The department is managed by the "Departmental Council of the Charente" in Angoulême. Charente is part of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
There are 3 "arrondissements" (districts), 19 "cantons" and 383 "communes" (municipalities) in Charente.
The following is a list of the 19 cantons of the Charente department (with their INSEE codes), following the French canton reorganisation which came into effect in March 2015:
The inhabitants of Charente are known, in French, as "Charentais" (women: "Charentaises").
Charente has a population, in 2014, of 353,853, for a population density of inhabitants/km. The "arrondissement" of Angoulême, with 197,377 inhabitants, is by far the largest. The other two, Cognac and Confolens, have respectively 92,224 and 64,252 inhabitants.
Evolution of the population in Charente-Maritime
The 10 main cities in the department are:
The cognac is an alcoholic drink, a kind of brandy. It is made from grapes. It is made mainly around the city of Cognac.
Charente-Maritime
Charente-Maritime (Saintongeais: "Chérente-Marine") is a department on the west coast of France in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is named after the Charente river, the most important river in the department, and its position along the coast.
Its prefecture is the city of La Rochelle.
The department, as "Charente-Inférieure" ("Lower Charente" because it was in the lower part of the Charente river), is one of the 83 French departments made during the French revolution, on 4 March 1790.
It was created from parts of the old provinces of Saintonge and Aunis and small parts of Poitou and Angoumois.
The new department had seven districts: La Rochelle, Rochefort, Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Saintes, Pons, Montlieu and Marennes. The capital (now prefecture) was Saintes alternating with La Rochelle and Saint-Jean-d'Angély but soon was changed and Saintes was kept as the only capital.
In 1800, with the creation of the "arrondissements" in France, the seven districts were changed into six "arrondissements": Saintes, Jonzac, Marennes, Rochefort, La Rochelle and Saint-Jean-d'Angély and in 1810 the capital was moved to La Rochelle.
On 10 September 1926, the "arrondissements" of Marennes and Saint-Jean-d'Angély were eliminated. In 1943, Saint-Jean-d'Angély was made again an "arrondissement".
On 4 Septembre 1941, the name of the department was changed from "Charente-Inférieure" to the present name of Charente-Maritime.
Charente-Maritime is part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It has an area of .
The highest point in the department is in the woods of Chantemerlière, near the commune of Contré in the northeast, and that is high.
The department is bordered by the departments: Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Charente, Dordogne and Gironde.
The main rivers are the Charente and its tributaries, the Boutonne and the Seugne, along with the Sèvre Niortaise, the Seudre, and the Garonne in its downstream part, which is the estuary of the Gironde.
The department includes the islands of:
The climate of La Rochelle is an oceanic climate with template summers, Cfb (Marine West Coast Climate) in the Köppen climate classification.
The average amount of precipitation for the year in La Rochelle is . The month with the most precipitation on average is October with of precipitation. The month with the least precipitation on average is July with an average of .
The average temperature for the year in La Rochelle is . The warmest month, on average, is July with an average temperature of . The coolest month on average is January, with an average temperature of .
The department is managed by the "Departmental Council of the Charente-Maritime" in La Rochelle. Charente-Maritime is part of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
There are 5 "arrondissements" (districts), 27 "cantons" and 469 "communes" (municipalities) in Charente-Maritime.
The following is a list of the 27 cantons of the Charente-Maritime department (with their INSEE codes), following the French canton reorganisation which came into effect in March 2015:
The inhabitants of Charente-Maritime are known, in French, as "Charentais maritimes" (women: "Charentaises maritimes").
Charente-Maritime has a population, in 2014, of 637,089, for a population density of inhabitants/km. The "arrondissement" of Rochelle, with 210,151 inhabitants, is by far the largest. The other four, Rochefort, Saintes, Jonzac and Saint-Jean-d'Angély, have respectively 187,843, 128,786, 56,973 and 53,336 inhabitants.
Evolution of the population in Charente-Maritime
The 10 main cities in the department are:
Optimization (computer science)
In computing, optimization is the process of modifying a system to make some features of it work more efficiently or use fewer resources. For instance, a computer program may be optimized so that it runs faster, or to run with less memory requirements or other resources (see Space-time tradeoff), or to consume less energy. This is a branch of software engineering.
The optimization can have sense at different levels, from the lowest (development of circuits, writing of machine code designed especially for the architecture) up to the highest levels of making of implementation, use or design of algorithms.
The optimization is generally recommended to leave until the end of the process of development, since the premature optimization can introduce new errors (generally more difficult to detect for being of algorithmic nature).
The optimized system may be a single computer program, a collection of computers or even an entire network such as the Internet.
Pilgrimage of Grace
The Pilgrimage of Grace was a revolt in York, Yorkshire in 1536. People protested against England's break with Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. There were also other specific political, social and economic issues they did not like. Technically the term "Pilgrimage of Grace" only refers to the uprising around York, but sometimes it is used in relation to the risings in general which took place around Northern England; first from Lincolnshire, twelve days before the actual "Pilgrimage of Grace".
The revolt was caused by Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, which caused problems with around 500,000 monks and nuns.
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer that has been built to solve only a few very specific problems and is not easily changed. The word "embedded" means it is built into the system. It is a permanent part in a bigger system. It usually does not look like a computer, often no keyboard or monitor or mouse. But like any computer it has a processor, software, input and output.
For example, the controller embedded in an elevator tells the motor to move the elevator to different floors, based on buttons that are pushed. A decoder is embedded in a satellite television set-top box (called STB) to read a signal from the dish and send something that a TV understands. Often this type of system must do its work in a specific amount of time. This is called real-time computing. If a set-top box got interrupted to do another task, you would see a bad picture on the TV, for example. A general purpose computer will often have short pauses while it does something else, it is not real-time.
Embedded systems control many of the common devices in use today, such as card readers in hotel door locks or several things in a car. They can control small things like an MP3 player or a digital camera, and large things like traffic light systems, airplanes, or assembly lines in a factory.
Embedded systems are used in many kinds of electrical devices, including:
Embedded systems are not always standalone devices. Sometimes they are built as a set, like the various parts of a car - the radio, the throttle control, the pollution control, etc. Sometimes they can communicate to the internet or a cell-phone network and they may have a USB reader or other connections.