator or a photoflash capacitor uses this ability. It gradually charges, until it cannot be filled any more, and then quickly discharges its stored power to a device that needs to have it quickly.

Supercapacitor 
Supercapacitors hold a bigger charge than regular capacitors. They are used to store electricity for motors and other purposes when batteries won't discharge quickly enough.
Polystyrene film capacitors 
This type of capacitor is not for use in high frequency circuits, being made with a coil inside. They can charge and discharge even more quickly than other capacitors. They are used in filter circuits or timing circuits which run at several hundred KHz or less.

Electrolytic capacitors 
Electrolytic capacitors use a conducting surface inside a liquid electrolyte. They do not charge and discharge as rapidly as film capacitors do. They have polarity and so they have to be attached correctly. There are two leads; one will have a + and the other a -. This means one lead is positive and one is negative. There are two different styles: axial, where the leads are connected to each end, and radial, where the leads are connected to one end. Electrolytic capacitors are printed with capacitance and voltage rating.
Since the voltage rating can be low, it is important to check that the electrolytic capacitor is not overcharged. Capacitors can be separated from a battery, then connected in series. Because the capacitor is polarized, the positive terminal must be connected to a negative terminal. This creates correct polarity through the electrical circuit and prevents breakdown.

Some electrolytic capacitors are unpolarized, meaning that either side can be positive or negative. These are mostly used in loudspeakers to block low-frequency signals (bass) from reaching high-frequency (tweeter) drivers.

References

Further reading
 YAN Kun(2011). Nonlinstor-An electronic circuit element of the nonlinear type with the deepening charge-controlled capacitor properties based on the form of the nonlinear differential equation (Brief annotation of the connection equation(R)), Xi'an: Xi'an Modern Nonlinear Science Applying Institute.

Other websites 

 Introduction To Capacitors Capsite 2016

Electronic components
Condenser may mean:

The old name for a capacitor
Condenser (laboratory), a device used in a chemistry laboratory
Condenser (heat transfer), a device used in HVAC to condense a gas into a liquid by cooling.
Strategy is a word which was first used by the military. It comes from an ancient Greek word for the general officer commanding all the armed forces of a state. A strategy is a long term plan on what to do to achieve a certain goal.  When talking about the near future, people often use the word tactics.  Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said "tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war". Today, the word "strategy" is in common use; people might talk about "business strategy", for example.
The distinction between strategy and tactics applies to any planning which might be done against an enemy or opponent. Strategy is what we broadly intend to do to reach our long-term goal or objective. Tactics is the detailed steps which are used as our progress is opposed by the opponent. For this reason, tactics are short-scale and flexible. Strategy, on the other hand, is changed as little as possible. It may be that our goal simply cannot be reached. In that case, a search goes on for a new goal and a new or adjusted strategy. Often, in war, chess or business, roughly the same tactics are still used to get to a different goal. Negotiation is another area where the distinction between strategy and tactics is especially clear.

References
References

Bibliography
Clausewitz, Carl von. 1989. On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Gray, Colin S. 1999. Modern Strategy. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Liddell Hart, Basil. H. 1967. Strategy. New York: Praeger.
Luttwak, Edward. 2001. Strategy: the logic of war and peace. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Sun Tzu. 1963. The Art of War. trans. Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Watson, John 1998. Secrets of modern chess strategy: advances since Nimzowitsch. Gambit, London.

Military
Games
In Computer science, a Design pattern is an abstract solution to a certain problem. Design patterns are used in object oriented programming. They give a possible solution to a problem of designing software.

Design patterns became popular around the year 1995. They also simplify the language between computer scientists. Ideally, a design pattern should be reusable many times. It is like a brick of a house, it can be used for many different problems. One can also build bridges with bricks, not only houses.

Examples 
These examples are actual examples of design patterns as they are in use. They have not been simplified. It is only the language used to describe them that has been made simpler.
Flyweight 
The flyweight design pattern is used to minimize the use of many similar objects. In a text-processing system each letter can have some attributes like formatting, typeface, and size. While it would be possible to create a new object for each character in the document and give it these attributes, it is extremely expensive.

