alibayram/wikipedia-40-langs huggingface dataset:
Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss (February 26, 1829–September 26, 1902) was a German-born American maker of clothing.

Born as Löb Strauss into a Jewish family in Buttenheim in Franconia, Bavaria, now a part of Germany.  In 1847, Strauss, his mother and two sisters moved to New York City to join his brothers Jonas and Louis Löb in their dry goods business. By 1850 he had adopted the name "Levi Strauss".

In 1853, Strauss moved to bustling San Francisco, California, where the California Gold Rush was still in high gear. Levi expected that the mining camps would welcome his buttons, scissors, thread and bolts of fabric; additionally, he had yards of canvas sailcloth intended for tent-making and as covers for the Conestoga wagons that dotted the landscape next to every stream and river in the area.

It was on California Street that Levi and his brother-in-law David Stern opened a dry goods wholesale business called Levi Strauss & Co.  Levi was often found leading a pack-horse, heavily laden with merchandise, directly into the mining camps found throughout the region. The story goes that both prospectors and miners, often complaining about the easily torn cotton "britches" and pockets that "split right out" gave Levi the idea to make a rugged overall trouser for the miners to wear. These were fashioned from bolts of brown canvas sailcloth, with gold ore storage pockets that were nearly impossible to split. Levi exhausted his original supply of canvas as the demand grew for his hard-wearing overalls, and so he switched to a sturdy fabric called serge, made in Nimes, France. Originally called serge de Nimes, the name was soon shortened to denim.

In 1872, Levi received a letter from Jacob Davis, a Reno, Nevada tailor. Davis was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers, who purchased bolts of cloth from the company to use for his own business. In this letter, Davis told Levi about the interesting way in which he made pants for his customers: he placed metal rivets at the points of strain—pocket corners and on the base of the fly. As he did not have the money to patent his process he suggested that Levi pay for the paperwork and that they take out the patent together.

On May 20, 1873, Strauss and Jacob Davis received United States patent #139121 for using copper rivets to strengthen the pockets of denim work pants. Levi Strauss & Co. began manufacturing the first of the famous Levi's brand of jeans in San Francisco, using fabric from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902, at the age of 73. He left his thriving manufacturing and dry goods business to his four nephews—Jacob, Louis, Abraham and Sigmund Stern—who helped rebuild the company after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The following year, Jacob Davis sold back his share of the company.

Peter Haas and his family are the primary heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Other websites 
 Levi Strauss Company
 Levi's
 Levi's Europe 
 Levi's Online Store 

 

Businesspeople from San Francisco
1829 births
1902 deaths
Princess Peach

Princess Peach Toadstool (sometimes called Peach) is a character in the Mario video game series. In most of the games she appears in, she is kidnapped by the reptile monster King Bowser and his son, Bowser Jr. She is the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, which is the main setting of most of the Mario games.

Appearance 
Princess Peach's looks are different than what they used to be. In her first game, Super Mario Bros. (1985), she had red hair and her dress was white.  She had dark red hair in Super Mario Bros. 2 (1986).  In Super Mario World (1991), her looks changed. She had yellow hair. In the Mario sport series games, she wears different dresses because she cannot play well in her normal, long, pink dress.

Her name has changed over the years.  In Japan, her name was always Peach.  When Nintendo sold Super Mario Bros. in other countries, she was called Princess Toadstool.  In Super Mario 64, her name became Princess Peach Toadstool.

Peach appears most often as the damsel-in-distress – always being kidnapped by Bowser.  Mario must always rescue her.  In Super Princess Peach (2006), the tables are turned and Bowser kidnaps Mario instead.  Peach must then rescue Mario.

Peach has been voiced by two different actresses.  The first was Leslie Swan.  The second was Jen Taylor.

Playable appearances 
 Super Mario Bros. 2—1988
 Mario Teaches Typing—1992
 Super Mario Kart—1992
 Super Mario All-Stars—1993
 Mario's Early Years: Fun with Letters—1994
 Mario's Early Years: Fun with Numbers—1994
 Mario's Early Years: Pre-School—1994
 Mario's Tennis—1995
 Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars—1996
 Mario Kart 64—1996
 Mario Teaches Typing 2—1997
 Mario Party—1998
 Mario Golf—1999
 Mario Party 2—1999
 Mario Tennis—2000
 Paper Mario—2000
 Mario Party 3—2000
 Super Mario Advance—2001
 Mario Kart Super Circuit—2001
 Super Smash Bros. Melee—2001
 Mario Party 4—2002
 Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour—2003
 Mario Party 5—2004
 Mario Kart: Double Dash!!—2003
 Mario Power Tennis—2004
 Mario Party 6—2004
 Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door—2004
 Mario Party Advance—2005
 SSX On Tour—2005
 Mario Superstar Baseball—2005
 Mario Party 7—2005
 Mario Kart DS—2005
 Mario Tennis: Power Tour—2005
 NBA Street V3—2005
 Super Mario Strikers—2006
 Super Princess Peach—2006
 Mario Hoops 3-on-3—2006
 Super Paper Mario—2007
 Yoshi's Island DS—2006
 Mario Strikers Charged—2007
 Mario Party 8—2007
 Itadaki Street DS—2007
 Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 2007
 Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - 2007
 Mario Kart Wii - 2008
 Mario Super Sluggers - 2008
 Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games - 2009
 Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games - 2011
 Mario Kart 7 - 2011
 Fortune Street - 2011
 Mario Party 9 - 2012
 Mario Tennis Open - 2012
 Mario Kart Arcade GP DX - 2013
 Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games - 2013
 Super Mario 3D World - 2013
 Mario Party: Island Tour - 2013
 Mario Golf: World Tour - 2014
 Mario Kart 8 - 2014
 Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U - 2014
 Mario Party 10 - 2015
 Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash - 2015

