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In Euclidean geometry, an angle is the figure formed by two rays, called the sides of the angle, sharing a common endpoint, called the vertex of the angle.Angles formed by two rays lie in the plane that contains the rays. Angles are also formed by the intersection of two planes. These are called dihedral angles. Two intersecting curves may also define an angle, which is the angle of the rays lying tangent to the respective curves at their point of intersection. Angle is also used to designate the measure of an angle or of a rotation. This measure is the ratio of the length of a circular arc to its radius. In the case of a geometric angle, the arc is centered at the vertex and delimited by the sides. In the case of a rotation, the arc is centered at the center of the rotation and delimited by any other point and its image by the rotation.History and etymologyThe word angle comes from the Latin word angulus, meaning "corner"; cognate words are the Greek (ankylοs), meaning "crooked, curved," and the English word "ankle". Both are connected with the Proto-Indo-European root *ank-, meaning "to bend" or "bow".Euclid defines a plane angle as the inclination to each other, in a plane, of two lines which meet each other, and do not lie straight with respect to each other. According to Proclus, an angle must be either a quality or a quantity, or a relationship. The first concept was used by Eudemus, who regarded an angle as a deviation from a straight line; the second by Carpus of Antioch, who regarded it as the interval or space between the intersecting lines; Euclid adopted the third concept.Identifying anglesIn mathematical expressions, it is common to use Greek letters (α, β, γ, θ, φ, . . . ) as variables denoting the size of some angle (to avoid confusion with its other meaning, the symbol is typically not used for this purpose). Lower case Roman letters (a, b, c, . . . ) are also used, as are upper case Roman letters in the context of polygons. See the figures in this article for examples.In geometric figures, angles may also be identified by the labels attached to the three points that define them. For example, the angle at vertex A enclosed by the rays AB and AC (i.e. the lines from point A to point B and point A to point C)

is denoted ∠BAC (in Unicode ) or . Where there is no risk of confusion, the angle may sometimes be referred to simply by its vertex (in this case "angle A").Potentially, an angle denoted as, say, ∠BAC, might refer to any of four angles: the clockwise

Asa may refer to:People Aṣa, stage name of Nigerian French singer-songwriter Bùkólá Elemide (born 1982) Asa (name), a masculine given name, including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name Asa (rapper), Finnish rapper Matti Salo (born 1980) Asa of Judah, third king of the Kingdom of Judah Asa people, an ethnic group of TanzaniaPlaces Asa, Iran, in South Khorasan Province Asa, Kwara State, a Local Government Area in Kwara State, Nigeria Asa, Hardoi, a village in Uttar Pradesh, India Asa River (disambiguation), various riversOther Asa (album), 2013 Falkenbach album Asa (raga), Indian format of musical rules Åsa IF, a Swedish

football club located in Åsa Asa language, of the Asa people Asa Station, Japanese railway station in San'yō-Onoda, Yamaguchi Ása, genitive of Æsir, the predominant group among the Norse gods Asa, or naboot, a staff used in Egyptian stick fencing Aša or

Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries.Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. Accordingly, the science of acoustics spreads across many facets of human society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more. Likewise, animal species such as songbirds and frogs use sound and hearing as a key element of mating rituals or marking territories. Art, craft, science and technology have provoked one another to advance the whole, as in many other fields of knowledge. Robert Bruce Lindsay's "Wheel of Acoustics" is a well accepted overview of the various fields in acoustics.HistoryEtymology The word "acoustic" is derived from the Greek word ἀκουστικός (akoustikos), meaning "of or for hearing, ready to hear" and that from ἀκουστός (akoustos), "heard, audible", which in turn derives from the verb ἀκούω(akouo), "I hear".The Latin synonym is "sonic", after which the term sonics used to be a synonym for acoustics and later a branch of acoustics. Frequencies

above and below the audible range are called "ultrasonic" and "infrasonic", respectively.Early research in acoustics In the 6th century BC, the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras wanted

Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. Atomic physics typically refers to the study of atomic structure and the interaction between atoms. It is primarily concerned with the way in which electrons are arranged around the nucleus andthe processes by which these arrangements change. This comprises ions, neutral atoms and, unless otherwise stated, it can be assumed that the term atom includes ions.The term atomic physics can be associated with nuclear power and nuclear weapons, due to the synonymous use of atomic and nuclear in standard English. Physicists distinguish between atomic physics—which deals with the atom as a system consisting of a nucleus and electrons—and nuclear physics, which studies nuclear reactions and special properties of atomic nuclei.As with many scientific fields, strict delineation can be highly contrived and atomic physics is often considered in the wider context of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Physics research groups are usually so classified.Isolated atomsAtomic physics primarily considers atoms in isolation. Atomic models will consist of a single

nucleus that may be surrounded by one or more bound electrons. It is not concerned with the formation of molecules (although much of the physics is identical), nor does it examine atoms in a solid

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by facial expression as well as movements and motions with the hands. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has propagated widely by schools for the deaf and Deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults.ASL signs have a number of phonemic components, such as movement of the face, the torso, and the hands. ASL is not a form of pantomime although iconicity plays a larger role in ASL than in spoken languages. English loan words are often borrowed through fingerspelling, although ASL grammar

is unrelated to that of English. ASL has verbal agreement and aspectual marking and has a productive system of forming agglutinative classifiers. Many linguists believe ASL

In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program written in the Java programming language that is designed to be placed on a web page. Applets are typical examples of transient and auxiliary applications that don't monopolize the user's attention. Applets are not full-featured application programs, and are intended to be easily accessible.HistoryThe word applet was first used in 1990 in PC Magazine. However, the concept of an applet, or more broadly a small interpreted program downloaded and executed by the user, dates at least to RFC 5 (1969) by Jeff Rulifson, which described the Decode-Encode Language (DEL), which was designed to allow remote use of the oN-Line System (NLS) over ARPANET, by downloading small programs to enhance the interaction. This has been specifically credited as a forerunner of Java's downloadable programs in RFC 2555.Applet as an extension of other softwareIn some cases, an applet does not run independently. These applets must run either in a container provided by a host program, through a plugin, or a variety of other applications including mobile devices that support the applet programming model.Web-based Applets Applets were used to provide interactive features to web applications that historically could not be provided by HTML alone. They could capture mouse input and also had

controls like buttons or check boxes. In response to the user action an applet could change the provided graphic content. This made applets well suitable for demonstration, visualization, and teaching. There were online applet collections for studying various subjects, from physics to heart

Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternative history stories propose What if? scenarios about crucial events in human history, and present outcomes very different from the historical record. Alternate history also is a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; as literature, alternate history uses the tropes of the genre to answer the What if? speculations of the story.Since the 1950s, as a subgenre of science fiction, alternative history stories feature the tropes of time travel between histories, and the psychic awareness of the existence of an alternative universe, by the inhabitants of a given universe; and time travel that divides history into various timestreams. In the Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, and Galician languages, the terms Uchronie, ucronia, ucronía, and Uchronie identify the alternate history genre, from which derives the English term Uchronia,

composed of the Greek prefix ("not", "not any", and "no") and the Greek word () "time", to describe a story that occurs "[in] no time"; analogous to a story that occurs in utopia, "[in] no place". The term Uchronia also is the name of

