AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
The eyes of most land-living vertebrates (as well as those of some spiders, and insect larvae) contain a fluid that has a higher refractive index than the air. The cornea is sharply curved and refracts light towards the focus. The lens need not do all of the refracting. This lets the lens adjust the focus more easily, for much higher resolution.
Instead of using a lens it is also possible to have cells inside the eye that act like mirrors. The image can then be reflected to focus at a central point. This design also means that someone looking into such an eye will see the same image as the organism which has them.
Many small organisms such as rotifers, copeopods and platyhelminthes use such this design, but their eyes are too small to produce usable images. Some larger organisms, such as scallops, also use reflector eyes. The scallop "Pecten" has up to 100 millimeter-scale reflector eyes fringing the edge of its shell. It detects moving objects as they pass successive lenses.
Compound eyes are different from simple eyes. Instead of having one organ that can sense light, they put together many such organs. Some compound eyes have thousands of them. The resulting image is put together in the brain, based on the signals of the many eye units. Each such unit is called "ommatidium", several are called "ommatidia". The ommatidia are located on a convex surface, each of them points in a slighly different direction. Unlike simple eyes, compound eyes have a very large angle of view. They can detect fast movement, and sometimes the polarization of light.
Compound eyes are common in arthropods, annelids, and some bivalved molluscs.
The evolution of eyes started with simplest light-sensitive patches in unicellular organisms. These eye-spots do nothing but detect if the surroundings are light or dark. Most animals have a biochemical 'clock' inside. These simple eye-spots are used to adjust this daily clock, which is called circadian rhythm. Some snails, for example, see no image (picture) at all, but they sense light, which helps them stay out of bright sunlight.
More complex eyes have not lost this function. A special type of cells in the eye senses light for a different purpose than seeing. These cells are called "ganglion" cells. They are located in the retina. They send their information about light to the brain along a different path (the "retinohypothalamic tract"). This information adjusts (synchronizes) the animal's circadian rhythm to nature's light/dark cycle of 24 hours. The system also works for some blind people who cannot see light at all.
Eyes that are a little bit better are shaped like cups, which lets the animal know where the light is coming from.
More complex eyes give the full sense of vision, including color, motion, and texture. These eyes have a round shape that makes light rays focus on the back part of the eye, called the "retina".
Good fliers like flies or honey bees, or prey-catching insects like praying mantis or dragonflies, have specialized zones of ommatidia organized into a fovea area which gives sharp vision. In this zone the eyes are flattened and the facets are larger. The flattening allows more ommatidia to receive light from a spot. This gives a higher resolution.
The body of "Ophiocoma wendtii", a type of brittle star, is covered with ommatidia, turning its whole skin into a compound eye. The same is true of many chitons.
Tongue-twister
A tongue-twister is a phrase that is hard to say. They often use alliteration and homophones. They are commonly employed to help warm up singers and actors
AbiWord
Insects, are a class in the phylum Arthropoda. They are small terrestrial invertebrates which have a hard exoskeleton.
Insects are the largest group of animals on earth by far: about 926,400 different species have been described. They are more than half of all known living species. They may be over 90% of animal species on Earth.
New species of insects are continually being found. Estimates of the total number of species range from 2 million to 30 million.
All adult insects have six legs; and most have wings. Insects were the first animals capable of flight.
As they develop from eggs, insects undergo metamorphosis. Insects live all over the planet: almost all are terrestrial (live on land). Few insects live in the oceans or in very cold places, such as Antarctica. The most species live in tropical areas.
Some people call all insects "bugs", but this is not correct. Only some insects are true bugs, which is a particular order of insects. People who study insects are called entomologists.
Insects have exoskeletons (skeletons on the outside). Their skeletons are made out of thin, hard pieces or plates, like armour, made of chitin. All together, these pieces make a hard layer around the insect’s body. The exoskeleton protects the insect.
The body of an insect has three main parts: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. On the head are an insect’s compound eyes, its two antennae (they feel and smell things), and its mouth.
On the thorax, insects have wings and legs. All insects have six legs (three pairs of jointed legs) and usually four wings (two pairs).
The abdomen is the back part of the insect. Inside the abdomen is the stomach, the heart, and the excretory system where body wastes pass out of the insect. Bees also have a stinger at the back of the abdomen.
Just like our muscles connect to our bones to make us walk and stand up, the muscles of an insect connect to the exoskeleton to make it walk and move. Their muscles are on the "inside" of their skeleton.
Insects are cold-blooded, which means that they cannot control their body temperature. This means that insects are not good at surviving the cold, at any rate out in the open. In the winter, many insects go into something called diapause, which is the insect version of hibernation. Some insects, like cockroaches, cannot go into diapause and they will die if it gets too cold outside. This is why cockroaches love living in people's warm houses.
