Pigs need a warm, clean area under a roof to sleep, and they should not be crowded. They need to be checked for sickness regularly. Pigs need lots of water. Over half their body weight is made up of water. Pigs should be given all the feed they will eat, which is usually four to five pounds a day for adult pigs. Corn is a good food for pigs, but they should also have protein supplements as well.
Pigs can be found throughout the world living on farms and in the wild, and they are also popular pets. Pigs are kept and slaughtered for their flesh, pork.
Wheat
Wheat (species of "Triticum") is a cereal grain. People eat it most often in the form of bread. It is a kind of grass whose fruit is a "head of wheat" with edible seeds. It was first grown in the Levant, a region of the Near East. Now it is cultivated worldwide.
World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined. Globally, wheat is the leading source of vegetable protein in human food. It has a higher protein content than other major cereals such as maize (corn) or rice. In terms of total production, it is second to rice as the main human food crop and ahead of maize (maize is used more for animal feeds). Almost 800,000,000 tonnes are harvested every year.
Wheat was a key factor enabling the emergence of city-based societies at the start of civilization. It was one of the first crops that could be easily cultivated on a large scale, and its seeds could be stored for long periods in a dry climate. Wheat helped the growth of city-states in the Fertile Crescent, including the Babylonian, Assyrian and persian empires.
Wheat grain is a staple food used to make flour for leavened, flat and steamed breads, biscuits, cookies, cakes, breakfast cereal, pasta, noodles, couscous. It can also be fermented to make ethanol, for alcoholic drinks, or biofuel.
An allergy to wheat can cause coeliac disease, which makes the sufferer have diarrhoea if they eat any food containing wheat.
The wheat plant has long, slender leaves, stems that are hollow in most types of wheat plants, and heads that have many kinds of flowers, from 20 to 100. The flowers are grouped together in spikelets. Each spikelet has two to six flowers. In most spikelets, two or three of the flowers become fertilized, and this makes them produce the grains used for food.
All cultivated wheats have more than one normal diploid set of chromosomes. The increases in chromosome sets occurs naturally at a low rate. Because they have more chromosomes, their ears of wheat are larger. All man did was to select the plants with extra fat ears of wheat when they occurred. Now a whole range of cultivated wheats are available. These are just a few:
Hexaploid species (six sets of chromosomes)
Tetraploid species (four sets)
Diploid species (normal two sets of chromosomes)
Emmer wheat ("Triticum dicoccum"), or 'hulled wheat', is a type of "awned" wheat. It was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East. It was widely cultivated in the ancient world, but is now a relict crop in mountainous regions of Europe and Asia.
In the wild, the awns of emmer wheat spikelets help them dig into the soil. With humidity in the night, the awns of the spikelet become erect and draw together, and in the process push the grain into the soil. During the day, the humidity drops and the awns slacken back again. During the course of days and nights, the awns' pumping movements drill the spikelet as much as an inch into the soil.
Einkorn wheat is one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat, ("Triticum monococcum"). Grains of wild einkorn have been found in Paleolithic sites of the Fertile Crescent. It was first domesticated about 7500 BC (~9000 years ago), in the early Neolithic period. Evidence from DNA suggests einkorn was domesticated in southeast Turkey, where a number of early farming villages have been found. Its cultivation decreased in the Bronze Age, and today it is a relic crop that is rarely planted. It has found a new market as a health food. It is still used for bulgur (cracked wheat) or as animal feed, in mountainous areas of France, Libya, former Yugoslavia, Turkey and other countries. It often survives on poor soils where other species of wheat fail.
Einkorn was domesticated at the same time as emmer wheat, but was not so important.
Taliban
The Taliban is an Islamic militant group operating in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. In 1994 it started a government in southern Afghanistan called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The Taliban governed Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. During this time, its leaders put in place the strictest forms of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world. Much criticism of the Taliban came from important Muslim scholars. For example, if a thief was caught stealing something the Taliban would cut-off one of his hands so that he does not use it to steal again, no matter what it was that he stole. Many criminals were put to death fast and without a fair trial. Anyone who refused to follow the law was considered a non-Muslim enemy. Every male had to go to mosque for prayer (except Afghan non-Muslims) during praying times, which is 5 times daily. The Taliban became known around the world for their very bad treatment of women and girls. The Taliban also did cultural genocide when they destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in February and March 2001.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban had been giving al-Qaeda a safe base from which to operate. The U.S. government said that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda members did the attacks in New York and Washington, but the Taliban asked the U.S. for proof of this before it would arrest them. The aim of the invasion was to remove the Taliban government from power, destroy al-Qaeda and capture bin Laden. The Taliban is still fighting the Afghan and Pakistani governments in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.
In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement that would remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. U.S. President Joe Biden said that the U.S. exit from Afghanistan will start on May 1, 2021 and end by September 11, 2021, which would be exactly 20 years since the September 11 attacks.
Screw
A screw is a sharp piece of threaded metal similar to a nail. Unlike a nail, a screw has spiral grooves down its spike. A screw is pressed down against wood and turned with a screwdriver. Turning the screw to the right makes it go into the wood. The grooves cut into the wood. This prevents the screw from falling out, as a nail might. Turning the screw to the left pulls it out of the wood.
Screws can be made of steel, iron, brass, bronze, plastic, etc.
There are also machine screws and self-tapping screws. Machine screws are bolts which have screw threads. The threads matched with nuts with female threads.
Screw threads are measured either in millimeters or in numbers. They are used in furniture, doors, appliances, etc.
Screwing is the neatest way of holding together two materials. If no glue is involved, then the screwing can be dismantled.
These are three different types of screw.
Do not place screws in line as this weakens the wood.
Use the right size screwdriver for the screw head. A screwdriver that is too slim can damage the slot, too wide can tear the materials. Screw threads in both wood and metal can become stripped, resulting in loss of holding power, and can also be difficult to remove.
A screw is a type of simple machine.
Tajikistan
Tajikistan is a country in Central Asia. It was previously part of the Soviet Union. Tajikistan is a republic. The capital city is Dushanbe. The official language is Tajik,which is a dialect of Farsi (Persian).
Tajikistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the CIS. Tajikistan is eighth in size of CIS countries.