the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
It adjusts the air to the pressure of the water around the diver so they can breathe easily at any safe depth.
There is also an air pressure gauge to show how much air is left in the tank.
BCD (buoyancy control device) to control whether the diver floats or sinks.
The diver can add air from an inflator valve or remove air by opening a dump valve.
Divers may also wear weights to stop themselves from floating upwards when their diving suit is too buoyant.
The BCD lets the diver adjust their buoyancy so they can be neutral (float in place) at a depth they want.
If the diver swims upward the air in the BCD will expand because the water pressure is less, and the diver must let some air out or float to the surface.
If the diver swims down the air will compress and the diver must put in more air or sink to the bottom, so the diver must carefully control how much air is in the BCD whenever their depth changes.
Depth gauge, to know how deep they are and there may be a watch to tell the time or a dive computer to show how slowly they must come up to be safe from decompression sickness.
A safe dive depends on how long and how deep the diver goes, and how long it has been since the last dive.
Most divers wear a diving suit to keep warm.
This is usually a wetsuit made from foam neprene rubber, but for colder water a dry suit can be used.
Divers wear a mask to see through, because the human eye cannot focus properly in water.
Swimfins are worn on the feet to swim better.
A snorkel can be used for breathing at the surface when swimming face down
Divers face dangers that can hurt or kill them if they don't know what to do.
They can use up all their air, or get decompression sickness or nitrogen narcosis.
A person must be trained to use the equipment and dive safely.
When they show that they can dive safely they get a certification card.
The biggest organization for certifying divers is PADI - Professional Association of Diving Instructors - but there are many others, depending on the country.
Some tourist places have a short course without certification and then the instructor will lead the diver in a shallow dive, all in one day.
freediving - Diving without scuba equipment (holding your breath).
Snorkeling equipment is often used in freediving.
No certification is needed but it can still be dangerous.
A capillary is a blood vessel.
It does not have the muscular/elastic tissue of other blood vessels.
It has a single celled wall to help substances be transported through organisms.
Capillaries are small, and smaller than any other blood vessels.
They are about 5-10 μms big, which connect arteries and venules, and enable the moving of water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, as well as many other nutrients and waste chemicals  between blood and surrounding tissues.
Blood moves from the heart to arteries, which branch and narrow into smaller arteries, and then branch more into capillaries.
After oxygen has been moved to the tissue, capillaries join and widen to become small veins and then widen more to become veins, which return blood to the heart.
The "capillary bed" is the network of capillaries supplying an organ.
The more metabolically active the cells, the more capillaries it will require to supply nutrients and carry away waste products.
Special arteries connect between arterioles and venules and are important in bypassing the flow of blood through the capillaries.
True capillaries come from mainly from metarterioles and provide movement between cells and the circulation.
The width of 8 μm forces the red blood cells to partly fold into bullet-like shapes in order to bypass them in single file.
The capillary wall is a one-layer tissue so thin that gas and other items such as oxygen, water, proteins and fats can pass through them driven by pressure differences.
Waste items such as carbon dioxide and urea can move back into the blood to be carried away for removal from the body.
The capillaries do not have this smooth muscle in their own wall, and so any change in their width is passive.
Any signaling molecules they release (such as endothelin for constriction and nitric oxide for dilation) act on the smooth muscle cells in the walls of nearby, larger vessels, e.g. arterioles.
Alveolar-capillary barrier
Blood brain barrier
Hagen-Poiseuille equation
Blood vessels
He is considered one of the most important Angolan poets of his time.
He wrote poems in Portuguese and Angolan languages.
He took part in the fight to free Angola from Portuguese rulers.
Political work
He was educated in Luanda, the capital of Angola, which was then ruled by Portugal.
As a young man in 1957 he went to Paris, where he met Mario Pinto de Andrade, another Angolan poet and politician, who helped with his political ideas.
In the 1960s they helped create the group called the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA—from the Portuguese name ).
The MPLA was in not in Angola at this time, but was first in Conakry (the capital of Guinea) and then later in Leopoldville, Congo (now Kinshasa the capital of the DRC).
Viriato da Cruz became secretary-general of the MPLA.
After some time he and others, did not agree with some people in the group and this led to fighting in the streets of Leopoldville.
Exiled in China
Viriato da Cruz went to Beijing, China in the 1960s because of the fighting in the MPLA.
At first, the Chinese government welcomed him.
He was well known because he had helped create the MPLA.
The Chinese wanted Viriato da Cruz to help them bring Maoist socialism to Africa.
This was a big problem for Viriato and his family.
His ideas were not the same as the Maoists.
He thought that stronger countries can not bring a socialist revolution to other places.
He was very brave and did not change his ideas.
This was against the Chinese Maoist idea of world revolution.
Viriato da Cruz wanted to leave China and return to Africa, but the Chinese government would not let him go and they were not good to him.
This may be because he could have made trouble for their work in Africa.
Last years of life
The last years of the life of Viriato da Cruz were unhappy and difficult.
He was weak, without much food, and he died on 13 Jun 1973.
His dead body was taken away in a military vehicle and his burial was without any ceremony.
Principal books
Poems (1961).
