Certain squid and small crustaceans use bioluminescence as many squid use ink. A cloud of luminescence is expelled, confusing or repelling a potential predator while the squid or crustacean escapes to safety. Every species of firefly has larvae that glow to repel predators.
Bioluminescent organisms are a target for many areas of research. Luciferase systems are widely used in the field of genetic engineering. They have also been used in biomedical research, to give some cells visible labels. Luciferin can be added to molecules and cells to make them visible under the microscope. "This market is now worth about £20bn. If you go into a hospital and have a blood test which measures viral proteins, cancer proteins, hormones, vitamins, bacterial proteins, drugs, it will almost certainly use this technique".
The structure of photophores, the light producing organs in bioluminescent organisms, are being investigated by industrial designers.
This is a list of organisms that have visible bioluminescence:
Animals:
Despite their name, fireflies are actually beetles which use an enzymatic reaction involving a chemical compound called luciferin to produce their typical greenish flashing light. As well as possibly warning predators about their toxicity, it is thought the main purpose of their flashing abdomen is to attract mates.
Whittier, Alaska
Whittier is a small town in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. Whittier has 182 people always living in it. The Whittier Glacier near Whittier was named for the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier in the year 1915.
During World War II the United States Army built a port and railroad near the glacier and named the port Whittier. The two big buildings that are very easy to notice in Whittier were built after World War II. The Hodge Building (now called Begich Towers) was built for housing soldiers and the Buckner Building, finish being built in 1953, was called the "city under one roof". It was once the biggest building in Alaska. The Begich Building is now a condominium (or houst that has many rooms that people live in), and almost all of the people that live in Whittier's live here.
The town was badly damaged by tsunamis (or very big waves) started by the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake; thirteen people died because of the waves that were 13 m (43 ft) tall.
Whittier is a popular port for cruise ships, because people can go to Anchorage and the inside of Alaska by both car and train. Whittier is also popular with visitors and fishermen.
Whittier is the wettest city in Alaska and the United States. The city receives at least 198 inches of rain a year.
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet, (born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. She made her movie debut as Juliet Hulme in Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" (1994). She is best known for her starring role in the American movie, "Titanic". Winslet is the second of four children, her sisters are the actresses Anna and Beth Winslet and her brother is Joss Winslet, her mother Sally Anne is a barmaid and her father Roger John Winslet is a swimming pool contractor. Her maternal grandparents Linda and Oliver Bridges founded the Reading Repertory Theatre and her uncle is the actor Robert Bridges, Her maternal great-grandmother Florence Theodelinda Lidman, was the daughter of a Swedish immigrant.
Kate Winslet was married to director Jim Threapleton; they had a daughter, Mia. She married director Sam Mendes; they had a son, Joe. In 2012, she married Ned Rocknroll, nephew of billionaire Richard Branson. She had his first son in December of 2013.
Joe DiMaggio
Joseph Paul DiMaggio (born Giuseppe Paolo Di Maggio Jr; November 25, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was a Major League Baseball center fielder who played his whole career for the New York Yankees. His nicknames were Joltin' Joe and The Yankee Clipper. He played from 1936 to 1942 and then joined the army in 1943 because of World War II. He came back and began playing again in 1946 until his retirement in 1951 at the age of 36. By the time he retired he had hit 361 home runs. He hit almost one home run for every strikeout. DiMaggio died on the 8th of March, 1999, of lung cancer. He is widely regarded as one of the best baseball players of all time. DiMaggio was also well known for his marriage and lifelong devotion to Marilyn Monroe.
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire, an area ruled by the great Mongol Khans in the 13th and 14th centuries, was one of the largest land empires in history.
The original homeland of the Mongols, was bounded by the Khingan Mountains on the east, the Altai and Tian mountains on the west, the Shilka River and the mountain ranges by Lake Baikal on the north, and the Great Wall of China on the south.
It was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206 AD when he brought together the Mongol and Turkic tribes. When he died in 1227 AD, he had conquered Central Asia, North China and parts of eastern Persia. Later his grandson Kublai Khan would go on to expand the empire and found the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty, ruling whole China. The Mongol Empire stretched from Eastern Europe to Western Asia, including Central Asia and the Middle East. Its power did not last long, though. By the 1360s it had broken into several empires, all of which were later destroyed.
Parthia
Parthia is an ancient country of Asia, now Iran and regions of Armenia, Iraq, Georgia, eastern Turkey, eastern Syria,Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and UAE.
Parthians were excellent horsemen and archers. In battle, mounted Parthians often discharged their arrows back towards the enemy while pretending to flee.
In 250 BC, the Parthians succeeded in founding an independent kingdom that in the 1st century BC it grew into an empire extending from the Euphrates to the Indus and from the Amu Darya to the Indian Ocean.
238 BC
1312
1312 CE (or A.D.) is a common year in the 14th century.
1422
1422 (MCDXXII) was .
Hydrolysis
Hydrolysis is a chemical reaction or process where a chemical compound reacts with water. This is the type of reaction that is used to break down polymers into many smaller units. In this reaction, water is always added to the chemical compound.
Hydrolysis of metal salts is more commonly known as hydration. Many metal ions are strong Lewis acids, and in water they may undergo hydrolysis to form "basic salts". Such salts contain a hydroxyl group that is directly bound to the metal ion in place of a water ligand. The positive charge on metal ions creates an attraction to water, a Lewis base with a non-binding electron pair on the oxygen atom, and alters the water molecule's electron density. This in turn increases the polarity of the O-H bond, which now acts as a proton donor under Brønsted-Lowry acid-base theory to release the hydrogen as a H+ ion, increasing the acidity of the solution. For example, aluminium chloride undergoes extensive hydrolysis in water with the solution being very acidic.
This implies that hydrogen chloride is lost in the evaporation of AlCl solutions and the residue is a basic salt (in this case an "oxychloride") in place of AlCl. This type of reaction is also seen with other metal chlorides such as ZnCl, SnCl, FeCl and lanthanide halides such as DyCl. With some compounds such as TiCl, the hydrolysis may go to completion and form the pure hydroxide or oxide, in this case TiO.
Water (molecule)
Water (HO, HOH) covers 70-75% of the Earth's surface in its liquid and solid (ice) states, and is present in the atmosphere as a vapor. It is the most abundant molecule on the Earth's surface.