In atomic theory and quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a mathematical function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in an atom. This function can be used to calculate the probability of finding any electron of an atom in any specific region around the atom's nucleus. The term atomic orbital may also refer to the physical region or space where the electron can be calculated to be present, as predicted by the particular mathematical form of the orbital.Each orbital in an atom is characterized by a set of values of the three quantum numbers , , and , which respectively correspond to the electron's energy, angular momentum, and an angular momentum vector component (the magnetic quantum number). Alternative to the magnetic quantum number, the orbitals are often labeled by the associated harmonic polynomials (e.g. xy, x2−y2). Each such orbital can be occupied by a maximum of two electrons, each with its own projection of spin . The simple names s orbital, p orbital, d orbital, and f orbital refer to orbitals with angular momentum quantum number and respectively. These names, together with the value of , are used to describe the electron configurations of atoms. They are derived from the description by early spectroscopists of certain series of alkali metal spectroscopic lines as sharp, principal, diffuse, and fundamental. Orbitals for > 3 continue alphabetically (g, h, i, k, ...), omitting j because some languages do not distinguish between the letters "i" and "j".Atomic orbitals are the basic building blocks of the atomic orbital model (alternatively known as the electron cloud or wave mechanics model), a modern framework for visualizing the submicroscopic behavior of electrons in matter. In this model the electron cloud of a multi-electron atom may be seen as being built up (in approximation) in an electron configuration that is a product of simpler hydrogen-like atomic orbitals. The repeating

periodicity of the blocks of 2, 6, 10, and 14 elements within sections of the periodic table arises naturally from the total number of electrons that occupy a complete set of s, p, d, and f atomic orbitals, respectively, although for higher values of the

Amino acids are organic compounds that contain amino () and carboxylate functional groups, along with a side chain (R group) specific to each amino acid. The elements present in every amino acid are carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), and nitrogen (N); in addition sulfur (S) is present in the side chains of cysteine and methionine, and selenium (Se) in the less common amino acid selenocysteine. More than 500 naturally occurring amino acids are known to constitute monomer units of peptides, including proteins, (though only 20 appear in the genetic code, plus selenocysteine, which is encoded in a special way).Amino acids are formally named by the IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature in terms of the fictitious "neutral" structure shown in the illustration. For example, the systematic name of alanine is 2-aminopropanoic acid, based on the formula . The Commission justified this approach

as follows:The systematic names and formulas given refer to hypothetical forms in which amino groups are unprotonated and carboxyl groups are undissociated.

Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.Born in Maida Vale, London, Turing was raised in southern England. He graduated at King's College, Cambridge, with a degree in mathematics. Whilst he was a fellow at Cambridge, he published a proof demonstrating that some purely mathematical yes–no questions can never be answered by computation and defined a Turing machine, and went on to prove the halting problem for Turing machines is undecidable. In 1938, he obtained his PhD from the Department of Mathematics at Princeton University. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led

Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the

Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional region, shape, or planar lamina, in the plane. Surface area is its analog on the two-dimensional surface of a three-dimensional object. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat. It is the two-dimensional analog of the length of a curve (a one-dimensional concept) or the volume of a solid (a three-dimensional concept).The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size. In the International System of Units (SI), the standard unit of area is the square metre (written as m2), which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square

metres would have the same area as three such squares. In mathematics, the unit square is defined to have area one,

The astronomical unit (symbol: au, or or AU) is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun and equal to about or ~8 light minutes. The actual distance from Earth to the Sun varies by about 3% as Earth orbits the Sun, from a maximum (aphelion) to a minimum (perihelion) and back again once each year. The astronomical unit was originally conceived as the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion; however, since 2012 it has been defined as exactly (see below for several conversions).The astronomical unit is used primarily for measuring distances within the Solar System or around other stars. It is also a fundamental component in the definition of another unit of astronomical length, the parsec.History of symbol usage A variety of unit symbols and abbreviations have been in use for the astronomical unit. In a 1976 resolution, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) had used the symbol A to denote a length equal to the astronomical unit. In the astronomical literature, the symbol AU was (and remains) common. In 2006, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) had recommended ua as the symbol for the unit. In the non-normative Annex C to ISO 80000-3:2006 (now withdrawn), the symbol of the astronomical unit was "ua".In 2012, the IAU, noting "that various symbols are presently in use for the astronomical unit", recommended the use of the symbol "au". The scientific journals published by the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society subsequently adopted this symbol. In the 2014 revision and 2019 edition of the SI Brochure, the BIPM used the unit symbol "au". ISO 80000-3:2019, which replaces ISO 80000-3:2006, does not mention the astronomical unit.Development of unit definition Earth's orbit around the Sun is an ellipse. The semi-major axis of this elliptic orbit is defined to be half of the straight line segment that joins the perihelion and aphelion. The centre of the Sun lies

on this straight line segment, but not at its midpoint. Because ellipses are well-understood shapes, measuring the points of its extremes defined the exact shape mathematically, and made possible calculations for the entire orbit as