Instead it would be better to create one object for each type of formatting and link the letter to that information. That needs a lot fewer objects. The only extra information that would need to be stored is the word or letter's position in the document. All similar letters would use the same object to define font, size, and other properties.
Singleton 
Another easy to understand pattern is called Singleton. It is used when there can only be one instance of a given class. That class usually has some static method (e.g. getInstance()) which returns a new instance. It also saves the instance internally. So if it already created the instance, it can simply return it.
 public class Singleton {
   static Object theInstance=null;
   public Object getInstance() {
     if (theInstance==null) {
      theInstance=new Object();}
     return theInstance; }
  }

Computer science
Amarillo is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in the northern part of Texas. The city's economy is mostly based on cattle. In 2000, 173,627 people lived there.

References 

Cities in Texas
County seats in Texas
Lansdowne is a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the US.

Geography 
Lansdowne has a total area of 1.2 square miles.

Cities in Pennsylvania
Gillingham Football Club is an English football club. They are based in the town of Gillingham, Kent. They are currently in Football League One. They play home games at Priestfield Stadium.  Gillingham are managed by Steve Lovell and the chairman is Paul Scally. The club captain, Gabriel Zakuani, plays in defence.  They finished their last season (2017-18) in 17th.

1893 establishments in England
English football clubs
Gillingham, Kent
Organisations based in Kent‎
A round in music is a song which can be sung by two or more groups of people.   One group starts off and the next group start to sing the same song a bit later.  It should sound nice together.  When a group gets to the end of the song they start again.  They can go round and round, singing it several times.

Usually rounds are in 2, 3 or 4 parts (meaning that they are for 2, 3 or 4 groups of people).  When a group of people sing or  play a round they usually sing it an agreed number of times.  This means that the group which starts last also finishes last.

Frère Jacques is a famous French round.  London's Burning is an English round.  Both those rounds can be sung in 4 parts.

The oldest round that we know is Sumer is icumen in.  This is a very famous piece of music because it is the oldest piece of music we know that was written down.  It was written around 1250 by a monk.  It can be sung in 4 parts with 2 bass drones (held notes).
Writing music by making one part imitate another is called canonic writing.  Rounds are a kind of canon.

Related pages
Canon (music)

Musical forms
The gallbladder is a pear-shaped organ in your abdomen. It stores about 50 ml of acidic liquid (bile) until the body needs it for digestion. That liquid helps digest fat. The gallbladder is about 7-10cm long in humans. It is dark green in color because of the bile in it. It is connected to the liver and the duodenum by the biliary tract.

Anatomy of the digestive system
Addenbrooke's Hospital is a large hospital in Cambridge, England. It was started in  in 1766. A new building was started in 1962 and the old building closed in 1984.  It is run by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital lets people in to look around, once every two years. You can visit the mortuary, the operating theatres and the hospital roof.

In October 2022  there were two cases where people were waiting more than 60 hours in the emergency department for a hospital bed. 515 patients  waited more than 12 hours.

References 

Buildings and structures in Cambridgeshire
Organisations based in Cambridge
Hospitals in the United Kingdom
A Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is a plant-eating marsupial. It lives in the eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia. They are the only living species in the family Phascolarctidae. They are related to the wombats.

Koalas are often called koala bears, because a koala looks like a small bear or teddy bear. However, it is not a bear, it is quite a different type of animal.

Appearance 
Koalas have brownish-grey or silver-grey fur, and a big pink, dark red or/and black nose. They have sharp claws which help them to climb.

Koalas also have finger prints which look the same as human finger prints. Finger print experts have had difficulty in being able to tell if the prints are from a human or koala. Finger prints are rare among mammals that climb trees. Scientists do not know why the koala has them, but their best guess is that it helps the koala choose leaves to eat.
Life 
Koalas are mostly active at night. They live in trees and are rarely found on the ground. Koalas have two unusual characteristics.
They eat leaves of  eucalyptus trees. Koalas do not drink often, they get most of their water from the eucalyptus leaves they eat. Eucalyptus leaves are poisonous, but koalas do not get poisoned. This is because they have certain bacteria in their digestive tract that can detoxify the poison in the leaves. Koalas, however, have to sleep long hours because eucalyptus leaves do not produce much energy and also because the digestive process takes a long time.

Koalas have a peculiar way of cooling themselves. Unlike humans who sweat and other animals, which either pant or lick their fur to stay cool, koalas reduce their body heat by hugging a tree. The temperature of the trunks of certain trees is up to 9 degrees Celsius lower than the air temperature. Koalas prefer to stay on these trees on a hot day even if they do not have the tastiest leaves.
Koalas live alone most of the time, but they have a social hierarchy with the other koalas who live near.

