AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
In sumo, a wrestler ("rikishi") attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring (dohyō) 4.55 metres in diameter. Also, the "rikishi" try to use their skill to force an opponent to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of his feet.
Sumo tournaments ("basho") take place in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. There are a total of 6 major professional tournaments (known as "honbasho") per year, in January, March, May, July, September and November.
A tournament normally lasts for 15 days and features matches from different divisions. The top 5 ranks are known as the "Top division", also called the "Makuuchi" (幕内) or "Makunouchi" (幕の内). It is fixed in size and always contains 42 "rikishi".
The ranks included in the top division are yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake, komusubi and maegashira.
Sumo wrestlers ("rikishi") are ranked into a hierarchy based on win-loss statistics in competitive tournaments.
Those who have earned the highest rank are grand champions ("yokuzuna").
For a full list of those rikishi who have held the title of "Yokozuna", see List of yokozuna.
Sumo has changed in modern times. Foreign-born wrestlers are part of the sport. For example, Konishiki and Akebono are Hawaiian-born athletes who earned places for themselves.
In 2008, Kotooshu from Bulgaria won a championship. In that same year, two top wrestlers, Asashoryu and Hakuho, were Mongolian. Hakuho won the Nagoya tournament with no losses, 15-0.
List of German districts
Germany is divided into 402 administrative districts. These consist of 295 rural districts ("Landkreise"), listed fully here, and 107 urban districts ("Kreisfreie Städte" / "Stadtkreise") - cities which constitute a district in their own right.
Bremen (state)
Bremen is the smallest state in Germany. It is a city-state with an area of . Bremen has a population of 664,000 people.
The official name is "Freie Hansestadt Bremen". This is because Bremen used to be in the "Hanseatic League" which was a group of cities which did a lot of trading. Many goods were sent from the port of Bremen or bought from the port from other countries. "Free" means it was independent of the local dukes and princes.
There are two cities that make up Bremen. These cities are Bremen and Bremerhaven. The local football club is named Werder Bremen.
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt (, (; Low German: ) is a Bundesland (state) in Germany. It has an area of . 2,580,626 people live there. The capital is Magdeburg.
Some big cities and towns in Saxony-Anhalt are:
Erfurt is the capital city of the German state of Thuringia. It has an area of . In December 2015 it had a population of 210,000 people. The River Gera runs through the city.
People have lived in the area for about 100,000 years. The city was first mentioned in writing in 742, in a letter to the Pope from St Boniface. St Boniface established Christianity in the area. He set up a church in Erfurt in 742. Erfurt Cathedral was later built on the same site.
The city is in the centre of Germany. It was on the Via Regia, a medieval trade road network that stretched across Europe. It became an important trading centre in the Middle Ages. Erfurt was a member of the Hanseatic League, an alliance of trade associations and market towns. It was also famous for producing woad. Blue indigo dye is made from the woad plant.
Erfurt is on the Way of St. James pilgrams' path (Spanish: "Camino de Santigo"; German: "Jakobsweg"). In the Middle Ages a number of monasteries were set up in the city. Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation, lived at St. Augustine's Monastery from 1505 until 1511. A famous philosopher and theologian called Meister Eckhart lived at the Dominican Monastery from about 1275 until 1311.
The city was part of the Holy Roman Empire. It became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1802. From 1949 until 1990 Erfurt was in the communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Modern day Erfurt is a transport hub for high speed trains and other German and European transport networks. This makes logistics one of its main industries. Other important industries are agriculture, horticulture and microelectronics.
The German Federal Labour Court (German:"Bundesarbeitsgericht") is in Erfurt.
The University of Erfurt was first set up in 1379. It closed in 1816, but was reopened in 1994. Martin Luther studied there from 1501 to 1505. It is also thought that Johannes Gutenberg, who developed the printing press, enrolled there in 1418. Erfurt also has a "Fachhochschule", a University of Applied Sciences.
Many visitors come to see the historic medieval town centre. One of the main tourist attractions is the Krämerbrücke (the Merchants' Bridge). The bridge was built in its current form in 1472. It has buildings with shops and houses on it. People still live on it.
The city is well known for its festivals throughout the year. Two million people visit the Christmas markets each year.
Other important sites in the city include:
Magdeburg (; ) is the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany. The city covers an area of . About 236,000 people live there (2016).
A demonstration of air pressure (called the Magdeburg spheres) was done here by Otto von Guericke in 1656. Also, the 18th century composer Georg Philipp Telemann was born here.
