Westernization is the transformation of a non western culture to Western standards, with historical examples being the Romanization of "barbarian" europe in the classical period, the Hispanization of South America, Central America and the Philippines in the 1500s, the Anglicization of North America and Australia in the 1700s, the Francization of North and West Africa in the 1800s and the current Americanization of many first world nations such as Singapore and Israel through Hollywood/ American popular culture.
Though there are many supporters of westernization, there are also many people who oppose it it expanding at the expense of local cultures.
E (mathematical constant)
The number has great importance in mathematics, as do 0, 1, , and . All five of these numbers are important and occur again and again in mathematics. The five constants appear in one formulation of Euler's identity. Like the constant , is also irrational (it cannot be represented as a ratio of integers) and transcendental (it is not a root of any non-zero polynomial with rational coefficients).
The number is very important for exponential functions. For example, the exponential function applied to the number one, has a value of .
There are many different ways to define . Jacob Bernoulli, who discovered , was trying to solve the problem:
In other words, there is a number that the expression formula_2 approaches as "n" becomes larger. This number is .
Another definition is to find the solution of the following formula:
Monster (disambiguation)
A monster is often a type of creature.
The term monster can also mean:
Platelet
A platelet is a cell fragment that circulates in the blood. Platelets are involved in hemostasis through the making of blood clots. A low platelet count (number of platelets in the blood) can cause a person to bleed without their blood clotting (making scabs). A high platelet count can increase the risk of thrombosis (blood clots inside blood vessels), which stops blood from flowing properly.
Platelets do not have a cell nucleus. They are disc-shaped, and are 1.5 to 3 micrometers in diameter. The body does not have a lot of platelets, so they can all be used up quickly. They contain RNA, a canalicular system, and several different types of granules; lysosomes (containing acid hydrolases), dense bodies (containing ADP, ATP serotonin and calcium) and alpha granules (containing fibrinogen, factor V, vitronectin, thrombospondin and von Willebrand factor), the contents of which are released when the platelet is activated.
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern region of Europe. Originally, it referred to the countries that were under the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople during the middle ages, which was in contrast to the West which referred to the countries under the influence of the Roman Catholic and later Protestant Churches. Later during the Cold War it meant the European countries that belonged to the Soviet Union, a definition that still persists today in these post-soviet states. Others describe Eastern Europe as a region of predominantly Slavic cultures, though other ethnic groups live there as well.
According to the widest contemporary definitions - including those used by the UN Statistics Division, several other UN organizations and EuroVoc (the multilingual thesaurus of the EU) - the following states are in Eastern Europe:
Partly recognized:
Since January 1993 some groups have changed their definitions of Eastern Europe. Although the list above is still the most popular and widely accepted definition of this region, some experts divide the region further into subsections. According to such theories: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia are in Central Europe (the western sections of Belarus and Ukraine are also sometimes listed as Central European) or East-Central Europe. Finally, the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania and Slovenia are occasionally grouped with a number of other countries into Southern Europe, but more often referred to as Southeast (or Southeastern) Europe.
Eastern Bloc
The term Eastern Bloc referred to the former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, which were not aligned with the Soviet Union after 1948 and 1960 respectively. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) arranged economic cooperation among the members.
Communist governments were initially installed, mostly in places that had been controlled by the Axis countries and occupied due to the victories of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II). The process included extensive political and media controls, along with a Soviet approach to restricting emigration. Events such as the split of Josip Broz Tito and Berlin Blockade prompted stricter control. While certain oppositional factions in the Bloc had revolts, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika experienced inefficiencies and stagnation throughout much of the Bloc preceding the Bloc's dissolution. Counterrevolutions in 1989 dissolved the Soviet Bloc.
A 2009 Pew Research Center poll showed that 72% of Hungarians and 62% of both Ukrainians and Bulgarians felt that their lives were worse off after 1989, when free markets were made dominant. A follow-up poll by Pew Research Center in 2011 showed that 45% of Lithuanians, 42% of Russians, and 34% of Ukrainians approved of the change to a market economy.
Truthiness
Truthiness is a word used by Stephen Colbert. It was first used on October 17, 2005 in the first episode of the television show "The Colbert Report". The word is used to describe something that feels truthful. Facts and logic have nothing to do with truthiness. The truthiness of something is only measured by it instinctively feeling correct.
The word was picked as the word of the year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society on January 6, 2006. It was also selected by the Merriam-Webster dictionary on December 10, 2006 as its 2006 Word of the Year. It beat the term "google" to get Word of the Year.
On the October 5 2005 Cobert Report, Stephen Colbert has this to say about truthiness:
Multi-core processor
A multi-core CPU is a computer processor which has two or more sections. Each section of the chip executes instructions as if it was a separate computer. The actual processors are still on one chip. On this chip every core looks mostly like the other. They are several mostly independent cores which work together in parallel. A dual-core processor is a multi-core processor with two independent microprocessors. A quad-core processor is a multi-core processor with four independent microprocessors. As you might be able to tell from the prefix, the name of the processor is based on the number of the microprocessors on the chip.
In the 20th century most computers used single-core processors and not multi-core processors. Multi-core solutions were only used in unusual cases. The usual way to make a computer faster was to increase the clock rate. But at a frequency about 4 GHz the CPU would get too hot and take a lot of electricity. This was the point when multi-core processors became more important. Therefore, the demand for multi-core processors increased. In the second half of 2006 the best processors were dual-core processors. Since 2006 the development has gone on, so that the new processors get four, eight, or more independent microprocessors. Today, single-core processors are not used in new personal computers, but they remain popular in embedded systems which do not need a fast processor.
The following operating systems support multi-core processors
Western Bloc
The Western Bloc during the Cold War means the powers allied with the United States and NATO against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.