To meet the demands of their customers, banks get cash from Federal Reserve Banks. Most medium- and large-sized banks maintain reserve accounts at one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, and they pay for the cash they get from the Fed by having those accounts debited. Some smaller banks maintain their required reserves at larger, "correspondent," banks. The smaller banks get cash through the correspondent banks, which charge a fee for the service. The larger banks get currency from the Fed and pass it on to the smaller banks.
When the public's demand for cash declines—after the holiday season, for example—banks find they have more cash than they need and they deposit the excess at the Fed. Because banks pay the Fed for cash by having their reserve accounts debited, the level of reserves in the nation's banking system drops when the public's demand for cash rises; similarly, the level rises again when the public's demand for cash subsides and banks ship cash back to the Fed. The Fed offsets variations in the public's demand for cash that could introduce volatility into credit markets by implementing open market operations.
The popularization of the ATM in recent years has increased the public's demand for currency and, in turn, the amount of currency that banks order from the Fed. Interestingly, the advent of the ATM has led some banks to request used, fit bills, rather than new bills, because the used bills often work better in the ATMs.
Each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks keeps an inventory of cash on hand to meet the needs of the depository institutions in its District. Extended custodial inventory sites in several continents promote the use of U.S. currency internationally, improve the collection of information on currency flows, and help local banks meet the public's demand for U.S. currency. Additions to that supply come directly from the two divisions of the Treasury Department that produce the cash: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which prints currency, and the United States Mint, which makes coins. Most of the inventory consists of deposits by banks that had more cash than they needed to serve their customers and deposited the excess at the Fed to help meet their reserve requirements.
When a Federal Reserve Bank receives a cash deposit from a bank, it checks the individual notes to determine whether they are fit for future circulation. About one-third of the notes that the Fed receives are not fit, and the Fed destroys them. As shown in the table below, the life of a note varies according to its denomination. For example, a $1 bill, which gets the greatest use, remains in circulation an average of 5.9 years; a $100 bill lasts about 15 years. Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Sunday night Cole
Fluid ounce
A fluid ounce is a unit of volume in both the imperial system of units and the U.S. customary units system. However, the two measures are not quite the same:
Shape of the universe
The shape of the Universe cannot be discussed with everyday terms, because all the terms need to be those of Einsteinian relativity. The geometry of the universe is therefore not the ordinary Euclidean geometry of our everyday lives.
According to the special theory of relativity, it is impossible to say whether two distinct events occur at the same time if those events are separated in space. To speak of "the shape of the universe (at a point in time)" is naive from the point of view of special relativity. Due to the relativity of simultaneity we cannot speak of different points in space as being "at the same point in time" nor, therefore, of "the shape of the universe at a point in time".
What astrophysicists do is ask whether a particular model of the universe is consistent with what is known through observations and measurements of the universe. If the observable universe is smaller than the entire universe (in some models it is many orders of magnitude smaller or even infinitesimal), observation is limited to a part of the whole.
Consideration of the shape of the universe can be split into two:<br>
The observable universe is the basis for testing any model of the universe. It is a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer, regardless of the shape of the universe as a whole. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth.
Recent measurements have led NASA to state, "We now know that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error". Within one model, the FLRW model, the present most popular shape of the Universe found to fit observational data is the infinite flat model. There are other models that also fit the data.
Meteor shower
A meteor shower is an event when many meteors seem to come from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel paths. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them burn up and never hit the Earth's surface.
A meteor shower is the result of an interaction between a planet, such as Earth, and streams of debris from a comet. Comets are dirty snowballs, made up of rock embedded in ice, orbiting the Sun. Each time a comet swings by the Sun in its orbit, some of its ice vaporizes and meteoroids will be shed. The meteoroids spread out along the entire orbit of the comet to form a meteoroid stream, also known as a "dust trail".
Most of our short-period meteor showers are the product of rare disintegrations, when large chunks break off a mostly dormant comet. Examples are the Quadrantids and Geminids. They originated from a breakup of asteroid-like objects, 2003 EH1 and 3200 Phaethon, respectively, about 500 and 1000 years ago. The fragments tend to fall apart quickly into dust, sand, and pebbles, and spread out along the orbit of the comet to form a dense meteoroid stream, which later moves into Earth's path.
The most visible meteor shower in most years are the Perseids, which peak on 12 August each year at over one meteor per minute. NASA has a useful tool to calculate how many meteors per hour are visible from your observing location.
The Leonid meteor shower peaks around 17 November of each year. About every 33 years, the Leonid shower produces a big meteor storm, peaking at thousands of meteors per hour. Leonid storms gave birth to the term "meteor shower" when it was first realised, during the November 1833 storm, that the meteors radiated from near the star Gamma Leonis. The last Leonid storms were in 1999, 2001 (two), and 2002 (two). Before that, there were storms in 1767, 1799, 1833, 1866, 1867, and 1966. When the Leonid shower is not "storming" it is less active than the Perseids.
Cat
Cats, also called domestic cats ("Felis catus"), are small, carnivorous mammals, of the family Felidae.
Domestic cats are often called 'house cats' when kept as indoor pets. Cats have been domesticated (tamed) for nearly 10,000 years.
They are one of the most popular pets in the world. They are kept by humans for hunting rodents and as companions.
There are also farm cats, which are kept on farms to keep rodents away; and feral cats, which are domestic cats that live away from humans.
A cat is sometimes called a "kitty". A young cat is called a "kitten". A female cat that has not had its sex organs removed is called a "queen". A male cat that has not had its sex organs removed is called a "tom".
There are about 60 breeds of cat. Domestic cats are found in shorthair, longhair, and hairless breeds. Cats which are not specific breeds can be referred to as 'domestic shorthair' (DSH) or 'domestic longhair' (DLH).