After a pregnancy of 35 days, the newly born koala is about a quarter of an inch long, and is born with no ears, eyes, or hair. It crawls into its mothers pouch on its own. After 12 months the young koala is old enough that it does not go into its mother's pouch or need milk anymore. The female koala can have another baby then. Young koalas usually leave their mothers when they are 18 months old, but if their mother does not have another baby they sometimes stay for up to three years. Koalas become mature when they are about two years old, but they often have their first baby after another two years.
Other information 
The koala is not an endangered species, but it is a near vulnerable species. One reason is the loss of habitat, which means that koalas have less space to live. In some places there are very few koalas left. But there are also places, such as French Island (Victoria), with too many koalas that eat too much. Because of this the eucalyptus trees and other animals are in danger. A study looking at koala numbers at 1800 sites for 20 years, shows that the number of koalas is falling. The study, by the Australian Koala Foundation, estimates that there are only about 50,000 koalas left. there is over 500 types of gum trees in the world, however, koalas only eat 4-6 types that they prefer.
Chlamydia
Many koalas are infected with Chlamydia. This is affecting the survival of the species. Koalas on French Island do not have the disease, and so groups of them are often moved to the mainland to repopulate some areas. The disease can cause blindness, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and reproductive tract infections.

References :3

Other websites

 The Aussie Koala Ark Conservation Project

Marsupials of Australia
Diprotodonts
John Coolidge Adams is an American composer. He was born in 1947. He was born in Worchester, Massachusetts. His music often uses minimalism with large orchestras and lots of different sounds. He was named after John Adams, the 2nd President of the United States.

Life
He studied music at Harvard University. After he graduated from Harvard, he went to California. Soon, he became part of the musical community of San Francisco. He listened to the music of minimalist composers like John Cage, Terry Riley and Morton Feldman. By the mid-1980s he was working as composer and conductor. The piece that made him famous was called Harmonium. Harmonium is made to sound like a harmonium, but the title also refers to "harmony". This shows that he is writing tonal music, unlike some composers at the time whose music was getting more difficult to understand because it was not in any key.
Adams wrote several short pieces such as Short Ride in a Fast Machine and The Chairman Dances. This last piece is music from his opera Nixon in China. It was performed many times, but made some people angry because the Chinese leaders Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung are shown in it as human beings who deserve sympathy.

Adam's Violin Concerto has been performed over 100 times by many of the world's famous violinists. Adam's song, The Chairman Dances, was put in the game Civilization IV.

References 

1947 births
Living people
20th-century American composers
21st-century American composers
Writers from Massachusetts
Handcuffs are a type of restraint, often used by police to ensure suspects cannot escape or hurt anyone. They do this by securing a person's wrists together. They are usually metal and consist of two parts linked together by a chain. Handcuffs cannot be removed without the right key, and a handcuffed person cannot move their wrists more than a short distance apart. Usually they are put on behind the back.

Styles 
There are three main types of handcuffs: chain, hinged, and solid bar. While they are harder to carry, rigid handcuffs allow a number of differences in cuffing. Both rigid and hinged cuffs can be used one-handed to apply pain-compliance/control techniques. Different accessories are available to improve the security or increase the hardness of handcuffs. These include boxes that fit over the chain or hinge and can be locked with a padlock.
In 1933 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used a type called "Mitten Handcuffs". These stopped criminals from being able to grab the officer's tools, such as their gun. It was used by some in law enforcement but it was never popular.

Handcuffs can be made from different metals, including carbon steel, stainless steel and aluminium, or from synthetic polymers.

The National Museum of Australia has a number of handcuffs in its collection. These can be from as early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Double locks 
Handcuffs with double locks have a piece that can stop the cuff from getting tighter. Tightening could be done on purpose or by struggling. Handcuffs may cause nerve damage or loss of circulation if they are tightened. Some wearers could tighten the cuffs to try to escape. They do this by trying to escape when the officer is loosening the cuffs. Double locks also make picking the locks more difficult.

There are three kinds of double locks described in a Smith & Wesson brochure:
Lever lock 
Moving a lever on the cuff makes the lock move into a position that locks the bolt. No tool is needed to double lock this type of cuff.