The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (in Latin, "vulgar" is the word for "common" and so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.
They are called "Romance languages" because they originate from Latin, the language spoken by the Western Roman Empire. Their grammatical inflection system has been simplified and lost most of the complex case structure of classical Latin.
The area that the Romance languages are spoken in Europe is mostly extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire. Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language. In Moldova it is sometimes called Moldovan.
The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total, there are almost a billion first and second language speakers.
Spanish is the most widely used Romance language, with Portuguese as the second and then French coming in at third.
Spanish is spoken mainly in Spain and Latin America. Portuguese is mostly used/spoken in Brazil, Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and in some areas of Africa. Romanian is spoken in Romania and Moldova.
Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the study of how a star changes over time. Stars can change very much between when they are first created and when they run out of energy. Because stars can produce light and heat for millions or billions of years, scientists study stellar evolution by studying many different stars in different stages of their life.
The stages in a star's life are: nebula, main-sequence star, red giant and either white dwarf followed by black dwarf, neutron star or black hole.
A star starts its life as a cloud of dust and gas called a nebula. This is pulled together by gravity which causes it to heat up. It also starts to spin and to look like a ball. When it gets hot enough, it starts to release energy through nuclear fusion, changing hydrogen to helium. This makes it shine very brightly and become what astronomers think of as a main-sequence star. It may stay a main-sequence star, looking about the same, for billions of years.
Sooner or later, almost all of the hydrogen at the center has changed to helium. This causes the nuclear reaction in the middle of the star to stop and the center will start to get smaller due to the star's gravity. The layer of the star just outside the center will begin to change hydrogen to helium, releasing energy.
The outer layers of the star will get much, much bigger. The star will make much more light, sometimes as much as ten thousand times as much as it did at first. Since the surface of the star will get bigger, this energy will be spread out over a much larger area. Because of this, the temperature of the surface will go down and the color will change to red or orange. It will become a red giant. It can swallow up any planets that orbit around it.
Later, the red giant that was left over from a star like ours stops burning. A cloud of gas is given off and a smaller star called a white dwarf is left behind. After a really long time, the white dwarf cools down into a black dwarf.
But, when a big red giant explodes, the explosion is a lot larger and is called a supernova. Instead of a white dwarf, it leaves behind a much smaller, much denser ball called a neutron star. A neutron star is created because the force of gravity is so strong that the atoms left behind would not have any electrons orbiting the nucleus of the atoms. A teaspoon of that matter might weigh as much as the entire Earth.
A much bigger red giant leaves behind a black hole. A black hole is created because gravity is so strong that even the protons and neutrons collapse in on themselves. Even light can no longer escape a black hole. Since there is nothing we know of stronger than the force that holds atomic nuclei (the plural of 'nucleus') together, some physicists think that a black hole collapses all the way down to a mathematical point called a singularity.
Genetics is a discipline of biology. It is the science of heredity. This includes the study of genes, and the inheritance of variation and traits of living organisms. In the laboratory, genetics proceeds by mating carefully selected organisms, and analysing their offspring. More informally, genetics is the study of how parents pass some of their characteristics to their children. It is an important part of biology, and gives the basic rules on which evolution acts.
The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been known since prehistoric times, and used to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics seeks to understand the process of inheritance. This began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century. Although he did not know the physical basis for heredity, Mendel observed that organisms inherit traits via discrete units of inheritance, which are now called genes.
Living things are made of millions of tiny self-contained components called cells. Inside of each cell are long and complex molecules called deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA stores information that tells the cells how to create that living thing. Parts of this information that tell how to make one small part or characteristic of the living thing – red hair, or blue eyes, or a tendency to be tall – are known as genes.
Every cell in the same living thing has the same DNA, but only some of it is used in each cell. For instance, some genes that tell how to make parts of the liver are switched off in the brain. What genes are used can also change over time. For instance, a lot of genes are used by a child early in pregnancy that are not used later.
A person has two copies of each gene, one from their mother, and one from their father. There can be several types of a single gene, which give different instructions: one version might cause a person to have blue eyes, another might cause them to have brown. These different versions are known as "alleles" of the gene.
Since a living thing has two copies of each gene, it can have two different alleles of it at the same time. Often, one allele will be "dominant", meaning that the living thing looks and acts as if it had only that one allele. The unexpressed allele is called "recessive". In other cases, you end up with something in between the two possibilities. In that case, the two alleles are called "co-dominant".
