cahya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Oxfordshire (short Oxon, from the Latinised form Oxonia) is a county in the South East of England, bordering on Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Warwickshire.

It is divided into five local government districts: Oxford, Cherwell, Vale of the White Horse (after the Uffington White Horse), West Oxfordshire and South Oxfordshire.

The county has a major tourism industry. The area is known for the concentration of motorsport companies and facilities. Oxford University Press has headed a concentration of print and publishing firms; the university is also linked to the concentration of local biotechnology companies.

The main centre of population is the city of Oxford. Other significant settlements are Bicester, Banbury, and Chipping Norton to the north of Oxford; Witney to the west; Thame and Chinnor to the east; and Abingdon, Wantage, Didcot and Henley-on-Thames to the south. Future population growth in the county is hoped to be concentrated around Banbury, Bicester, Didcot and Witney, near the South Midlands growth area.

The highest point of the county is Whitehorse Hill, in the Vale of White Horse, reaching 856 feet (261m).

History
The county of Oxfordshire was formed in the early years of the 10th century.

Historically the area has always had some importance, it has been good agricultural land resting between the main southern cities and Oxford (whose name came from Anglo-Saxon Oxenaford = "ford for oxen"). The area was part of the Cotswolds wool trade from the 13th century. The Great Western Railway reached Didcot in 1839. Morris Motors was founded in Oxford in 1912 and MG in Abingdon in 1929. The importance of agriculture as an employer has gone down in the 20th century; today less than one percent of the county's population are involved.

The Vale of the White Horse and parts of South Oxfordshire south of the River Thames were historically part of Berkshire, but were added to the administrative county in 1974.

Towns and cities
 Abingdon (In Berkshire until 1974)
 Banbury
 Bicester
 Burford
 Carterton
 Chipping Norton
 Didcot (In Berkshire until 1974)
 Faringdon (In Berkshire until 1974)
 Henley-on-Thames
 Oxford
 Thame
 Wallingford (In Berkshire until 1974)
 Wantage (In Berkshire until 1974)
 Witney
 Woodstock

Places of interest

  Blenheim Palace — UNESCO World Heritage Site
  Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway — A heritage railway operated with steam and diesel locomotives
  Cholsey and Wallingford Railway
 Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens
  Didcot Railway Centre — Museum of the Great Western Railway

  Kelmscott Manor — Home of William Morris
   Oxford
  River and Rowing Museum
  River Thames
  Rousham House and Gardens
  Wallingford Museum

Related pages
 University of Oxford (including links to the individual colleges).
 Oxford Canal
 Blewbury

Other websites 

 Oxfordshire County Council
 Results of the 2005 county council election 
 Thisisoxfordshire Oxfordshire news, sport & information
 Flags of Oxfordshire

Ceremonial counties of England
The order Notostraca has just two living genera in it. Triops and Lepidura. The two genera are considered 'living fossils', as they have not changed in outward form since the Triassic.

Notostracans, or tadpole shrimps, are omnivores living on the bottom of temporary pools and shallow lakes. They live in pools of water on every continent except Antarctica. They grow very quickly, and can reach adulthood in a week. Triops only live for a short time; a record-breaking female only lived to be 100 days. When their pools dry up,adult tadpole shrimp die. Their eggs, however, stop developing for a time. When they are in water again, they come to life, and new Triops are hatched. This is because of a state known as diapause, where eggs can lie dormant for up to twenty years before hatching again.

Evolution and fossil record
The fossil record of Notostraca is extensive. They occur in a wide range of geological deposits, reaching back to the Carboniferous. The lack of major morphological change since 250 million years ago has led to Notostraca being described as living fossils.

The Notostraca abandoned filter feeding in open water, and took up a benthic lifestyle in muddy waters, taking up food from particles of sediment and preying on small animals.

Notostracans keep the ancient condition of having two separate compound eyes. These touch but do not become united, as does happens in other groups of Branchiopods.

References 

Branchiopods
Living fossils
Porphyria is the name for certain medical conditions or diseases, which have been known since the days of Hippocrates. Those who suffer from the disease can not make certain substances in the blood. They have disorders of certain enzymes which normally work in the production of porphyrins and heme. 

The condition is usually caused by a genetic deficiency, but chemicals which affect metabolism may also cause it. Arsenic is an example. It can be triggered by various drugs or by some environmental conditions. The disease causes skin problems, or some diseases of the nervous system, or both. Severe pain is often present. Drugs are available that can at least treat the symptoms. This disease is most common in European countries and often affects the skin. When someone is affected by porphyria they will start to lose their hair about two weeks after having an attack. There is no cure for the hair loss. However, there is medication available to help prevent attacks.

Diseases
Genetic disorders
Diatoms ( = through +  temnein = to cut: "cut through") are a big group of eukaryotic algae. They are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although some form chains or simple colonies. Diatom cells are encased within a unique cell wall made of silica (SiO2). These walls, called frustules, take many forms, some quite beautiful and ornate. They usually consist of two asymmetrical sides with a split between them, which gives the group its name.

