In 1254 Pistoia was captured by troops from Florentine. Pistoia stayed a Florentine city except for few years in the 14th century, when Castruccio Castracani captured it for Lucca. It was annexed to (made a part of) Florence in 1530. During the 14th century Ormanno Tedici was one of the Lords of the city.
Dante mentioned the town in his Divina Commedia. Michelangelo called the people of Pistoia the "enemies of heaven".
The large Piazza del Duomo is connected near to other famous buildings, for example the " Palazzo del Comune" and the "Palazzo del Podestà". In July, the "Giostra dell'Orso" ("Bear Joust") takes place in the square. At the joust, horsemen try to strike a target held by a dummy shaped like a bear. The 14th century Baptistry, in Gothic style is also in the square.
The "Palazzo dei Vescovi" ("Bishops' Palace") includes a loggia in gothic style.
Pistoia is twinned with:
Seleute
Seleute was a municipality, in the new municipality of Clos du Doubs and district of Porrentruy in the canton of Jura in Switzerland.
Vendlincourt
Vendlincourt is a municipality of the district of Porrentruy in the canton of Jura in Switzerland.
Bassecourt
Bassecourt is a former municipality of the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura in Switzerland. On 1 January 2013 the former municipalities of Bassecourt, Courfaivre, Glovelier, Soulce and Undervelier merged to form the new municipality of Haute-Sorne.
Boécourt
Boécourt is a municipality of the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura in Switzerland.
Bourrignon
Bourrignon is a municipality of the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura in Switzerland.
Châtillon, Jura
Châtillon is a municipality of the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura in Switzerland.
Trans fat
Trans fat is a type of unsaturated fat. Trans fat is often produced in higher amounts in factories when manufacturing certain processed foods such as margarine. Trans fat occurs in nature only very rarely, found in small amounts in meat and milk fat. When vegetable oils are heated or when they are "hydrogenated", trans fats are made. Hydrogenation is the process of bubbling hydrogen gas through the oil to change its consistency. The bubbling raises the melting point of the oil. As the hydrogen passes through, the oil begins to become solid. By stopping the hydrogenation part of the way through, manufacturers obtain "partially hydrogenated oil". This is similar to butter, but much cheaper to produce. It is sold as "margarine", "oleo" or "vegetable shortening". The process allows cheaply adding a butter-like consistency to food products.
Trans fat is bad for human health and has been linked to a number of problems including: coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, liver dysfunction, and infertility. Healthy oils are always liquid at the temperature of blood. Saturated and trans fats are not.
There has yet to be a study which shows that trans fat is good for human health in any way. Since scientists and nutritionists now know the health issues related to eating trans fats, trans fats are being used less but there are still some in commercial food products.
For some time, the US government's "Food and Drug Administration" allowed makers of food products to label their products as having "0 grams of trans fat per serving" as long as the amount of trans fat in the food product falls below 0.5 grams per serving. Since partially hydrogenated oils are the major source of trans fat, reading the "ingredients" label is the safest way to ensure that a food does not contain any trans fat at all. Fried foods will likely, but not necessarily, contain trans fat since fried foods are produced by using very hot oil.
In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration began to gradually stop the use of trans fats in all foods. It says there is no safe amount of trans fats that should be in food eaten by humans.
In June 2015, the FDA issued a final statement. It says there is no agreement by scientists that artificial trans fatty acids are safe for any use in human food. Trans fat must be taken out of all food production within three years (by June 2018). The FDA says the ban will cost the food industry $6.2 billion over 20 years. The food industry must use new formulas and recipes using ingredients without trans fat. The benefits will be about $140 billion over 20 years. This will be mostly from lower health care costs. Food companies can issue requests to the FDA for permission to use partially hydrogenated oils. The companies must prove the oils' use is safe.
Cluny
Cluny is a city in eastern France. It lies in the region of Burgundy. The city grew around the Abbey of Cluny in the 10th century. The town of Mâcon is about 30 km to the southeast. Lyon is about 60 km to the south. Today, about 4,400 people live in the city. The Cluniac Reforms started here.
Integumentary system
The integumentary system is everything covering the outside of an animal's body. This account is written mostly with people in mind, but it applies more widely.
The integument means skin, hair, scales, nails, sweat glands and their products (sweat and mucus). The name comes from the Latin "integumentum", which means 'a covering'.
Skin, hair, scales, feathers and nails make up the integumentary system.
There are two layers of skin:
There are four types of glands
The integumentary system has lots of different functions. It:
Here is a list of skin problems:
There are other skin problems that are less common.
Auditory system
The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense for hearing. The sense organ for hearing is the ear.
The outer ear is the folds of cartilage surrounding the ear canal. They are called the pinna.
Sound waves travelling through the ear canal will hit the tympanum, or eardrum. Three tiny bones, the ossicles, convert the waves to high pressure vibrations. They are then converted to nerve impulses in the cochlea.
The inner ear is made mostly of the cochlea. The cochlea is made up of three pieces, and is filled with liquid. It transforms sound waves to electric signals in neurons. The semicircular canals of the inner ear are used in equilibrioception, the sense of balance.
Northbridge
The northbridge is one of two basic chips on the motherboard of a computer. The other basic chip is the southbridge and together they create the computer chipset. Usually, north- and southbridge are on different ICs; it is rare for both of them to be on one chip.
Northbridge supports communication between CPU, RAM memory, AGP port or PCI Express bus and also supports connection with southbridge. There exist some chipsets which support two types of RAM memory and which are accessible during transition to new standard.
Northbridge is a basic part of motherboard which establishes speed, types of processors, quantity of processors and kind of RAM memory. Other important factors are, for example, voltage regulation and number of connectors.
Sequencers of RAM memory was, in AMD64 architecture, shifted directly into processor. Other producers (like Intel or IBM) also incorporated this change into their new processors.
A perspective to the future is SOC (System On Chip). With it will also decrease the number of components on the motherboard. But bigger chips hold under universality of solution, they have more pins and they are more difficult. Present high-speed buses are series (PCIe, SATA) and they decline the complexity. In the future we can expect return to the standard interface of other circuits using bus (probably PCI express) and maybe they will be connected to the single Super I/O sequencer. Saved lads can be used for another integrated turn like SATA, USB, IDE, SDIO scanner of cards and sequencers of PCI.
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