Push pin lock 
A small peg on the key is inserted into a hole to engage the lock.

Slot lock 
These are also used with a peg, but here it is inserted into a slot and moved sideways to engage the lock.

Plastic handcuffs 
Plastic handcuffs, are lightweight plastic strips that look like electrical cable ties. Soldiers and police can carry a lot of them at once. This is useful for some situations, such as during big protests and riots. In recent years, airlines have started to carry plastic handcuffs to restrain troublesome passengers. Disposable handcuffs could be considered cost-inefficient. This is because they cannot be loosened, and have to be cut off to let a restrained person be fingerprinted, or to use the bathroom.
However, this usage means that cheap handcuffs are used in times where steel ones would normally be unused for long times. Recent products have been made that deal with this. These include disposable plastic restraints that can be opened with a key. These are more expensive than traditional plastic restraints, since they can only be used for a small number of times, usually only one, and are not as strong. In addition, many people think plastic restraints are more likely to cause nerve or soft-tissue damage to the wearer than metal handcuffs.

Legcuffs 
When a suspect is extremely aggressive, leg irons may be used as well. Sometimes the chain connecting the leg irons to each other is looped around the chain of the handcuffs, resulting in the prisoner being "hog-tied" or "hog cuffed". In a few rare cases, people lying on their stomachs have died from positional asphyxia. This makes the practice very controversial, and has led to it being restricted, or even banned, in many places.
Keys 
Most handcuffs today in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Latin America can be opened with the same key. This makes transporting prisoners easier. However, there are handcuff makers who use different keys. Maximum security handcuffs need special keys. Handcuff keys usually do not work with thumbcuffs. The Cuff Lock handcuff key padlock uses this same standard key.

In addition to the Universal handcuff key, a few modified designs exist. One kind of key is designed to fit behind an officer's badge.

References

Law enforcement equipment
A flashlight (in American English) or torch (in Commonwealth countries) is a small, portable spotlight. Its function is a beam of light which helps to see. It usually requires batteries.

The light is made by a small light bulb.  In the 20th century, it was usually an incandescent bulb.  Nowadays most use LEDs, which work slightly differently.  In 1896, the first dry cell battery was invented. Unlike previous batteries, it used a paste electrolyte instead of a liquid. This was the first battery suitable for portable electrical devices, as it did not spill or break easily and worked in any orientation.  Sometimes the electricity comes from a small generator instead of a battery.

The torch can also refer to a flammable stick that is lit on fire to provide light and (or) heat.

Origin
Origin 

Hundreds of years ago, people used candles or oil lamps for indoor light. Candles were expensive, and once the candle was gone, you would have to buy or make a new one or be stuck in the dark. When electricity was discovered and the light bulb was invented, David Misell, a British man working in Hubert's New York shop in 1898, came up with the idea of a light bulb that you could take with you, anywhere you wanted to go. Then, the torch was invented. The first flashlight has three D batteries which powered a small incandescent bulb. The bulbs would glow with a simple ON/OFF switch.

References 

Light sources
Discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly or differently because the person is one of a particular group. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all persons must be protected against any kind of discrimination, or even its inciting.

A person might be discriminated against because of their race, age, sex, politics, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion,caste,the way they look, a past criminal record, the person's lifestyle, their choice of clothing, their age or their disabilities whether they are a member of or fit in with a social clique (group), social class, social status or caste, and many other reasons.
In some countries, discrimination against somebody on the basis of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, or disability is illegal. Even in those countries where discrimination is unlawful, it still takes place for reasons not covered by the law. In some other countries, discrimination against somebody is legal or even official government policy. This especially takes place in countries in which there is an official religion, and people of other religions are discriminated against.
 Ableism
 Ageism
 Antisemitism
 Homophobia 
 Intersectionality
 Persecution 
 Political correctness
 Prejudice
 Racism
 Sexism
 Casteism 
 Social stigma
 Speciesism
 Transphobia
 Human rights
 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Discrimination
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson  OM PC FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British scientist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 for his work on nuclear physics, and for his theory of the structure of the atom.

Career 
Rutherford was one of the first researchers in nuclear physics, after the discovery of radiation by the French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896. Rutherford discovered the radioactive half-life, and the three parts of radiation which he named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. He also discovered that alpha particles were the nuclei of Helium. Rutherford's Geiger–Marsden experiment led to what we know today about the atomic structure, where the atom is a nucleus and electrons orbit around it.