An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the term is also often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (although less often for actors). "Artiste" (French for artist) is a variant used in English in this context, but this use has become rare. Use of the term "artist" to describe writers is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like used in criticism.Dictionary definitionsThe Oxford English Dictionary defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist": A learned person or Master of Arts. One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry. A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice. A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic. One who makes their craft a fine art. One who cultivates one of the fine arts – traditionally the arts presided over by the muses.History of the termThe Greek word "techně", often translated as "art," implies mastery of any sort of craft. The adjectival Latin form of the word, "technicus",became the source of the English words technique, technology, technical.In Greek culture each of the nine Muses oversaw a different field of human creation: Calliope (the 'beautiful of speech'): chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry Clio

(the 'glorious one'): muse of history Erato (the 'amorous one'): muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs Euterpe (the 'well-pleasing'): muse

Actaeon (; Aktaion), in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron.He fell to the fatal wrath of Artemis, but the surviving details of his transgression vary: "the only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted; he was transformed into a stag, and his raging hounds, struck with a 'wolf's frenzy' (Lyssa), tore him apart as they would a stag." This is the iconic motif by which Actaeon is recognized, both in ancient art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance depictions.The plotAmong others, John Heath has observed, "The unalterable kernel of the tale was a hunter's transformation into a deer and his death in the jaws of his hunting dogs. But authors were free to suggest different motives for his death." In the version that was offered by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, which has become the standard setting, Artemis was bathing in the woods when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. Once seen, Artemis got revenge on Actaeon: she forbade him speech — if he tried to speak, he would be changed into a stag — for the unlucky profanation of her virginity's mystery.Upon hearing the call of his hunting party, he cried out to them and immediately transformed. At this he fled deep into the woods, and doing so he came upon a pond and, seeing his reflection, groaned. His own hounds then turned upon him and pursued him, not recognizing him. In an endeavour to save himself, he raised his eyes (and would have raised his arms, had he had them) toward Mount Olympus. The gods did not heed his plea, and he was torn to pieces. An element of the earlier myth made Actaeon the familiar hunting companion of Artemis, no stranger. In an embroidered extension of the myth, the hounds were so upset with their master's death, that Chiron made a statue so lifelike that the hounds thought it was Actaeon.There are various other versions of his transgression: The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and pseudo-Apollodoran Bibliotheke state that his offense was that he was a rival of Zeus for

Semele, his mother's sister, whereas in Euripides' Bacchae he has boasted that he is a better hunter than Artemis:Further materials, including fragments that belong with the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and at least four Attic tragedies,

Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the largest branches of Christianity, with around 110 million adherents worldwide .Adherents of Anglicanism are called Anglicans; they are also called Episcopalians in some countries. The majority of Anglicans are members of national or regional ecclesiastical provinces of the international Anglican Communion, which forms the third-largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. These provinces are in full communion with the See of Canterbury and thus with the British Monarch’s personal choice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom the communion refers to as its primus inter pares (Latin, 'first among equals'). The Archbishop calls the decennial Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of primates, and is the president of the Anglican Consultative Council. Some churches that are not part of the Anglican Communion or recognised by it also call themselves Anglican, including those that are within the Continuing Anglican movement and Anglican realignment.Anglicans base their Christian faith on the Bible, traditions of the apostolic Church, apostolic succession ("historic episcopate"), and the writings of the Church Fathers. Anglicanism forms one of the branches of Western Christianity, having definitively declared its independence from the Holy See at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the new Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century corresponded closely to those of contemporary Protestantism. These reforms in the Church of England were understood by one of those most responsible for them, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others as navigating a middle way between two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism.In the first half of the 17th century, the Church of England and its associated Church of Ireland were presented by some Anglican divines as comprising a distinct Christian tradition, with theologies, structures, and forms of worship representing a different kind of middle way, or via media, between Protestantism and Catholicism – a perspective that came to be highly influential in later theories of Anglican identity and expressed in the description of Anglicanism as "catholic and reformed". The degree

