AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Nice is twinned with:
Strasbourg is a city in eastern France, the prefecture of Grand Est. Today, about 275,000 people live there (with around 780,000 in the metropolitan area). It lies on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite the German city of Kehl.
Strasbourg is the seat Council of Europe, of the European Court of Human Rights and of the European Parliament. A lot of people also consider Strasbourg to be the capital of the European Union.
Its old town, la Grande Île ("Grand Island") has been classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
The city was founded in 12 BC by Drusus, the brother of Tiberius. Its Celtic name was "Argentorate" (which the Romans called "Argentoratum"). People think this name is linked to the river Ill (that flows into the Rhine near Strasbourg).
At that time, it was on the Limes, a fortification the Romans built across Europe (to keep out the Germanic tribes). There was a fortification (named "castella drusi", "drusus fort") at that spot. Soldiers need to live from something, so a local civilian settlement developed there. Later, the Limes was pushed farther east.
Strasbourg has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification).
Montpellier is a city in south of France. About 280,000 people live there. It is the 8th largest city in France. It has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Koeppen climate classification).
A campus of the École nationale de l'aviation civile (French civil aviation academy) is in Montpellier. The computer science school École pour l'informatique et les nouvelles technologies and E-Artsup are also in the city.
The University of Montpellier is one of the oldest in the world, as well as the Montpellier Business School.
Montpellier is twinned with:
Lille is a city in the north of France with a population of about 226,800 inhabitants. It is the capital of the region Hauts-de-France and the Nord
department., and is not far from the border with Belgium, where in Dutch it is called . About two million people live in the urban area ("conurbation") shared with Kortrijk and Tournai, which is the fifth largest in France behind Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse.
Lille has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification).
There are two big railway stations in Lille with many trains to and from different places around France and Belgium. Most of these serve station and are operated by SNCF, including the TGV high-speed service. The other big station, , has Eurostar trains to and from Brussels, Paris, and St Pancras station in London via the Channel Tunnel to the United Kingdom.
Public transport in Lille is made up of buses, two metro lines, and two tram lines to the nearby towns of Tourcoing and Roubaix. The metro system is one of the first in the world that does not have drivers.
Lille is twinned with:
Rennes is a city in France, the prefecture of Brittany and the Ille-et-Vilaine department. Its name is « » in the Breton language.
The Rennes agglomeration has a large student population (around 63,000) and 2 universities :
A campus of the computer science schools "École pour l'informatique et les techniques avancées" and "École pour l'informatique et les nouvelles technologies" , the university in electric energy and information sciences Supélec, the engineering school CentraleSupélec.
The business schools Rennes School of Business and Paris School of Business are also in Rennes.
Within France
Pacts of cooperation
Reims is a commune in France, in the Marne department in the Grand Est region. NEOMA Business School is located in the city.
Reims Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims) is famous by coronation of almost every king of France. The cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1914 (after an attack by the German army).
Orléans
Orléans is a city in France, the prefecture of the Centre-Val de Loire region and the Loiret department. It is on the Loire River and was formerly a busy port.
Orléans is twinned with:
It has a partnership with:
Le Havre is a city in Normandy. It is one of the most important ports in France. It is located on the right bank of the Seine river along the English Channel.
The city and port were founded by the King Francis I of France in 1517.
The city was bombed during World War II. The damaged area was rebuilt by Auguste Perret from 1945 to 1964. This section was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
The École de management de Normandie is located in the city.
Mountain range
A mountain range (mountain chain, mountain belt) is a geographic area with many mountains. A 'mountain system' or 'system of mountain ranges' includes geological features that are in the same region as a mountain range.
Mountain ranges usually include highlands or mountain passes and valleys. Individual mountains in the same range do not always have the same geology or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terrains, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, and volcanic landforms. This results in a variety of rock types.
Most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earth's land surface are associated with either in the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Pacific Ring of Fire includes the Andes of South America, extends through the North American Cordillera along the Pacific Coast, the Aleutian Range, on through Kamchatka, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, to New Zealand. The Andes is long and is often described as the world's longest mountain system.
The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalayas, and ends in the Alps. The belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, at of elevation.
Mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the world's northernmost mountain system. If the definition of a mountain range includes underwater mountains, then the ocean ridges form the longest continuous mountain system on Earth, with a length of .
Many mountain ranges have sub-ranges within them. It can be thought of as a parent-child relationship. For example, the Appalachian Mountains range is the parent of its own ranges, two of which are the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The White Mountains are a child of the Appalachians, and there are also children of the Whites, like the Sandwich Range and the Presidential Range.
The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow. When air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing precipitation (rain or snow). As the air descends on the leeward side, it warms again and is drier, having been stripped of much of its moisture. Often, a rain shadow will occur on the leeward side of a range.