Diatom chloroplasts were probably derived from those of red algae. The fossil record of diatoms starts in strata of the Lower Jurassic, ~185 million years ago. Molecular clock evidence suggests an earlier date for their origin. The entire genomes of two species of diatom have been analysed. The analysis reveals that hundreds of genes in both species came from bacteria.

Diatoms have some practical uses. Diatom communities are a popular tool for monitoring environmental conditions, past and present. They are commonly used in studies of water quality. They are also of interest to nanotechnology.

References 

Protista
Algae
Decapitation or beheading is the act of cutting off the head from the rest of the body of a living thing. Beheading usually means that the removal of the head is deliberate. It is generally done during an execution with an axe, sword, or guillotine. If the removal of the head is an accident or unintentional, it is called decapitation. It can happen because of an auto accident, explosion, factory accident, a mistake during a hanging or some other violent accident.

Decapitation is always fatal, that is, the result is always death. This is because it causes all other organs to stop receiving nervous signals from the brain that are needed to function, while the supply of blood, and therefore oxygen, to the brain itself is also cut off.

Decapitation can also describe the removal of a head from a body that is already dead. In these situations, the head is usually a trophy or a public display of warning.

Beheading was the usual means of death penalty in Scandinavian countries in the past. Noblemen were beheaded with a sword, commoners with an axe. The last execution by beheading in Finland occurred in 1822, when a farmhand Tahvo Putkonen was beheaded for murder. The last beheading in Sweden occurred in 1910, when Johan Andersson-Ander was guillotined for murder. Also Germany, France and Belgium favoured beheading in the past. In those countries was carried out by guillotine.

Last beheading in Europe occurred 1977, when a Tunisian murderer Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined in France. 

Some countries, especially Arab countries or former French colonies, still use beheading as the means of execution. In Saudi Arabia, the convicts are beheaded with a sword.

The executioner who performs beheadings is called a headsman.

History
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had centuries of public beheadings, but in 2013 is considering firing squads as an alternative means of execution.

Famous people who have been beheaded

Biblical 
Goliath
John the Baptist in the Gospels
Holofernes in the Book of Judith
Apostle James, traditionally
Apostle Paul, traditionally

China 
Guan Yu

England 
Anne Boleyn (1536)
Catherine Howard (1542)
Lady Jane Grey (1554)
Mary, Queen of Scots (1587) 
Sir Walter Raleigh (1618)
Charles I, King of England and Scotland (1649)
Blackbeard (1718)

The Colonial Americas 
Panama: Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1519)

Frisia 
Wijerd Jelckama

French Revolution 
Marie Antoinette
Louis XVI of France
Madame du Barry
Maximilien Robespierre

Iraq 
Shosei Koda
Kim Sun-il
Kenneth Bigley
Nick Berg
Eugene Armstrong
Jack Hensley
Maher Kemal
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti

Switzerland 
Wildhans von Breitenlandenberg and 61 companions following the siege of Greifensee during the Old Zürich War (1444).

Saudi Arabia 
Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.

Related pages
Execution
Guillotine

References

Crime
Capital punishment
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (born 8 February  (O.S. 27 January) 1834 near Tobolsk – 2 February (O.S. 20 January 20) 1907 in Saint Petersburg) was a Russian chemist who created the periodic table of elements. Many of the predictions made in his periodic table (such as the properties of elements undiscovered at the time) were later proved correct by experiments. Chemical element 101 was named Mendelevium.

Life 
Mendeleev was born in village of Verkhnie Aremzyani, near Tobolsk, to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (née Kornilieva). His grandfather was Pavel Maximovich Sokolov, a priest of Russian Orthodox Church from the Tver region. Ivan, with his brothers and sisters, got new family names while attending theological seminary. Later in life, he invented the periodic table of elements.

Mendeleev is thought to be the youngest of 14 siblings, but the exact number differs between sources. At the age of 13, after the death of his father and the destruction of his mother's factory by fire, Mendeleev attended the Gymnasium in Tobolsk.

In 1849, the now poor Mendeleev family went to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850. After graduation, tuberculosis caused him to move to the Crimean Peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1855. While there he became a science master of the Simferopol gymnasium №1. He returned with fully restored health to Saint Petersburg in 1857.

Periodic Table 

Others in the 1860s suggested that elements group together. For example, John Newlands, published his Law of Octaves in 1865. The lack of spaces for undiscovered elements and the placing of two elements in one box were criticized and his ideas were not accepted. Another was Lothar Meyer, who published a work in 1864, describing 28 elements. Neither attempted to predict new elements. In 1863 there were 56 known elements with a new element being discovered at a rate of approximately one each year.