Fictional characters introduced in 1985
Mario series characters
Fictional princesses
Fixed Dose Procedure

The fixed-dose procedure (FDP) was proposed in 1984 to test a substance's acute oral toxicity using fewer animals with less suffering than the older LD50 test which was developed in 1927.

FDP uses 10-20 animals to find the dose that produces toxicity signs but not death, and from there predicts the lethal dose. LD50 ("lethal dose 50%") uses 60-80 animals to find a dose that kills 50% of animals in a given time. FDP sometimes needs retesting using slightly higher or lower doses.

Other websites 
Department of Applied Statistics, University of Reading, UK.

Toxicology
Tentacle rape

Tentacle rape or shokushu goukan (触手強姦) is illustrated pornography involving the rape of (often quite young) women. This animation is different from other animation methods due to use of tentacles to portray the rape. This was done to get around Japanese censorship laws that made it illegal to portray male genitalia being used for sexual penetration. Since tentacles are technically not genitals, they do not need to be censored.

Anime
Pornography
Bel canto

Bel canto is a way of singing in opera.  It comes from the Italian, meaning "beautiful singing".  

Bel canto singing means singing beautifully, flexibly and smoothly, delivering high and low notes in a similar style so that all the notes of a singer's range sound even from top to bottom.  Bel canto singing started when opera began in the 1600s, but the term "bel canto" is normally used for operas written in the early 19th century.  The operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti need bel canto singing. The term "bel canto" was not used at the time.  People only started talking about "bel canto" in the mid-to-late 19th century, when a lot of new operas by composers such as Richard Wagner appeared. These new operas had to have singers with big, dramatic voices if they were to sound good.

Bel canto-style operas came back into fashion in the 1950s, having been out of favour for the previous 50 or 60 years. Today, some of the most popular operas are bel canto ones. Famous bel canto singers of recent times include the sopranos Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, Beverly Sills and the tenors Francisco Araiza, Juan Diego Florez, Alfredo Kraus, Luciano Pavarotti. 

Mathilde Marchesi was a famous 19th-century bel canto teacher.

Opera terminology
Wagner (disambiguation)

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was a German composer.

Wagner may also refer to:

People 
 Wagner (surname), including a list of people
 Wagner (given name), a list of people
 Wágner, a given name and surname, including a list of people
Wagner (singer), Brazilian singer and participant in The X Factor Wagner Fiuza-Carrilho
Wágner (footballer, born 1945), Brazilian football manager and former midfielder Wágner Canotilho
Wagner (footballer, born 1966), Brazilian football forward Antonio Wagner de Moraes
Wágner (footballer, born 1973), Brazilian football striker Wágner Pires de Almeida
Wagner (footballer, born 1978), Brazilian football manager and former attacking midfielder Wagner Santos Lago
Wágner (footballer, born 1985), Brazilian football attacking midfielder Wágner Ferreira dos Santos
Wágner (footballer, born 1987), Brazilian football forward Wágner de Andrade Borges
Wágner (footballer, born 1989), Brazilian football centre-back Wágner Luiz Fogolari
Wagner (footballer, born 1991), Brazilian football attacking midfielder Wagner Ricardo Silva da Silva

Places

United States
 Wagner (community), Wisconsin, an unincorporated community
 Wagner, Montana, an unincorporated village
 Wagner, South Dakota, a city
 Wagner, Wisconsin, a town
 Wagner Township, Clayton County, Iowa
 Wagner Township, Aitkin County, Minnesota
 Wagner Lake, a lake in Minnesota

Canada
 Wagner, Alberta, a hamlet

Outer space
 Wagner (crater), on the planet Mercury
 3992 Wagner, a main-belt asteroid

Fictional characters
 Wagner, in Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus, Goethe's Faust and Gounod's opera Faust
 Wagner, a shaman in the video game Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi
 Wagner, a dragon in the video game Odin Sphere
 Wagner, a pig in the Finnish comic strip Viivi & Wagner
 Kurt Wagner, a.k.a. Nightcrawler (comics), a character in the Marvel universe