Mountain ranges are always being eroded. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills and plains. The basins next to an eroding mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock.
The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are an example. As the uplift was occurring some of mostly Mesozoic sedimentary strata were removed by erosion and spread as sand and clays across the Great Plains to the east. This mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift.
Straight edge
Straight edge (Often called sXe) is a lifestyle without drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Some followers of "straight edge" also abstain from illegal or casual sex.
For some, no drug use includes caffeine which is a stimulant drug. Some will accept drugs such as codeine or morphine for medical reasons.
Some followers of straight edge will not use Ny-Quil or Day-Quil because they contain alcohol.
Those straight edgers who quit casual or illegal sex would not have one-night stands and will wait until they are in a committed relationship to have sex.
Some cities have associated straight edge as gang affiliation, but advocates call it a way of life such as being a vegetarian.
Rouen is a commune. It is the prefecture of Upper Normandy and the Seine-Maritime department.
First settlements in that region were from the 6th century before Christ.
The Romans founded Rotomagus about 100 A.D..
Since 384 Rouen is the seat of a bishop.
In 841 the Vikings conquered Rouen. It became the capitol of the Duchy of Normandy.
In 1204 the Frensh king reconquered Rouen.
In 1419 the English crown (Henry IV. of England) conquered the city in the 100-year War between France and England. On May, 30th of 1431 Jeanne D'Arc (the Virgin of Orleans) was burned in Rouen.
In 1494 the French got the city back.
In 1834 the railway connection Paris-Rouen was opened.
Rouen was occupied by the Germans in the Franco-German War of 1870 to 187373 and in both World Wars. In the World War II many buildings were destroyed.
Rouen has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification). It has a great marine harbor 60 km from the city. Tourism, transportation, the colleges and the university are most important economic factors.
The university of Rouen has about 40,000 students.
Microcode is the name for a number of instructions or data structures which are involved in implementing higher-level machine language in many processors, especially microprogrammed ones. Microcode is on memory that is very fast to access. When a machine level instruction needs to be executed, microcode tells the processor what electronic circuits should be used. When a new processor is designed, an engineer also writes the microcode for the instructions of machine language. This is called Microprogramming, the resulting code is called a microprogram.
In early processors, each instruction was hard-wired. This has several drawbacks, the most obvious is that correcting an error in processor design means that the processor needs to be replaced.
A processor should add two values, which are in registers A and B.
Items 1-3, as well as 5-6, can be coded as one instruction. It is also possible to hard-wire the logic needed for this operation. This has the benefit of being faster, but the drawback that it no longer allows changes that might be needed later on.
The concept of microprogramming was developed by Maurice Wilkes in 1951, using diode matrices for the memory element.
Computational complexity theory
Computational complexity theory is a part of computer science. It looks at algorithms, and tries to say how many steps or how much memory a certain algorithm takes for a computer to do. Very often, algorithms that use fewer steps use more memory (or the other way round: if there is less memory available, it takes more steps to do). Many interesting algorithms take a number of steps that is dependent on the size of the problem.
Complexity theory also looks at how a problem changes if it is done for more elements. A problem of constant complexity class is the only class in which this is not true. A problem with constant complexity takes the same number of steps to complete no matter the size of the input or the number of elements it is computed on. Broadcasting a message can be thought of as a problem of constant complexity. No matter how many people need to receive a message, all can listen on to one single broadcast with no extra broadcasts needed.
Mowing the lawn can be thought of as a problem with linear complexity. Mowing an area that is double the size of the original takes twice as long.
Suppose you want to know which of your friends know each other. You have to ask each pair of friends whether they know each other. If you have twice as many friends as someone else, you have to ask four times as many questions to figure out who everyone knows. Problems that take four times as long when the size of the problem doubles are said to have quadratic complexity.
This is often the complexity for problems that involve looking things up, like finding a word in a dictionary. If the dictionary is twice as big, it contains twice as many words as the original to compare to. Looking something up will take only one step more. The algorithm to do lookups is simple. The word in the middle of the dictionary will be either before or after the term that needs to be looked up, if the words do not match. If it is before, the term needs to be in the second half of the dictionary. If it is after the word, it needs to be in the first half. That way, the problem space is halved with every step, until the word or definition is found. This is generally known as logarithmic complexity
There are problems that grow very fast. One such problem is known as the Travelling salesman problem. A salesman needs to take a tour of a certain number of cities. Each city should only be visited once, the distance (or cost) of the travelling should be minimal, and the salesman should end up where he started. This problem has exponential complexity. There are n factorial possibilities to consider. Adding one city (from n to n+1) will multiply the number of possibilities by (n+1). Most of the interesting problems have this complexity.