Most of the characteristics that you can see in a living thing have multiple genes that influence them. And many genes have multiple effects on the body, because their function will not have the same effect in each tissue. The multiple effects of a single gene is called "pleiotropism". The whole set of genes is called the "genotype", and the total effect of genes on the body is called the "phenotype". These are key terms in genetics.
We know that man started breeding domestic animals from early times, probably before the invention of agriculture. We do not know when heredity was first appreciated as a scientific problem. The Greeks, and most obviously Aristotle, studied living things, and proposed ideas about reproduction and heredity.
Probably the most important idea before Mendel was that of Charles Darwin, whose idea of "pangenesis" had two parts. The first, that persistent hereditary units were passed on from one generation to another, was quite right. The second was his idea that they were replenished by 'gemmules' from the somatic (body) tissues. This was entirely wrong, and plays no part in science today. Darwin was right about one thing: whatever happens in evolution must happen by means of heredity, and so an accurate science of genetics is fundamental to the theory of evolution. This 'mating' between genetics and evolution took many years to organise. It resulted in the modern evolutionary synthesis.
The basic rules of genetics were first discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in around 1865. For thousands of years, people had already studied how traits are inherited from parents to their children. However, Mendel's work was different because he designed his experiments very carefully.
In his experiments, Mendel studied how traits were passed on in pea plants. He started his crosses with plants that bred true, and counted characters that were either/or in nature (either "tall" or "short"). He bred large numbers of plants, and expressed his results numerically. He used test crosses to reveal the presence and proportion of recessive characters.
Mendel explained the results of his experiment using two scientific laws:
Mendel's laws helped explain the results he observed in his pea plants. Later, geneticists discovered that his laws were also true for other living things, even humans. Mendel's findings from his work on the garden pea plants helped to establish the field of genetics. His contributions were not limited to the basic rules that he discovered. Mendel's care towards controlling experiment conditions along with his attention to his numerical results set a standard for future experiments. Over the years, scientists have changed and improved Mendel's ideas. However, the science of genetics would not be possible today without the early work of Gregor Mendel.
In the years between Mendel's work and 1900 the foundations of cytology, the study of cells, was developed. The facts discovered about the nucleus and cell division were essential for Mendel's work to be properly understood.
At this point, discoveries in cytology merged with the rediscovered ideas of Mendel to make a fusion called cytogenetics, (cyto = cell; genetics = heredity) which has continued to the present day.
During the 1890s several biologists began doing experiments on breeding. and soon Mendel's results were duplicated, even before his papers were read. Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries were the main rediscoverers of Mendel's writings and laws. Both acknowledged Mendel's priority, although it is probable that de Vries did not understand his own results until after reading Mendel. Though Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted because he did not understand Mendel's laws. Though de Vries later lost interest in Mendelism, other biologists built genetics into a science.
Mendel's results were replicated, and genetic linkage soon worked out. William Bateson perhaps did the most in the early days to publicise Mendel's theory. The word "genetics", and other terminology, originated with Bateson.
Mendel's experimental results have later been the object of some debate. Fisher analyzed the results of the F2 (second filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1. It is sometimes suggested that Mendel may have censored his results, and that his seven traits each occur on a separate chromosome pair, an extremely unlikely occurrence if they were chosen at random. In fact, the genes Mendel studied occurred in only four linkage groups, and only one gene pair (out of 21 possible) is close enough to show deviation from independent assortment; this is not a pair that Mendel studied.
During the process of DNA replication, errors sometimes occur. These errors, called mutations, can have an effect on the phenotype of an organism. In turn, that usually has an effect on the organism's fitness, its ability to live and reproduce successfully.
Error rates are usually very low—1 error in every 10–100 million bases—due to the "proofreading" ability of DNA polymerases. Error rates are a thousandfold higher in many viruses. Because they rely on DNA and RNA polymerases which lack proofreading ability, they get higher mutation rates.
Processes that increase the rate of changes in DNA are called mutagenic. Mutagenic chemicals increase errors in DNA replication, often by interfering with the structure of base-pairing, while UV radiation induces mutations by causing damage to the DNA structure. Chemical damage to DNA occurs naturally as well, and cells use DNA repair mechanisms to repair mismatches and breaks in DNA—nevertheless, the repair sometimes fails to return the DNA to its original sequence.
In organisms which use chromosomal crossovers to exchange DNA and recombine genes, errors in alignment during meiosis can also cause mutations. Errors in crossover are especially likely when similar sequences cause partner chromosomes to adopt a mistaken alignment; this makes some regions in genomes more prone to mutating in this way. These errors create large structural changes in DNA sequence—duplications, inversions or deletions of entire regions, or the accidental exchanging of whole parts between different chromosomes (called translocation).