Insect respiration happens without lungs. There is a system of internal tubes and sacs through which gases diffuse or are actively pumped. Air is taken in through openings on the sides of the abdomen called spiracles. Oxygen gets to tissues that need it through their trachea (element 8 in diagram).
Many insect larvae live in water. Many of those have gills that can extract oxygen dissolved in water. Others must rise to the water surface to get air which may be held or trapped in special parts of their body.
Adult insects use oxygen at a high rate when they fly. They need it for the flight muscles, the most active tissue known in biology. The flight muscles use oxygen at a huge rate: 100 ccs of oxygen for every single cc of tissue per hour. With this system, the greatest diameter a muscle could have (and still consume oxygen at this rate) is about 0.5 cm. Even with special extra arrangements, insects cannot get larger than about 11 cm long. The largest insect bodies are about as big as a mouse.
Some insects also use a molecule called haemocyanin, which does the same job as haemoglobin does in vertebrates (but less efficiently). The insect circulatory system has no veins or arteries. The 'blood' is called haemolymph, and moves around in the space called the haemocoel. The organs sit in the haemocoel and are bathed in the haemolymph. The 'heart' is little more than a single tube which pulses (squeezes).
Insects start life as an egg. Usually a female (mother) insect lays eggs, but a few species have live birth (the eggs develop inside the mother). The eggs are small; but they can usually be seen with the naked eye.
Although the adults are larger, they do need a magnifying glass or a binocular microscope to see the details. A professional entomologist uses a binocular microscope to identify insects, plus a printed reference work. There are far too many insects for anyone to remember them all, and most entomologists specialise in just one or two orders.
After the eggs hatch, two kinds of development may occur. Some insects have what is called 'incomplete metamorphosis'. This means that a small insect, called a nymph comes out of the egg, and the nymph looks almost the same as the adult insect. As the nymph grows, it does not change the way it looks, but only how big it is. It goes through a number of stages, called 'instars'. Grasshoppers grow in this way.
Other insects have complete metamorphosis, which means that the small larva which comes out of the egg looks very different from the adult insect. Insects that have complete metamorphosis usually come out of the egg as a larva, which usually looks like a worm. The larva eats food and gets bigger until it turns into a pupa. Butterfly pupae (plural for pupa) are often inside cocoons. Inside the cocoon the insect changes the way it looks and often grows wings. When the cocoon opens, the adult insect comes out. Many insects have complete metamorphosis, for example beetles, butterflies and moths, and flies. The adult stage of development is called the imago.
The oldest known insect fossil is the Devonian "Rhyniognatha", from the 396 million year old Rhynie chert. It may have superficially resembled a modern-day silverfish insect. This species already possessed mandibles of a type associated with winged insects, suggesting that wings may already have evolved at this time. Thus, anatomical recrds suggest the first insects may have appeared earlier, in the Silurian period. Genomic analysis puts their origin even further back in the Ordovician period.
In 2008, researchers uncovered what they believe is the world's oldest known full-body impression of a primitive flying insect, a 300 million-year-old specimen from the Carboniferous period.
The origins of insect flight remain obscure, since the earliest winged insects currently known appear to have been capable fliers. Some extinct insects had an additional pair of winglets attaching to the first segment of the thorax, for a total of three pairs. It seems the insects were not a particularly successful group of animals before they evolved wings.
Upper Carboniferous and Lower Permian insect orders include both living groups and a number of Palaeozoic groups, now extinct. During this era, some giant dragonfly-like forms reached wingspans of making them far larger than any living insect.
This gigantism may have been due to higher atmospheric oxygen levels, which allowed increased respiratory efficiency. The lack of flying vertebrates could have been another factor. Many of the early groups became extinct during the PermianTriassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth, around 252 million years ago.
Different kinds of insects can be divided into groups called orders. There are many insect orders (about 29). The biggest insect orders are listed below:
All these groups except one (Odonata) are strongly connected with plants as a source of food.
Spiders, scorpions, and similar animals are not insects; they are arachnids. Arachnids are arthropods that have four pairs of legs. Centipedes are also arthropods, but not insects: they are in a subphylum called the Myriapoda.
This taxonomy lists some of the better known groups of insects.
Pests can be harmful to people in different ways. Some are parasites, such as lice and bed bugs. Some of these parasite insects can spread diseases, such as mosquitoes spreading malaria.
Other pest insects do not directly hurt people. Termites and some beetles eat wood and sometimes eat buildings, such as houses. However, termites also help break down the trees and branches that fall on the forest floor. Many insects eat agricultural products (plants meant for people to eat). Grasshoppers are one example of pest insects that eat plants in agriculture.
