Paranthropus aethiopicus is an extinct species of hominid. The fossil was discovered in 1985 in Lake Turkana, Kenya. KNM WT 17000 is known as the "Black Skull" due to the dark colouration of the bone, caused by high levels of manganese. It is one of the earliest examples of robust australopithecines from the Pliocene. The skull is dated to 2.5 million years ago, before the other forms of robust australopithecines.
Curry tree
The curry tree ("Murraya koenigii"), also known as karivepallai, karivembu, karivepaku or kadipatta, is a kind of tree. It is found mostly in hot climates, and is a native plant of India. The leaves of the curry tree are called curry leaves or sweet Neem leaves.
Usually, curry trees grow to 4-6 metres tall, and their trunk grows to 40 centimetres in diameter. Small black, shiny berries that grow on the tree can be eaten, but their seeds are poisonous.
The scientific name of the curry tree, "Murraya koenegii", was chosen to celebrate the botanist Johann Gerhard König, who worked for a long time in India.
Native (ecology)
A species is called indigenous or native to a place when that species lives there because of the natural environment, not human change. A species is an indigen if it lives in the wild and has not had artificial selection by humans.
If a species is in a place because it was moved by humans, the species is not indigenous to that place. It is an introduced species.
Quicksand
Quicksand is a mixture of water and sand or silt. It has the characteristic of thixotropy: it looks solid, but when pressure is applied it liquifies (acts like a liquid). If animals or people stand on it, they sink into it. However, a person does not drown in quicksand. A human or animal does not sink entirely into quicksand due to the higher density of the fluid. It can be difficult to get out: that is the real problem. Quicksand may be escaped by slow movement of the legs in order to reduce viscosity of the fluid, and rotating the body so as to float on one's back (supine).
Water circulation underground can focus in an area with just the right mixture of fine sands and other materials such as clay. The water moves up and then down slowly in a convection-like manner throughout a column of sand, and the sand remains a generally solid mass. This lubricates the sand particles and makes them unable to support any significant weight, since they move around with very little friction. They behave more like a liquid when exposed to stress. Since the water does not usually go all the way up through the sand, the sand above does not appear to move at all, and can support leaves and other small debris. This makes it difficult to distinguish quicksand from the surrounding environment.
Quicksand is a non-Newtonian fluid: when undisturbed it often seems to be solid ("gel" form), but a small (less than 1%) change in the stress on the quicksand causes it to turn liquid ("sol" form). There is a sudden decrease in its viscosity. Under his weight, the person then sinks into the sol (liquidised sand).
Someone stepping in it starts to sink. Around the person dense regions of sand and sediment form and grip the person. The viscosity of the quicksand seems to increase suddenly. It is now a gel. In order to move within the quicksand, a person or object must apply sufficient pressure on the compacted sand to re-introduce enough water to liquify it. The forces required to do this are quite large: to remove a foot from quicksand at a speed of one centimeter per second would require the same amount of force as "that needed to lift a medium-sized car".
It was commonly believed that the behavior of quicksand was due solely to saturated or supersaturated suspensions of granules in water. Pressure from underground sources of water would separate and suspend the granular particles, reducing the friction between them. In 2005 it was been shown that the presence of salt is important. The stability of the colloidal quicksand is changed by the presence of salt. It increases the high viscosity regions of sediment responsible for quicksand's "trapping" power. Another finding was that a human cannot be drawn into a saltwater quicksand entirely.
Quicksand may be found inland (on riverbanks, near lakes, or in marshes), or near the coast.
One region notorious for its quicksands is Morecambe Bay, Yorkshire. As the bay is very broad and shallow, a person trapped by the quicksand would be exposed to the danger of the returning tide, which can come in rapidly.
Military organization
A military organization is a way of making up the armed forces of a state as a need to offer military capability as needed by a national defence policy. In some countries paramilitary forces are included in a nation's armed forces. Armed forces that are not a part of the military or paramilitary organizations, such as insurgent forces, often mimic military organizations, or use ad hoc structures.
SS-Verfügungstruppe
The SS-Verfügungstruppe (The Combat Support Force) (short: SS-VT) were combat divisions of the SS, trained to the same way as the normal German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht). They were the precursor of the later-developed Waffen-SS.
On 24 September 1934, a special SS military unit was made up by a group of a few other Nazi and paramilitary units like units known as SS Special Detachments (SS-Sonderkommandos) and the Guard known as the (SS-Stabswache) units. The new group was to be trained as combat ready infantry. The unit was called SS-Special Purpose Troops (SS-Verfügungstruppe) and was not the police or the Armed Forces but military trained men for the use by the Führer in war or peace. The SS-Verfügungstruppe (known as SS-VT) was told to the public on 16 March 1935. The SS-VT trained with Hitler’s body guards some of which later joined the SS-VT prior to the invasion of Russia in 1941
Some units of the SS-VT worked with the Wehrmacht during the take over of the Sudetenland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and took part in the invasion of Poland along with the campaign against the Allies in the West. From the regiments that made up the SS-VT came the Waffen-SS (or "Armed"-SS) Divisions that fought in all German theaters in World War II. Units making up the SS-VT were not known as the "Waffen-SS" until a speech by Adolf Hitler in July 1940.
In 1939 the whole SS was split into two groups: the Allgemeine-SS (the General SS) and the Waffen-SS (the Armed SS).
The Waffen-SS was made up of three smaller groups
In 1941 the commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, said that more Waffen-SS Verfügungstruppe units would be made from non-German foreign nationals. The goal was to get more soldiers from occupied nations. Some of these foreign units included volunteers from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, and the Netherlands.
Countries like Spain, officially a neutral state, had by the end of the war given many volunteers to the Waffen SS (most of them with the SS Wallonien division) that took part in combat until the end of the European war in Berlin. This and many other volunteers of non-German background were believers in the German cause.
Detachment (military)
A detachment (from the French word "détachement") is a military unit. It can be broken off from a bigger unit for a set reason or (as often seen in United States Army usage) can be a permanent unit smaller than a battalion. The term is often used to refer to a unit that is sent to a different base from the parent unit.
A Cadet detachment usually consists of between 10 and 40 cadets. Several detachments make up a cadet company.
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit of around 500-1500 men often made up of from two to seven companies and often commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel. More than one battalions often make up a regiment or a brigade.
A battalion is often the smallest military unit able to do movement on their own without being part of a larger unit. The battalion is often part of a regiment, group or a brigade.