Developed by Reginald Punnett, Punnett squares are used by biologists to determine the probability of offspring having a particular genotype.
If B represents the allele for having black hair and b represents the allele for having white hair, the offspring of two Bb parents would have a 25% probability of having two white hair alleles (bb), 50% of having one of each (Bb), and 25% of having only black hair alleles (BB).
Geneticists (biologists who study genetics) use pedigree charts to record traits of people in a family. Using these charts, geneticists can study how a trait is inherited from person to person.
Geneticists can also use pedigree charts to predict how traits will be passed to future children in a family. For instance, genetic counselors are professionals who work with families who might be affected by genetic diseases. As part of their job, they create pedigree charts for the family, which can be used to study how the disease might be inherited.
Since human beings are not bred experimentally, human genetics must be studied by other means. One recent way is by studying the human genome. Another way, older by many years, is to study twins.
Identical twins are natural clones. They carry the same genes, they may be used to investigate how much heredity contributes to individual people. Studies with twins have been quite interesting. If we make a list of characteristic traits, we find that they vary in how much they owe to heredity. For example:
The way the studies are done is like this. Take a group of identical twins and a group of fraternal twins. Measure them for various traits. Do a statistical analysis (such as analysis of variance). This tells you to what extent the trait is inherited. Those traits which are partly inherited will be significantly more similar in identical twins. Studies like this may be carried further, by comparing identical twins brought up together with identical twins brought up in different circumstances. That gives a handle on how much circumstances can alter the outcomes of genetically identical people.
The person who first did twin studies was Francis Galton, Darwin's half-cousin, who was a founder of statistics. His method was to trace twins through their life-history, making many kinds of measurement. Unfortunately, though he knew about mono and dizygotic twins, he did not appreciate the real genetic difference. Twin studies of the modern kind did not appear until the 1920s.
The genetics of bacteria, archaea and viruses is a major field of research. Bacteria mostly divide by asexual cell division, but do have a kind of sex by horizontal gene transfer. Bacterial conjugation, transduction and transformation are their methods. In addition, the complete DNA sequence of many bacteria, archaea and viruses is now known.
Although many bacteria were given generic and specific names, like "Staphylococcus aureus", the whole idea of a species is rather meaningless for an organism which does not have sexes and crossing-over of chromosomes. Instead, these organisms have strains, and that is how they are identified in the laboratory.
Gene expression is the process by which the heritable information in a gene, the sequence of DNA base pairs, is made into a functional gene product, such as protein or RNA. The basic idea is that DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins. Proteins make many of the structures and all the enzymes in a cell or organism.
Several steps in the gene expression process may be modulated (tuned). This includes both the transcription and translation stages, and the final folded state of a protein. Gene regulation switches genes on and off, and so controls cell differentiation, and morphogenesis. Gene regulation may also serve as a basis for evolutionary change: control of the timing, location, and amount of gene expression can have a profound effect on the development of the organism. The expression of a gene may vary a lot in different tissues. This is called pleiotropism, a widespread phenomenon in genetics.
Alternative splicing is a modern discovery of great importance. It is a process where "from a single gene a large number of variant proteins can be assembled". One particular Drosophila gene (DSCAM) can be alternatively spliced into 38,000 different mRNA.
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity which are "not" caused by changes in the DNA sequence. It is the study of gene expression, the way genes bring about their phenotypic effects.
These changes in gene activity may stay for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for many generations of cells, through cell divisions. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism. Instead, non-hereditary factors cause the organism's genes to behave (express themselves) differently.
Hox genes are a complex of genes whose proteins bind to the regulatory regions of target genes. The target genes then activate or repress cell processes to direct the final development of the organism.
There are some kinds of heredity which happen outside the cell nucleus. Normal inheritance is from both parents via the chromosomes in the nucleus of a fertilised egg cell. There are some kinds of inheritance other than this.
Mitochondria and chloroplasts carry some DNA of their own. Their make-up is decided by genes in the chromosomes and genes in the organelle. Carl Correns discovered an example in 1908. The four o'clock plant, "Mirabilis jalapa", has leaves which may be white, green or variegated. Correns discovered the pollen had no influence on this inheritance. The colour is decided by genes in the chloroplasts.
This is caused by a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with a microorganism.