Business
 Nestlé Wagner, a frozen pizza brand
 Wagner Manufacturing Company, an cookware and metal products maker (1891–1952)
 Wagner Motorcycle Company, an American manufacturer (1901–1914)

Military
 Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organisation
 , a destroyer escort

Schools
 Wagner College, a private liberal arts college on Staten Island, New York City
 Wagner Seahawks, the athletic program of Wagner College
 Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University
 Karen Wagner High School, a high school in San Antonio, Texas
 W.P. Wagner High School, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Other uses
 Wagner (mini-series), a 1983 television series about Richard Wagner

See also

 Wagner Act, common name for the National Labor Relations Act, a 1935 U.S. labor law
 Wagner's disease, familial eye disease of the connective tissue in the eye that causes blindness
 Wagner's law, an economic theory of development
 Vagner
Midori Days

Midori Days is an anime about a girl who falls in love so badly that when she wakes up she's somehow attached to her love interest's (seiji) right hand. This anime is about how these two adjust to their strange new relationship.

High school boy Seiji Sawamura is really quite a nice guy, but he's got a bad reputation and the nickname Mad Dog, earned by copious street fighting, often in pursuit of justice. His right hook is so deadly that it's got its own nickname-The Devil's Right Hand. Other students avoid him and he can not get a girlfriend. In fact, 20 girls have turned him down. But unknown to him, he has had a secret admirer for the past three years-quiet goody-two-shoes Midori Kasugano, who is so paralyzed by her shyness that she could not possibly tell him how she feels. Then, in the tradition of Minami's Sweetheart (*DE) and The Eternity You Desire, Midori falls into a coma, while Seiji finds that instead of a right hand, he now has a living glove puppet-compare to Puppet Master Sakon. A tiny, living and speaking Midori is attached to the end of his arm and reveling in his undivided attention. The situation is awkward and embarrassing but the pair find they really do like each other, even when things are switched for an episode and Seiji becomes Midori's left hand. The result is a very silly show that still manages to convey how paralyzing shyness can be and how enforced intimacy can reveal unsuspected aspects of a person's character. Based on the manga by Kazuro Inoue in Shonen Sunday, itself a surreal cartoon version of the perennial surrogate parenting and reluctant roommates genres of live-action Japanese television

References 

Anime
Innocence

Innocence is the opposite of guilt.
The adjective is innocent (the opposite of 'guilty').

If someone is innocent of a crime it means that they did not do it.
If someone is accused of a crime, they have to go to court. The court will decide whether they are guilty or not guilty (innocent). People must be treated as innocent unless (or until) they are found guilty.

'Innocence' and 'innocent' can also be used in a slightly different way. Children are often described as 'innocent' meaning that they think the world is all good and do not yet know about the bad things in life. People talk about living in a 'state of innocence' i.e. children or people with simple minds who have not yet learned that some people are evil. In Christian cultures this sometimes meant that children did not know about sex.

Trials
Virtues
Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music which has a story attached to it or describes something such as poem or a painting or any idea which is not music.  A symphonic poem is a kind of programme music (music for instruments which has an idea outside music).

Symphonic poems were mostly written in the 19th century at the time known as the  Romantic period.  They are normally in one movement lasting perhaps between 10 and 20 minutes.  Some of the longest ones, such as Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss are much longer, like a symphony with four movements which run into one another.
 
The idea can be seen in Beethoven’s overtures which tell the story of the opera or play which is about to be performed.  Composers such as Felix Mendelssohn then started to write overtures which told a story but were not attached to any opera. Fingal's Cave (1832) describes the sea lapping against the rocks of a cave in the Scottish Hebrides. 

Franz Liszt was the composer who made the symphonic poem an important musical form.  He wrote twelve works which he called Symphonische Dichtung (Symphonic poem) because the music developed in the same way as in a symphony.  One example is Mazeppa (1851) which describes the poem by Victor Hugo about a wild horse that carries a man tied to him until he is rescued by the Ukrainians and made into their chief.

Other composers who wrote symphonic poems include Sergei Rachmaninoff, Modest Mussorgsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Jean Sibelius, Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and César Franck.

The opening of Richard Strauss’s  tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (1895-1896) has become particularly famous in recent years through its use in the movie  2001: A Space Odyssey.

Musical forms
Melody

A melody in music is a group of notes of various pitches (how high or low a note sounds) which are played one after another. Together they make a tune in the same way that a group of words make a sentence.  Some people like to sing melodies.  Melodies have rhythm (the length of the notes). 

In music, 'melody' contrasts with 'harmony'.  Harmony means notes which are played at the same time, like chords.  Composers often think of a melody and then add harmony to it. 