In 1919, Rutherford made the world's first artificial nuclear reaction, where he put alpha particles with nitrogen gas and created particles of oxygen isotopes and protons. This was nuclear transmutation, changing nitrogen gas into oxygen gas.
Rutherford was the leader of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He proved the existence of the nucleus and that is was composed of protons and neutrons. In 1932 James Chadwick made an experiment at the Cavendish Lab that showed Rutherford was right.

Rutherford College, a school in Auckland, New Zealand, was named after him.

Related pages 
List of scientists from Oceania

Other websites 

 The Rutherford Museum
 Rutherford Scientist Supreme
 Ernest Rutherford  @ nobel.se
 "Ernest Rutherford 1871–1937". A Science Odyssey, pbs.org.

1871 births
1937 deaths
New Zealand chemists
British chemists
British nuclear physicists
People buried in Westminster Abbey
Order of Merit
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom Barons
Fellows of the Royal Society
Presidents of the Royal Society
New Zealand Nobel Prize winners
New Zealand physicists
Serialism is a way of composing music using a series of notes in a particular order and using this to build up a whole piece of music. These series and patterns can also be applied to other parts of music (like how loud or soft it is).

A simple example

To show how serialism works we can take a very simple example.  Let us use just five notes from the white notes of a keyboard.  We can use the notes A, B, C, D and E.  We are going to make a “tune” using all these five notes, but not repeating any until all five have been used (although we are allowed to repeat the note we have just had).
For example: we might have D, C, A, A, A, A, B, E.  This is what we call our “row” or “series”, although usually one would expect a row of twelve different notes.  It is the one we start off with, so we can call it our tone row.

We can change the tone row by playing it backwards.  This is called retrograde.  So we now get E, B, A, A, A, A, C, D.
We can also change it by playing it upside down.  This means that instead of going up one step we go down one step, or instead of going up two steps we go down two steps etc.  If we start on the same note D we now get: D, E, G, G, G, G, F, C.  This is called inversion.
We can make it go backwards and upside down.  So we get: C, F, G, G, G, G, E, D.  This is called retrograde inversion.

We now have four ways of playing our row: tone row, retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion.

These can now be transposed to create many more options.

Schoenberg’s twelve-tone series
In 1923 the composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) developed what he called the “twelve-tone system”.  Instead of using just five notes as in our example, he used all 12 notes in the octave (5 black and 7 white notes on the piano keyboard).  Most music we listen to is in a particular key (tonality).  This is called “tonal” music.  For example: if we start “Twinkle, twinkle little star” on a C we finish on a C at the end and the piece sounds finished. It is “tonal” (in a particular key).  In twelve-tone music all 12 notes are equal, there is no “key note” (it is “atonal”).  This makes the music very hard to understand and it took people a long time to get used to the sound of Schoenberg’s new music.
Schoenberg was not the only composer to use this way of composing.  His pupils Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1883-1945) also wrote twelve-tone music. Schoenberg, Webern & Berg are sometimes called the "Second Viennese School"-The first was Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven a hundred years before. The composers Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Aaron Copland (1900-1990) started to write twelve-tone music when they were quite old.  Composers such as Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) used it occasionally, often putting it together with music which was tonal (listen to Britten’s opera “Midsummer Night’s Dream”).  When contrasted with tonal music in this way it can be very beautiful.
In the 1950s and 1960s some composers like Pierre Boulez (b.1925) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (b.1928) wrote music which was not only twelve-tone, but serial in other ways as well.  For example: they organized levels of dynamics (from very quiet to very loud) in a series, and the lengths of notes (from very short to very long), and even timbre (the sound quality).  By combining all these things their music became very complicated indeed.  When all these things were used for the whole piece of music it was called “total serialism”.  Boulez’s Structures I is an example of a piece which uses “total serialism”.  A lot of people criticized this music, saying that it was too mathematical instead of being expressive.  Such music can be hard to understand. 
Musical movements
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849; pronounced SHOH-pen) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the greatest Romantic piano composers. Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A famous child prodigy, he grew up in Warsaw where he completed his music education and composed many of his mature works before leaving Poland in 1830 at age 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.