Other achievements 

Mendeleev made other important contributions to chemistry. The Russian chemist and science historian L.A. Tchugayev called him "a chemist of genius, first-class physicist, a fruitful researcher in the fields of hydrodynamics, meteorology, geology, certain branches of chemical technology (explosives, petroleum, and fuels, for example) and other disciplines adjacent to chemistry and physics, a thorough expert of chemical industry and industry in general, and an original thinker in the field of economy". Mendeleev was one of the founders, in 1869, of the Russian Chemical Society. He worked on the theory and practice of protectionist trade and on agriculture.

References 

1834 births
1907 deaths
Russian chemists
The Angevin Empire was a collection of states ruled by the Angevin Plantagenet dynasty. The Plantagenets, Henry II of England, Richard I of England, and John of England, ruled over an area from the Pyrenees to Ireland during the 12th and early 13th centuries. Their empire was roughly half of medieval France as well as all of England and Ireland. The name Angevin came from the French region and town of Anjou which was the home of the Plantagenet family.

References

History of France
History of the British Isles
Empires
13th century in Europe
12th century in Europe
The spine is a column of vertebrae in the back part of the torso (upper body). It is also called the backbone or vertebral column. There is a spinal canal that runs through the length of the spine. Inside this canal is the spinal cord. Animals that have a spine are called vertebrates, and animals that do not have one are called invertebrates. Humans have a spine, so we are vertebrates. Many vertebrates, including mammals, have intervertebral discs separating the vertebrae.

Regions 
The vertebral column has five regions. These regions from top to bottom are:
 Cervical - Shown in red, this region supports the head. It is made up of 7 vertebrae. The first two, called the atlas and axis, connect the spine to the skull.
 Thoracic - Shown in blue, this region supports the ribs. It is made up of 12 vertebrae.
 Lumbar - Shown in yellow, this region is located in the lower back. It is made up of 5 vertebrae.
Sacral - Shown in green. It is made up of 5 vertebrae that are fused together.
Coccygeal - Shown in purple. It is made up of 3 to 5 vertebrae.

Spinal canal 
The spinal column has an opening called spinal canal and this opening is used for nerves. The part of the central nervous system in the spinal column is called spinal cord.

References 
 Gray's Anatomy: The Vertebral Column - The 1917 Gray's Anatomy is available via the Bartleby project. It is available with full colour diagrams. The initial version of this article was copied and pasted from the 1917 Gray's anatomy, which is in the public domain.

Other websites 

 North American Spine Society is a multidisciplinary medical organization that advances quality spine care through education, research and advocacy.
 Spinal anatomy and back pain
 Spine anatomy illustrations
 Spine anatomy 
 Vertebral column basics 

Bones
The Pyrenees (; ; ; ; ; ) are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separate the Iberian Peninsula from France, and extend for about 430 km (267 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay) to the Mediterranean Sea (Cap de Creus).

Other websites 

Great Routes: Pirineos , from a website of the Instituto de Turismo de España
 Official website  of France's Pyrenees National Park
 Cycling the French High Pyrenees and Ariege Pyrenees photos and video by steephill.tv bike travelogue
 The Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales  Online resource for the Aude & Pyrénées-Orientales departments of the Languedoc-Roussillon.

Mountain ranges
 
Mountains of France
Geography of Andorra
Geography of Spain
Aragon
Basque Country
Catalonia
Navarre
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Occitanie
Dartmoor is a national park in Devon, a county in England. Its highest point is High Willhays, 621 metres high. This is the highest point in the south of England. It has a large area of moorland, and is very hilly. There is much woodland on its lower slopes.

Dartmoor is famous for its tors—outcrops of rock on top of many of its hills. These are the remains of volcanic activity in the Carboniferous period. 

Animal life on Dartmoor includes birds such as the ring ouzel and dunlin, and the endangered marsh fritillary butterfly. Its bogs are home to many unusual plants such as the sundew.

Other websites 

Dartmoor National Park Authority 
Ten Tors Official Website 

Geography of England
Devon
National parks in the United Kingdom
Cirencester is a town in Gloucestershire in England. People first moved there in Roman times. It currently has a population of 19,000. It is 93 miles west of London, and is between Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester.

Towns in Gloucestershire
Seppuku is a Japanese ritual where a samurai kills himself by cutting into his belly. After one had done so, a second person would cut off his head. It was thought that seppuku was an honorable way to die. Sometimes, it is called hara-kiri, which is translated from Japanese as belly-cutting.

Seppuku first developed in the 12th century as a means for samurai to achieve an honorable death. Swordsmen performed the ritual to avoid capture following battlefield defeats, but it also functioned as a means of protest and a way of expressing grief over the death of a revered leader. Beginning in the 1400s, seppuku evolved into a common form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed crimes. In each case, it was considered an act of extreme bravery and self-sacrifice that embodied Bushido, the ancient warrior code of the samurai. There was even a female version of seppuku called “jigai,” which involved cutting the throat using a special knife known as a “tanto.”

Overview 
Seppuku was a key part of bushido, the honor code of the samurai warriors. It was used by warriors so that they would not fall into enemy hands and be shamed. It was possible also that a samurai received an order from his master to commit seppuku.  