Some music has more than one melody happening at the same time.  When this happens throughout the whole piece, it is called polyphonic music. Rounds and fugues are types of polyphonic music. If the other melody only happens sometimes, then the second melody is called a countermelody.

The adjective of melody is melodic. There is also the adjective melodious which means: 'a sweet-sounding melody'.  

Music that does not have an obvious melody may be hard to understand (unless it is focused on rhythm, such as a drum solo).

Many melodies are easy to sing, while others are difficult to sing. Still other melodies are impossible to sing. Those melodies can still be played on musical instruments. 

Music theory
Apostolic Palace

The Apostolic Palace, also called the Papal Palace or the Palace of the Vatican, is the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City.

The palace is a complex of buildings, with the Papal Apartment, the Catholic Church's government offices, a handful of chapels, the Vatican Museum and the Vatican library. In all there are over 1,000 rooms with the most famous including the Sistine Chapel and its renowned ceiling frescoes painted by Michelangelo (restored between 1980 and 1990) and Raphael's Rooms.

The other papal residences are at the Lateran Palace and the Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

Before 1871, the Quirinal Palace was the Pope's official residence. After the final overthrow of the Papal States in 1870, the King of Italy confiscated that palace in 1871, making it the king's official residence; after the abolition of the Italian monarchy in 1946, it became the President of the Italian Republic's residence.

Related pages
 Borgia Apartment
 Clementine Hall
 Domus Sanctae Marthae
 Papal Gentlemen
 Papal Apartment
 Sistine Chapel
 Raphael Rooms

Buildings and structures in Vatican City
Palaces in Europe
Transcendental number

A real or complex number is called a transcendental number if it cannot be found as a result of an algebraic equation with integer coefficients.

Proving that a certain number is transcendental can be very hard. Each transcendental number is also an irrational number. The first people to see that there were transcendental numbers were Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Leonhard Euler. The first to actually prove there were transcendental numbers was Joseph Liouville. He did this in 1844.

Well known transcendental numbers:
 e
 π
 ea for algebraic a ≠ 0

References 

 David Hilbert, "Über die Transcendenz der Zahlen  und ", Mathematische Annalen 43:216–219 (1893).
 Alan Baker, Transcendental Number Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1975, .

Other websites 

 Proof that  is transcendental (PDF)  (German)
 Proof that  is transcendental (PDF)  (German)

Transcendental numbers
Number theory
Flip-flops

In footwear and fashion, flip-flops are a kind of flat, backless sandal. They have a flat sole held on the foot by a u-shaped strap that passes between the first (big) and second toes and around either side of the foot, attached to the sole at three points, commonly known as the thong strap. They may have been developed out of traditional Japanese woven or wooden-soled sandals (i.e., zori and setta) in Australia.

Footwear
Thong, Kent

Thong is a village in Kent, England. It is south of Gravesend. 

Villages in Kent
Hamlet (place)

A hamlet is a small settlement, smaller than a village. Usually, all settlers in a hamlet are centered around a single economic activity. A hamlet may consist of a farm, a mill, a mine or a harbor. All the people living there would be workers on that farm, mill, mine or harbour. Hamlets, especially those with a medieval church may have resulted from a medieval village, that was abandoned for some reason.

Because of the small size of the settlement, there are usually no buildings which have a central or admninistratrive function. There usually is no church, town hall or pub. Roads and streets in the hamlet do not have names, most of the time. 5-6 families may live there usually within a 2km radius area. 

In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Alsace region of France, such hamlets often have names that end in -wil, -wil(l)er, -wyhl or -viller.

 
Types of settlements
Recording Industry Association of America

The Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA is an organization that was created and paid for by large record companies. It is based in Washington, D.C. It symbolizes the entire recording industry of the United States of America. The RIAA also participates in the collection, management and distribution of music licenses and royalties.

The association is responsible for certifying gold and platinum albums and singles in the U.S. Its goals are:
to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists;
to perform research about the music industry;
to watch over and review laws, regulations and rules that apply to the music industry.

Members 
The members of the RIAA are mostly record companies in the U.S.

History 
The RIAA was created in 1952 to create technical standards for vinyl records so any record could play on any record player without difficulty. In today's times, the RIAA's goals is to prevent piracy of records. The RIAA says that the music industry loses nearly 4.2 billion U.S. dollars a year because of this.

Related pages
 Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ)
 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
 Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC)

References

Other websites
Official website of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

1952 establishments in the United States
Music industry organizations
Organizations in Washington, D.C.
Mar del Plata

Mar del Plata is a city of Argentina in the Buenos Aires Province. It is found on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, about 400 km south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata has a population of 541,733 people. It is the 7th biggest city in Argentina.

Other websites 

 Official Government website 
 Tourist Info (from the Official Government website)  
 Mar del Plata Website with news and things to do
Pope Boniface VIII

Pope Boniface VIII (; c. 1230 – October 11, 1303), born Benedetto Caetani, was an Italian cleric of the Roman Catholic Church and the 194th Pope  from 1294 to 1303.