An average is the "normal" number of a group of numbers made by mixing the group of numbers.
In math, an average is called a mean. It can be found by adding the numbers, then dividing the answer by the number of numbers there were. There are other kinds of mean, and other things that are sometimes thought of as "average" such as median or mode (statistics).
In some sports, such as cricket and baseball, averages are used to tell how good a player is (such as batting average). Sporting averages have special rules for how to find them.
Fluminense FC
Fluminense Football Club () or Fluminense, is a football club in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Romanization, or Latinization, is the process by which words and languages that normally do not use the Latin alphabet are converted into Latin letters. That allows people who do not know the original writing system to read the sounds of the language. Romanization is one way to show the pronunciation of the language's words.
There are often several standards for romanizing one language. For the Russian language ,the Soviet Union invented several systems, and the United Nations and the International Organization for Standardization invented two of the others. Methods for Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese are similarly diverse. Some romanization systems are based on transcription, some are based on transliteration, and some are based on both.
Transcription occurs when the effect at the end is that both the original and the transcribed version sound the same, whether or not each letter alone in one text matches the corresponding letter in the other one.
Transliteration occurs when the effect at the end is for the letters to match one to one, whether or not the sound is the same.
Diaspora (, literally, "a scattering or sowing of seeds") is used (without capitals) to refer to any people or racial group living outside their traditional homelands, emigrating and being scattered in distant places and making a new community. It was first used in the Septuagint to mean the scattering of Jews after the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
Angers
Angers is a city in the west of France. Around 160,000 inhabitants live inside the city and 300,000 live in the metropolitan area.
It is the capital of the historical province called Anjou. Today, the name of Anjou is Maine-et-Loire. The inhabitants of Angers and of Anjou are called 'angevins'.
The city existed before the Roman Empire. After the Roman conquest, the city was called Juliomagus. Angers was an important French city during the Middle-Ages. There is one of the bigger castles of Europe in the city.
It is now the 16th city of France (for its population). It is an economic center, a touristic and cultural town. Many festivals happen every year in the city (film festival 'Premiers plans', street festivals 'Tours de scène' and the famous 'Accroches-coeurs'). It has many museums. The museum of Beaux-Arts (a famous Art museum) and "Apocalypse Tapestry" (the oldest and largest collection of medieval tapestries in the world) are very famous.
There are two universities. More than 17,000 students go to the 'Université d'Angers' (a state university) and 12,000 go to the 'Université Catholique de l'Ouest' (a private catholic university). The 'École supérieure des sciences commerciales d'Angers' is one of the most prestigious business school in France.
Angers is twinned with:
Toulon is a city in the south of France. It has about 170,000 people. Toulon is the prefecture of Var. Toulon is the third biggest city of the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur after Marseille and Nice. It is from the Italian border.
Grenoble is a French commune in the Alpine foothills. It is the prefecture of the Isère department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
It has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification).
It is an important centre for scientific research in France.
A campus of the École nationale de l'aviation civile (French civil aviation academy) is in Grenoble. Grenoble School of Management is also in the city, as well as the Université Grenoble-Alpes.
Grenoble is twinned with:
A sequence is a word meaning "a set of related events, movements or items that follow each other in a particular order".
It is used in mathematics and other disciplines. In ordinary use, it means a series of events, one following another. In maths, a sequence is made up of several things put together, one after the other. The order that the things are in matters. For example, both (Blue, Red, Yellow) and (Yellow, Blue, Red) are sequences, but they are not the same. Sequences made up of numbers are also called progressions.
There are two kinds of sequences. One kind is finite sequences, which have an end. For example, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is a finite sequence. The other kind is infinite sequences, which means that they keep going and never end. An example of a sequence that is infinite is the sequence of all even numbers, bigger than 0. This sequence never ends: it starts with 2, 4, 6, and so on, and one can always keep on naming even numbers.
If a sequence is finite, it is easy to say what it is: one can simply write down all the things in the sequence. This does not work for an infinite sequence. So another way to write down a sequence is to write a rule for finding the thing in any place one wants. The rule should tell us how to get the thing in the "n"-th place, where "n" can be any natural number. This means that a sequence is really a special kind of function with natural numbers as its domain. We sometimes write a sequence as formula_1, where formula_2 stands for the "n"-th term of the sequence.
For example, the rule could be that the thing in the "n"-th place is the number 2×"n" (2 times n). This tells us what the whole sequence is, even though it never ends. The first number is 2×1, which is 2. The second number is 2×2, or 4. If we want to know what the 100-th number is, we can simply calculate 2×100 and get 200. No matter which thing in the sequence we want, the rule can tell us what it is.
In an arithmetic progression, the difference between a term and the term before it is always a constant.