Some insects are useful to us. Bees make honey. The larvae of some moths make silk, which people use to make clothing. In some parts of the world, people actually eat insects. Eating insects for food is called entomophagy.
Many bees and flies pollinate plants. This means the insects help the plants make seeds by moving pollen from one flower to another. Some good insects eat pest insects, such as lady beetles (or ladybirds or ladybugs) eating aphids. Many insects eat dead plants and animals.
People often use poisons called insecticides to kill pest insects. Insecticides do not always work. Sometimes the pest insects become resistant to the insecticides, which means the insecticides do not hurt them anymore. Both the Colorado potato beetle and the diamondback moth are insects that are resistant to many insecticides.
Insecticides do not only kill pest insects; sometimes many helpful insects are killed too. When helpful insects are killed, such as those that eat pest insects, the pest insects may come back in larger numbers than before because they are not being eaten by helpful insects anymore.
List of operating systems
Operating systems written for a hobby.
Little operating systems that run on small devices.
Operating systems that have only appeared in fiction or as jokes.
Computer jargon
Computer jargon means words to do with computers and surrounding topics. Knowing what these words mean can help people know more about computers. Most people use these words to discuss computer ideas, but some people use these words to impress others (also known as buzzwords).
Some examples of jargon are:
One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number after 999,999 and before 1,000,001. The name is derived from Italian, where was 1,000, and 1,000,000 became a ""milione"", as 'a large thousand'.
In scientific notation, the number is written as 1×10 or just 10. Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix when dealing with SI units. For example, 1 megawatt equals 1,000,000 watts.
The word 'million' is common to both the short-scale and long-scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.
The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in 'Never in a million years' and 'You're one in a million', or as hyperbole, as in 'I've walked a million miles'.
"Il Milione" is the title of Marco Polo's narration of his travels in China. The name is supposed to come from Polo's nickname after his tales of riches and multitudes.
1000 (number)
A thousand (1000, one thousand or 1,000) is the natural number after 999 and before 1001. One thousand thousands is known as a million.
In Roman numerals, 1000 is written as M.
In economics, gross domestic product (GDP) is how much a place produces in an amount of time. GDP can be calculated by adding up its output inside the borders of that country.
To find the GDP of a country, one adds up all consumer spending (C), all investment (I), all government spending minus taxes (G), and the value of exports minus imports ("X – M"). This is shown by the equation:formula_1 This measure is often used to find out how healthy a country is; a country with a high value of GDP can be called a large economy. The United States has the largest GDP in the world. Germany has the largest in Europe, Nigeria in Africa and China in Asia.
There are different ways to calculate the GDP. Nominal GDP is the total amount of money spent on all new and final goods in an economy, real GDP (adjusting for changes in prices) tries to correct this number for inflation. For example, if the prices rise by 2% (meaning, everything costs 2% more) and the nominal GDP grows by 5%, the real GDP growth is only increased by 3%.
GDP per capita is the total income of a country, divided by the number of inhabitants. It shows how rich people, on average, are.
The GDP measure is different from gross national product (GNP) in that GNP = GDP + net income from assets in other countries (net income receipts).
When the gross domestic product is evaluated at the current market prices, it is called the nominal GDP. It includes changes in prices which makes it different from the real GDP. These changes can be due to inflation or price fluctuations. It can be measured in one of three different ways. The "income approach" uses the total of all income from businesses and individuals in a single year. The "expenditure approach" uses the market value of all goods purchased in a single year. The "production approach" is based on the total production in a single year.
Cricket is a sport which is played between two teams of eleven players each. One team, which is batting, tries to score runs , while the other team is fielding, and tries to prevent this. Runs are scored by hitting the ball, which is thrown by a player from the fielding team to a player from the batting team, across the boundary, or by the batting team's players running between two areas of the field called the batsmen's grounds as many times as possible before the fielding team successfully hits a wicket (set of sticks) in either of the grounds with the ball to get them out.
The wickets are sets of three small, wooden posts that are at each end of a rectangle of short grass called 'the pitch', which is 22 yards long. The pitch is inside a much larger oval of grass called the 'area of play'. The area of play is a 30 yard circle inside the cricket ground or stadium. When a player is out, a teammate will replace them in the field. When a team no longer has enough "not-out" players left to score, then the other team gets the chance to try to score. In shorter games of cricket, a team may also have to stop batting when the ball has been thrown to their players a certain number of times. After both teams have had enough chances to score, the team with the most runs wins.