Early life 
Benedetto Caetani was born in 1235 at Anagni in Italy.  Caetani studied at Todi and at Spoleto where he earned a degree in law. He came from a very noble family. His family was in government.

In 1265, Caetani traveled with Cardinal Ottobuono Fieschi to England.

Cardinal
In 1281, Pope Martin IV raised Caetani to the rank of cardinal. In 1291, Pope Nicholas IV made him Cardinal of SS. Silvestro e Martino ai Monti.

Pope
Cardinal Caetani was elected in 1294; and he chose to be called Boniface VIII.

Pope Boniface confirmed the decree of Pope Celestine V that any pope can freely resign.

Boniface was involved in Italian and European political disputes.

Boniface VIII made a rule that if a ruler (king) fined people taxes without the church or popes' permission that the ruler would be excluded from the church. He would make rash decisions without consideration. He was known to be harsh, mean, cruel, and did not listen to other people's recommendations. For example, He declared a very rash papal law that all people, not just Christians, must follow him if they want to go to heaven. He believed as the Pope, all rulers should bow down to him and respect him.

After his death
Dante mentions Boniface in The Inferno.  He identifies the pope as "the Prince of the new Pharisees."

Related pages
 List of popes
 Abdication

References

Other reading
 Boase, Thomas Sherrer Ross. (1933). Boniface VIII. London: Constable.  OCLC 1387650

Other websites 

 
  Catholic Hierarchy, Pope Boniface VII
  Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church,  Cardinal Caetani 

Italian popes
1235 births
1303 deaths
Signal

Signal, signals or signalling may refer to:

Scientific concepts 
 Signal (electrical engineering), a varying quantity that can carry information over air or wires.
 Signal processing, the field of techniques used to extract information from signals
 Signal (computing), an event, message, or data structure transmitted between computational processes
 Cell signalling (biology), the system of communication that governs basic cellular activities and coordinates cell actions
 Signal (biology), electrochemical activity in an organism

Communications 
 Signals used in various kinds of transport:
 Road traffic signal
 Railway signal
 Semaphore
 Beacon
 International maritime signal flags, using the International Code of Signals
 Signals (military), a historical name for the military communications
 Signal corps, the branch of military which operates with command, control and communications systems
 Signalling theory in biology, how organisms signal their state to others
 Distress signal
 Smoke signal (See also :Category:Early telecommunications)
 Signalling (telecommunications), a part of some communication protocols
 Signal (recognition), a way of showing that a person recognizes something; such as the Color of the day used by police.

Names 
 Signal band A rock band from Northwest Indiana
 Signal (band), a Bulgarian rock band
 Signals (album), an album by progressive rock band Rush
 Signal (magazine)
 Signal (toothpaste)
 Signal 1 and Signal 2 radio stations
 Signal (subscription service), service that provided real-time stock quotes
 Signaal (now Thales Nederland), a Netherlands-based defence company
 Signal Systems, a company of the McLean Group of Companies

Other 
 Any implicit, subtle, or disguised message, in situations such as:
 Partnership card games (see signal (bridge))
 Signaling (economics)
 Signals and slots, a software design pattern
 Kent (game) a card game also known as Signal or Kemp
Signal (electrical engineering)

In the fields of communications, signal processing, and in electrical engineering more generally, a signal is any time-varying quantity. 

The concept is broad, and hard to define precisely.  Definitions specific to subfields are common. For example, in information theory, a signal is a codified message, i.e., the sequence of states in a communications channel that encodes a message. In a communications system, a transmitter encodes a message into a signal, which is carried to a receiver by the communications channel.  For example, the words "Mary had a little lamb" might be the message spoken into a telephone. The telephone transmitter converts the sounds into an electrical voltage signal. The signal is transmitted to the receiving telephone by wires; and at the receiver it is reconverted into sounds.

Examples of signals 
 Motion.  The motion of a particle through some space can be considered to be a signal, or can be represented by a signal.  The domain of a motion signal is one-dimensional (time), and the range is generally three-dimensional.  Position is thus a 3-vector signal; position and orientation is a 6-vector signal.

 Sound.  Since a sound is a vibration of a medium (such as air), a sound signal associates a pressure value to every value of time and three space coordinates.  A microphone converts sound pressure at some place to just a function of time, using a voltage signal as an analog of the sound signal.

 Compact discs (CDs).  CDs contain discrete bits representing a sound signal, recorded at 44,100 samples per second.  Each sample contains data for a left and right channel, which may be considered to be a 2-vector (since CDs are recorded in stereo).

 Noise typically unwanted but not always.

References
Shannon, C. E., 2005 [1948], "A Mathematical Theory of Communication,"  (corrected reprint ), accessed Dec. 15, 2005. Orig. 1948, Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623-656.