Example: formula_3
9 - 4 = 5, 14 - 9 = 5, 19 - 14 = 5, 24 - 19 = 5, and so on.
So if one takes the first term as "a" and the constant difference as "D", then the general formula for arithmetic sequence is formula_4, where "n" is the number of term.
In a geometric progression, the ratio between a term and the term before it is always constant.
Example: formula_5
6/3 = 2, 12/6 = 2, 24/12 = 2, 48/24 = 2, and so on.
So if one takes "a" to be the first term and "r" to be the ratio, then the general formula for geometric progression is formula_6, where "n" is the number of term.
In a harmonic progression, the difference between the reciprocal of a term and the reciprocal of the term before it is a constant.
Example: formula_7
formula_8, and so on.
A series is the sum of all the terms of a sequence.
The general formula for calculating the sum of arithmetic sequence is
That of a geometric sequence is formula_10, if the sequence is infinite, andformula_11, if it is finite.
Here, "a" is the first term, "d" is the common difference in arithmetic sequence, "r" is the ratio in geometric sequence and "n" is the number of term.
Aix-en-Provence is a city in the south of France.
It has about 150,000 inhabitants.
Amiens
Le Mans is a commune. It is found in the Pays de la Loire region in the Sarthe department in the west of France.
Le Mans is a city in France. It has about 143,000 inhabitants. It takes about one hour to go to Paris by TGV.
Le Mans is twinned with:
Tours is a city in the centre of France.
It has about 143,000 inhabitants.
Nancy, France
Nancy is a commune. It is the prefecture of the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in the Grand Est region. It was formerly the capital of the old Duchy of Lorraine.
Nancy has an oceanic climate ("Cfb" in the Koeppen climate classification).
Nancy is twinned with:
Limoges ( or "Limòtges") is a city and commune, the capital (prefecture) of the Haute-Vienne department and the historical capital of the old Limousin region in west-central France. It is also the capital of the "arrondissement" of the same name.
Limoges is known for its medieval and Renaissance enamels on copper, for its 19th-century porcelain and for its oak barrels which are used for Cognac and Bordeaux production.
The city of Limoges is near the western limits of the Massif Central, in the centre of the Haute-Vienne department. The Vienne river flows through the city.
Limoges is at about from Paris, from Toulouse, from Bordeaux and from Marseille.
The "commune" has an area of . Its average altitude is ; at the city hall, the altitude is .
The "commune" of Limoges is surrounded by the "communes":
The climate of Limoges, in the Köppen climate classification, is Cfb - Oceanic climate with template summers.
The average amount of precipitation for the year in Limoges is . The month with the most precipitation on average is October with of precipitation. The month with the least precipitation on average is February with an average of .
The average temperature for the year in Limoges is . The warmest month, on average, is July with an average temperature of . The coolest month on average is January, with an average temperature of .
The inhabitants of Limoges are known, in French, as " Limougeauds" (women: "Limougeaudes").
With a population of 134,577, Limoges has a population density of inhabitants/km.
Evolution of the population in Limoges
Limoges forms, together with other 8 "communes", the urban area of Limoges with a population of 183,860 inhabitants (2013) and an area of . This urban area is the centre of the metropolitan area of Limoges, formed by 96 "communes", with a population of 283,050 inhabitants (2013) and an area of .
Limoges is the prefecture of the Haute-Vienne department, the capital of the "arrondissement" of Limoges and the administrative centre () of 9 cantons
It is part of the intercommunality "Limoges Métropole" ().
Limoges is twinned with:
Clermont-Ferrand is a "commune" in the Puy-de-Dôme department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in central-southern France.
It is the prefecture of the department and the capital of the "arrondissement" of Clermont-Ferrand and the historical capital of the region of Auvergne.
The modern city was born from the union of two separate towns, Clermont and Montferrand. This union has been imposed by Louis XIII in 1630 (Edict of Troyes) and was confirmed by Louis XV.
While Montferrand was founded in the early twelfth century by the Counts of Auvergne on the model of fortified cities in the Southwest, Clairmont is much older, as it existed in ancient times. The earliest mention of the existence of Clairmont contained in the work of Strabo, the early first century. The city was then known Nemossos described as a "metropolis of Arvernes." She later took the name of Augustonemetum then Arverni.
To the west of Clermont-Ferrand, there is a plateau where is the "Chaîne des Puys", a chain of dormant volcanoes including the "Puy de Dôme". To the north of the city is the plain de "Limage", a large plain in the Auvergne region in the valley of the Allier river.
Clermont-Ferrand has an area of , and its average altitude is ; at the city hall, the altitude is .
The distances from Clermont-Ferrand to other cities are:
Clermont-Ferrand is surrounded by the "communes":
The climate of Clermont-Ferrand is an oceanic climate, Cfb (Marine West Coast Climate) in the Köppen climate classification.
