The islands do have vegetation. They have been called Scotia Sea Islands tundra ecoregion. These include South Georgia, the volcanic South Sandwich Islands and the South Orkneys in the Scotia Sea as well as the remote South Shetland Islands near the Antarctic Peninsula and the small isolated volcano Bouvet Island. All these islands are in the cold seas below the Antarctic convergence. These areas have tundra vegetation of mosses, lichen and algae. Seabirds, penguins and seals feed in the surrounding waters.
Seabirds include four species of albatross: Black-browed Albatross "(Diomedea melanophris)", Grey-headed Albatross "(Thalassarche chrysostoma)", Light-mantled Albatross "(Phoebetria palpebrata)", and Wandering Albatross "(Diomedea exulans)". There are only five species of bird that stay on land. These include two endemic species: a race of the Yellow-billed Pintail duck"(Anas georgica)" and South Georgia Pipit "(Anthus antarcticus)".
Penguin species found here include large numbers of King Penguins, as well as Chinstrap Penguin, Macaroni Penguin, Gentoo penguin, Adelie Penguin, and Rockhopper Penguin "(Eudyptes chrysocome)".
Seals include the Antarctic Fur Seal "(Arctocephalus gazella)" and Sub-Antarctic Fur Seal "(Arctocephalus tropicalis)" in large numbers, Leopard Seal "(Hydrurga leptonyx)", Weddell Seal "(Leptonychotes weddellii)", the huge Southern Elephant Seal "(Mirounga leonina)", and Crabeater Seal "(Lobodon carcinophagus)".
South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and Bouvet Island are protected as nature reserves. Bird Island, South Georgia is a site of special scientific interest.
Weddell Sea
The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and has the Weddell Gyre. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha Coast, Queen Maud Land. Much of the southern part of the sea, up to Elephant Island, is permanent ice. The sea is claimed by Argentina and Britain. There is also a part in the claim of Chile. At its widest the sea is around 2,000 km across. In area it is around 2.8 million km².
The sea is named after the British sailor James Weddell who entered the sea in 1823.
The Weddell Seal is one of the animals that live in the area.
The Weddell Sea has said by scientists to have the clearest water of any sea.
Bab-el-Mandeb
The Bab-el-Mandeb, meaning "Gate of Tears" in Arabic, is a strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Djibouti and Eritrea, north of Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, and connecting the Red Sea to the Guardafui Channel and Gulf of Aden. It is sometimes called the "Mandab Strait" in the English language.
The strait gets its name from the dangers of traveling on it. Or, according to an Arab legend, from the numbers who were drowned by the earthquake which separated Asia and Africa.
Bab el-Mandab acts is an important link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. In 2006, about of oil passed through the strait per day, out of a world total of about .
The distance across is about 20 miles (30 km) from Ras Menheli in Yemen to Ras Siyan in Djibouti. The island of Perim divides the strait into two channels. The eastern channel, known as the Bab Iskender (Alexander's Strait), is 2 miles (3 km) wide and 16 fathoms (30 m) deep. The western channel, or Dact-el-Mayun, has a width of about 16 miles (25 km) and a depth of 170 fathoms (310 m). Near the coast of Djibouti is a group of smaller islands known as the "Seven Brothers".
Bass Strait
Bass Strait is a sea strait separating Tasmania from the south of the Australian mainland, specifically the state of Victoria. The strait was named after George Bass who travelled it in 1798.
It is about 240 km wide at its narrowest point and generally around 50 metres deep. It has many islands, with King Island and Flinders Island home to many towns.
The water is very rough, with many ships lost in the 19th century. A lighthouse was built on Deal Island in 1848 to help ships in the eastern part of the Straits. On the west, the Cape Otway Lighthouse was first lit in 1848. Another lighthouse was at Cape Wickham at the northern end of King Island in 1861.
There are over 50 islands in Bass Strait. Major islands include:
Western section:
South eastern section:
North eastern section:
Davis Strait
Davis Strait is a northern arm of the Labrador Sea. It is between mid-western Greenland and Nunavut, Canada's Baffin Island. The strait was named for the English explorer John Davis (1550–1605), who explored the area while seeking a Northwest Passage. It is the world's broadest strait.
The water depth is between one and two thousand meters. The strait is much shallower than the Labrador Sea to the south or Baffin Bay to the north. It is on the coast line of Canada.
Nine-banded armadillo
The nine-banded armadillo ("Dasypus novemcinctus"), or the nine-banded, long-nosed armadillo, is a species of armadillo. The nine-banded armadillo is an insectivorous animal. Ants, termites, and other small invertebrates make up most of its diet. The armadillo can jump in the air when scared.
The nine-banded armadillo is spreading more far out in both the north and east of the United States. It crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in the late 19th century. At the same time, it was introduced in Florida by humans. By 1995, the species was found in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and recently seen as far north as southern Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana.
The main reason of this fast expansion is because the species have few or no natural predators in the United States. It is also because Americans do not hunt or eat the armadillo. In late 2009, the state of North Carolina considered a hunting season for armadillo to slow them down.
Outside the United States, the nine-banded armadillo is in Central and South America and northern Argentina and Uruguay.
Nine-banded armadillos are mostly insectivores. They find their meals by pushing their snouts into soil and digging. They dig up grubs, beetles, ants, termites, and worms. They sometimes also eat amphibians, small reptiles, fungi, and carrion.
Nine-banded armadillos do not live in groups. They are nocturnal, which means that they are lively at night instead of the day. The burrows they make are about wide, deep, and long.
Armadillos usually mark their territory. The armadillo can jump in the air when scared. This may be dangerous on roads, because it could get hit by a car.
Mating is usually done from July to August in the Northern Hemisphere and November to January in the Southern Hemisphere. A single egg is fertilized. Then it splits into four identical embryos, each which makes its own placenta. The nine-banded armadillo gives birth to genetically identical quadruplets.
After birth, the quadruplets remain in the burrow, drinking the mother's milk for about three months. Then they begin to hunt for their meals with the mother. After six months to a year, they leave.
A single female can produce up to 56 young over the course of her life.
Redundancy
In information theory, redundancy means that a message is encoded and transmitted using more bits that are necessary to encode the message. If a piece of information is redundant, it can be left out, without loss of information. Redudant information such as checksums can be used to detect and correct errors in transmission or storage.
Operations like data compression reduce redundancy. This can be good, as the data can be sent more quickly and take less space. It can also be bad, if an error can no longer be corrected automatically.
When using databases, redundancies must be avoided, as they can lead to inconsistencies. In this case, the process is called normalisation.
Hiroshima Toyo Carp
The is a Japanese professional baseball team in the city of Hiroshima and Hiroshima Prefecture. The Carp play in Japan's Central League or .
The team's ballpark is Mazda Stadium.