Electronics
Electrical engineering
Telecommunications
Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand  is a big passenger airline from Auckland, New Zealand. It flies mainly in Australasia and South Pacific, but it also has services to Europe, North America and Asia. It is a Star Alliance member. It joined the alliance in 1999. Its main base or hub is Auckland International Airport.

History
In 1940, TEAL was founded. Its first flights were from Auckland to Sydney and Wellington. Later, flights to Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti and the Cook Islands were added. The Australian government bought 50% of TEAL in 1953. The remaining 50% was owned by the Government of New Zealand. In 1961, the airline became completely owned by the Government of New Zealand. TEAL was officially renamed Air New Zealand on April 1, 1965. The airline bought Douglas DC-8 airplanes in July 1965. These were used for longer routes to Honolulu and Los Angeles. A larger Boeing 747 was bought in 1981. Air New Zealand bought Ansett Australia in 2000. Ansett later went out of business.

Gallery

Destinations
Air New Zealand serves the following destinations:

References

1965 establishments in Oceania
Airlines of Oceania
Auckland
Star Alliance
Transport in New Zealand
1960s establishments in New Zealand
IATA members
Companies of New Zealand
Air Jamaica

Air Jamaica was the national airline of Jamaica from Kingston, Jamaica. It flies regular services from Kingston and Montego Bay to 23 airports in the Caribbean, the USA, Canada and United Kingdom. The airline's main bases are Norman Manley International Airport (KIN), Kingston and Sangster International Airport (MBJ), Montego Bay.

References 

Jamaica
Airlines of North America
1968 establishments
2011 disestablishments
IATA members
Economist

An economist is someone who studies or works in the field of economics. Economics is the study of how people make choices to satisfy their wants.

According to Frédéric Bastiat:
"There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen."

Related pages
 Constitutional economics
 Political economy

References

 
Financial occupations
Artillery

Artillery is a word for the big guns used in an army, for example cannons and howitzers. Such guns are used to shoot targets far away. Artillery is often used to stop enemy troops using an area, to bombard trenches and buildings with enemies in it and to support friendly units. There are many different weapons that are called artillery. They may shoot shells or missiles. Newer systems can even drop mines over a big area, making the area uncrossable. Anti-aircraft warfare includes the use of artillery to fight planes and other aircraft.  

Those who fire the artillery piece are called "gunners". In most cases someone else, called a "spotter" must see the enemy, because artillery often shoots farther than the gunners can see. The artillery crews do not have to see the enemy to damage them.

Different types of artillery

Other websites 

 Artillery - Citizendium

More reading
House of Lords

The House of Lords is one of the two Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom (UK). It is in London, the capital city of the UK. The other house is the House of Commons. Together, the two houses form the government and parliament of the UK. 

The House of Lords is not elected (voted for), except in the case of the holders of the seats reserved for hereditary peers (who are chosen by the House or by other hereditary peers in their parties).
 2 people are members because of their job (The Duke of Norfolk, who is the Earl Marshal, and the Marquess of Lord Great Chamberlain, who both help to organise royal events).
 90 people are hereditary peers. These are members of the House of Lords because one of their ancestors was made a member and (since 1999) have been elected from among other such people.
 The other members were made members for life, either life peers, who have existed since 1958 or as law lords. Law lords were senior judges made members of the House to help when the House of Lords was also the highest court in England and Wales (before the foundation of the Supreme Court in 2009).
 The twenty-six most senior Bishops of the Church of England also sit in the House of Lords, they are called the Lords Spiritual.

Crossbenchers 
Many members of the House of Lords sit as Crossbenchers.  This means they do not support either the government or opposition parties, but instead are independent of party politics. They got their name because the benches where they sit are placed across the aisle which separates the government and opposition supporters.

Criticisms
There are several criticisms of the House of Lords, including:

 How people are "appointed" as lords, which has often been described as undemocratic. The House of Lords is fully unelected and allows peers to hold their seats until death.
 The makeup of the Lords does not reflect the diversity of the UK, with under-representation of ethnic minorities and women when compared with the House of Commons, and relative over-representation of people from South East England and people over 50.
 The House of Lords is often criticised for being too large, and too expensive. With almost 800 members it is the second-largest house of government in the world, second only to the National People's Congress of China, and is much larger than Upper Houses in comparable countries.

These criticisms have led some to question whether there is a need for a second/upper house at all, and whether the two house system in British politics is still useful. People such as Tony Benn and Rebecca Long-Bailey, have said the House of Lords should be gotten rid of. This is also supported by the Scottish National Party (SNP). This would mean the United Kingdom would have one level of government, which is called unicameralism and is present in many other countries.

References

Other websites 
Parliament UK

House of Lords
Acapulco

Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , also  ),  is a town and sea port on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 300 km (190 miles) southwest from Mexico City. Acapulco is on a deep, semi-circular bay. It is a stop for shipping and cruising lines running between Panama, and San Francisco, California, USA. In 2005, about 722,499 people lived there.

