The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is a Mexican Formula One circuit near Mexico City. It was named after racing driver Ricardo Rodríguez (the brother of Pedro Rodríguez, a Formula One driver). It was finished in 1962 and held its first Formula One race there in the same year, though it did not count for the championship. A year later, the Mexican Grand Prix started, and continued from 1963 to 1970, where F1 did not return until 1986, and left once again 1992. The track still hosts various events, and even hosted the Nationwide Series from 2005 to 2008, before leaving once again.
Andromeda
Andromeda may refer to:
In arts and literature:
In comics:
Andromeda (constellation)
Andromeda is a constellation in the northern sky. It is named after the princess Andromeda in Greek mythology. It is sometimes called "Princess of Ethiopia" or "the Chained Woman" in English. It has also been called "Persea" ("Perseus's wife") or "Cepheis" ("Cepheus's daughter"). The astronomer named Ptolemy listed Andromeda when he made a list of 48 constellations. It is also one of the 88 constellations made by the International Astronomical Union.
The Andromeda Galaxy is inside Andromeda. It is the closest spiral galaxy to Earth, at about 2.2 million light-years from Earth (estimates range up to 2.5 million light-years). The brightest star in Andromeda is called Alpha Andromedae, which is a binary star.
K.d. lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang, better known as k.d. lang (born November 2, 1961), is a Canadian country and pop singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her best known hit is "Constant Craving". She has contributed songs to many movie soundtracks.
Lang was born in Edmonton, Alberta. She is openly lesbian and is an activist for LGBT rights.
List of Premiers of the Soviet Union
The Premier of the Soviet Union was the head of government. Most western countries use the term "Prime Minister". In the former Soviet Union the job had many names:
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn (born April 14, 1932 known as The First Known Lady of Country Music) is an American country music singer and songwriter born in Kentucky. She became a part of the country music scene in Nashville during the 1960s; in 1967 she charted her first of 16 number 1 songs overall. Certain country music radio stations would not play her songs, however, due to subject matter. Despite that, she had become the "First Known Lady of Country Music" and continues being one of the most successful vocalists of all time.
She is named after film star Loretta Young. Lynn's sisters are Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue, who are also country singers. She was married to Oliver Lynn (August 26, 1926-August 22, 1996).
Microbial mat
A microbial mat is a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, mainly bacteria and archaea. They were first described by Paracelsus (~1519), but their full significance was not realised until the last quarter of the 20th century.
Microbial mats grow mostly on submerged or moist surfaces but a few survive in deserts. They colonize environments ranging in temperature from –40 °C to +120 °C. A few are endosymbionts of animals.
Although usually only a few centimetres thick, microbial mats create a wide range of internal chemical environments. They consist of layers of microorganisms that can feed on or tolerate the chemicals at their level. In moist conditions mats are held together by slimy substances (polysaccharides) secreted by the microorganisms. Some of the micro-organisms form tangled webs of filaments which make the mat tougher. The best known physical forms are flat mats and stubby pillars called stromatolites, but there are also spherical forms.
Microbial mats are the earliest form of life on Earth for which there is good fossil evidence, from 3500 million years ago, and were for a long period the most important members of the planet's ecosystems.
Originally they may have depended on hydrothermal vents for energy and chemical "food". The development of photosynthesis gradually liberated them from the 'hydrothermal ghetto' by proving a more widely-available energy source, sunlight, although initially the photosynthesizing mats still depended on the diffusion of chemicals emitted by hydrothermal vents. The final and most significant stage of this liberation was the development of oxygen-producing photosynthesis, since the main chemical inputs for this are carbon dioxide and water.
As a result microbial mats began to produce the atmosphere we know today, in which free oxygen is a vital component. At around the same time they may also have been the birthplace of the more complex eukaryote type of cell, of which all multicellular organisms are composed. Microbial mats were abundant on the shallow seabed until the Cambrian substrate revolution, when animals living in shallow seas increased their burrowing capabilities and thus broke up the surfaces of mats and let oxygenated water into the deeper layers, poisoning the oxygen-intolerant micro-organisms that lived there. Although this revolution drove mats off soft floors of shallow seas, they still flourish in many environments where burrowing is limited or impossible, including rocky seabeds and shores, hyper-saline and brackish lagoons, and are found on the floors of the deep oceans.
Because of microbial mats' ability to use almost anything as nutrients, there is considerable interest in industrial uses of mats, especially for water treatment and for cleaning up pollution.
Fiji Hindi
Fiji Hindi or Fiji Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language which is the mother tongue of 313,000 people of Indian and Pakistani origin in Fiji.
This language is very different from the standard Hindi spoken in India and the relationship between the two languages ​​are similar to those between Dutch and Afrikaans. The language is composed of the Eastern Hindi dialects (Bhojpuri and Awadhi) with numerous English and Fijian words. It is spoken with a Pacific twang.
In recent times, due to the political upheaval in Fiji, large numbers of Fiji Indians have migrated to Australia, New Zealand, United States and Canada, taking the Fiji Hindi language with them.
Electronic money
Electronic money is money stored electronically, and spent by using a technical device, such as a smart card. If it is stored on a card, its use may be secured by a PIN code. In Japan, electronic money is commonly used to pay for train tickets. JR East’s prepaid train ticket (Suica) and JR West’s IC Operating card (ICOCA). Suica and ICOCA are plastic cards with a built-in IC chip. Suica was originally introduced in 2001.
In addition, many types of electronic money are used in other train stations in Japan. For example, Kitaca is electronic money in the Hokkaido area, Sugoca is used in the Kyusyu area, etc. Most electronic money is also used to pay for goods at convenience stores in Japan.
In 2004, NTT DoCoMo launched a mobile phone that uses smart card chip to realize electronic
money capability. Recently, many people have been using these kinds of electronic money cards in Japan.
Note, that electronic money is always backed by real money. For this reason, cryptocurrencies cannot be used as electronic money.
Sori Yanagi
He was born in 1915 in Tokyo, Japan, as the son of Soetsu Yanagi, who founded the "mingei" movement which celebrated Japanese folk crafts and the beauty of everyday objects. Soetsu helped establish the Nihon Mingeikon, the Folk Crafts Museum of Japan. Sori entered Tokyo Art School in 1934, where he studied both art and architecture. He was influenced by Le Corbusier as well as by Charlotte Perriand when she worked in Japan in the early 1940s. So, his interests moved from painting to buildings to design and objects.