Among these poems, Namoro, Sô Santo and Makézu are well-known.
Angolan people
Molluscs (or mollusks) are an important phylum of invertebrate animals.
Most of them are marine.
They have huge numbers in-shore, that is, in shallow water.
They are the largest marine phylum, with about 85,000 living species, 23% of all named marine organisms.
They also occur in freshwater and on land.
Mollusks are extremely varied: they have great diversity.
That may be why there is no word in English for the phylum as a whole. "
In an evolutionary sense, mollusks are plastic material".
They have much more variety than their ancient rivals, the brachiopods.
Many mollusks also live in freshwater and terrestrial habitats.
They are highly diverse, not just in size and in anatomical structure, but also in behaviour and in habitat.
The phylum is usually divided into 9 or 10 taxonomic classes, of which two are entirely extinct.
Cephalopod molluscs, such as squid, cuttlefish and octopus, are among the most neurologically advanced of all invertebrates: they have good brains and complex behaviours.
Either the giant squid or the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate species.
The gastropods (snails and slugs) are by far the most numerous molluscs in terms of classified species, and account for 80% of the total.
The scientific study of mollusks is called malacology.
a mantle with a cavity used for breathing and excretion,
the presence of a radula, and
the structure of the nervous system.
Other than these things, mollusks have so much variety that many textbooks use a "hypothetical ancestral mollusk" to summarize them (see below).
This has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top, which is made of proteins and chitin reinforced with calcium carbonate.
It is secreted by a mantle covering the whole upper surface.
The underside of the animal consists of a single muscular "foot".
The mollusk's feeding system starts with a rasping "tongue", the radula.
The complex digestive system uses mucus and microscopic, muscle-powered "hairs" called cilia.
The generalized mollusk has two paired nerve cords, or three in bivalves.
The brain, in species that have one, circles the oesophagus.
Most mollusks have eyes, and all have sensors to detect chemicals, vibrations, and touch.
The simplest type of molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but more complex variations occur.
All produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults.
A striking feature of molluscs is the use of the same organ for multiple functions.
For example, the heart and nephridia ("kidneys") are important parts of the reproductive system, as well as the circulatory and excretory systems.
In bivalves, the gills both "breathe" and produce a water current in the mantle cavity: this is important for excretion and reproduction.
In reproduction, molluscs may change gender to accommodate the other breeding partner.
Good evidence exists for the appearance of gastropods, cephalopods and bivalves in the Cambrian period, 541 to 485.4 million years ago (mya).
Before that, the evolutionary history of molluscs' emergence from the ancestral Lophotrochozoa is still unclear.
Mollusk species can also represent hazards or pests for human activities.
The bite of the blue-ringed octopus is often fatal, and that of Octopus apollyon causes inflammation that can last for over a month.
Stings from a few species of large tropical cone shells can also kill: their venom have become important tools in neurological research.
Schistosomiasis (also known as bilharzia, bilharziosis or snail fever) is transmitted to humans via water snail hosts, and affects about 200 million people.
Snails and slugs can also be serious agricultural pests, and accidental or deliberate introduction of some snail species into new environments has seriously damaged some ecosystems.
A "generalized mollusk"
Because mollusks have so many different shapes, many textbooks start the subject of molluscan anatomy by describing what is called an archi-mollusc, hypothetical generalized mollusc, or hypothetical ancestral mollusc (HAM) to illustrate the most common features in the phylum.
The picture is rather similar to modern monoplacophorans: some think it may resemble very early mollusks.
The generalized mollusk is bilaterally symmetrical and has a single, "limpet-like" shell on top.
The shell is secreted by a mantle covering the upper surface.
The underside consists of a single muscular "foot".
The visceral mass, or visceropallium, is the soft, nonmuscular metabolic region of the mollusc.
It contains the body organs.
Aplacophora: molluscs: the living ones are shell-less
Bivalvia: Most shellfish; clams, oysters, scallops, mussels
Cephalopoda: Squid, Octopus
Gastropoda: whelks, limpets, snails, slugs, Nudibranchs
Helcionelloida: (see below)
Monoplacophora: molluscs with a cap-like shell
Polyplacophora: Chitons
†Rostroconchia: an extinct group
Scaphopoda: the tusk shells
It has become clear that the fossil taxon Helcionelloida does not belong to the class Gastropoda.
It is now a separate class in the Mollusca.
Parkhaev (2006, 2007) created the class Helcionelloida, whose members were previously treated as "Paleozoic mollusks of uncertain systematic position" by Bouchet & Rocroi.
Many mollusks are eaten as food: clams, oysters, scallops, mussels, squid (calamari) and land snails (escargot)
Oysters sometimes make pearls, which are valuable and used to make necklaces.
Other shells are collected for their beauty and sometimes used to make jewelry.
A sponge is a member of the phylum Porifera.
It is a simple animal with many cells, but no mouth, muscles, heart or brain.
It is sessile: it cannot move from place to place the way most animals can.
A sponge is an animal that grows in one spot like most plants do.
Nevertheless, sponges are quite successful.
The basic body plan is a jelly-like layer sandwiched between two thin layers of cells.
Their bodies are full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them.
Most of them feed on bacteria and other microorganisms.