The average temperature for the year in Clermont-Ferrand, at an altitude of , is . The warmest month, on average, is July with an average temperature of . The coolest month on average is January, with an average temperature of .
The average amount of precipitation for the year in Clermont-Ferrand is . The month with the most precipitation on average is May with of precipitation. The month with the least precipitation on average is January with an average of .
The inhabitants of Clermont-Ferrand are known, in French, as "Puydômois" (women: "Puydômoises").
With a population of 141,365, Clermont-Ferrand has a population density of inhabitants/km.
Evolution of the population in Clermont-Ferrand
Clermont-Ferrand forms, together with other 16 "communes", the urban area of Clermont-Ferrand with a population of 264,704 inhabitants (2013) and an area of . This urban area is the centre of the metropolitan area of Clermont-Ferrand, formed by 184 "communes", with a population of 475,694 inhabitants (2013) and an area of .
Clermont-Ferrand is the prefecture of the Puy-de-Dôme department since 1790. It is also the capital of the "arrondissement" of Clermont-Ferrand and the administrative centre () of six cantons:
It is part of the intercommunality "Clermont Auvergne Métropole".
Clermont-Ferrand is twinned with:
Villeurbanne
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a programming interface for 3D graphics which helps computer programmers make their 3D graphics perform better and faster by running parts of their programs on a video card (GPU) rather than just the central processor (CPU). Programming interfaces like OpenGL are usually called an "API," which stands for "Application Programming Interface".
OpenGL is often compared to Direct3D, an API for 3D graphics on Windows. Programming for Direct3D is different in some ways because the APIs use different naming schemes for talking to a computer's graphics driver, which means that programmers need to write different code for OpenGL and Direct3D to do the same things.
OpenGL is owned by the Khronos Group, and is an example of open source software. This means that all of OpenGL's programming, and the explanations for how the programming all works, can be viewed, copied, revised, and re-released by anyone.
Māori
Māori might mean:
Māori language
The Māori language (, shortened to Te Reo) is the language of the Māori and an official language of New Zealand. It is an Austronesian language.
Although it's an official language, not many people speak it fluently. In the 2013 census, about 149,000 people, (3.7% of the population) said that they could have a conversation in Māori about a lot of everyday things.
The language can be seen everywhere throughout New Zealand, as many of the placenames are Māori, such as Whangarei, Rotorua, and Timaru. Lots of government or city buildings use te reo on their signs as well as English, and most of the public schools have a Māori name as well as an English one.
Te Reo Māori did not have a writing system until the Europeans arrived. In 1817, a Ngāpuhi chief, Tītori, and his relative Tui worked with Professor Samuel Lee and prepared a writing system for "te reo".
Movie criticism
Movie criticism is the evaluation of a movie. People who write their opinions about movies in newspapers and magazines or talk about movies on television, the Internet or on radio shows are called movie critics. Some movie critics also write books about movies and the history of movies.
Some movie critics studied movie or movie history in a university before becoming a movie critic. Other movie critics are people who have experience making movies, for example as a movie director or screenwriter. Some movie critics studied other subjects in university that are related to movie, such as English Literature or theatre.
Roger Ebert became the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize. After his win, many other critics were awarded with this honor.
McCarthyism is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the mid to late 1950s. The term gets its name from U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican of Wisconsin. The period of McCarthyism is also referred to as the Second Red Scare. It happened at the same times as increased fears of Communist influence on American institutions, espionage by Soviet agents such as the Rosenbergs, heightened tension from Soviet control over Eastern Europe, the success of the Chinese Communist revolution (1949) and the Korean War (1950-1953). There is a play called 'The Crucible' which is about the beginning of the Salem witch trials but also McCarthyism.
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by a bacterium called "Treponema pallidum". Syphilis is usually spread by sexual contact. However, a fetus can get syphilis from its mother while she is pregnant or during childbirth. This is called "congenital syphilis".
There are four stages of syphilis: the primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages. In each stage, the signs and symptoms of syphilis are different.
In the primary stage, a person usually just has a wound on their skin, called a "chancre." In the secondary stage, a person usually gets a rash. In the "latent" stage, syphilis has few or no symptoms. If syphilis reaches the tertiary stage, which is the most severe, it causes many serious symptoms. These can include problems with the nervous system (the brain and nerves) and problems with the heart. Eventually, many people with tertiary syphilis will die if they do not get medical treatment.
Syphilis is usually diagnosed with blood tests. The bacteria that causes syphilis can also be seen under a microscope. Most people who have syphilis can be treated and cured with antibiotics.