In this case nuclear genes in the female gamete are transcribed. The products accumulate in the egg cytoplasm, and have an effect on the early development of the fertilised egg. The coiling of a snail, "Limnaea peregra", is determined like this. Right-handed shells are genotypes "Dd" or "dd", while left-handed shells are "dd".
The most important example of maternal effect is in "Drosophila melanogaster". The protein product maternal-effect genes activate other genes, which in turn activate still more genes. This work won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1995.
Much modern research uses a mixture of genetics, cell biology and molecular biology. Topics which have been the subject of Nobel Prizes in either chemistry or physiology include:
Many well-known disorders of human behaviour have a genetic component. This means that their inheritance partly causes the behaviour, or makes it more likely the problem would occur. Examples include:
Also, normal behaviour is also heavily influenced by heredity:
Church Square Park
In economics, supply is the amount of something that companies are willing to provide in a market. The law of supply and demand will decide the price at which something will be bought and sold.
According to C.R. McConnell and S.L.Brue, a "supply" is a scale showing the amount of a good or service that sellers offer for sale in the market at different prices for a while
"The volume of supply" (volume of output) is the number of goods that a commodity producer (enterprise, firm) is ready to offer at a certain price for a certain period, all other things being equal.
"Amount of supply" is the amount of a product or service that is on sale at a certain price at a certain time.
It is possible to consider both an "individual supply" (the offer of a specific seller) and the total value of the supply (the offer of all sellers present on the market). In economics, it is mainly the total value of the supply for a product or service that is studied.
The "law of supply" is a direct relationship between the price and the value of the supply of goods or services during a certain period.
The increase in prices leads to additional profit, allowing the manufacturer to expand production, attracting new manufacturers to the market.
The manufacturer's main task is to solve the problem — how much product to make at a given price. There are 2 general ideas:
Various factors can make a seller more or less willing to produce and sell a good. The more common ones are:
There may be other factors that affect the supply of a good, especially since it depends on whether the seller is willing to produce and sell the good.
Demand is the total amount of goods or services which people want to buy, for a set price. The demand for an item indicates how much it is needed or wanted. This is important in economics, because the law of supply and demand will decide the price at which something will be bought and sold.
Demand is the amount of goods that people want to buy at a given price. Prices go up when supply is less, and demand is more. It follows the law of demand where as price increases, demand decreases and vice versa showing an inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price. This is known as the law of demand which assumes that the consumer will want more. Demand forecasting tries to predict how demand will change in the future.
Sometimes the demand does not change much no matter what the price is. One example is when people are addicted to illegal drugs. These people need to get their drugs, they will pay any price they can afford. This effect is known as elasticity.
A transaction is an exchange. Money, goods, and services are often exchanged. They are bought, sold or traded.
A bank transaction is when money is taken out of or put into a bank.
The (Latin for "British Encyclopaedia"), previously published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a popular encyclopaedia which right now published as an online. It is written in British English. It was originally only printed on paper, but late in the 20th century it expanded to have digital, or computer versions as well. Since 2010, it is out of print in paper versions. The encyclopaedia is split into many books. The articles in the books are arranged in alphabetical order. There have been versions of it that are for children as well. It is the largest printed encyclopaedia in English, and the second largest encyclopaedia. The largest is Wikipedia. Many people consider it to be the best encyclopaedia, because they think it is accurate and has lots of detail.
The encyclopaedia was once very small, the first edition in 1768 only had 3 books. Slowly it became bigger. The last edition, the 15th, started in 1974, has 29 books, plus two indexes. It includes an extra book called Propædia, to classify knowledge. The 29 books and made up of a Macropædia and a Micropædia. The Macropædia is a larger one, with more detailed articles that can be as long as 300 pages, made up of 17 books, while the Micropædia is the smaller one with many much shorter articles that are usually less than 750 words. The Micropædia is used for fast-checking, but for more detailed information, people have to use the Macropædia. Each book is very big, more than 1,000 pages per book. Every year, an update book was published. The last yearbook was for 2018, published in 2017.
In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions, and would focus instead on "Encyclopædia Britannica Online".
The articles in the Britannica are for educated adults, not for children, and written by about 100 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia now. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew very popular, with its third edition in 1801 comprising of 21 books.
The size of the Britannica is almost the same since the 1930s, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. The encyclopaedia was once owned by British people. In the 20th century it was American-owned, but it is still written in British English. Over time, the encyclopaedia has had difficulties trying to earn money, which almost every encyclopaedia is facing.