Its name is a Nahuatl word, meaning "plain of dense reeds". The city has been a port since the 16th century.

Playones de San Isidro 
Playones de San Isidro de Isidro is a community belonging to the Flavio Alfaro canton. The village has a population of approximately 200 people.

References 

Cities in Mexico
Guerrero (state)
1520s establishments in Mexico
Deutsche Bahn

Deutsche Bahn AG (short DB AG or often only DB) is Europe's largest railway company. It runs over 30,000 trains a day and owns more than 5,000 stations. The company headquarters are in Berlin, Germany.

It was founded on January 1, 1994 to replace the Deutsche Bundesbahn, which was the state railway of West Germany, and the Deutsche Reichsbahn, which was the state railway of East Germany.

Deutsche Bahn is also active in the field of logistics and owns companies like Schenker. DB claim they are the second largest logistics company in the world.

Other websites 

DB corporate home page
DB travel portal
DB timetable information

Rail transport in Germany
Transport companies of Germany
Railway companies
1994 establishments in Germany
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is a contract of treaties and international law. It also defines means of expression consent to be bound by a treaty including ratification. It was signed in the 1960s. It codified earlier customs that were there. 105 states signed the convention.

Other websites 

Full text of the treaty: html, pdf
Easy-to-read version of the text

Sources
Damrosch, Henkin, et al., International Law, West Group 2001.

Treaties and Conventions
The Lost World

The Lost World is a book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the year 1912. In it, Professor Challenger and his companions travel to find a large plateau in South America where dinosaurs still live. After a long journey they find the plateau, and witness not only dinosaurs, but two tribes - an ancient Native American people and ape-men who resemble the missing link.

After many adventures, they return to London and attempt to describe their adventures to a disbelieving public.

Other websites

 

British novels
Science fiction books
Dinosaurs in fiction
Books by Arthur Conan Doyle
Amnesty International

Amnesty International (also called AI or Amnesty) is an international organization founded in London in 1961. They promote human rights in accordance with Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law.  This organization was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its defense of human dignity against torture. It is one of the most widely-known human rights groups in the world.  The six key areas that Amnesty International focuses on are refugee rights, the rights of women, children, and of minorities, ending torture, stopping the death penalty, the rights of people imprisoned because of what they believe, and protection of human dignity.

What they believe in 
Amnesty International is based on these central ideas:
 Every person has human rights. Human rights cannot be taken away from a person. They are natural laws that are the right of all human beings from their birth on.
 Human rights cannot be divided. When one right is taken away, this is also bad for other rights. When one right is protected, other rights are in a better position as well.
 Human rights will not be protected by governments alone. Governments have said they will protect human rights, and then not acted upon it. Human rights organisations have to influence the governments.
 To protect human rights, people must help other people. Danger for human rights starts at the level of single persons. To help one person means to stop the danger from growing. One person alone can do this.
 To defend human rights, an organization must be independent and impartial. It should not be for or against any one ideology. An ideology is a certain point of view. It can be political, economic, or religious. Also, the organization should not say one country is the "worst". It should focus on the individual and all individuals.

References

Literature 
 Jürgen Wüst: «Imperialistisches Menschenrechtsgeschrei». Der Kampf des MfS gegen die Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGFM) und Amnesty International (AI), in: Deutschland Archiv, Nr. 3/1998, S. 418—427

Other websites 
 Amnesty International website

1961 establishments in Europe
1960s establishments in England
Capital punishment
Human rights organisations in the United Kingdom
Imprisonment and detention
International organizations
Charities of the United Kingdom
FLAC

FLAC (which stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a way to code audio files. It makes those audio files smaller, without affecting the sound quality. It is unlike MP3, because when encoding audio using an MP3 encoder, information is lost and cannot be recovered. When a FLAC file is decoded, it will be identical to the original raw audio. FLAC is the most common lossless audio codec.

Lossy encoders, such as MP3 encoders will generate smaller files than lossless encoders such as FLAC, although with a lossy codec the decoder's output will not be exactly identical to the encoder's input, although with a decent encoder at sufficient bitrate, it will be extremely close.

Computer file formats for audio
Decameron

The Decameron is a collection of 100 short stories. It was written by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio around 1350. In the book, ten friends, seven young women and three young men, leave the city of Florence because of the plague and stay in a large house in the countryside. Each day, they entertain each other by taking turns to tell stories. The stories are of different types. Some are romantic, some are erotic, some are comedies and some are tragedies.  

Other writers have used the stories for ideas. Many paintings have been done which illustrate the stories. The picture to the right shows a scene from the story of "The Pot of Basil" in which Isabella buries the head of her murdered lover Ferdinand inside a potplant.

