Pollination in this genus is accomplished in an unusual manner, as the pollen is grouped into pollen sacs. The feet or mouthparts of flower visiting insects such as bees, wasps and butterflies, slip into one of the five slits in each flower formed by adjacent anthers. The bases of the pollinia then mechanically attach to the insect, pulling a pair of pollen sacs free when the pollinator flies off. Pollination is effected by the reverse procedure in which one of the pollinia becomes trapped within the anther slit.
Milkweeds have three defenses to limit damage by caterpillars and other insects: hairs on the leaves, toxins, and latex fluids. Some more recent milkweed species grow faster than older species. They have the potential to grow faster than caterpillars can eat them. Caterpillars which eat milkweeds, and their adult butterflies, may be protected by the foul taste of the milkweed chemicals. Such butterflies and caterpillars usually show warning colors (see mimicry#warning coloration).
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann (27 November 1874 in Motal, Belarus – 9 November 1952 in Jerusalem) was the first President of Israel.
Weizmann came to the University of Manchester in 1904, where he lectured on chemistry. During World War I, the British forces needed to increase the production of artillery shells. The production was limited by a shortage of acetone, needed to produce cordite. Cordite was used to propel (fire) shells and bullets to their targets. Weizmann developed a production of acetone from the anaerobic fermentation of maize and horse chestnuts by bacteria. As a result, the production of shells rose from 500,000 in the first five months of the war to 16.4 million in 1915.
Weizmann was President of Israel from 1948, and he died in 1952. He had worked for years to get agreement for the Israel.
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum (NHM) is a museum in London. It is the largest natural history museum in Britain. It includes the nation's main collections of specimens of life, rocks and minerals. The museum employs scientific staff, conducts research, stores specimens, and manages the public galleries.
The NHM is one of the four large institutions on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. The others are the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Imperial College London.
The NHM was at first a department of the famous British Museum. When the present NHM building was opened in 1881, it was then called the "British Museum (Natural History)" or BMNH. Its head reported to the Director of the British Museum. Not until 1963 did the NHM become fully independent, with its own Board of Trustees, and not until 1992 was it permitted to use its present name.
In 1986, the museum absorbed the adjacent Geological Museum of the British Geological Survey, which is to just to the north of the NHM. The museum's galleries were completely rebuilt and relaunched in 1996 as "The Earth Galleries", with the exhibitions in the Waterhouse building retitled "The Life Galleries". The Natural History Museum's own Mineralogy displays remain largely unchanged as an example of the 19th-century display techniques of the Waterhouse building.
The newly-developed "Darwin Centre" (named after Charles Darwin) is designed as a new home for the museum's collection of tens of millions of preserved specimens, and new work spaces for the museum's scientific staff. Built in two phases, with two new buildings adjacent to the main Waterhouse building, it is the most important new project in the museum's history.
The museum employs 300 scientific staff, and has huge collections of fossils, rocks and minerals, as well as the preserved specimens of present-day plants and animals. There are over 70 million specimens in the collections. Data bases of the collections are being developed.
Bracha Peli
Bracha Peli (1892-1986) was the owner of the "Massada Publishing house" in Israel. Massada or Massadah published the six volumes of "The General Encyclopedia" in Israel. She and her son then started the "Encyclopaedia Hebraica". She starting the Annual "Hebrew Book Week" in 1926.
Bronya Kutzenok was born in what is now the Ukraine in a small village called Starovitzky. Her family were Hasidic Jews. She changed her surname when she married a man called Meir. They changed their surname again in Israel to Peli. In the Ukraine she started a school that had 400 children in one year. Bronya and Meir left the Ukraine in 1921 and went to Tel Aviv in Mandatory Palestine.
In Tel Aviv, Peli was the owner of the "Massada Publishing house". She published the six volumes of "The General Encyclopedia" in Israel. She and her son then started the "Encyclopaedia Hebraica". The new books were written in the Hebrew language. She starting the Annual "Hebrew Book Week" in 1926. The new encyclopedia was not finished until 1980.
San Francisco de Macorís
The Dominican city of San Francisco de Macorís is the head municipality of the Duarte province, on the northeast of the country.
It is located on the eastern part of the Cibao Valley; it is the largest city of the Dominican northeast and it is the centre of the region.
The municipality had, in 2010, a total population of 149,508: 73,705 men and 75,803 women. The urban population was of the total population, one of the most urban municipality in the country.
When the country was a Spanish colony, the region where the city is now was known as the "Partido de Macorís" ("partido" was an old Spanish subdivision like a municipality). It had the name of "Macorís" because on the mountains to the north of the area lived native people named "Macorís" or "Macorix", different from the Taínos.
Those people that were living here founded, on 20 September 1778, the town in a place called "El Rincón de San Francisco" and, for that reason, they gave to the new town the name that it has now: San Francisco de Macorís, that in English would be "St. Francis of Macoris".
San Francisco de Macorís was part of La Vega province until 1885 when it became a municipality of the Espaillat province. With the creation of the Duarte province, San Francisco de Macorís became its head municipality, like the capital city, of the new province.
San Francisco de Macorís has a total area of . It has four municipal districts (a municipal district is a subdivision of a municipality). These are Cenoví, Jaya, La Peña and Presidente Don Antonio Guzmán Fernández.
San Francisco de Macorís is at to the northwest of Santo Domingo, in the "Cibao Oriental" (in English, "Eastern Cibao"), the eastern part of the Cibao Valley. Most of the municipality is in the valley but the northern part of it is on the "Cordillera Septentrional" (in English, "Northern mountain range"); the mountains here are not very high. The altitude of the city of San Francisco de Macorís is above sea level.
The municipality has the María Trinidad Sánchez province to the north and east, the municipality of Las Guáranas to the south, the La Vega province to the southwest, the Hermanas Mirabal province to the west and the Espaillat province to the northwest.
Rivers here are short with their sources in the Cordillera Septentrional; they are tributaries of the River Camú, a tributary of the River Yuna that flows to the Samaná Bay. The most important river in the municipality is the River Jaya, that flows to the west of the city; San Francisco de Macorís is also known as "The City of the Jaya" because of this small river.
San Francisco de Macorís has a tropical wet climate (Köppen climate classification : Af) with no dry or cold season as it is constantly moist.
The average amount of rainfall for the year in the city is . The month with the most precipitation on average is May with of rainfall, followed by November with .
The driest season is winter. The month with the least rainfall on average is March with an average of and the second is February with .