A few of them eat tiny crustaceans.
There are more than 10,000 species of sponge.
Most sponges live in the ocean.
A few live in fresh water.
All sponges take in water through pores (little holes) in their bodies.
The water goes out through a big tube in the center.
Most sponges filter (take out) little bits of food from the water going through their bodies.
Animals that get food this way are called filter feeders.
What makes them different
Sponges are simple animals.
A few things make them different from other animals.
A living sponge can change the shape of its body.
Most cells in its body can move around; a few cells can even change from one type of cell to another.
Like cnidarians (jellyfish, etc.)
and ctenophores (comb jellies), and unlike all other known metazoans, sponges' bodies are made of a non-living jelly-like mass sandwiched between two main layers of cells.
Sponges have no nervous system.
Their middle jelly-like layers have many different types of cells.
Some types of cell in their outer layers may move into the middle layer and change their functions.
Sponges can deter predators by releasing a chemically active compound that can contain toxins and also affect organisms competing with them.
Different kinds of sponges
There are four classes of sponges.
The difference between these kinds is in how their skeleton is made.
Demosponges is a class that contains most of the sponges.
The sponges in this class make their skeleton from spongin.
Spongin is a special protein.
All the large sponges are in this order.
Bony sponges use calcium carbonate to make the skeleton.
They are known as Calcarea.
They are usually very small, only 3-4 inches in height.
Of the about 15,000 sponges known, about 400 are Calcarea.
Glass sponges use silicon dioxide to make their skeletons.
They are sometimes called Hexactinellida.
Most of these live very deep in the ocean.
There are about 500 different kinds of glass sponges, in 17 different families.
These sponges make for about 7% of all known sponges.
Homoscleromorpha are a class which was part of the Demosponges.
Actually, they are well separated from the demosponges.
Life functions
Sponges are sessile, they live in one place, where they are fixed to the ground.
A few sponges can change their position, they can move at speeds of between 1 mm and 4 mm a day.
They do this like amoebae.
A few species can contract their whole bodies.
Many can close their openings/holes.
Carnivorous sponges
A few species live in waters where there is very little food available.
They have therefore changed, and became predators.
They eat small crustaceans and other small animals.
Most of these sponges belong to the family Cladorhizidae, but a few members of the Guitarridae and Esperiopsidae are also carnivores.
In most cases little is known about how they actually capture prey.
Some species are thought to use either sticky threads or hooked spicules.
Most carnivorous sponges live in deep waters, up to , and the development of deep-ocean exploration techniques is expected to lead to the discovery of several more.
However one species has been found in Mediterranean caves at depths of 17-23m alongside the more usual filter feeding sponges.
The cave-dwelling predators capture crustaceans under  long by entangling them with fine threads, digest them by enveloping them with further threads over the course of a few days, and then return to their normal shape; there is no evidence that they use venom.
Most known carnivorous sponges have completely lost the water flow system and choanocytes.
However the genus Chondrocladia uses a highly modified water flow system to inflate balloon-like structures that are used for capturing prey.
Reproduction in Sponges
Sponges usually reproduce when little pieces break off.
If such a piece has the right types of cells it can grow to become a new sponge.
A few sponges can also use budding.
With budding a small sponge grows on the parent; when it is done growing, it simply falls off.
When the conditions are bad, some sponges can also grow lumps of unspecialised cells.
These will not develop until the conditions improve again.
They can then either make a new sponge, or they can use the skeleton of the parent sponge (that died).
Most sponges reproduce sexually.
They can make sperm cells that are released into the water.
These are either captured by another sponge, and are then transported to the egg cells of the parent.
This is known as viviparous.
Both cells are joined to form larvae, which can swim off to find a good place to settle.
The other way, known as oviparous is that both sperm cells and egg cells are released into the water.
These then combine outside the sponges.
Use as tools
By dolphins
A report in 1997 described how bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay used sponges as tools: A dolphin may attach a marine sponge to its rostrum (snoutlike projection).
It is thought the sponge is used to protect the rostrum when the dolphin is looking for food in the sandy sea bottom but scientists have not confirmed this.
The behaviour, known as sponging, has only been seen in this bay, and is almost exclusively shown by females.
A study in 2005 concluded that mothers teach the behaviour to their daughters, and that all the sponge-users are closely related.
This suggests that it is a fairly recent innovation.
Dolphins also use sponges as an exfoliator, rubbing their skin against the sponge attached to the rock to get rid of their old/dry skin.
By people
The calcium carbonate or silica spicules of most sponges make them too rough for most uses, but two genera, Hippospongia and Spongia, have soft, entirely fibrous skeletons.
Early Europeans used soft sponges for many purposes including padding for helmets, portable drinking utensils and municipal water filters.
Until synthetic sponges were invented, they were also used as cleaning tools, for painting, and as contraceptives.
In the 20th century, overfishing is a problem.
This has caused the animals, as well as the industry behind it to be close to extinction.
Many objects with sponge-like textures are now made of substances that do not come from poriferans.
Synthetic "sponges" include personal and household cleaning tools; breast implants; contraceptive sponges.