By 1999, more than 12 million people around the world had gotten syphilis. More than 90% of these people (10.8 million) lived in the developing world. Syphilis got much less common after penicillin became available in the 1940s. At that time, penicillin was used as a treatment for syphilis, and often cured the disease. However, since 2000, syphilis is becoming more common again.
Syphilis can be a very dangerous disease if it is not treated. Without treatment, 8% to 58% of people with syphilis die from the disease. Syphilis also makes a person two to five times more likely to get Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
After a person gets syphilis, the disease begins in the primary stage. A person gets syphilis by having sex with a person who has syphilis. Usually, the person who has syphilis has wounds on their genitals caused by syphilis. Touching these wounds during sex (including oral sex or anal sex) can give a person syphilis.
Later, a chancre (skin sore) usually appears at the place on the body that touched the infected wounds. The chancre can be painful. The most common type of chancre gets bigger and bigger until it becomes an ulcer.
Chancres can appear in places other than the genitals. In women, chancres most often appear on the cervix - the bottom of the uterus. Some people get no chancres at all. Many people who have secondary syphilis (40–85% of women and 20–65% of men) say they never had a chancre during the primary stage.
Around the place where syphilis entered the body, the lymph nodes usually get bigger about 7 to 10 days after the chancre forms. If the person does not get treatment, their wound(s) can last for three to six weeks.
If a person does not get treatment, syphilis will get worse. The secondary stage of syphilis will start about four to ten weeks after the person first got infected. Secondary syphilis can cause many different symptoms. However, the most common three symptoms are:
All of the sores that people get during this stage can spread syphilis. The bacteria lives inside the wounds.
The symptoms of secondary syphilis usually get better after three to six weeks. However, in about 25% of cases (1 out of every 4), these symptoms can return.
In the latent stage of syphilis, a person has no symptoms, but blood tests show that he has syphilis. Latent syphilis is described as either early or late.
If a person with syphilis does not get treatment, the disease can reach the worst stage - tertiary syphilis. Usually this happens about three to 15 years after the person first got infected. Without treatment, one-third of people with syphilis get tertiary disease. People with tertiary syphilis cannot infect other people with syphilis.
There are three different forms of tertiary syphilis.
Gummatous syphilis can happen anywhere from one to 46 years after the person first got syphilis. On average, it happens after 15 years. It causes soft, tumor-like balls of inflammation (swelling), of many different sizes. Usually they appear on the skin, bone, and liver, but they can happen anywhere.
About 15% of people who do not get treated for syphilis get gummatous syphilis.
In neurosyphilis, the syphilis infects the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). In some people, neurosyphilis happens soon after they get syphilis. (This is called "early neurosyphilis".) Some of these people have no symptoms of neurosyphilis. Others get syphilitic meningitis, a dangerous infection of the meninges (the protective layers which line the brain and spinal cord).
Neurosyphilis can also appear later, usually four to 25 years after a person first got syphilis. (This is called "late neurosyphilis".) Late neurosyphilis can cause many serious problems. For example:
About 6.5% of people who do not get treated for syphilis get late neurosyphilis.
This type of tertiary syphilis causes problems with the cardiovascular system (the heart and blood vessels). It usually happens 10 to 30 years after the person first got infected with syphilis.
The most common problem it causes is syphilitic aortitis, which affects the aorta. The aorta is the most important artery in the heart; it helps carry blood to the entire body. Syphilitic aortitis can make the aorta become too big. If the aorta is too big, it cannot work correctly.
About 10% of people who do not get treated for syphilis get cardiovascular syphilis.
Congenital syphilis is spread from a mother to her fetus during pregnancy or childbirth.
Two out of every three infants born with syphilis have no symptoms. In the other infants, symptoms can appear as the baby gets older. The most common symptoms are:
If babies with syphilis do not get treated, they can get "late congenital syphilis", which has much more serious symptoms. For example, the child can have seizures, and their body and brain may not grow normally.
Syphilis is caused by the "Treponema pallidum" bacterium. "Treponema pallidum" is a species of bacterium which is shaped like a spiral: a spirochaete. There are different types of "Treponema pallidum" bacteria, which are called subspecies.
Scientists think that "Treponema pallidum" can only live inside humans. The bacterium cannot survive outside a human for more than a few days.
Syphilis is spread mostly by sexual contact or during pregnancy from a mother to her fetus. Syphilis can pass through undamaged mucous membranes, or through damaged skin. Because of this, syphilis can be spread through oral sex, vaginal sex, and anal sex. It can also be spread by kissing, if the person with syphilis has a sore in their mouth.
Only a very small amount of the "Treponema pallidum" bacterium needs to get into a person's body to cause syphilis. However, not everybody who is exposed to primary or secondary syphilis will get the disease.
A person can get syphilis if they get a blood transfusion from someone with the disease. However, many countries test blood donations for syphilis. In countries that do not do this, getting syphilis from a blood transfusion is much more likely.