The game started in England in the 16th century. The earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of 1598. The court in Guildford heard a coroner, John Derrick, that when he was a scholar at the "Free School at Guildford", fifty years earlier, "he and diverse of his fellows did run and play [on the common land] at cricket and other players". Later, the game spread to countries of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Today, it is a popular sport in England, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies and several other countries such as Afghanistan, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Zimbabwe.
There are two teams: The team bowling has 11 players on the field. The team batting has two players, one at each end of the pitch (also sometimes called the wicket).
The captain of the bowling team chooses a bowler from his team; the other players are called 'fielders'.
The bowler runs towards his wicket, and bowls towards the batsman at the other wicket.
The batsman is trying to defend the wicket from getting hit with the ball. He does this with a bat. When he hits the ball with his bat, he may run toward the other wicket.
There are different ways that a batsman can get out. The most common ways are:
When a batsman is out, another comes onto the field to take his place. The innings is over when ten wickets are taken (i.e. ten of the eleven batsmen are out). After this, the team which was the 'fielding' team becomes the 'batting' team. They now have to score more runs than the other team managed to score. If they score more runs before ten wickets are taken, they win. If they do not, the other team wins.
In a one-day game, each side has one innings, and innings are limited to a certain number of overs. In longer formats each side has two innings, and there is no specific limit to the number of overs in an innings.
Cricket is popular in many countries, mostly in Commonwealth countries.
The countries where cricket is most popular compete in international matches (games between countries) that last up to 5 days, which are called Test matches. Those countries are England, Australia, West Indies, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The West Indies are a group of Caribbean countries that play together as a team. Several other countries have more junior status. The test match idea was invented by teams from England and Australia in the 19th century.Ireland and Afghanistan are the new teams which can play Test cricket.
Cricket is also played in Kenya, Canada, Bermuda, Scotland, Holland and Namibia; the national teams of those countries can play one-day international matches, but do not play test matches.
A cricket field is where cricket is played. It is circular or oval-shaped grassy ground. There are no fixed dimensions for the field. Its diameter usually varies between 450 feet (137 m) to 500 feet (100 m).
Test matches are the top international matches played between countries. The main point of test cricket is to test young players. The countries permitted to play test matches are accredited by the ICC: the International Cricket Council. The ten countries are listed below, with 'West Indies','England' counting for this purpose as a country. Tests last for up to five days (This is why many also call it "5 day cricket.") and can still end in a draw match : it is the longest format of cricket.
Test Playing Nations "in order of first dates":
Called counties in England, and states in Australia and islands in the West Indies. These are three or four day matches.
In these games, the length is determined by the number of overs, and each side has one innings only. A special formula, known as the 'Duckworth–Lewis method' is applied if rain reduces the time for play. It calculates the target score for the team batting second in a limited overs match interrupted by weather or other circumstance.
ODIs are usually restricted to 50 overs batting for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 10 overs maximum. The highest team score is England 481-6 against Australia in June 19, 2018. The highest individual score is 264 off 173 balls by Rohit Sharma for India against Sri Lanka.
Twenty20 cricket has 20 overs for each side and each bowler can bowl up to 4 overs maximum unlike 10 overs in an ODI match. The highest team score is 263/5 by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) against Pune Warriors India (PWI) in the 2013 IPL season. The highest individual score is 175* off 69 balls by Chris Gayle for RCB in the same match.
In cricket there are two special kinds of average, used to measure how good a player is:
There is a separate set of averages for each type of cricket listed above.
Track and field athletics
Track and field is part of the sport of athletics. Athletics is a collection of sport events that includes running, jumping and "throwing". Track and field events take place in a sports stadium, either on the running track, or on the field inside the running track. These tracks are generally made up of synthetic rubber – rubber particles bound with latex or polyurethane. Other athletics events that are not track and field, include cross country running, road running, marathon running, and race-walking - these events take place outside a sports stadium.
Athletics is a very common sporting event over the world. Athletics is a combination of different sports, generally running, jumping and throwing events. Running events include marathons, hurdle races, long distance and short distance events. Some jumping events are high jump, long jump, triple jump and pole vault. Throwing events involve javelin throw, discus throw, hammer throw and shot put.
There are also events that combine parts of running, jumping, and throwing. One of these is the "decathlon", which includes two short-distance races, a mile run, a hurdles race, javelin, discus, shot-put, high jump and pole vault.
All participants are timed or have a distance measured and this is their end result. Participants train hard for an event and always aim to better their results.
Athletics is a sport that people take part in all over the world. It is a sport that is most common between young children up to younger adults. Athletics can be played for enjoyment, but it can also be a competitive sport. Athletics is also an event in the Olympic games.