The luffa "sponge", also spelled loofah, which is commonly sold for use in the kitchen or the bath, is not derived from an animal but from the fibrous "skeleton" of a gourd (Cucurbitaceae).
A kibibyte is a unit of information or computer storage.
A kibibyte is 1024 bytes, 1024 kibibytes are a mebibyte.
Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a 2003 action movie from Paramount Pictures.
It is the second movie to star Angelina Jolie as the title character from the Tomb Raider video games.
Movies based on video games
Amplitudes are always measured as positive numbers (for example: 3.5, 1, 120) and are never negative (for example: -3.5, -1, -120).
That's because distance can only be greater than zero or equal to zero; negative distance does not exist.
The distance from the top of one peak to the bottom of another is called peak-to-peak amplitude.
Another way to describe peak-to-peak amplitude is to say that it is the distance between the maximum positive value and the maximum negative value of a wave is the maximum displacement of a wave from an equilibrium position
Waves and their properties:
Ska is a popular music from Jamaica that began in the 1950s.
Ska music that was first played at a slower tempo then became reggae in the late 1960s.
Ska music bands include singers, electric guitars, electric bass guitar, piano, organ, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.
In ska, the electric guitar and piano normally play short chords on the off-beat.
If you go "one and two and three and four", the off-beat is the "and".
A ska singer does a style of Jamaican singing called "toasting."
When a singer is "toasting", they make sounds, repeat words, invent rhymes, and shout into the microphone.
The Jamaican "toasting" style of singing and talking was adapted into rap music in the 1980s.
How Ska musicians dress
Musicians who play ska dress in hats and suits.
Many ska bands wear clothes with a chessboard pattern of black and white squares.
Doc Martens are a common type of shoe.
This pattern symbolizes the way that ska music mixes of Black and White musicans and styles of music.
There was a British genre of ska-punk influenced by The Specials, Madness and the English Beat, that began to dress in kilts.
1980s Ska Revival
Even though ska was developed in the 1950s, it became popular again in the 1980s in Britain.
In the 1980s, ska bands such as The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat, UB40 and Madness played ska music.
1990s Ska mixed with punk rock
In the 1990s, some bands mixed ska music with Punk rock to make ska-punk.
This kind of ska music is from England and the United States.
Some pop-punk bands from the 1990s mixed pop-punk with ska-punk.
Ska bands and singers
The Selecter (British band)
The Beat (British band)
Madness (English band)
Prince Buster (Jamaican singer)
Desmond Dekker (Jamaican singer)
The Bodysnatchers (female British band)
The Skatalites (Jamaican band)
Streetlight Manifesto (American band)
The Toasters (American band)
The Slackers (New York City band)
Rusted Root (American band)
Westbound Train (Boston band)
Suburban Legends (American band)
Catch 22 (American band)
Lord Creator (Jamaican singer)
The King Blues (British band)
Going to a Ska Show?
Here's What to Wear (LA Weekly)
British culture
1950s establishments in North America
The Braille system is a way of writing things.
It is named after Louis Braille, the French man who invented it.
The system is used by blind people to read and write.
The Braille system uses a set of raised bumps or dots that can be felt with a finger.
Each set of dots is a character in an alphabet, and the numbers and some punctuation.
Before Braille
Louis Braille was not the first person to think about how to let the blind read and write.
In the 17th century the Italian Jesuit Francesco Lana thought about different systems of writing for the blind.
He invented a system of dashes that could be felt.
Valentin Haüy was one of the first French who was interested in the problems the blind had when they wanted to communicate.
Haüy was born in Picardie in 1745, and studied languages at the university in Paris.
First he studied deaf people who could not speak, then blind people.
In his opinion the biggest problem of the blind was that they could not read.
He then invented a system which allowed them to read and write sentences and to do mathematics.
Later he started a school for blind children.
His writing system used two columns which had between one and six positions each.
Vowels had a dot in the left column, for example.
Charles Barbier used a similar system, because Napoleon wanted a code that soldiers could use to exchange messages silently and without light at night.
Barbier called it night writing.
Night writing uses two columns of six dots.
It uses phonemes (separate sounds), not letters.
Barbier's system was too hard for soldiers to learn, and the military did not use it.
From the year 1821, he started to test his system in the school Haüy had founded.
There it became very successful.
Even though the system was difficult to learn, it did help the blind to read better than earlier systems.
Barbier had understood that it was better to use a system that used dots over one that used lines.
Barbier met Braille when he visited the National Institute of the Blind.
Braille saw the biggest problem of the code: The human finger cannot feel the whole symbol at one time.
This makes it impossible to move rapidly from one symbol to the next.
Braille's change was to use a 6 dot cell — the braille system — which completely changed how the blind would read and write.
The Braille alphabet
Braille can be seen as the world's first binary way of character encoding.
The system as originally invented by Braille has two parts
Defining the letters of the French language with tuples (groups) of six bits or "dots".
Showing these six-bit characters as raised dots in Braille cell.
Braille is used with different languages today.
In each language, the letters are encoded differently, depending on the alphabet.
The list of codes is known as braille code, or code page.
There are also different braille codes in use for special purposes, like writing shorthand, mathematics or music.
To make it possible to read faster, certain transcriptions of Braille use shortened words, or contractions.