Because seppuku was an honorable act, a warrior who was caught by the enemy was sometimes given the choice between seppuku and being executed. If he chose seppuku, he could protect his honor. Samurai women had to ask for permission to commit seppuku.

This act could be performed either with a ritual, or quietly on the battlefield while other warriors fight the enemy.

The main weapon used was the samurai's knife called tantō or the short sword, called wakizashi. A samurai who wants to commit seppuku would take the weapon, open his kimono and stab the blade into his belly. He would make a deep cut from Right to left. An assistant of the warrior committing seppuku (called kaishakunin) would immediately cut off his head.

Seppuku fell out of favor with the decline of the samurai in the late-19th century, but the practice didn’t disappear entirely. Japanese General Nogi Maresuke disemboweled himself in 1912 out of loyalty to the deceased Meiji Emperor, and many troops later chose the sword over surrender during World War II. Perhaps the most famous case in recent history concerns Yukio Mishima, a renowned novelist and Nobel Prize nominee who committed ritual seppuku in 1970 after leading a failed coup against the Japanese government.

References 
Japanese culture
Louis Jay Pearlman (June 19, 1954 - August 19, 2016) was an American record producer and fraudster. He was born in Flushing, Queens, New York City. He used to live in Orlando, Florida. 

In 2008, Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. He died of a stroke in prison in Texarkana, Texas.

References

Other reading 
 
  Cited as Henderson 2006.
  Cited as Pearlman 2002.

Other websites
officialloupearlman.com 
 

1954 births
2016 deaths
American fraudsters
Cardiovascular disease deaths in Texas
Criminals from New York City
Deaths from stroke
People from Queens
People who died in prison custody in the United States
The Thirteen Colonies were colonies in British North America in what is now the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. They were founded for different reasons. Some people thought that they would make a lot of money in new goods in America that could not be found in Europe, such as tobacco. Others left to find freedom of religion or just to make a new start. Some wanted to be in charge and to change things that they did not like back at England.

The first colony was Virginia, which was started in 1607 at Jamestown. The last colony of the thirteen to be started was Georgia in 1732.

The Thirteen Colonies (listed from north to south):
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut Colony
New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware
Maryland
Virginia Colony
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia 

The colonies are often divided into three groups. The northern group was called New England and included New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

There were four Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

The South had five colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

New England had small farms and focused on fishing, forestry (trees and lumber), shipping, and small industry to make money.

The South had large plantation farms that grew tobacco and later cotton. Plantations were farmed first by indentured servants, who would work for a period of years in return for their passage to America and land. They were later replaced by slaves.

The Middle Colonies had medium-sized farms. They also had people from many different cultures with many different beliefs. 

All three regions were tied to the "Atlantic economy". Colonists built merchant vessels, and merchants traded slaves, agricultural goods, gold, fish, lumber, and manufactured goods between America, the West Indies, Europe and Africa.

After the French and Indian War, Great Britain made new taxes and other laws that angered some people in the colonies. That led to a war between Great Britain and its former colonies: the American Revolutionary War.

The colonies said why they wanted to become independent of Great Britain on July 4, 1776 at the Declaration of Independence and became known as the United States of America.

References 

History of the United States
American Revolutionary War
Former British colonies
Jamestown may refer to:

Places

Australia
Jamestown, South Australia

Barbados
Holetown, Saint James, Barbados; sometimes called its founding name, Jamestown

Canada
Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown, a neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario

Ghana
Jamestown, Ghana, a district of the city of Accra

Ireland
Jamestown, County Laois
Jamestown, County Leitrim

New Zealand
 Jamestown, New Zealand

Saint Kitts and Nevis
Jamestown, the name of a former town on the edge of Morton Bay on Nevis in the late 17th century

South Africa
Jamestown, South Africa

United Kingdom
Jamestown, Rossshire, Scotland
Jamestown, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland
Jamestown, Fife, Scotland

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
Jamestown, Saint Helena, a harbour and the capital of Saint Helena

United States
 Jamestown, California
 Jamestown, Colorado
 Jamestown, Indiana, in Boone County
 Jamestown, Elkhart County, Indiana
 Jamestown, Kansas
 Jamestown, Kentucky
 Jamestown, Louisiana
 Jamestown, Missouri
 Jamestown, New York, the largest American city bearing the name
 Jamestown, North Carolina
 Jamestown, North Dakota, the second largest city bearing the name
 Jamestown, Ohio
 Jamestown, Oklahoma
 Jamestown, Pennsylvania
 Jamestown, Rhode Island
 Jamestown, South Carolina
 Jamestown, Tennessee
 Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States
 Jamestown Settlement, the living history museum reconstruction of the town
 Historic Jamestowne, the archaeological site of the original town
 Jamestown S'Klallam Indian Reservation, Washington
 Jamestown, West Virginia
 Jamestown, Wisconsin
 James Town, Wyoming
 Jamestown Township, Steuben County, Indiana
 Jamestown Charter Township, Michigan
 Jamestown Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota
 Jamestown Dam, a dam in North Dakota

Other uses
 Jamestown (horse), American Champion racehorse
 The Indian massacre of 1622, often referred to as the Jamestown Massacre, in the Virginian town of Jamestown
 Jamestown (video game), a video game developed and published by Final Form Games.
A stillbirth happens when a fetus (unborn baby) dies while still inside the mother or dies during delivery (childbirth). It is said that the delivered baby is stillborn. Stillbirth is different from a miscarriage because a stillbirth happens after the baby has been living inside its mother 20 to 24 weeks (depending on the country). It is called a miscarriage if the baby lived inside the mother for less time.