Many different people have owned the Britannica. They include Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is owned by Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor. Information technology has become better and more electronic encyclopaedias such as "Microsoft Encarta" and Wikipedia have made people not want to buy encyclopaedias in print anymore. So that it still can survive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has kept on telling people that the "Britannica" is good and accurate, made the encyclopaedia cheaper, and made electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD and the World Wide Web. Since the early 1930s, the company has also promoted spin-off reference works.
There are 15 official editions of the encyclopaedia, with some extensions to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below). Actually, one can say that the 10th edition was only an extension to the 9th edition, and the 12th and 13th editions were extensions to the 11th edition. The 15th edition was reorganised in 1985, and the updated, current version is the 15th edition.
Through the encyclopaedia's history, the "Britannica" wanted to be an excellent reference book and to provide learning materials for those who want to study. In 1974, the 15th edition had a third wish: to put together all that everyone knows. The history of the "Britannica" can be divided into five main eras, or lengths of time.
In its first years (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the "Britannica" was controlled by the people who first wrote it, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by their friends and relations, such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable. The "Britannica" was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, a city in Scotland, called the "Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan". It was written to replace the French "Encyclopédie". Its logo, which is the floral emblem of Scotland, shows that the "Britannica" was a Scottish business. The encyclopaedia being created is one of the most famous events that happened in the time when Scotland started inventing many things, or the Age of Enlightenment. The "Britannica" started as three-book set ( in the 1st edition) written by one young editor—William Smellie— Many people said that the first edition of the encyclopaedia was very inaccurate, and had many problems in it. Slowly, the "Britannica" changed, in the first era, to a 20-book set written by many people. Although a few other encyclopaedias had been fighting with the "Britannica", such as "Rees's Cyclopaedia" and Coleridge's "Encyclopaedia Metropolitana", these encyclopedias either went bankrupt or were not finished because the people writing them argued. When the first era was almost over, the "Britannica" had many people helping to write it, all having different types of skills. The encyclopaedia managed to get so many people by inviting their friends to help.
In the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the "Britannica" was owned by the Edinburgh company, A & C Black. Although some of the people who helped write the "Britannica" helped because they were friends of the most important editors, many other people wanted to help the "Britannica" because it was becoming very successful. These people came from many other countries, and some of them were very famous for the things they wrote about. An index of all the articles was written to add to the 7th edition of the encyclopaedia, and they continued to make an index until 1974. The first English chief editor was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who led the making of the famous 9th edition, which is also called the "Scholar's Edition". The 9th edition is considered to be the "Britannica" most meant for students ever written. However, at the end of the 19th century, the 9th edition was already too old and the "Britannica" had many financial problems.
In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), the "Britannica" was owned by American people, who started to advertise a lot to earn more money. The American owners also slowly made the "Britannica's" articles simpler, so it could serve more people. The 11th edition is said by many people to be the best edition of the encyclopedia. Its owner, Horace Hooper, worked extremely hard to make the 11th edition perfect. When Hooper had financial problems, the "Britannica" was managed by Sears Roebuck for about 18 years (1920–1923, 1928–1943). In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell, owned the "Britannica".
In 1936, he started to continuously revise the encyclopaedia often (still done so today), in which every article is checked at least two times every ten years. This was a big difference from before, when the articles were not changed until they wrote a new edition, about every 25 years, with some articles used again without revising them. He also quickly made some educational products which made the encyclopedia even more well known by everyone. In 1943, William Benton managed the "Britannica" until his death in 1973. Benton also set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the "Britannica" until 1996. In 1968, near the end of this era, the "Britannica" celebrated its 200-year anniversary, and in 2014 published the last printed edition.
Since 1985, the "Britannica" has had four parts: the "Micropædia," the "Macropædia," the "Propædia," and a two-book index. The "Britannica"'s articles are found in the "Micropædia" and "Macropædia," which contain 12 and 17 books, respectively, each book having about one thousand pages. The 2007 "Macropædia" has 699 detailed articles, which can be as short as 2 pages and as long as 310 pages, and having references and named writers. The 2007 "Micropædia" has about 65,000 articles, and about 97% contain less than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors. The "Micropædia" articles are supposed to be for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more information in the "Macropædia". The "Macropædia" articles are supposed to be well-written articles on their subjects and articles of information where you cannot find anywhere else. The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States, and came from putting the articles on the individual states together.
Information can be found in the "Britannica" by following the notes telling where people can find more information in the "Micropædia" and "Macropædia"; but there are very little of this, with about only one of this every page. So, readers are asked to try to use the indexes or the "Propædia", which organises what is in the "Britannica" volumes by topic.