Badminton is a sport for two or four( "singles" or "doubles") people. The game is either one player against one player or a team of two players against another team of two players. Players use rackets to hit a shuttlecock over a net but if it goes too far it will be an out.
The aim of the game is to hit the shuttlecock over the net in a way that the other player or pair cannot hit it back properly before it hits the floor. Every time this is done, the player or pair gets one point. They also get to serve. The first player or pair to reach 21 points wins a game.
The winner of the match is the first to win 2 sets.
Badminton traces its history to a game called George Cajoles, which was played in Pune, India in the 19th century by the British military officers stationed there. This game was taken by retired officers back to England where it developed and quickly grew in popularity.
In 1877, the first set of written rules were arranged by the newly formed Bath Badminton Club. The All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, was held in 1899.
Badminton has been an Olympic sport since 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Although badminton originated in England, it is mainly played in countries of Asia such as China, Nepal, Indonesia and the Republic of Korea that now dominates this sport.
The first Indian to win the All England Badminton Championship was Prakash Padukone in the year 1980
Chemical warfare means using chemical compounds in war to injure or kill people. The chemicals used for chemical warfare are poisonous.
Chemical warfare has been used since the Stone Age. Since 1899, several international laws have said that using chemical weapons is illegal. But chemical weapons have still been used in wars since then.
Chemical weapons are different than regular weapons (like bombs) or nuclear weapons because they do not explode. Some chemical weapons are meant to kill people; they do this by poisoning them. Other chemical weapons are meant to "incapacitate" people (make them unable to fight back). They do this by causing pain, injuries, or sickness.
Chemical warfare does not include using living organisms (like anthrax bacteria) to make people sick. That is called biological warfare.
However, some living organisms make toxins (poisons). These toxins are not alive. For example, botulinum toxin is made by a bacteria, and ricin is made by the castor oil plant. Because botulinum toxin and ricin are not alive, using them to make people sick is called chemical warfare. This is explained in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The Convention also says that any toxic chemical is a chemical weapon unless it is used for legal reasons.
About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled (saved up) as chemical warfare agents during the 20th century. The Chemical Weapons Convention says that all of these chemicals should be destroyed.
The Chemical Weapons Convention lists three different groups of chemicals. These are chemicals that are poisonous enough to be used as chemical weapons, or chemicals that may be used to make chemical weapons.
Although very basic chemical warfare has been used in many parts of the world for thousands of years, "modern" chemical warfare began during World War I (see the page Chemical weapons in World War I).
Since modern chemical warfare started in World War I, countries have tried to research and make chemical weapons. They have had four main goals:
Chemical warfare was first used during the Stone Age. Stone Age people used poisoned arrows and spear-tips. These were dipped in poisons, like venom from snakes or scorpions. Sometimes they used poisonous plants.
The Ancient Chinese used different forms of poisonous smokes, when they besieged a city to try to take it over.
The Ancient Greeks used a form of burning wood, pitch from plants, and sulphur.
"Main article: Chemical weapons in World War I"
Poison gas was first used in World War I. France was the first country to make this type of gas. However, Germany was the first to use it in battle, on March 15th, 1915. On that day, they used tear gas against France.
The three types of gas used in World War One were:
At first, very basic ways of spreading these gases were used. Even so, many soldiers could be hurt or killed. This was partly because World War I was fought usingtrench warfare, so many soldiers would be in the same place at the same time, and escaping from poisonous gases would be very hard.
Germany was the first country in World War I to use chemical warfare in battle. They simply opened containers of chlorine upwind of enemy soldiers, so that the wind would carry the chlorine gas to their enemies.
Soon after this, the French started using chemical weapons too. They filled artillery projectiles with phosgene and fired them at the Germans. This was a much more effective way of using chemical weapons. It would become the most common way of delivering chemical weapons during World War I.
Chemical weapons were not used very much in World War II, except by the Japanese army during the invasion of China. This was because everybody was afraid that the other side would use weapons like theirs. Also, chemical weapons were not easy to use. They took time to use, and this made it harder for soldiers to move quickly. Also, the raw materials needed to make chemical weapons were not easy to get. This was because World War II was fought in areas which were not connected well by railroads.
During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq used chemical weapons (Iran did not). Many people believe that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurdish people.
The United States has used chemical weapons even after World War II. For example, the U.S. used Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
It has been reported that many other countries, like the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, and Serbia and Montenegro, have chemical weapons.
According to international law, it is wrong to use chemical weapons. Since 1899, there have been many rules that make it illegal to make, import, and use chemical weapons.
The first international law to make chemical warfare illegal was the Hague Convention in 1899.
After World War I, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 made it illegal to use chemical or biological weapons on people.