Causes 
The causes of many stillbirths are unknown, even when special tests are done to learn the cause.
nicotine, alcohol, or drugs taken by the mother during pregnancy
physical trauma
radiation poisoning
Rh disease
umbilical cord problems

Occurrence 
The number of stillbirths in the United States is about 1 in 115 births, which is about 26,000 a year, or one every 20 minutes. In developing countries, where medical care is not as advanced or good, the number of stillbirths is higher. 

In Australia, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the rate is about 1 in 200 babies.

After stillbirth 

The death of the baby is usually treated like the death of an older baby.  The family may have a funeral. The body of the dead baby can be buried or cremated (burned).  In some places, there are special places for putting the bodies or the ashes of stillborn babies.

The mother may be ill.  Her body may be hurt from having the baby.

Legal definitions of stillbirth

United Kingdom 
In the UK, any baby that leaves its mother's body after 24 weeks and does not show any signs of life is called a stillbirth. The mother or father must tell the government about the baby. A Stillbirth Certificate is given to the family.

Australia 
In Australia, any stillborn fetus that weighs more than 400 grams and lived in the mother for more than 20 weeks must be reported to the government.

United States 
The United States does not have a formal definition of stillborn babies.  All pregnancies are legally called either: live birth, fetal death, or induced termination of pregnancy (abortion). The law does not have a difference between a stillbirth and a miscarriage. However, it is recommended to register infants who weighed over 350 grams or who lived over 19 weeks inside the mother before dying.

Related pages
Fetus
Childbirth
Abortion

Footnotes and references 

Pregnancy Institute founded by Dr. Jason H. Collins, OB/GYN specializes in umbilical cord research 
March of Dimes: Quick reference and fact sheet
Investigating perinatal death: a review of the options when autopsy consent is refused. 
Stillbirth at h2g2 - written by a bereaved mother

Other websites 
The Wisconsin Stillbirth Service Program (WiSSP), a branch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Clinical Genetics Center.  One of the foremost authorities on the causes of stillbirth and responsible for many stillbirth evaluation protocols, including the widespread use of the Kleihauer-Betke test in deciding whether Rh disease is to blame for a stillbirth.
 First-person story of one woman's journey through stillbirth

Pregnancy and childbirth
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona. They are the oldest continuous professional American football club in the United States, founded in 1899 in Chicago, Illinois. They moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 before moving to Phoenix in 1988. The head coach of the team is Kliff Kingsbury. As of 2019, their starting quarterback is Kyler Murray. Drew Stanton is currently the number 2 quarterback. Arizona Cardinals play their home games at State Farm Stadium. The Arizona Cardinals played in Super Bowl XLIII, but lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

References 

 
1988 establishments in the United States
20th-century establishments in Arizona
Totnes is a town in South Devon, South West England. 7,800 people live there. It has many old buildings dating back to Tudor times, and it has the remains of a Norman castle. The town stands on the River Dart, at the highest point reached by the tide.

Totnes is well known in Britain for its large New Age community, although some of these people are moving away from the town. The town has many interesting shops selling health food and books, and there are also many art and craft shops.

A local legend says that Totnes was begun by Brutus of Troy after the Trojan war. There is a stone in the high street called the Brutus Stone. This is where people say he first stepped on British soil.

Other websites 

 Tourist information 
 Totnes Museum
 Totnes Community Magazine 

Towns in Devon
The Three Character Classic, Trimetric Classic or San Zi Jing (三字經, 三字经) is a written work from China. Many people believe that Wang Yinglin wrote it during the Song Dynasty. It is named Three Character Classic because each line has three Chinese words, which are called "characters." It is often used to teach children how to say words.

Other websites  
 
 Song dynasty Chinese text with English translation.
 The Three Character Classic in Chinese with the Herbert Giles English Translation. 
  Another English translation. 

China
The Ural Mountains (), also known simply as the Urals, is a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia.

Geography 

The Urals stretch 2,500 km from the Kazakh steppes along the northern border of Kazakhstan to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The island of Novaya Zemlya forms a further continuation of the chain. Geographically this range marks the northern part of the border between Asian and European sections of the Eurasian continent. Its highest peak is Mount Narodnaya (Poznurr, 1895 m).