This is known as Grade 2 Braille.
The Braille cell
Braille uses cells of six raised dots, in two columns of three dots.
The dot positions on the left are numbered one, to three, the ones on the right four to six, as shown in the picture.
Each symbol is coded with certain dots present, and others absent.
The dots are approximately 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) high; inside the cell, the dots are about 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) apart.
The space between the dots of two cells is about 0.15 inches (3.75 mm) horizontally and 0.2 inches (5 mm) vertically.
A standard braille page is 11 inches by 11 inches and typically has between forty and forty-two braille cells per line and twenty-five lines.
As first made by Louis Braille, the first group of characters, using just the top 4 dots of the braille cell, represents letters "a" through "j" (this group of ten characters is called a decade).
Dot 3 (bottom left) is added to each of the "a" through "j" symbols to give letters "k" through "t".
Both of the bottom dots (dots 3 and 6) are added to the first decade to give letters "u", "v", "x", "y", and "z".
The letter "w" is left out of this group because French did not use the letter "w" when Louis Braille made his alphabet.
The fifth decade is the same as the first decade, but shifted down by a row (dots 1 and 4 are blank).
English braille has codes for the letters and some punctuation, and some double letter signs and word signs directly, but capitalization and numbers need a prefix symbol.
In practice, braille produced in the United Kingdom does not use capital letters.
Writing braille
Braille can be made using a "slate" and a "stylus" in which each dot is created from the back of the page, writing in mirror image, by hand, or it may be produced on a special braille typewriter or "Perkins Brailler", or produced by a braille embosser attached to a computer.
It may also be made using a refreshable braille display.
The six bit braille code is very limited, it only allows 64 different possible combinations.
This means that many things need more than one braille character to be coded.
One example for this is how numbers are coded in English braille: First there is a symbol that says the next symbol is a number, and then there is the symbol for the number.
The symbol for number is usually given only once; every symbol that follows is treated as a number, until there is a space.
Braille has been extended to an 8 dot code, particularly for use with braille embossers and refreshable braille displays.
In 8 dot braille the added dots are added at the bottom of the cell, giving a cell 4 dots high by 2 dots wide.
The additional dots are called 7 (for the lower-left dot) and 8 (for the lower-right dot).
8-dot braille has the advantages that capital and lower cases of the letters are directly coded in the cell, a capital letter does not need two cells.
All the printable ASCII characters can be represented in a single cell, and all 256 possible combinations of 8 bits are encoded by the Unicode standard.
Braille with six dots is frequently stored as braille ASCII.
Grade 1 braille
It is possible to transcribe braille by replacing each letter with the braille code for the letter.
This is usually known as Grade 1 Braille.
Grade 1 braille is mostly used by beginners.
The basic problem of Grade 1 braille is that braille letters are much larger than printed ones.
The standard page is 11"x11" (28 cm by 28 cm) in size and only has room for twenty-five lines of forty characters.
This means a book would need to be very thick compared to a standard printed book.
Grade 2 braille
For this reason almost all English braille books use a transcription known as Grade 2 braille.
Grade 2 braille uses contractions, which allows to save space and increase reading speed.
Grade 2 braille was developed by linguists (people who study languages), who also looked at customs, styles and practices.
Transcribing a text into Grade 2 braille is difficult, and the people doing the transcription need to have a special education.
In English, there are 23 words which are replaced with a single letter.
That way, the word but is contracted (shortened) to the single letter b, can to c, do to d, and so on.
Even this simple rule has exceptions and special cases, which must be thought of.
As an example, only the verb to do is replaced by d, the noun do (which stands for a note in music) is a different word, and is written in full.
Sometimes, part of words are contracted, and a character can mean different things in different parts of a word.
There are many rules for this process.
For example, the character with dots 2-3-5 (the letter "f" lowered in the braille cell) stands for "ff" when used in the middle of a word.
At the beginning of a word, this same character stands for the word "to" although the character is written in braille with no space following it.
At the end of a word, the same character represents an exclamation point.
The contraction rules cannot be used when it would make a problem with a prefix or suffix on the word.
Also, some rules are flexible and may depend on the situation.
So when the rules permit the same word to be written in more than one way, preference is given to "the contraction that is closer to the correct pronunciation."
Grade 3 braille
Grade 3 Braille is a system that includes many additional contractions.
It is almost like a shorthand.
It is rarely used for books, but people use it to be able to write and read fast, for themselves.
It can be used for taking notes.
Grade 4 braille
Only very few people can use grade 4 braille.
It uses many rules to shorten grade 3 even further.
It allows a blind person to use shorthand to follow spoken conversation.
Very often, systems of seven or eight dots are used.
Braille on banknotes
The current Canadian paper money has raised dots on the bills that shows its value.
This helps blind people who might otherwise be cheated.
This 'tactile feature' does not use standard braille but, instead, a system developed by working with blind and visually impaired Canadians after they found that not all people who needed it could read braille.
Writing systems other than Braille
Braille may not be the main way blind people read and write.
In Britain (for example), of the two million visually impaired people, only about 15-20 thousand use Braille.