Early life 
After the Uprising, he lived in Paris as part of Poland's Great Emigration. During the last 19 years of his life, Chopin performed only about 30 times, usually in a salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and teaching piano. After a romantic relationship with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amandine Dupin, better known as George Sand.
Works 
Since he composed many piano pieces, he was called the poet of the piano. Most of Chopin's works are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces and some songs to Polish lyrics. His piano works are often technically difficult, especially because deep expression is involved along with the importance of considering each detail in his music. Chopin also created the instrumental ballade, along with the addition of new ideas to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, étude, impromptu, scherzo and prélude. All of Chopin's works involve the piano, and for composing them he was using a number of them. While living in Warsaw, Chopin played on Buchholtz piano. Later in Paris he preferred an instrument from Pleyel. Both of these instruments were recreated in XXI century to help listeners to hear Chopin works played on pianos that they were written for.

Death 
Chopin suffered from poor health most of his life and died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1849 at age 39.
References

Other websites
Chopin biography 
Our Chopin

Deaths from tuberculosis
Infectious disease deaths in France
Polish pianists
Polish composers
Polish Roman Catholics
19th-century French composers
French Roman Catholics
Romantic composers
1810 births
1849 deaths
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–1857) was a Russian composer, regarded as the first to become very famous.

Russia is a very large country. In the 18th century there was a lot of music in Europe, but Russian people had not yet heard it. A lot of them were very poor and modern transport did not exist. By the time Glinka was born Russian people in the large towns like Saint Petersburg were becoming very interested in European music.

Mikhail Glinka was born in a little village called Novospasskoye. His father was a rich landowner. Glinka was brought up by his grandmother who looked after him very carefully. She was always afraid he would be cold, so she wrapped him up in a fur coat in a room which was kept at 77 °F. He was not often allowed to play in the fresh air. Later in his life Glinka was always worrying about his health.
It was a long way to the big cities from where the child lived. There was no radio in those days, and no CDs. The only music he heard was the church bells, and the singing of the peasants (the simple people who worked on the land). They sang folksongs and made up harmony underneath the tunes.

After his grandmother died he was allowed to travel 6 miles to his uncle’s home. His uncle had a group of musicians who played music by European composers like Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He had never heard such music before.

When he was 13 he went to school in St Petersburg. Now he could hear lots of music and meet some good musicians. He had piano lessons and spent a lot of time at parties. He started to compose some songs.
In 1830 he went to Italy. Italy was famous for its music, especially for opera. Glinka met famous composers like Mendelssohn and Berlioz as well as Italian composers like Donizetti and Bellini. He like their music, and decided he wanted to write opera as well, but he wanted to make his music sound very Russian.

Glinka went back to Russia. He wrote two great operas. The first one was called Ivan Susanin. The story of the opera, set in 1612, is about a poor peasant Ivan Susanin who dies to save the life of the Tsar (the Tsar was the ruler of Russia, like a king or emperor). The Tsar liked the opera and thought that it should be called A Life for the Tsar. It was a big success when it was first performed in 1836.
He soon wrote his second opera: Ruslan and Lyudmila. The story comes from a tale by the famous Russian poet Pushkin. The man who wrote the words for him did it very quickly while he was drunk, so the story is a bit muddled, but the music is wonderful. It is a fairy tale about a nasty dwarf Chernomor who has taken away a princess called Lyudmila. In the end Ruslan, the hero, rescues her. Some of the music sounds quite oriental. The overture that starts the opera is very famous.

Glinka also wrote piano music, songs and chamber music.

Glinka’s music is important because he was the first Russian composer to write music that sounded Russian. Later composers like Tchaikovsky were influenced by his music.

References 
 David Brown: Mikhail Glinka, a biographical and critical study London OUP1974