Other websites 

 Five parts of the Ural Mountains

Mountain ranges
Mountains of Russia
In physical geography, a steppe is a plain without trees (apart from those near rivers and lakes). It is similar to a short-grass prairie, although a prairie is generally considered as North America, and the steppe is in eastern Europe and central Asia. Sometimes the short-grass prairie in North America is also called a steppe. Similar places in Africa are called savanna. The world's largest steppe, sometimes called The Great Steppe, is in Russia.

The Mongolian Steppe, also known as the Eastern Steppe, is located in northern Mongolia. It is between the Altai Mountains in the west and the Greater Khingan Region in the east.

Climate and Landscape
It may be semi-desert, or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude. It is the sort of climate that is in regions too dry for a forest, but not so dry that there are only deserts. The soil is too moist for a desert, but too dry for normal forest life. Steppes receive slightly more rain than deserts do. The climates in steppes are usually temperate. They are pretty dry because there is very minimal rain.

Culture
This is an open area, and often there were long distances between places with good water. People who lived in this type of area were often nomads, often traveling by horses. Genghis Khan was a great warrior from Mongolia who lived on the steppe. The majority of people in the steppe are nomads. Families in Mongolia live in "gers" which is a large portable tent. Mongolians are also master horse riders so many families own many horses that roam the steppe. The people in the steppe interact with the steppe with using the animals there for there food and drink. They also have a very prominent musical culture with a wide variety of traditional Mongolian songs.

In the United States, the cowboy herded cattle in the steppe, moving from place to place by horse. During the Dust Bowl in the 1930s in North America, farmers who had recently settled on the land and started farms suddenly found themselves without food. Many of them left. Eventually they learned to plow differently and plant crops that survived a drought better, and to plant trees in rows called windbreaks.

References

Plains
In geography, a plain is a large area of land with no hills or mountains. Plains mostly are more suitable for farming than plateaus or mountains.

List of famous plains:
 Australian Plains, Australia
 Canterbury Plains, New Zealand
 Gangetic Plains of India, Bangladesh, North India,Nepal
 Great Plains, United States
 Indus Valley Plain, Pakistan
 Kantō Plain, Japan
 Nullarbor Plain, Australia
 Khuzestan Plain, Iran
 Mazandaran Plain, Iran
 Pannonian Plain, Central Europe
 Salisbury Plain, England

Related pages
 Landform
 Floodplain
 Grassland
 Meadow
 Pasture
 Plateau
 Prairie
 Rangeland
 Savanna
 Steppe
French fries (called chips in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Commonwealth, French fried potatoes or just fries in North America), is a potato-based dish that originated in Belgium. The potatoes are cut into thin strips and fried in oil. In the UK chips are seen as different to fries with chips being thicker cut than the thinner fries.

They are usually eaten with fish, burgers, sausages, pies, fried chicken, or by themselves. Many things can be put on them to make them taste better, such as salt and vinegar, gravy, curry, cheese, ketchup or mayonnaise. These extra flavours are called condiments.

In the UK, a chip shop is a shop which sells cooked chips, usually to take home to eat. They also sell fried fish, sausages, pies, pickled eggs and pickled onions. Fish and chips is a very popular meal in Great Britain, and other places. American style burger take-aways, such as McDonald's, sell the thinner fries rather than chips.

French fries can be found in multiple locations around the world. French fries are a delicious snack that ýou can make at home by using a deep fryer, potatoes, and salt. You can also go to a fast food restaurant near you and get some.

Related pages
 Potato chips
 Cheese fries

Other websites 

 
 

Fast food
Potatoes
Fried foods
Champagne is a French sparkling wine. It is named after the Champagne wine region in Grand Est. This is a region in France with many vineyards that grow grapes and make wine.  Note that this region is not identical to the French region of Champagne-Ardenne, nor the historical province Champagne. Champagne contains carbon dioxide. One of the features of Champagne wine is that this carbon dioxide originates from a second fermentation in the bottle, and is not added.  

Many people call all sparkling wines champagne but according to trade laws, only sparkling wine from the Champagne region can be called champagne.

Kinds of champagnes 
Champagnes must be made from certain kinds of grapes. They can be made from white Chardonnay grapes, or red Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier grapes. Even if red grapes are used, most champagnes look white or sometimes pink (rosé).

Champagnes have different names depending on how much sugar is added. Here is a list of kinds of champagnes from least sweet (called "dry") to most sweet (called "wet"/"doux"):
 brut zéro or brut natural - no sugar is added
extra brut
 brut
 extra-dry
 sec
 demi-sec
 doux

Brut is the most common type of champagne.

Features 

Champagne, like all sparkling wines, is carbonated. Because of all the bubbles, champagne is sometimes called bubbly (ex. "We're going to have bubbly at our wedding.")

Champagne can be opened in a way that the cork "pops" out and the champagne sprays out in a bubbly foam. Usually this is done only at celebrations. It can be achieved by shaking the bottle before opening it. Normally, care should be taken when opening champagne bottles so that it does not make a mess. When done correctly, the cork will come out quietly, more like a sigh than a pop.