In the U.S.A. according to the 2015 Annual Report from the American Printing House for the Blind, there were 61,739 legally blind students registered in the U.S. Of these, only 8.6% (5,333) were registered as braille readers, 31% (19,109) as visual readers, 9.4% (5,795) as auditory readers, 17% (10,470) as pre-readers, and 34% (21,032) as non-readers.
Currently, among the estimated 85,000 blind adults in the United States, 90% of those who are Braille-literate are employed.
Among adults who do not know Braille, only 33% are employed.
Younger people are turning to electronic text on computers which can be read aloud by software  programs.
This is a good communication method they can use with their friends.
Inevitably, software will go on advancing, as it does in all its functions.
Also, there are audio sources for literature: some are available for use without computer links.
Much thought is going into all these issues.
A term which is useful to know is "accessible publishing": Accessible publishing means books and other texts are available in formats designed to aid or replace the reading process.
Examples are: varieties of larger fonts, specialised fonts for certain kinds of reading disabilities, Braille, e-books, and automated Audiobooks and digital talking books.
This means that Braille is only one way for sighting-impaired people to go; also that there are many more partially sighted people than registered blind people.
The partially sighted obviously have more choices.
Braille for other scripts
There are many extensions of Braille for additional letters with diacritics, such as ç, ô, é.
When braille is adapted to languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, the blocks are generally assigned to the new alphabet according to how it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, not the alphabetic order of the national script.
This is the case with Russian (Cyrillic alphabet), Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese.
In Greek, for example, gamma is written as Latin g, even though it is the third letter of that alphabet (like the Latin c).
Hebrew beth, the second letter of the alphabet and cognate with the Latin letter b, is instead written v, as it is commonly pronounced.
Esperanto letters with circumflexes, ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ and ŝ, are written as those letters without circumflexes with a filled sixth dot.
More differences are in Chinese braille.
In Mandarin Braille, which is based on Zhuyin rather than the Latin Pinyin alphabet, the Latin braille values are used for the first consonants and the simple vowels.
There are additional blocks for the tones, diphthongs, and any following vowel + consonant combinations.
Cantonese Braille is also based on Latin braille for many of the initial consonants and simple vowels, but the blocks also have different values depending on whether they are in a leading syllable or following syllable position.
For instance, the block for Latin k represents old-style Cantonese k (g in Yale and other modern Romanizations) when initial, but aak when final, while Latin j represents Cantonese initial j but final oei.
However, at least two adaptations of Braille have completely reassigned the Latin sound values of the blocks.
Japanese Braille
Korean Braille
In Japanese Braille, alphabetic signs for a consonant and vowel are combined into a single syllable block; in Korean Braille, the consonants have different leading and following syllable forms.
These changes made Braille much more compatible with Japanese kana and Korean hangul, but meant that the Latin sound values could not be kept.
Reading Braille
The National Library for the Blind
Unified (English) Braille Code (including information specific to British braille)
English Braille: American Edition
Online Braille Translation
How Braille Began —a detailed history of braille's origins and the people who supported and opposed the system.
A braille alphabet card
A switch is something that changes the flow of an electrical circuit.
The most common kind of switch is something (for example a railroad switch) which can be taken off of one course and put onto another.
The term "switch" usually means electrical power.
In applications where more than one switch is needed, (i.e. a telephone service) mechanical switches have been replaced by electronic switches which can be controlled automatically.
The switch is called a "gate" when used in a mathematical form.
In logic, arguments are represented as logic gates.
The use of electronic gates to work as a system of logical gates is the basic idea behind the computer —i.e. a computer is a lot of electronic switches that work as logic gates.
Types of switch
There are many types of switches.
Rocker switch
Micro switch
Relay switch
Surface mount switch
Tilt switch
The word 'switch' can also mean to change between two things.
For example, on a railway line, sometimes the track can split into two different tracks.
If the train is travelling on one line and changes over to the other, it has just done a switch.
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban  KC, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), was an English philosopher, statesman, and author.
He has been described as one of the greatest thinkers ever whose ideas have changed the way people think.
He was born in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the nephew of Queen Elizabeth's advisor, William Cecil.
His first job was as a lawyer.
He later became a Member of Parliament and in 1586 he took a leading part in having Mary Queen of Scots executed.
He became a friend of Robert Deveraux, the Earl of Essex, in 1591, and received many valuable gifts from him.
After Essex led a rebellion against the Queen, Bacon was one of the people who led the investigation which led to Essex's execution in 1601.
Bacon was often in trouble for spending too much, and in 1601 he was arrested for debt.
When King James became king in 1603, Bacon's position improved.
He was knighted in 1603.
He was one of the people who argued for the joining of England and Scotland together as one country, which happened after his lifetime, in the 1700s.
Bacon married Alice Barnham in 1606, and the next year he was made the Solicitor General.
He continued to be given better paying positions including Attorney General, Lord Keeper, and Lord Chancellor.
He was made Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Albans in 1621.
Because he did not have children both titles ended when he died.
He used his positions to make more money for himself, and in 1621 the Parliament found that he was corrupt.
He was fined £40,000 and removed from all his jobs.
King James overturned the fine, but he was kept as a prisoner in the Tower of London for a while.
He became best known as a leading thinker in new ways of looking at the world.
