Winter Olympic Games were originally considered to be linked with the nation hosting the Summer Olympic Games. The country holding the summer games was preferred as the host for the winter games. Since 1948, the locations of summer and winter games have developed independent of each other.
Woodside, California
Woodside is a town in California with a population of about 5,000 people and over 5,000 horses. It is in the northern region of Silicon Valley and has the highest percapita population of billionaires, as well as being the home of celebrities including Shirley Temple, Neil Diamond, Joan Baez, Michelle Pfeiffer and a gorilla named Koko that knows more than a thousand words of American Sign Language.
Pathogen
A pathogen is an infectious thing, such as a virus, bacteria, fungi or parasite, which causes a disease. This ability is called pathogenicity.
The body has many ways to defend against some of the common pathogens (such as "Pneumocystis") in the form of the human immune system and by some "helpful" bacteria present in the human body's normal human flora. However, if the immune system or "good" bacteria is damaged in any way (for example, chemotherapy, HIV, or antibiotics being taken to kill other pathogens), pathogenic bacteria that were being held back can grow and cause harm to the host. Such cases are opportunistic infections.
Some pathogens cause epidemics. These include the bacterium "Yersinia pestis" which may have caused the Black Death, the "Variola" virus, and the malarial protozoa. They hurt or even kill large numbers of people.
The most famous and lethal outbreak was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic (type A influenza, H1N1 subtype), which lasted from 1918 to 1919. It is not known exactly how many it killed, but estimates range from 20 to 100 million people. This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed as many people as the Black Death.
The huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and skin also occurred". The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive bleeding and oedema in the lungs.
In plants, fungi are the main cause of infectious disease.
Pesticide
A pesticide is a chemical that is used to kill or prevent small animals (or organisms) which are considered to be unwanted. These organisms are called pests. Some of these pests that people do not want are insects, microbes that destroy plants, and other things that affect humans in a bad way and it may kill humans too. Many pesticides are poisonous, and are bad for not only the organisms they kill, but for humans too. A pesticide also affects the environment
and the atmosphere.
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants lists chemicals that are very hard to destroy, or very toxic. In total, twelve chemicals are listed. Nine of them can be used as pesticides.
There are different types of pesticides for getting rid of different pests.
Pesticides are used to kill pests, but many are bad for human health. They may pollute water, and go into rivers, lakes, and ponds. This will cause acid rain, and organisms living in the water can get sick and die, because the water where they live has more acid.
Pesticide is very bad for animals, especially amphibians.
In many cases, there are alternatives to the use of (chemical) pesticides. These include:
Inhalation
Inhalation is half of what occurs when people or animals breathe. Air is moved from the outside through the respiratory system into the lungs. The lungs take out some oxygen and put it into the blood. Drugs can also be inhaled with an inhaler to put them into the blood. The air is then moved out of the lungs again. This is the other half of breathing, called exhalation.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was an atypical pneumonia. It started in November 2002 in Guangdong Province, in the city of Foshan, of the People's Republic of China. The disease was caused by the SARS coronavirus (SARS CoV), a new coronavirus. It was also a part-time STD, it can be spread through both sexual and casual contact.
SARS is a zoonosis: it is a disease which comes from animals: it came from Asian palm civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats. Exactly how the virus got to humans is not known.
SARS was first reported in Asia in February 2003. Over the next few months, the illness spread to more than 24 countries in Asia, North America, South America, and Europe before the SARS global outbreak of 2003 was contained. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during the 2003 outbreak; 774 of these died.
After the Chinese government suppressed news of the SARS outbreak, the disease spread rapidly, reaching Hong Kong and Vietnam in late February 2003, and then to other countries via international travellers. The last case in this outbreak occurred in June 2003. There were a total of 8437 known cases of the disease, with 813 deaths (a mortality rate of 9.636%).
In May 2005 the disease itself was declared 'eradicated' by the WHO and it became the second disease in mankind to receive this label (the other was smallpox). The "New York Times" reported that "not a single case of severe acute respiratory syndrome has been reported this year or in late 2004. It is the first winter without a case since the initial outbreak in late 2002. Also, the epidemic strain of SARS that caused at least 813 deaths worldwide by June of 2003 has not been seen outside a laboratory since then."
In late 2019, a new strian of SARS emerged in Wuhan, China and turn out to be a global pandemic in the year 2020.
Ballet
Ballet is a type of dance. It is only done by dancers who have had special training. The dancers are employed by a dance company, and they perform in theatres. The first reference to ballet is found in a work of Domenico da Piacenza, who lived in the early 14th century.
Ballet involves the creation of the dance itself, often a type of imaginary story. The story is told with the help of dance and mime. Ballet is a form of expression. It presents a story in a new form to the audience. The creation of a dance is called choreography. The choreography is learnt by the dancers under the supervision of a trainer, called a ballet master or mistress. Ballet is always performed to music, and in many cases the music was specially composed for a particular ballet. Ballet is a major part of theatre, and a popular example is "The Nutcracker".
Ballet grew out of Renaissance spectacles which, rather like big pop music events today, used every type of performance art. These Italian ballets were further developed in France. "Le Ballet Comique de la Reine" (The Queen's Ballet Comedy) was performed in Paris in 1581. It was staged by Balthazar de Beaujoyeux, a violinist and dancing master at the court of Catherine de Medici. It was danced by amateurs in a hall. The royal family were watching at one end and the others in galleries on three sides. Poetry and songs came with the dances.
The basis of classical ballet was formed in the Court of Louis XIV in France, in the 17th century. Even his title (the 'Sun King') came from a role he danced in a ballet. Louis founded the first ballet company, the Ballet de l'Opera de Paris. Many of the ballets presented at his court were created by the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and the choreographer Pierre Beauchamp. Also during this time, the playwright Molière invented the comedie-ballet.