Champagne is usually served in a champagne flute (a tall, narrow glass). The shape of the glass helps keep the bubbles for a longer time.

Champagne is always served cold (chilled). The best temperature is 7 to 9 °C (43 to 48 °F). Often the bottle is chilled in a bucket of ice before and after opening.

How to say it 
In English it is pronounced like "shampain" (). In French is sounds more like "shampanye" ().

References 

 Guy, Kolleen. When Champagne became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
 Robinson, Jancis (Ed.) The Oxford Companion to Wine. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, second edition, 1999.
 Prial, Frank J. Decantations. New Yrk: St. Maritin's and grifin Publishers, 2001, p. 24.

Other websites 
 Champagne reviews and tasting notes

French wines
Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, nicknamed Caesarion (little Caesar; ; June 23, 47 BC – August, 30 BC) was the son of Cleopatra VII. He ruled Egypt as a child along with Cleopatra until 30 BC. He was murdered by Octavian, who would later become the Roman emperor Augustus.

Caesarion is probably the son of Julius Caesar. If so, he is the only known son of Caesar.

Caesarion was the last king (pharaoh) of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt.

Pharaohs
47 BC births
30 BC deaths
Exile means being sent away from the country or area where you live.  People are usually exiled for political reasons or sometimes because they have committed a crime.  They may have said bad things about the rulers in that country or tried to get into power themselves. People are not exiled in democratic countries, but many famous people in history have been sent into exile.

Exile may mean that someone is sent out of the country, but sometimes they are sent to another part of the country (this is called "internal exile").  Sometimes people have made their own decision to leave their country as a protest against the way it was being ruled.  This is called "self-imposed exile".

In the Old Testament the Jews were exiled to Babylon.  In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome people were often sent into exile.  For several centuries Russia (in the 20th century the Soviet Union) sent many people into exile, often to labour camps in Siberia.  Thousands of people from Europe including many famous people went to the United States when the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s.

One famous person who was sent into exile was Napoléon Bonaparte who was exiled from France, first to Elba and then to Saint Helena after his defeat against the allied forces.

The cellist Pablo Casals went into self-imposed exile as a protest against the government of Francisco Franco. He said he would not come back until Spain was a democracy. But he never could, because he died two years before Franco.

Related pages
Government-in-exile
Political asylum

Politics
Punishments
The Republican National Committee (the R.N.C. or RNC) is a group of people who coordinate the activities of the U.S. Republican party in all fifty states.  The R.N.C. has its headquarters in Washington, DC. It also has state Republican party headquarters in each of the 50 state capitals.

The current chairwoman of the committee is Ronna Romney McDaniel of Michigan.

Related pages
Democratic National Committee
Libertarian National Committee

Other websites 
Official RNC website 

United States Republican Party
The Democratic National Committee (D.N.C. or DNC) is a group of people who coordinate the activities of the U.S. Democratic party in all fifty states. The D.N.C. is headquartered in the nation's capital, Washington, DC. It also has state Democratic party headquarters in each of the 50 state capitals.

The current chairman is Jaime Harrison of South Carolina and the Deputy Chairman is Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Related pages
Republican National Committee
Libertarian National Committee

Other websites 
Official DNC website

United States Democratic Party
The Southwestern United States (called the American Southwest or simply the Southwest) is a region of the western United States. The region is warmer than the northern states and drier than the eastern states. The area includes Arizona and New Mexico, as well as the nearby parts of Southern California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado and western Texas. The Southwest is growing really fast, big cities in the area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. It is one of the fastest growing parts of the country.

The main parts of the Southwest are the ones that were in Santa Fe de Nuevo México and the New Mexico Territory.

Western United States
A flagellum (plural: flagella) is a long, whip-like structure that helps some single celled organisms move. It is composed of microtubules. They help propel cells and organisms in a whip-like motion. The flagellum of eukaryotes usually moves with an “S” motion, and is surrounded by cell membrane.

Flagella are structurally almost identical with the much smaller Cilia. So much so that it has been proposed protists bearing either should be unified in the Phylum Undulipodia. Previously, Margulis had proposed that the Ciliates alone should be placed in a Phylum Ciliophora. Admittedly, the Protista is a collection of disparate single-celled forms, but while a more sophisticated taxonomy is in flux (changing), Protista is still a useful term.

Cilia and flagella are cell organelles, specialised units which carry out well-defined functions, like mitochondria and plastids. It is fairly clear now that all or most of these organelles have their origin in once-independent prokaryotes (bacteria or archaea), and that the eukaryote cell is a 'community of micro-organisms' working together in 'a marriage of convenience'.