His writings started and made famous a way of thinking about science.
This way of thinking is now called the Baconian method.
It is based on looking at the world by making experiments.
After watching the results the scientist comes up with an idea to explain what has happened.
This idea or hypothesis is then further tested by more experiments.
This way of thinking about science is called inductive methodology.
In Bacon's time these methods were linked with magic including hermeticism and alchemy.
Alchemy was the study of fire, earth, water and air.
Alchemists tried to make gold from lead.
The Francis Bacon Society
Contains the New Organon, slightly modified for easier reading
Francis Bacon of Verulam.
Realistic Philosophy and its Age  (1857) by Kuno Fischer and John Oxenford in English
1561 births
1626 deaths
Lord Chancellors
Sled dogs, known also as sleigh dogs, sledge dogs or sleddogs are types of dogs that are used to pull a wheel-less vehicle on runners (a sled or sleigh) over snow or ice, by means of harnesses and lines.
The Overland Expedition, also called the Overland Relief Expedition or Point Barrow-Overland Relief Expedition, was a long trip in 1897–8, by three officers of the United States Coast Guard (then named the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service), with the help of two civilians, using sled dogs and reindeer to rescue more than 250 whalers trapped in the Arctic Ocean by  ice around their ships.
The rescue was ordered by then-U.S. President William McKinley.
McKinley later talked about the rescue in a letter dated January 17, 1899 to the United States Congress, in which he asked Congress to award the officers Congressional Gold Medals, and to pay the civilians for their help:
officers and crews of the fleet, would perish from hunger unless succor [an old word for help] could reach them early in the spring. ...
The overland expedition was formed, and consisted of First Lieut.
H. Jarvis, Revenue-Cutter Service, commanding; Second Lieut.
Ellsworth
the Bear, all volunteers. ...
three months and twelve days from their landing from the Bear at
Cape Vancouver, Alaskan coast of Bering Sea.
They arrived none too soon. ... [
due to] bad sanitary conditions and want of proper food, the men from the whale ships quartered there were found upon the verge of great suffering, while sickness had broken out among them. ...
to ask your favorable action: ...
suffering fellow-men. ...
Fog, Men, and Cutters: A Short History of the Bering Sea Patrol, by Dennis L. Noble, Ph.D. from the USCG website
William McKinley papers from Project Gutenberg
List of Congressional Gold Medal Recipients from the Office of the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives
1890s in the United States
Number theory is a part of mathematics.
It explains what some types of numbers are, what properties they have, and ways that they can be useful.
Fermat's last theorem
A well-known application of number theory is encrypted messaging (encryption).
Data compression also makes use of the field.
G.H. Hardy; E.M. Wright (2008) [1938].
An introduction to the theory of numbers.
ISBN 978-0-19-921986-5.
Vinogradov, I.M. (2003) [1954].
Elements of Number Theory (reprint o 1954 ed.).
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
Ivan M. Niven; Herbert S. Zuckerman; Hugh L. Montgomery (2008) [1960].
An introduction to the theory of numbers (reprint of the 5th edition 1991 ed.).
ISBN 978-81-265-1811-1.
Kenneth H. Rosen (2010).
Elementary Number Theory (6th ed.).
Pearson Education.
ISBN 978-0-321-71775-7.
Borevich, A. I.; Shafarevich, Igor R. (1966).
Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Boston, MA: Academic Press.
ISBN 978-0-12-117850-5.
MR 0195803.
Serre, Jean-Pierre (1996) [1973].
A course in arithmetic.
Graduate texts in mathematics.
ISBN 978-0-387-90040-7.
Number Theory Web
Tear gas is the name for a number of chemical compounds.
They are not actually gases.
They are fine powders or mists of liquid.
The chemicals are acidic and cause  pain in the eyes.
Tear gas may cause temporary blindness for up to 45 minutes.
Tear gas is commonly used by police to control crowds.
Phenacyl chloride (CN) liquid and CS powder are two of the chemicals that are often found in tear gas.
Pepper spray is another chemical compound that acts very similarly and is sometimes used to control crowds.
Tear gas is a chemical weapon, and was used as a weapon in the First World War.
The 1925 Geneva Protocol is not specific enough about the use of irritating agents, such as tear gas in war.
The Chemical Weapons Convention, of 1992 prohibits the use of tear gas for warfare.
The use as a riot control agent is not covered by the treaty.
Problems of using tear gas
The use of tear gas is also has problems: Usually, cartidges of tear gas are thrown; they can hit and injure people.
A case of serious vascular injury from tear gas shells has also been reported from Iran, with high rates of associated nerve injury (44%) and amputation (17%), as well as instances of head injuries in young people.
Directly exposing skin to tear gas may lead to chemical burns and allergic reactions of the skin.
In the short term, the medical consequences are usually limited to  skin inflammation.
delayed complications are also possible: people with respiratory conditions such as asthma are likely to need medical attention and may sometimes require hospitalization or even ventilation support.
Skin exposure to CS may cause chemical burns or induce allergic contact dermatitis.
When people are hit at close range or are severely exposed, eye injuries involving scarring of the cornea can lead to a permanent loss in visual acuity.
