Meteomont is the mountain meteorological service of the Italian Army. The service helps with search and rescue. It also assesses the risk of avalanches, gives early warning of avalanches, and assesses mountain snow conditions in general. The service works together with the Carabinieri (the Italian Army law enforcement service), the meteorological and intelligence service of the Italian Air Force, and the Alpini. The Alpini are the elite mountain troops of the Italian Army.
Whitelist
A whitelist is a list of acceptable, recognised or privileged people, websites or images. On the computer, a whitelist shows a list of websites that you can go to; any website not on the whitelist is not accepted. The opposite is a blacklist, which shows a list of websites that you cannot go to.
Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho
Otelo Nuno Romão Saraiva de Carvalho is a retired Portuguese military officer. He was the chief strategist of the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon.
António de Spínola
António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola was a Portuguese military officer.
During the Carnation Revolution, Marcelo Caetano would only surrender to Spínola. This gave Spínola an important place after the revolution. He was made president of the National Salvation Junta. Then he became President of Portugal. He was only President 4 months before Francisco da Costa Gomes took the position.
Vasco Gonçalves
General Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves was a Portuguese army officer. After the Carnation Revolution, he served as the Prime Minister of Portugal.
Francisco de Sá Carneiro
Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro founded the Portuguese Social Democratic Party in 1974. He was elected Prime Minister of Portugal in January 1980. Sá Carneiro died in a plane crash in December 1980.
Nederlandse Spoorwegen
Nederlandse Spoorwegen () or NS is the main passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. NS provides rail services on the Dutch main rail network. The rail infrastructure is maintained by network manager ProRail, which was split off from NS in 2003. Freight services, formerly operated by NS Cargo, merged with the DB Schenker group in 2000.
NS runs 4,800 scheduled domestic trains a day, serving 1.1 million passengers. In addition, NS provides international rail services from Abellio which runs Abellio Greater Anglia, Merseyrail and ScotRail in the United Kingdom.
Zollikofen
Zollikofen is a municipality in the administrative district of Bern-Mittelland in the canton of Berne in Switzerland.
It is a suburb of the capital of Berne.
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a district in the East End of London, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
It is 3.4 miles (5.5 km) east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by Petticoat Lane and Mansell Street to the west, Fashion Street to the north, Cambridge Heath Road and Sidney Street to the east and The Highway to the south.
Because the area is close to the London Docklands and east of the city, it has been a popular place for immigrants and the working class. The area was the centre of the London Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century. It is where the infamous Whitechapel Murders by Jack the Ripper took place in 1888. In the latter half of the 20th century, Tower Hamlets (including Whitechapel) became the largest settlement for the British Bangladeshi community, particularly on and around Whitechapel Road and Brick Lane.
Holywood
Holywood ( ) is a town in the metropolitan area of Belfast in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is a civil parish and townland of 755 acres lying on the shore of Belfast Lough, between Belfast and Bangor. Holywood Exchange and Belfast City Airport are nearby. The town hosts an annual jazz and blues festival.
Zuzwil, Bern
Zuzwil is a municipality in the administrative district of Bern-Mittelland in the canton of Berne in Switzerland.
Zablon Simintov
Zablon Simintov (born 1959) is thought to be the last Jew in Afghanistan. He was born in Herat. Simintov had lived with the second last remaining Jewish man in Afghanistan, Ishaq Levin, who died on January 26, 2005, aged around 80.
Simintov says it is not easy to practice his religion alone. However, he has obtained special permission from the nearest rabbi, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to slaughter his own meat in line with "kosher" dietary laws. That can normally only be done by a specially trained and qualified Jewish ritual slaughterer. He says that he receives special kosher packages for Passover from Afghan Jews living in New York.
His wife and two daughters live in Israel. When asked during an interview whether he would emigrate to Israel, Simintov retorted, "Go to Israel? What business do I have there? Why should I leave?"
History of hearing aids
The first modern hearing aids were made in the 17th century. Even though that was when they first became popular, since the 13th century people had already been making similar devices by hollowing out the horns of animals. Hearing aids did not improve very much until electricity and the telephone were created in 1898. This is when the first electric hearing aid was also created, but it was not given out to the public to use until later in the 20th century. Over the past century however, the fast development of technology has changed and improved the hearing aid greatly, making new designs and adding new functions to be able to help even more hearing problems.
The first hearing aids were called ear trumpets and were large funnel-shaped devices that were mostly made out of metal, animal horns, wood and even snail shells. People would hold to the device to their ear when they needed to use it to hear. These hearing aids did not make sound louder but collected sound and directed it into the ear which made the sound energy stronger when it hits the ear drum, helping to make hearing easier for people with hearing loss.
Ear trumpets worked by capturing more sound for users, so the best way to make them work was for others to speak into the opening of the trumpet. When used in more public places such as concerts, the ear trumpet would not be as effective. Background noise could not be blocked and would enter the trumpet along with the sounds that the user is trying to focus on.
Late in the 19th century, after the invention of telephones and microphones, the electric hearing aids was created. Even though they were made during the 1870s - 1890s, they did not become popular until the early 20th century.
The first electronic hearing aid was called an Akouphone, and was invented by Miller Reese Hutchinson. It used a carbon transmitter created by Thomas Edison which could increase sound by about 15 decibels by using an electric current to make the sound signal stronger. These first electronic hearing aids were portable but still a little large and were not easily carried around. Also, they sometimes had a scratchy noise and could not pick up all sounds so were not ideal.
In 1920, the vacuum-tube hearing aid was created by Earl Hanson who was a naval engineer. Similar to the electronic hearing aids, these devices used the transmitter found in telephones to make sounds louder. It would do this by turn sound into electronic current and making it louder and moving it to the ear. Vacuum tubes could increase sound by up to 70 decibels, and worked better because they could control electricity better than carbon could. These were first the size of a cabinet, but between the 1920s - 1930s, the hearing aids were made small enough to fit into a small box. The hearing aids were continued to be made even smaller and in the late 1940s, a device that could fit in the pockets was made. This device still connected to the ears through wires so many people still did not think it was appealing.