Types 
Three types of flagella have so far been distinguished; bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic. The main differences among these three types are summarized below:

 Bacterial flagella are helical filaments that rotate like screws. They provide two of several kinds of bacterial motility.
 Archaeal flagella are superficially similar to bacterial flagella, but are different in many details and considered non-homologous.
 Eukaryotic flagella – those of animal, plant, and protist cells – are complex cellular projections that lash back and forth.  Eukaryotic flagella are classed along with eukaryotic motile cilia as undulipodia to emphasize their distinctive wavy appendage role in cellular function or motility.  Primary cilia are immotile, and are not undulipodia; they have a structurally different 9+0 axoneme rather than the 9+2 axoneme found in both flagella and motile cilia undulopodia.

References

Other websites 
 Molecular Machines Index of Illustrations, Graphics, and Animations 
 Physics Today introduction to the bacterial flagellum by Howard Berg 

Protista
Organelles
Walkman is the invention as well as the brand name of Sony. It represents a portable audio player. Today, similar devices are also called "Walkman". The name describes players that have small sizes and can be carried by one anywhere. The portable player was a revolutionary device since one could take favorite music with him or her.

History 

The  original Walkman cassette player was released in 1979. The name "Walkman" was used in Japan, while abroad it had other names, one of which was "Soundabout". First the product did not have a name, and then one of the company's staff proposed "Walkman". Because it was a direct translation from Japanese, Sony's leadership seemed skeptical. They thought "Walkman" was not a suitable name for a device which was to be launched in the United States and Europe.

Sony used new ways to introduce its new product on the market and advertise it. The main idea of Sony was to make people aware that Walkman is a product that is unique on the market and that it is both new and fun. On June 22 (the date of release), Sony Walkman appeared in Tokyo. The company held an unusual press conference where different journalists were invited to Yoyogi, which is Tokyo's major park. They were given a Walkman to prove that the portable player is fun and easy to use. 

By 1995 there were already about 150 million Walkman portable players produced. Later, MP3 players became more popular.

Related pages

 Sony
 Japan
 iPod
 MP3
 Laptop
 DVD
 Universal Serial Bus (USB)

Audio technology
Music technology
Semantics is the study of meaning. Meaning in this case refers to the relation between signifiers and what they stand for. Signifiers are words, signs and symbols.

The word semantics was first used by a French man named Michel Bréal. He studied the way that language was put together, how language changed as time passed, and the connections in languages. Semantics can include simple or very complicated ideas.  In everyday speech, it means a problem with understanding language that can confuse because of the words or their connotation (another idea created by a word that is not in its definition).  This problem of understanding has been studied for a long time, especially in the field of formal semantics, where people explain the connection between words and their meanings in a clear way.

In linguistics (the study of language), semantics is the study of the attempts to understand signs or symbols used in agents (the words that cause an action) or communities in different situations. Other items of language that are said to have meaning are sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics, which is the use of personal space. Each of these topics connects to many ways of studying. In writing, things like the way paragraphs are written and the use of punctuation show meaning. Other types of language create other meanings.

Formal semantics is sometimes similar to many other areas of language study. Some of these are lexicology (study of words), syntax (ordering of words), pragmatics (the study of language in different situations), and etymology (the history of words). Semantics is also a well-defined field on its own. [3]

References

Linguistics
Governance is the term for the way a group of people such as a country do things. Many groups create a government to decide how things are to be done. Governance is different from politics. Politics deals with people with different ideas working together to create an agreement about what to do, and governance is doing what politics decided needed to be done.Governance is also how government decision making affects people in that nation.

Government

pt:Governança corporativa
A snowball is a ball of snow. They are usually made by a person picking snow up in their hands and pressing it together in the ball the size of their hand. Snowballs are usually thrown at people or objects as a game called a snowball fight. Making snowballs is a common activity for children when it snows. 

Larger snowballs are made by using a ball the size of a hand and rolling it on the ground. As more snow sticks to it, the ball grows larger. Larger snowballs are often used to make Snowmen. The term "Snowball effect" comes from this. It means as things go on, they get larger in the same way that a snowball gets larger as it rolls.

Snow
MPEG-4 is a video and audio standard (type). Movies in MPEG-4 need less space on a computer. At the same time, they still have DVD quality. MPEG means Moving Picture Experts Group. Many researchers and engineers all over the world worked to develop MPEG-4. The work on this standard ended in 1998. MPEG-4 became a standard all over the world.

Movies that use MPEG-4 standard are high quality and take up less computer memory. Older standards were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. Compared to these older versions, MPEG-4 has more features. For example, it has a way to fix problems, lots of quality and size choices, and a better picture quality.

MPEG-4 is designed for the special needs of computers, television areas and telecommunications. It is able to be individual objects in a certain area, besides rectangular pieces of computer information. For example, this could be a car driving in front of a background. The background does not change. The car can be treated as separate thing, because it is not a fixed background. This is because MPEG-4 can be many rectangular images at the same time.

Related pages
VHS
DVD
MP3

Other websites 
MPEG-4 - Additional information on the format for more advanced users

Computer file formats
Audio technology
Display technology