The use of the "Propædia" is its "Outline of Knowledge," which wants to organise all of everything people know. The Outline is thought through by the "Britannica"'s editors to decide which articles should be included in the "Micropædia" and "Macropædia". The Outline is also intended to be a study guide, and to tell a student who wants to learn a topic in depth what articles to use. However, libraries say that very few people use it, and reviewers recommend the encyclopedias to not print it anymore. The "Propædia" also has diagrams printed on transparent paper of big topics and a section which lists the people working together to make the encyclopaedia.
Altogether, the "Micropædia" and "Macropædia" have about 40 million words and 24,000 pictures. The index has 2,350 pages, which lists all the 228,274 topics written about in the "Britannica,". The "Britannica" uses the British spellings and not American spellings. For example, it uses "colour" (not "color"), "centre" (not "center"), and "encyclopaedia" (not "encyclopedia"). However, this rule is not always followed, for example "defense" and not "defence". The other spellings of the word is sometimes shown with a link, for example "Color: "see" Colour."
Since 1936, the articles of the "Britannica" have been revised often, with about 10% of the articles brought to be re-written each year. One Britannica website said in 2007 that 46% of the articles were revised in the past three years; but another Britannica web-site says only 35% of the articles were revised.
The way the articles are arranged (in alphabet order) in the "Micropædia" and "Macropædia" is very accurate. Non-English letters are ignored and articles with numbers such as "War of 1812" are arranged as if the number had been written out ("War of Eighteen-twelve"). If the articles have the same names, articles about persons go first, then by places, then by things. People with the same names are arranged first alphabetically by country and then by their time. Similarly, places that have the same names are arranged by alphabet by the country they are in.
There are a few smaller versions of the "Britannica" encyclopedias. The "Britannica Concise Encyclopædia", written in one book, has 28,000 shorter articles. "Compton's by Britannica," published in 2007, with the old "Compton's Encyclopedia," in it is written for teenagers who are 10–17 years old and has 26 books and 11,000 pages in it. A "Children's Britannica" was published by the company in 1960; this was edited by John Armitage and written for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; the writers were almost all British. Other books are "My First Britannica", written for children who are six to twelve years old, and the "Britannica Discovery Library", written for children who are three to six years old (issued in 1974 to 1991). Since 1938, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has published a "Book of the Year" every year, with information about the past year's events, which is written online since the 1994 edition (with the events of 1993). The company also publishes a few books on special topics, such as "Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard" (Wiley, 2006).
The "Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD" contains over 55 million words and over 100,000 articles. It includes 73,645 "Britannica" articles, with the other articles from the "Britannica Student Encyclopædia," the "Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia" and the "Britannica Book of the Year"s (1993–2004), plus a few old articles from old editions of the encyclopaedia. The whole DVD also includes other bonus tools including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links. It also has study tools and a dictionary and thesaurus from Merriam-Webster.
"Encyclopædia Britannica Online" is a web site with more than 120,000 articles and is updated often. It has features, updates and links to news reports from "The New York Times" and the BBC every day. People need to pay to use the website. Special discounts are given to schools, colleges and libraries since these big groups of people are important in Britannica's business. Articles can be read online for free, but only the first few sentences can be seen. Beginning in early 2007, the "Britannica" let people read the articles for free if they are linked to another website, since these links let the articles appear more often and easily in search engines.
On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. said that it was working with mobile phone search company AskMeNow to make an encyclopaedia in phones. Users can send a question by text message, and AskMeNow will search "Britannica"'s 28,000-article encyclopaedia to answer the user.
An idea to use a wiki-Britannica was announced on the June 3, 2008. A lot of people will be involved, with the Britannica staff editing important parts.
A pipeline is a long tube, that is used to transport liquids or gases over long distances. Pipelines are made of metal. While the transport of liquids and gases is common, some pipelines are used to transport coal or iron ore, which are mixed with mud. Such pipelines are sometimes called slurry pipelines. Even though a pipeline is very expensive to build, the low operating cost often makes it the cheapest transport.
Many stadiums use a central tank for beer. Each bar is served by a pipeline from the central tank.
Even though mail and other goods can also be delivered that way, the system is generally not referred to as "pipeline". In this case, capsules are used. These are propelled by air.
Pipeline networks are made of different components. These are:
An avocado is a berry. It has medium dark green or dark green bumpy or smooth skin depending on the variety.
The flesh of an avocado is deep chartreuse green in color near the skin and pale chartreuse green near the core. It has a creamy, rich texture.