Other websites 

1804 births
1857 deaths
Russian composers
Romantic composers
People from Saint Petersburg
Russian musicians
Events 
 January 23 – Henry VIII of England, then 18 years-old, appears incognito in the lists at Richmond, and is applauded for his jousting before he reveals himself.
 Conquest of Pskov by Grand Prince Vasili III of Muscovy.
 Formation of the Holy League to defend the Italian States.
 Peter Henlein builds the first pocketwatch.
 End of the War of the League of Cambrai (started 1508)
 Start of the War of the Holy League (ended 1513)
Births 
 March 30 – Antonio de Cabezón, Spanish composer and organist (died 1566)
 April 2 – Ashikaga Yoshiharu, Japanese shogun (died 1550)
 July 22 – Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence (died 1537)
 October 6 – Rowland Taylor, English pastor (executed 1555)
 November 6 – John Caius, English physician (d. 1573)
 Mikael Agricola, Finnish scholar (died 1557)
 Francis Borgia, General of the Jesuits (died 1572)
 Jörg Breu the Younger, German painter (died 1547)
 Ferenc Dávid, Hungarian religious reformer (died 1579)
 Andrea Gabrieli, Italian composer and organist (died 1586)
 Claude Goudimel, French composer and music theorist (died 1572)
 Matsunaga Hisahide, Japanese warlord (died 1577)
 Aloysius Lilius, Italian inventor of the Gregorian calendar (died 1576)
 Solomon Luria, Polish-born Kabbalist (died 1574)
 Luis de Morales, Spanish religious painter (died 1586)
 Oda Nobuhide, Japanese warlord (died 1551)
 Bernard de Palissy, French potter and writer
 Ambroise Paré, French surgeon (died 1590)
Guillaume Postel, linguist (died 1581)
 Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII of France and Anne of Brittany (died 1575)
 Lope de Rueda, Spanish dramatist and writer
 Lawrence Sheriff, Elizabethan gentleman and grocer (died 1567)
 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Spanish explorer (died 1554)
 Claudio Veggio, Italian composer
 Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, French naval officer (died 1571)
Deaths 
 February 28 – Juan de la Cosa, Spanish mapmaker and explorer (born c. 1460)
 March 1 – Francisco de Almeida, Portuguese soldier and explorer (born c. 1450)
 March 10 – Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg, German preacher (born 1445)
 May 17 – Sandro Botticelli, Italian painter (born 1445)
 August 17 – Edmund Dudley, English statesman
 December 14 – Friedrich of Saxony (b. 1473)
 December 31 – Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan and wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (born 1472)
 Agueybana, Taino chief
 Ambrogio Calepino, Italian lexicographer (born 1450)
 Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (born 1454)
 Richard Empson, English statesman
 Giorgione, Italian painter (born c. 1477)
 Bohuslav Hasištejnský z Lobkovic, Bohemian writer (born 1461)
 Florian Zamoyski, Polish nobleman
An ellipsoid is a shape like a sphere, but it may be longer in one or more directions, like a rugby ball. It is the 3 dimensional analogue of an ellipse.

The Earth is shaped slightly like an ellipsoid. Its shape is called an oblate spheroid. An ellipsoid shaped like the Earth, called a reference ellipsoid, is often preferred to the geoid because it makes calculations simpler.

Related pages 
Ellipse
Oblate spheroid
Geoid

Three-dimensional shapes
Geodesy
The Liancourt Rocks are a group of small islands in the East Sea. The islands are currently occupied under the South Korean armed police. The name Liancourt Rocks comes from the French whaling ship Liancourt. The people on the Liancourt made a map of the islands in 1849. The islands have been in dispute for some time by both Korea and Japan. Japan has been suggesting to settle the dispute in International Court of Justice, but the South Korean government has refused the request.

Geography 

Liancourt Rocks consists of two islets that are 150 meters apart. These small islands are called West Islet and East Islet. The western islet is the larger of the two islets. Altogether, there are about 90 islets and reefs. The islands and rocks have a volcanic nature. A total of 37 of these islets are recognized as permanent land. The eastern islet formed 4.5 million years ago. Ulleungdo formed 2 million years later. Both are quickly eroding and weathering.
The total area of the islets is about 187,450 square meters. Their highest point is 169 meters on the western islet. The western islet is about 88,640 square meters in area; the eastern islet about 73,300 square meters. Liancourt Rocks is at about 131°52′ East longitude and about 37°14′ North latitude. The western islet is at  and the eastern islet is at . The main islands coast lines are 217 km apart from mainland Korea and 212 km apart from main island's of Japan (Honshu). The nearest Korean territory (Ulleungdo) is 87 km away and can be visible on fair days; the nearest Japanese territory (Oki islands) is 157 km away.