Other websites 
 Decameron Web, from Brown University
 The Decameron - Introduction, from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook

14th-century books
Italian literature
Lung transplant

A lung transplant is a type of surgery. People who can not breathe without additional oxygen may need a lung transplant. In this surgery, the patient's ill lung or lungs are removed.  A healthy lung or lungs are put into the patient. The healthy lungs may come from a dead or from a living person. When the person who gives, or donates, the healthy lung is still alive, only one lung is removed. Sometimes a healthy person can give just part of a lung to a sick person. A healthy person can normally give a lung or part of a lung without becoming sick.

References 

Pulmonology
Surgery
Transplants
Commodity

Commodity is a term with distinct meanings in both business and in Marxian political economy. For the former, it is a product, that is traded solely on the basis of price. For Marxian political economy it means wares offered for exchange.

Business usage
In the world of business, a commodity is a product, good or service that is traded based solely on its price, rather than quality and features. Examples include: electricity (most users of electric power are only concerned with energy consumption; only a minority of users are concerned with the quality and technical details of voltage and frequency deviations), wheat, bulk chemicals such as sodium carbonate, metals, and even orange juice.  

In the original and simplified sense, commodities were things of value, of uniform quality, that were produced in large quantities by many different producers; the items from each different producer are considered as of the same value.

Examples
Wheat is an example of a soft commodity. Wheat from many different farms comes together.  Generally, it is all traded at the same price; wheat from farm A has not another price than wheat from farm B.  Some uniform standard of quality is assumed. (There may be various standards leading to different pools:  one say for genetically modified wheat, and one for unmodified wheat.)
  
International markets for the trade of commodities can be very efficient, particularly if the division into pools matches demand segments. These markets will quickly respond to changes in supply and demand to find a price.

Commodities and Marxism
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is simply any good or service offered as a product for sale on the market. Some items are also seen as being treated as if they were commodities, e.g. human labour or labor power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods. 

Marx's analysis of the commodity is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow among others. Value and price are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists.

Illustration
To understand the concept of a commodity, consider a chair. It is a commodity if the chair is a tradeable product of human work possessing a social use-value. By contrast, a fallen log of deadwood sat upon in the forest is not a commodity, as it was not produced by human work for the purpose of trade. A chair created by a hobbyist as a gift to someone is not a commodity. Nor is a chair a commodity (as a chair) if its only use would be as scrap firewood (unless one purchases a chair specifically to chop it up for fire wood). A chair that nobody could sit on has no use-value, and cannot be a commodity (unless it has an ornamental value, e.g. in a doll's house).

Related pages
 Property
 Trade

Business
My Lai Massacre

The My Lai Massacre (pronounced IPA: [mi.˧˩˥'lɐːj˧˧], Thảm sát Mỹ Lai, Thảm sát Sơn Mỹ) was the killing of hundreds of civilians by United States soldiers at the village of My Lai, Vietnam on March 16, 1968. A memorial in My Lai lists the names of 504 victims.

Before the massacre, U.S. soldiers were told that all of the "true" civilians would be at the market and the remaining people would be members of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. When the soldiers got to the village they did not find any NLF troops. Despite this, many soldiers began to kill the villagers, mainly elderly people, women, and children. 

The crew of a U.S. Army helicopter, intervened. That crew saved the lives of some of the (Vietnamese) civilians. They were able to save 11 people.

The killings were covered up by the United States Army, but eventually 26 soldiers were charged with being involved in the killings. However, only one, Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty.

The massacre caused public opinion in the United States to shift further towards wanting peace and wanting to get American soldiers out of Vietnam.

The intervention by the crew from a U.S. Army helicopter 

The crew of a U.S. Army helicopter, intervened. That crew saved the lives of some of the (Vietnamese) civilians.

The pilot of the helicopter, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., saw dead and wounded civilians as he was flying over the village of Sơn Mỹ. The helicopter was providing close-air support for U.S. soldiers (on the ground). The crew used two-way radio to call for help for the wounded civilians. The crew landed their helicopter next to a ditch, which they saw was full of bodies. They could see movement by survivors (in the ditch). Thompson spoke with two (American) soldiers next to the ditch. When Thompson was lifting-off with the helicopter, he saw that Seargeant Mitchell was shooting into the ditch. Thompson and his crew were witnesses to an unarmed woman being kicked and shot (, up close or) at point-blank range by officer Medina. Medina later claimed that he thought she had a hand grenade. Thompson then saw a group of civilians at a bunker, and soldiers were moving towards the civilians. Thompson landed, and told his crew that if the soldiers shot at the villagers while he was trying to get them out of the bunker, then his crew were to open fire on the soldiers.

Years after the event, the crew of the U.S. Army helicopter were awarded the Soldier's medal for bravery. This is the highest award for a soldier who doesn't have contact with the enemy. The three were Hugh Thompson Jr., Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn. Andreotta received it posthumously. He died in the Vietnam war.

Massacres in Asia
War crimes
Vietnam War
20th century in Vietnam
1960s in Asia