Scientists think syphilis is usually not spread by sharing needles (using the same needles to inject drugs).
A person cannot get syphilis from sitting on a toilet seat; using a hot tub or a swimming pool; sharing plates, cups, or utensils; sharing clothing; or doing other regular daily activities.
It is hard for doctors to diagnose syphilis just from the signs and symptoms that happen early on, because many diseases can cause skin sores and rashes. Instead, they can diagnose syphilis by doing a blood test, or by looking at the blood under a microscope. Blood tests are used more often, because they are easier to do. However, blood tests cannot tell which stage of syphilis a person has.
, there is no vaccine that prevents syphilis.
Not having sexual contact with a person who has syphilis is one of the best ways to prevent getting syphilis.
If a person does not know if their sexual partner has syphilis, having safer sex can help protect them. For example, using a latex condom the right way lowers the risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease like syphilis. However, even if a person uses a condom, it is still possible for him to get syphilis.
Because of this, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the best ways to prevent syphilis are:
Congenital syphilis in newborn babies can be prevented by testing mothers for syphilis during early pregnancy and treating women who are infected. By following these steps, in 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eradicate the spread of syphilis from Cuban mothers to their babies.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the World Health Organization say that all pregnant women should be tested for syphilis. If a woman tests positive, her sexual partners (the people she has had sex with) should also be treated.
In most developed countries, congenital syphilis is not common. It still happens once in a while, when women do not get any health care during pregnancy. However, congenital syphilis is much more common in developing countries. Many women in these countries do not get healthcare during pregnancy, and others get healthcare that does not include testing for syphilis. When there are programs that make syphilis testing easier to get, fewer babies get congenital syphilis in these countries.
If people do certain things, they are more likely to get syphilis. Medical professionals say that these people should get tested regularly. For example, the CDC says that men who have sex with men should be tested at least every year. Getting tested regularly helps prevent syphilis from being spread. If a person is tested and finds out that they have syphilis, they are more likely to get treatment, and will not accidentally spread syphilis to other people.
Syphilis is a notifiable disease in many places, including Canada, the countries in the European Union, and the United States. This means that if a healthcare provider (like a doctor or a nurse) knows that a patient has syphilis, the provider has to tell public health authorities that the patient is infected. Public health workers then talk to all of the patient's sexual partners. They tell them someone might have given them syphilis, without telling them who that person is. Doctors might also try to get patients with syphilis to tell their sexual partners to get treatment.
Syphilis that is not complicated can usually be treated and cured by antibiotic medications.
Usually, people need just one dose of penicillin G or azithromycin. If a person cannot take either of these medicines (for example, because they are allergic to them), some other medications work too. For example, Doxycycline and tetracycline are two other possible choices; however, they cannot be used in pregnant women.
The "Treponema pallidum" bacterium has become resistant to many different antibiotics, including macrolides, clindamycin, and rifampin. This means that these antibiotics no longer kill the bacterium.
Once a person is in the later stages of syphilis, the disease is harder to treat.
For example, if a person has neurosyphilis, they need antibiotics that will kill the infection in their central nervous system (their brain and major nerves). However, it is hard for penicillin G to get into the central nervous system. Because of this, a single shot of penicillin - which will usually cure early syphilis - is not enough to cure neurosyphilis. Instead, people with neurosyphilis usually need to be given large doses of penicillin for at least 10 days. Usually, they also need to get the medicine intravenously (through a needle placed into a vein) so it goes more directly to the central nervous system. If a person is allergic to penicillin, other antibiotics like ceftriaxone, doxycycline, or tetracycline can be used, but they have to be given over longer periods of time.
Once a person has late-stage syphilis, treatment will keep their syphilis from getting any worse. However, if syphilis has already damaged the person's body, the treatment will not make that damage go away. At best, treatment can only have a very small effect on the damage that has already happened.
Sometimes, the treatment for syphilis can cause a side effect called the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction. This reaction usually starts within one hour after treatment begins, and lasts for 24 hours. Its symptoms include fever, muscle pains, headache, and a fast heart rate.
Antibiotic medication breaks open syphilis bacteria to kill them. As the bacteria break open, proteins come out of them. These proteins cause the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction.
By 1999, syphilis had infected about 12 million people. More than 90% of these people lived in the developing world.
Syphilis causes problems in 700,000 to 1.6 million pregnancies every year. Syphilis can cause a pregnant woman to have a miscarriage, a stillbirth, a premature baby, a baby with congenital syphilis, or a baby that dies before it is a month old. In sub-Saharan Africa, syphilis causes up to 20% of perinatal deaths (deaths that happen soon after a baby is born).