The western islet is made of a single peak. It has many caves along the coastline. The cliffs of the eastern islet are about 10 to 20 meters high. There are two caves giving access to the sea, as well as a crater.
Economy 
22 Korean people currently reside on the islets,  several Korean telecom service providers (namely SK Telecom, KT, and LG U+) have also installed stations on Liancourt Rocks to cover the islets in the South Korean wireless telephone network. There is also regular ferry service from Ulleung-do.

Although the islets themselves are barely habitable, the Exclusive Economic Zone surrounding them has rich fishing grounds and possible reserves of natural gas. As of 2006, the expected reserves have not been found. A wide variety of fish as well as seaweed, kelp, sea slugs, and clams live around the islets. Major fishery catches in the area are squid, Alaskan pollock, codfish, and octopus. There are 102 species of seaweed, although many of these have no economic value.
This area used to be one of the largest breeding grounds of sea lions (Zalophus californianus japonicus) and a good spot for hunting them and also a spot for obtaining abalone at the end of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Until the 1950s, sea lions were observed on the islets by the voluntary guards.

Over 900 Korean citizens say that they live on the islands. Over 2,000 Japanese do the same. However, only two people, a married Korean couple, are living there permanently.

Tourism 
Because they are classified as a nature reserve, special permits are required for tourists to land on the islets rather than just circling them. There were 1,507 and 1,597 recorded tourists in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Visitors generally come by boat from Ulleungdo.

In 2005, the first wedding ceremony was held on the islets. The South Korean couple chose the location to protest against Japanese territorial claims.
Climate 
Due to the location of the isle, the weather of the Liancourt Rocks is known to be harsh. As a result, ships are unable to dock in winter as the north-western winds are too strong. The climate is warm and humid. It is heavily influenced by warm sea currents. There is a lot of rain throughout the year (annual average - 1324 mm), with occasional snowfall. Fog is a common sight. In the summer, southerly winds dominate. The water around the islets is about 10 degrees Celsius in spring, when the water is coolest. It warms to about 25 degrees Celsius in August.

Ecology 
Like Ulleung-do, the islets are volcanic rocks, with only a thin layer of soil and moss. About 80 species of plants, over 22 species of birds, and 37 species of insects have been recorded on the islets, in addition to the local maritime life.
Since the early 1970s, trees and some types of flowers were planted along with the indigenous flora and fauna. (Trees are required under international law for the islets to be recognized as natural islands rather than reefs.)

Liancourt Rocks was declared "Natural Monument #336" by South Korea in the 1990s. Some birds actually live on the islands, but most are just using them as a stopover to fly elsewhere.  The fork-tailed petrel, streaked shearwater, and black-tailed gulls live on the islands. The population of breeding birds counted on the rocks, however, has been declining in recent years.

In 1999, the islets were designated a special environmental protected area by the South Korean government. They are older than any other Korean volcanic islands, including Ulleungdo.
It was announced in 2005 that three new genera and five new species of bacteria had been identified by Korean scientists in the waters off the islets. The genera are Dokdonella koreensis, Dokdonia donghaenensis, and Donghae dokdoensis. The newly identified species are Virgilbacillus dokdoensis, Maribacter dokdoensis, Marimonas dokdoensis, Polaribacter dokdoensis, and Porphyrobacter dokdoensis.

Strategic location 
The islets are of importance not only for economic reasons, but also for military ones. They have occasionally served as a military base, most notably during the Russo-Japanese War. The South Korean government has built a radar station and helicopter landing pad on the islets, enabling it to track foreign naval forces.
An additional note of the dispute 
South Korean armed force captured 3929 and killed 44 Japanese people between 1952 and 1965 until Syngman Rhee Line was set. The dispute between South Korea and Japan over the islands has gained heat in 2008 with new Japanese school books mentioning the islands, and a visit by the South Korean Prime Minister in July. Ten years ago, no people lived on the islands. But South Korea started to populate the island to make its claim stronger. South Korea insists that the islet was called Usan-do or Sokdo in a past and later changed its name, but there is no historical proof which shows when the name was changed.
Rusk documents in 1951 states that "As regards the island of Dokdo, otherwise known as Takeshima or Liancourt Rocks, this normally uninhabited rock formation was according to our information never treated as part of Korea and, since about 1905, has been under the jurisdiction of the Oki Islands Branch Office of Shimane Prefecture of Japan. The island does not appear ever before to have been claimed by Korea."

References

Other websites

Official sites 
 South Korean government's perspective on Dokdo via Korea.net