In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was created. As of the end of 2015, 192 countries had agreed to follow the CWC. According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as of October 2015, 90% of the world's chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed.
The main types of agents used in chemical warfare are:
If we use chemicals (like Agent Orange or glyphosate) to destroy plants, sometimes human beings may be affected by side effects. But, we will not call it chemical warfare. Chemical warfare covers only direct attacks on human life.
Iran officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (), historically known as Persia, is a country in Western Asia. It is part of the Middle East region. It shares borders with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.
Tehran is the capital and biggest city. Iran is the eighteenth largest country in the world. It has more than 84.9 million people. Iran has been a member of the United Nations since 1945. It is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It is an Islamic republic.
In Iran, Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Mazandaranis, Gilaks, Lurs and Bakhtiaris make up the nations minority ethnic groups.
In the past, Iran was called "Persia" by people outside of the country. The people that lived there called the country "Iran". The official name was Persia, a region in Iran. The name Persia was used when dealing with other countries and in government papers.
In 1935, Reza Shāh Pahlavi was Shah of Iran. He officially asked foreigners to call the country "Iran". This was done to show that Iran belongs to all the non-Persian Iranians as well as to Persian Iranians. The name Iran means "land of the Aryans". It is used in the ancient book of the Zoroastrians, the Avesta. In the 19th and early 20th century, the name "Aryan" was used by Europeans to mean "all Indo-Europeans". The "Aryan Race" was a term that Hitler used to describe his "Superior" or "perfect" race, but it first meant Iranians. "Aryan" means "noble" in Iranian languages.
Around 500 BC, the area that is now Iran was the center of the Achaemenid Empire. The Greek city states fought against the Persian armies led by Darius the Great and Xerxes. Then Alexander the Great took the country by fighting the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. He ruled until he died,then the Greek Seleucids ruled until they were defeated by the Parthian Empire which later fought the Roman Empire.
After the Parthians, the Sassanian dynasty (224-651) took over. Other people took Persia by fi\ghting, like the Arabs (7th century), Turks (10th century) and Mongols (13th century). However, Iran has always had a different culture and continued to survive.
After the Arab Muslims conquered the Iranians, Persian women were enslaved as domestic servants while Persian men were forced to build and farm and engage hard labour. The Arab Abbasid Harun caliph had Persian concubines like Marajil al-Badghisiyya whom the later Abbasid caliph Al-Ma'mun descended from in the maternal line.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in Iran to create 1953 riots which led to the removal of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. The United States and Great Britain then made the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi the most powerful person in Iran, again. The Shah left Iran in 1979 in the face of a revolt. The Iranian government was changed to an Islamic Republic by Islamic Revolution. Soon afterwards, the Iranian Students Movement (Tahkim Vahdat), with the backing of the new government, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. They held most of the diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Relations between the two countries have not been good since. For example, the United States claims that Iran supports terrorist groups against Israel. Iran does not see Israel as a country. Iran, along with most Arab countries, believes that Israel does not have the right to exist. However, Iran has collaborated with the West at times. These deals have been about energy or about fighting terrorism.
Iran fought the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s. Many foreign countries supported Iraq.
Now, the West is trying to prevent Iran from using nuclear technology, even though Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported many times that there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. However, it also says that it can not say for sure that Iran is not doing so in secret.
A December 2007 CIA report on nuclear activity in Iran said that Iran's secret program to get nuclear weapons technology was stopped in 2003. It said that Iran will probably not be able to build a nuclear weapon soon.
Iran has the natural resource of oil. It is a member of OPEC. Oil is one of its main exports. Rice, handicrafts, carpets and crocus are important local products. Iran is the world's largest exporter and producer of caviar. Iran is also one of the world's biggest exporters of pistachio nuts.
Iran has factories that produce industrial products. Iran is also involved in the field of biomedical sciences.
Rial is the money used in Iran.
About 90% of Iranian people are Muslim. The state religion is Shia Islam. It has been the state religion since the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. This is the religion of about 75% of Iranians. They belong to the Twelver branch. About 9% of Iranians Muslim belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. The 9% of Iranians who are not Muslim are Bahá'ís, Mandeans, Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews. It is thought that there are between 300,000 and 350,000 Persian (Iranian) Jews.
The Buddha is a title used to refer to a man named "Siddharth Gautama". It means Fully Awakened One. He was born in a region of what is now known as the country Nepal as Prince Siddhartha Gautam in a Nepali Shakya Kingdom in Lumbini, Nepal and was the person who created the religion of Buddhism. He lived from about 563 BC to about 483 BC.
He is also called Shakyamuni Buddha because he was a
member of the Śākyan clan, the ruling class of an aristocratic republic in Lumbini in Nepal in that region.