Syphilis used to be very common, and it caused sickness and death all over the world. It was especially very common in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. During the early 20th century, syphilis quickly became less common in the developed world, because antibiotics were being used more and more. Syphilis kept becoming less common until the 1980s and 1990s. Since the year 2000, syphilis is getting more common again in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Europe, mostly among men who have sex with men.
In China and Russia, syphilis has gotten more common among heterosexual ("straight") people since the 1990s. Studies say this is because of unsafe sexual practices, like having sex with many different people, prostitution (getting paid to have sex), and not having safer sex to protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
Over the 19th and 20th centuries, the symptoms of syphilis have become less severe (not quite as bad). This is partly because there are more treatments that work well, and if they are given early, syphilis does not get as bad. Also, the bacteria that causes syphilis has become weaker.
If people with syphilis get treated early on, they can usually be cured without the disease causing damage that cannot be fixed. However, syphilis is still very dangerous. It still causes serious problems, and sometimes death, if it is not treated.
Syphilis also makes a person two to five times more likely to get HIV. Confection (having both syphilis and HIV) is common. In some big cities, it happens in as many as 30% to 60% of people with syphilis.
Nobody knows exactly where and how syphilis started. There are two major ideas about where the disease came from.
The first idea is called the "Columbian hypothesis." (A hypothesis is an educated guess about how something happened). This hypothesis says that when Christopher Columbus's crew came back to Europe after exploring the "New World", they brought syphilis back to Europe and spread the disease there.
The other idea is called the "pre-Columbian hypothesis." ("Pre-Columbian" means "before Columbus.") This hypothesis says that syphilis was already in Europe before Columbus, and people just did not realize that the disease existed.
While there is evidence that can be used to say that either of these ideas are right, there is more evidence for the Columbian hypothesis.
The first written records that talk about an outbreak of syphilis in Europe are from 1494-1495. The outbreak happened in Naples, Italy, when France was invading (trying to take over Italy). Because syphilis was spread by French soldiers who were coming back from Italy, at first it was called the "French disease."
The name "syphilis" was first used in 1530 by an Italian doctor and poet named Girolamo Fracastoreo. He used the word "syphilis" as the title of a Latin poem that talked about the damage the disease was causing in Italy. At other times in history, syphilis was also called the "Great Pox".
In 1905, two men named Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann discovered that syphilis is caused by the "Treponema pallidum" bacteria. Five years later, Paul Ehrlich created the first treatment that helped treat syphilis (called Salvarsan). After that, scientists started to study penicillin. In 1943, it was officially decided that penicillin worked for syphilis.
This was a major success in the treatment of syphilis. Before penicillin, the treatments used for syphilis were often even worse than the disease. For example, people were treated with mercury (which is poisonous and causes serious health problems), or people were just kept away from everyone else.
From 1932-1972, the United States Public Health Service did a study on syphilis in Alabama. They wanted to see how syphilis got worse when it was not treated. The researchers chose a group of poor African-American sharecroppers, but never told them they had syphilis. Even after the 1940s, when the researchers knew penicillin could cure these people, they refused to let them get treatment or even tell them that penicillin could help them. This study, now called the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, was very important in creating medical ethics.
Many famous people in history may have had syphilis. For example, some people think that Franz Schubert, Arthur Schopenhauer, Édouard Manet, and Adolf Hitler had the disease.
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is a disease. It is transmitted by having sex. It is among the most widespread sexually transmitted diseases. Gonorrhea is also sometimes called "the clap." Gonorrhea can be cured using antibiotics but the entire course of antibiotics must be used.
Its presence was found up to 700 years ago. At that time, this disease was described by coming from the "Le Clapiers" part of the city of Paris. This part of the city was known to be where prostitutes lived.
It is caused by a bacterium, "Neisseria gonorrheae". Since it is caused by a bacterium, it can be treated with antibiotics. The use of latex condoms when having sex can prevent it from spreading. Sometimes antibiotics do not cure gonorrhea. This is because the bacterium is becoming immune or resistant to the medicine. When this happens, the infection is more difficult to cure.
Cichlid
Cichlids (pronounced 'sick-lids') are fishes from the Cichlidae family, in the order "Perciformes".
It is a very large family of fish made up of more than 2500 species.
Cichlids come in many different sizes, from 2.5 centimeters to almost a meter long. All cichlids have some form of parental care for their eggs and fry. That parental care may come in the form of guarding the eggs and fry or it may come in the form of mouthbrooding.
Cichlids are famous for their speciation in East African lakes.
The Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066) was a pitched battle between the Anglo-Saxon English and an invading Norman army. The day-long battle ended in the death of the Anglo-Saxon king and a decisive victory for the Normans. William, the Duke of Normandy, was crowned as King William I of England 10 weeks later. The Norman conquest was a major turning point in England's history.