The word, Avocado came from a aztec word meaning testicle.
Avocado trees come from Central America and Mexico. They can grow in many places, as long as it is not too cold.
Avocados have much more fat than most other fruit, but most is fat that is healthy to eat (monounsaturated fat). Avocados have lots of potassium, B vitamins, and vitamin E and K.
The Mexican food called guacamole is made of avocados. Many other foods are also made from avocado.
Avocado is poisonous to some animals. Many animals will get very sick or die if they eat avocado.
Ice hockey is a sport that is played by two teams on ice. The players wear ice skates on their feet and can skate across the ice at very high speeds. They hold hockey sticks, which they use to push, shoot or pass a puck around the ice. The players score by shooting the puck into a net; the goaltenders try to stop them. Six players on each team play at once, but a whole team has over 20 players. Each team has 2 defenders, 3 forwards, and a goalie on the ice at a time. When a player breaks a rule, a referee calls a penalty, and the player has to sit in a penalty box for 2-4 minutes. While the player sits in the penalty box, his team has to play without him, and will have fewer players on the ice until the penalty is over.
Ice hockey is very well-known and well-liked in Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, the United States, Latvia and Slovakia. Most of the best players in the world play in the National Hockey League (NHL), which has 31 teams in the United States and Canada. These teams are divided 2 conferences and 4 divisions. In the regular season, they play 82 games. Each team faces each other about 3 times. They try to win the Stanley Cup at the end of the year. Another popular hockey league is the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which has teams in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia, China and Croatia. In North America, women play in the Canadian Women's Hockey League and the Western Women's Hockey League. In North America and Europe, men's hockey is much more popular than women's hockey. Hockey is played by both men and women at the Olympic games, and at world championships. Ice hockey began in Canada in the 19th century. There are two types of penalty: The major and the minor. The minor is the main one the referee will call during a game and the players have to go in the penalty box for two minutes. The major is when players fight with each other or when someone did something very dangerous. Most of time players are kicked out of the games but in a fight they only get 5 minutes in the penalty box. In the National Hockey League (NHL) there are four referees. Two lineman and two head referee. Only head referees can call the penalty. They can be recognized by the orange armband on their arm. In the major league, the game is separated into three periods of 20 minutes. For the minor league, the time can be different for each category. Each period starts after the face-off. A face-off is when two teams are in position around the face-off circle. Then, the referee drops the puck between the players who play center. There are 6 different positions: center, right wing, left wing, right defense, left defense and goalie. The play is over after a whistle of any referee. After a whistle-blow, the time stops running. Each team can have a maximum of 20 players, including two goaltenders who have a zone to defend. Each team has one captain and two or three assistant captains. The ice is separated into three zones. Each zone is marked by lines. The center zone is between two blue lines and team zones are between one blue line and the end of the ice. The lineman can whistle for two reasons: icing and offside. An icing is when a player throws the puck into the zone before he crosses the red line (center line) and an offside is when a player enters the zone before the one who has the puck enters with it.
The year 1492 is considered to be an important year in the history of the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Spain, and the New World, among others.
Virtues of Harmony
Virtues of Harmony was a sitcom that ran in Hong Kong from 2001 until February 2005. "Virtues of Harmony One" was set in ancient China during the Ming Dynasty. It follows the lives of the Kam family. The allure of the series was the humorous storylines and how the good always wins. The star of the show was Nancy Sit, a kind hearted matriarch with the best intentions.
Following the success of "Virtues of Harmony One", "Virtues of Harmony Two" was set in modern Hong Kong with a similar cast.
Ashford, Kent
Ashford is a large town in Kent in England. Many villages in are nearby and Ashford attracts lots of locals for its shopping. The Ashford international railway station is connected by the Channel Tunnel to mainland Europe. Ashford is an established and populated area of Kent with lots of houses. The UK Government is going to build many more houses in the town and will double its population in a few years. About 120,000 people live there.
There's also an Ashford Designer Outlet Shopping Centre nearby.
A song is a piece of music which contains words. Songs may be made by songwriters. Other songs are folk songs, which are songs created by people long ago that have been sung as tradition.
Some people form bands which write and record songs to make money from it. When two or three singers sing the song it is called a duet or trio. Some people also make parodies of songs, which is usually changing the words of the song but keeping the tune. Parodies are usually made to make fun of a song or its writer/singer (parody artist "Weird Al" Yankovic is an example of this).
The word "song" is often used to describe any piece of music, even one without words or lyrics. The proper word for a piece of music without words is ""instrumental"".