Riot Agents
"Kaba Ma Kyei" (), which means "Until the World Crumbles", is the national anthem (song) of Myanmar.
The melody and lyrics were created by Saya Tin, and became the Burmese national anthem in 1947.
Burmese lyrics
IPA pronunciation
MLC Transcription System|MLC transcription
kam.bha ma.kye / mran.ma prany /
tui.
bhui: bwa: a.mwe cac mui.
hkyac mrat nui: pe //
prany htaung su.
kui a.sak pe: lui.
ka kwai ma.le /
da tui.
prany da tui.
mre to.
puing nak mre //
prany tui.
mre a.kyui: kui
nyi nya cwa tui.
ta.twe htam: hsaung pa sui.
ta wan pe a. hpui: tan mre //
Till the end of the world, Myanmar
Since she is the true inheritance from our forefathers, we love and value her.
We will fight and give our lives for the union
This is the country and land of our own
For her prosperity, we will responsibly shoulder the task,
Standing as one in duty to our precious land.
Until the world crumbles, Myanmar!,
Our ancestors gave us the inheritance after fighting wars with love.
We will sacrifice our lives and our labours to protect the Union.
This is our Nation, this is our Land, the land that we own.
Our nation, our land will prosper with productivity and equality as pictured
To unite in keeping to the duties of our valuable land.
Yangon () also known as Rangoon, is the largest city in Myanmar.
It was also the capital city until 2006.
The city is by a river called Hlaingthayar, and is close to the sea.
Yangon has more than 4 million people living there.
Yangon was founded as Dagon in the 6th century AD by the Mons, who ruled Lower Burma at that time.
Dagon was a small fishing village centered about the Shwedagon Pagoda.
In 1755, King Alaungpaya conquered Dagon and renamed it "Yangon".
The British captured Yangon during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26) but returned it to Burma after the war.
The city was destroyed by a fire in 1841.
The British took Yangon and all of Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, and then changed Yangon into the most important city of British Burma.
The British constructed a new city on a grid plan on delta land.
It was bound to the east by the Pazundaung Creek and to the south and west by the Yangon River.
Yangon became the capital of all British Burma after the British had captured Upper Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885.
By the 1890s Yangon's increasing population and commerce gave birth to prosperous residential suburbs to the north of Royal Lake (Kandawgyi) and Inya Lake.
The British also established hospitals including Rangoon General Hospital and colleges including Rangoon University.
Colonial Yangon, with its spacious parks and lakes and mix of modern buildings and traditional wooden architecture, was known as "the garden city of the East."
By the early 20th century, Yangon had public services and infrastructure on par with London.
Before World War II, about 55% of Yangon's population of 500,000 was Indian or South Asian, and only about a third was Bamar (Burman).
Karens, the Chinese, the Anglo-Burmese and others made up the rest.
After World War I, Yangon became the center of Burmese independence movement.
The leftist Rangoon University students led the way.
Three nationwide strikes against the British Empire in 1920, 1936 and 1938 began in Yangon.
Yangon was under Japan's occupation (1942–45), and was heavily damaged during World War II.
Yangon became the capital of Union of Burma on 4 January 1948 when the country regained independence from the British Empire.
Cities in Myanmar
Pyinmana (, ; population: 100,000 (2006 estimate)) is a small town in Mandalay Division of Myanmar.
The government in 2005 decided to move the capital city from Yangon to an area two miles (3.2 km) away west of Pyinmana on November 6, 2005, near the town, named Naypyidaw, which means Royal City.
Pyinmana is approximately  north of Yangon.
Towns in Asia
A kyat () is a kind of money used in Myanmar.
The symbol for it is K. One kyat is equal to 100 pya.
One kyat is almost equal to 1000 US dollars.
Burmese (in Burmese , pronounced /baa-MAA-saa/) is a language spoken in Myanmar.
Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language, meaning that is close to Chinese and Tibetan.
Burmese has three tones (high, medium, low: plus two 'stops or abbreviated additional, qualifying 'tones), no gender {have natural gender e.g. saya (male teacher), sayama(female teacher)}, and no tense.
Burmese has many English and Indian words(loan words) though is a very distinct and full language itself with a long history and substantial numbers of proudly articulated dialects.
Hello = min-ga-la-ba
= Nei kaun la?
I am (name) = Cha-naw yè nan-bè ga ___
(Kya-naw is replaced with kya-ma for females.
= Ka-mya na mei be' lo khal le'   (OR) na mei be' lo khal le' (You can omit  "Ka-mya=You")
Are you from Burma?
= Nae ba-ma pyi ga la da la?
(Note: To ask if someone is from other countries, just replace ba-ma pyi with any of the countries below.)
America = A-mè-ree-ka
France = Pyin-thit
Britain = In-ga-lan
Germany = Ja-ma-nee
Russia = Ra-sha
Thailand = Yoe-da-ya
Japan = Ja-pan
Chinese = Ta-yote
Indian =  in-di-yah
Danielle Fernande Schuelein-Steel (born August 14, 1947 in New York City) is an American writer.
Steel was an only child.
She was looked after by relatives and family employees in Paris and New York City.
She was a lonely child and read a lot of books and poetry.