About 2600 years ago, a clan called the "Shakyas" in Lumbini, Nepal ruled the city of Kapilavastu.
Siddhartha Gautama was born just outside the city in Lumbini, Nepal as Prince Siddhartha Gautam in a Nepali Shakya clan. His father was a ruler named Shuddhodana, and his mother was named Maya. Maya died when Siddhartha was about 7 days old. His father controlled him in a very peaceful and nice way. There were home tutors for him as he was not interested in the outward things that took place at that time. Siddhartha lived in luxury; his father kept trouble and hard work far from him. A seer predicted that if Siddhartha stayed inside his palace his whole life, then he would become a great king. However, if he left the palace, then he would become a great religious leader. The king did not want his son to become a religious leader. He kept Siddhartha in the palace for his entire childhood.
When Siddhartha turned 16 years old, his father found a woman for him to marry. He married a woman named Yashodhara, and they had a son named Rahula. Although Siddhartha had everything he could want, he was still not happy. He wanted to learn about life outside his palace.
Legend says that he got out of the castle against his father's orders. He saw the ""Four Great Sights"": an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man with no home.
Siddhartha left his family, his land and everything else in Nepal at the age of 29. He left everything to travel to neighbouring country India to be a mendicant (a wandering ascetic); eventually he became a religious leader for the people.
Many holy men at this time were "ascetics". They hurt their bodies for religious reasons. They abstain from certain pleasures so they can get rid of desire. One group of ascetics were called the Jains. They practiced self-denial and made themselves suffer very much. They believed this would free the ātman (soul) from pain and sadness. There were many types of ascetic mendicants (wanderers) throughout the region which would become known as India.
Siddhartha tried these ascetic practices and meditation techniques, and eventually became better than his teachers. He still found no answer, so he left his teachers and friends to discover another way. He decided to eat only six grains of rice a day. He tried holding his breath. His body became very thin, like skin and bones, and he nearly died. Still, he had no answer.
Siddhartha began to think again about this path. He recalled sitting under a roseapple tree as a boy, and reaching a profound happy peaceful state. He thought this memory might point to a better way than hurting himself. He accepted a meal of milk-rice so he would have strength to make focussed effort. He found a fig tree (now called the "Bodhi tree") and decided to meditate beneath it. He promised himself that he would not leave this spot until he had found "enlightenment". He meditated under the tree (some say for 49 days). His mind is said to have become pure, and then--after a total of six years practicing--he became enlightened. He was now the Buddha the Fully Awakened
When the Buddha became "enlightened", he found the answer to "suffering", and he knew how to defeat "suffering". This answer was called the Four Noble Truths. He was not sure if he should teach his new ideas or not. He asked himself if the world was ready for such a deep teaching. But in the end, he decided to travel to a town called Sarnath to teach the people his new way. He taught about the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The people listened to him.
When he taught, he did not pretend to be a god. He said he was just a man who had found the meaning of life (enlightenment), and that any person can also find the meaning of life. For the rest of his life, he walked all over Southern Nepal and parts of India to teach people what he believed. He started a "Sangha", which is a group of Buddhist monks and nuns. Many people became enlightened because of him. At the age of 80, after 45 years teaching the Four Noble Truths, Gautama Buddha died.
The teachings of the Buddha are known as "Buddhism". Buddhism is mostly about ending the feeling of pain that all people feel inside. Gautama Buddha taught that old age, sickness, death and suffering is a part of everyone's life. He taught that pain is caused by craving. And he showed that there is a way to end craving and end suffering by doing good things, not doing bad things, and training one's mind. When a person is able to perfect these qualities, they will gain "enlightenment".
Buddhism teaches non-harm and balance – not going too far one way or the other. The Buddha taught people to meditate while sitting in the lotus position or when standing, sitting, walking, or lying down. The Buddha urged his followers to remember the Teachings, and ask questions. Some Buddhists chant (which was a way to remember and preserve the Teachings). Buddhists sometimes do these things to understand the human heart and mind. Sometimes they do these things to understand the way the world works. Sometimes they do these things to find peace.
The Buddha taught that people should not look to gods to save them or bring them enlightenment. The gods may have power over world events and they might help people, or they might not. But Buddha believed that it is up to each person to become enlightened.
Buddha's life storyNorth
List of Portuguese football teams
These are some Portuguese football teams.
Epiphany (software)
Epiphany is a Web browser for GNOME. It is also available for Mac OS X and was made from Galeon.
