An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is an area of countryside considered to have significant landscape value in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Natural England designates them on behalf of the United Kingdom government. The Countryside Council for Wales designates them on behalf of the Welsh Government. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency designates them on behalf of the Northern Ireland Executive.
The chief purpose of the AONB designation is to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the landscape, with two secondary aims: meeting the need for quiet enjoyment of the countryside and having regard for the interests of those who live and work there. To achieve these aims, AONBs rely on planning controls and practical countryside management.
As they have the same landscape quality, AONBs may be compared to the national parks of England and Wales. AONBs are created under the same legislation as the national parks, the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Unlike AONBs, national parks have their own authorities, have special legal powers to prevent unsympathetic development, and are well known to many inhabitants of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
There are 35 AONBs in England, four in Wales, one (Wye Valley) that is in both England and Wales and nine in Northern Ireland. The first AONB was awarded in 1956 to the Gower Peninsula, south Wales. The most recently confirmed is the Tamar Valley AONB in 1994. The smallest AONB is the Isles of Scilly (1976), , and the largest AONB is the Cotswolds (1966), . The AONBs of England and Wales together cover around 18% of the countryside in the two countries.
Chaturanga
Chaturanga is the earliest known form of chess, 6th century AD.
This precursor of modern chess originated in the northern Indian subcontinent during the Gupta empire. 'Chaturanga' translates as 'the four divisions', meaning infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry. They were the four divisions of an Indian army at the time, and no doubt the game was thought of as a war-game. At that time the game had no female piece: what we now call the queen was called "Mantri", meaning a minister or advisor.
The game eventually spread to the rest of the world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. It was then called Shatranj.
From the beginning until the end of the 15th century the pieces we call bishops and queens had limited movement, and it took longer to get the pieces into action. In modern chess, the original pieces evolved into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.<ref name="H/W">Hooper, David and Whyld, Kenneth 1992. "The Oxford Companion to Chess" 2nd ed, Oxford University Press. </ref>
Shatranj
Chatrang, or Shatranj, was the name given to the early game of chess when it travelled to Persia and then to the Arab world.
In Sassanid Persia around 600 the name became Chatrang and the rules were developed further, and players started calling "Shāh!" (Persian for 'King') when threatening the opponent's king, and "Shāh māt!" (Persian for 'the king is finished') when the king could not escape from attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it traveled to other lands.
The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the pieces largely retaining their Persian names; in Arabic "māt" or "māta" مَاتَ means "died", "is dead". In Arabic, the game became Shatranj. In all other languages, the name of the game is derived either from "shatranj" or from "shah".
One interesting fact is that the Arabs divided their game into the same three stages which we do today: opening, middlegame and endgame.
At the start of a game, the Arabic masters took a number of moves before the pieces were in contact with the other side.
The following table provides a glimpse of the changes in the names and character of chess pieces, as they passed from one culture to another, from India through Persia to Europe:
Ice cap
An ice cap is a large mass of ice.
Ice caps cover less than 50 000 km² of land area. Sheets of ice covering more than 50 000 km² are called ice sheets.
Ice caps are usually in high areas, but they are not limited to them.
Carbon–hydrogen bond activation
Carbon–hydrogen bond activation or C-H activation is a reaction that breaks a carbon–hydrogen bond. Most times, the reaction involves organometallic complexes. The reaction path has coordination of a hydrocarbon to the inner-sphere of the metal atom (“M”). The reaction path includes either an intermediate “alkane or arene complex” or as a transition state leading to a "M-C" intermediate. The reaction path makes C-H activation different from other reactions. During the C-H breaking event the hydrocarbyl group remains linked in the inner-sphere and under the influence of the metal atom.
Chemists study C-H activation because for many years chemists believed that C-H bonds were unreactive. Both theoretical studies as well as experiments now show that C-H bonds can be broken. This is done by a nearby metal atom changing the electron distribution of the C-H bond (coordination). Much chemical research looks at the design and synthesis of new reagents and catalysts that can affect C-H activation. The goal of this research is the conversion of cheap and abundant alkanes into valuable functionalized organic compounds.
Historians say that Otto Dimroth discovered the first C-H activation reaction. In 1902, he reported that benzene reacted with mercury(II) acetate (See: organomercury), but some scholars do not view this reaction as being a C-H activation. Goldman & Goldberg later wrote, C-H activation looks like H-H activation: both can be achieved by electrophilic or oxidative addition. The first true C-H activation reaction was reported by Joseph Chatt in 1965 with insertion of a ruthenium atom ligated to dmpe in the C-H bond of naphthalene.
Egyptian literature
Egyptian literature is some of the earliest known literature. The Egyptians were the first culture to develop the book.
The ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus. They also wrote on walls, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and more. A well-known example of ancient Egyptian literature is the Story of Sinuhe;
Alexandria became an important center of early Christianity from around the 1st to 4th century CE. Writing by Coptic Christians was important to Christian literature at that time.The Nag Hammadi library protected some books from being lost or destroyed.
Muslim Arabs controlled Egypt by the eighth century. Libraries and literature were important in Arab Egypt. Several important changes for writers happened at this time. Cloth paper replaced papyrus. Writers began using calligraphy. Also, writers began to write mostly about Islam. The earliest novel written in Egypt was Ibn al-Nafis' "Theologus Autodidactus". It was an early science fiction and religious novel.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Arab world experienced a cultural change like the Renaissance. This was called al-Nahda movement. It touched nearly all areas of life, including literature. One of the most important people from this time was Naguib Mahfouz. He was first Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Another important modern writer was Muhammad Husayn Haykal. He wrote "Zaynab" in 1914. It is an Islamic novel and is called the first modern Egyptian novel.
Phormium tenax
Phormium tenax ("harakeke" in Māori, New Zealand flax) is an evergreen perennial plant from New Zealand and Norfolk Island. It is an important fibre plant and also a popular garden plant.
The plant grows as a clump of long, straplike leaves up to two meters long. It grows a much taller flowering shoot, with dramatic yellow or red flowers.
The fibre from the plant was used by the Māori of New Zealand to make baskets. It was also used in rope and sail making. after the arrival of Europeans up until at least WWII