It uses the Gecko layout engine from the Mozilla project to show web pages; however, the Epiphany developers have a new but less stable version of Epiphany 2.21.4 using the WebKit engine instead of Gecko. The Epiphany team wants to stop using Gecko and only use the WebKit engine, by the time they release Epiphany 2.24 or 2.26. Epiphany has tabbed browsing, cookie management, popup blocking and an extensions system. Epiphany can be extended with the Epiphany-extensions package in GNU/Linux Operating Systems.
Epiphany was made from Galeon by Marco Pesenti Gritti (also the creator of Galeon) with the aim of making a web browser with a very simple user experience. Because of that, Epiphany does not have its own themes, instead, it uses GNOME’s settings that are set in the GNOME Control Center.
Video game console
A video game console is a machine that is used to play video games. Video game consoles usually connect to a television.
Special controllers are attached to the console to control the game. Some video game consoles are handheld. They can be carried around and have their own screens. The Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable are examples of handheld consoles. Some video game consoles can also run general software, such as Linux.
The PlayStation (often known as the PS1 or the PSX) is a video game console made by Sony released in December 1994. At the time, it was competing against the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. PlayStation games were stored on CDs. The controllers that were first released with the console had no analog joysticks on them, but analog joysticks and a vibration feature were added to later controllers. A slimmer version of the console called the PSOne was released in 2000. It was white instead of grey. It was succeeded by the PlayStation 2 in March 2000 and was discontinued on March 23, 2006 (eight months before the PlayStation 3 was released).
The PlayStation and the PSOne have sold over 120 million consoles.
The PocketStation was a very small games console released as a peripheral (an extra accessory) for the PlayStation. It had a clock, an LCD display and four buttons. It could be used as a memory card. It wasn't released in the United States, because it did not sell well.
An election is a way people can choose their candidate or their preferences in a representative democracy or other form of government.
Most democratic countries hold new elections for their national legislature every few years. What elections do is select representatives for the local areas. These are called MPs (Members of Parliament) in the British parliamentary system. Parliamentary systems may have a head of government and a head of state, but sometimes the two posts are held by the same person.
The legislature chooses the government, usually by majority vote in the legislature. Some democracies elect a president, who then selects the government. Many democratic countries also have regional, provincial or state elections.
There are different ways to organize an election in different countries. Voters might vote for an individual, or they might vote for a political party (party list). This is because different countries use different voting systems.
Countries that are not democracies can also hold elections. This is usually done to let the people choose a local representative (like a mayor). Also many countries call themselves democracies, but behind the scenes have a more autocratic form of government.
Elections keep a democratic country functioning, as they give people the right to select their own government. However, there are ways a government can "fix" elections. Opposition candidates are permitted in former USSR countries, but they are usually prevented from using broadcasting or the newspapers. This means that, in effect, the ruling president is never challenged. Elections which are fixed are sometimes called sham elections or show elections.
Psephology is the study of elections.
Medicine is the science that deals with diseases (illnesses) in humans and animals, the best ways to prevent diseases, and the best ways to return to a healthy condition.
People who practice "medicine" are most often called medical doctors or physicians. Often doctors work closely with nurses and many other types of health care professionals.
Many doctors specialize in one kind of medical work. For example, pediatrics is the medical specialty about the health of children.
In this specialty, the doctor is trained to provide anaesthesia and sedation. This is important for surgeries and certain medical procedures. Anaesthesiologists also provide pre-operative assessments, ensuring the patient is safe during the operation and successfully awakens from anaesthesia after the operation. They assess for medical conditions and suitability for anaesthesia. They screen for risk factors prior to surgery and try to optimize the operative environment for the patient and the surgeon. They are the doctors who give epidurals during labor and delivery, provide spinal blocks, local nerve blocks, and general anaesthesia for procedures. They are the doctors who are especially trained in intubation (putting a tube into the lungs to help a person artificially breathe when the person is paralyzed and asleep during surgery). Hence, due to their skill in intubation, they are often the first line responders for emergencies. They help people who are in distress with their breathing, who have lost their airway or when their airway has become obstructed.
A cardiologist is a doctor with special training on the heart. The doctor in this field ensures the heart is healthy and functions properly. The heart is a vital organ whose role is to pump blood to the rest of the body. The purpose of blood is to deliver oxygen to the tissues. Without the heart functioning well, our tissues and organs would die and not function properly. Cardiologists treat heart attacks, sudden cardiac arrests, arrhythmias (rhythm issues related to a faulty electrical system of the heart), heart failure (where the heart fails to pump blood forward properly) and many other heart related illnesses. They specialize in life saving procedures like cardiac stents and cardiac ablation. There is a subspecialty within cardiology called "Interventional cardiology." These are cardiologists who specialize in interventions or procedures to save the function of the heart, such as cardiac stenting or angiography.