of distinction between Protestant and Catholic tendencies within the Anglican tradition is routinely a matter of debate both within specific Anglican churches and throughout the Anglican Communion. Unique to Anglicanism is the Book of Common Prayer, the collection of services in one Book used for centuries. The Book is

Athens ( ; ; (pl.) ) is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th centuries BC.Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. It was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent—particularly Ancient Rome. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece. In 2021, Athens' urban area hosted more than three and a half million people, which is around 35% of the entire population of Greece.Athens is a Beta global city according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and is one of

the biggest economic centers in Southeastern Europe. It also has a large financial sector, and its port Piraeus is both the largest passenger port in Europe, and the third largest in the world.The Municipality of Athens

Anguilla ( ) is a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin. The territory consists of the main island of Anguilla, approximately long by wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The territory's capital is The Valley. The total land area of the territory is , with a population of approximately ().EtymologyThe native Arawak name for the island was Malliouhana.In reference to the island's shape, the Italian , meaning "eel" (in turn, from the Latin diminutive of anguis, “snake”) was used as its name.History Anguilla was first settled by Indigenous Amerindian peoples who migrated from South America. The earliest Native American artefacts found on Anguilla have been dated to around 1300 BC; remains of settlements date from AD 600.There are two known petroglyph sites in Anguilla: Big Spring and Fountain Cavern. The rock ledges of Big Spring contain over 100 petroglyphs (dating back to AD 600-1200), the

majority consisting of three indentations that form faces.Precisely when Anguilla was first seen by Europeans is uncertain: some sources claim that Columbus sighted the island during his second voyage in 1493, while others state that the first European explorer was the

This article is about communications systems in Anguilla.TelephoneTelephones – main lines in use: 6,200 (2002)country comparison to the world: 212Telephones – mobile cellular: 1,800 (2002)country comparison to the world: 211Telephone system:Domestic: Modern internal telephone systemInternational: EAST CARIBBEAN FIBRE SYSTEM ECFS (cable system) microwave radio relay to island of Saint Martin (Guadeloupe and Netherlands Antilles)Mobile phone (GSM)Mobile phone operators:FLOW (Anguilla) Ltd. – GSM and UMTS 850 and 1900 MHz, LTE 700 MHz with Island-wide coverage Digicel (Anguilla) Ltd. – GSM and UMTS 850 to 1900 MHz, LTE 700 MHz Mobiles: ? (2007)RadioRadio broadcast stations: AM 3, FM 7, shortwave 0 (2007)Radios: 3,000 (1997)TelevisionTelevision broadcast stations: 1 (1997)Televisions: 1,000 (1997)InternetInternet country code: .ai (Top level domain)Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 2 (FLOW – , Digicel Anguilla –

)Internet hosts: 269 (2012) country comparison to the world: 192Internet: users: 12,377 (2018) country comparison to the world: 206See alsoAnguilla FLOW (Anguilla) Ltd.ReferencesExternal links Flow Internet APN settingsCommunications in AnguillaAnguillaAnguilla

The Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands is an uninhabited external territory of Australia consisting of four low-lying tropical islands in two separate reefs, and the territorial sea generated by the islands. The territory is located in the Indian Ocean situated on the edge of the continental shelf, about off the northwest coast of Australia and south of the Indonesian island of Rote.Ashmore Reef is called Pulau Pasir by Indonesians and Nusa Solokaek in the Rotenese language. Both names have the meaning "sand island".GeographyThe Territory comprises Ashmore Reef, which includes West, Middle, and East Islands, and two lagoons, and Cartier Reef, which includes Cartier Island. Ashmore Reef covers approximately and Cartier Reef , both measurements extending to the limits of the reefs.West, Middle, and East Islands have a combined land area variously reported as , and . Cartier Island has a reported land area of .HistoryAccording to Australian literature, Cartier Island was discovered by Captain Nash in 1800, and named after his ship Cartier. Ashmore Island was discovered by Captain Samuel Ashmore in 1811 from his ship and named after him. Ashmore Island was annexed by the United Kingdom in 1878, as was Cartier Island in 1909.A British order-in-council dated 23 July 1931 stated that Ashmore and Cartier Islands would be placed under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia when Australia

passed legislation to accept them, and formal administration began two years later. The Commonwealth's resulting Ashmore and Cartier Islands Acceptance Act 1933 came into operation on 10 May 1934, when the islands formally became a territory. The act

Acoustic theory is a scientific field that relates to the description of sound waves. It derives from fluid dynamics. See acoustics for the engineering approach.For sound waves of any magnitude of a disturbance in velocity, pressure, and density we have In the case that the fluctuations in velocity, density, and pressure are small, we can approximate these as Where is the perturbed velocity of the fluid, is the pressure of the fluid at rest, is the perturbed pressure of the system as a function of space and time, is the density of the fluid at rest, and is the variance in the density of the fluid over space and time.In the case that the velocity is irrotational (), we then have the acoustic wave equation that describes the system:Where we haveDerivation for a medium at restStarting with the Continuity Equation and the Euler Equation: If we take small perturbations of a constant pressure and density: Then the equations of the system are Noting that the equilibrium pressures and densities are constant, this simplifies toA Moving MediumStarting with We can have these equations work for a moving medium by setting , where is the constant velocity that the whole fluid is moving at before being disturbed (equivalent to a moving observer) and is the fluid velocity.In this case the equations look very similar: Note that setting returns the equations at rest.Linearized WavesStarting with the above given equations of motion for a medium at rest: Let us now take to all be small quantities.In the case that we keep terms to first order, for the continuity equation, we have the term going to 0. This similarly applies for the density perturbation times the time derivative of the velocity. Moreover, the spatial components of the material derivative go to 0. We thus have, upon rearranging the equilibrium density: Next, given that our sound wave occurs in an ideal fluid, the motion is adiabatic, and then we can relate the small change in the pressure to the small change in the density by Under this condition, we see that we now have Defining the speed of sound of the system: Everything becomesFor Irrotational FluidsIn the case that

the fluid is irrotational, that is , we can then write and thus write our equations of motion as The second equation tells us that And the use of this equation in the continuity equation tells us that This simplifies to Thus the velocity potential

Alexander Mackenzie, (January 28, 1822 – April 17, 1892) was a Canadian politician who served as the second prime minister of Canada, in office from 1873 to 1878.Mackenzie was born in Logierait, Perthshire, Scotland. He left school at the age of 13, following his father's death to help his widowed mother, and trained as a stonemason. Mackenzie immigrated to Canada when he was 19, settling in what became Ontario. His masonry business prospered, allowing him to pursue other interests – such as the editorship of a pro-Reformist newspaper called the Lambton Shield. Mackenzie was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1862, as a supporter of George Brown.In 1867, Mackenzie was elected to the new House of Commons of Canada for the Liberal Party. He became leader of the party (thus Leader of the Opposition) in mid-1873, and a few months later succeeded John A. Macdonald as prime minister, following Macdonald's resignation in the aftermath of the Pacific Scandal. Mackenzie and the Liberals won a clear majority at the 1874 election. He was popular among the general public for his humble background and apparent democratic tendencies.As prime minister, Mackenzie continued the nation-building programme that had been begun by his predecessor. His government established the Supreme Court of Canada and Royal Military College of Canada, and created the District of Keewatin to better administer Canada's newly acquired western territories. However, it made little progress on the transcontinental railway, and struggled to deal with the aftermath of the Panic of 1873. At the 1878 election, Mackenzie's government suffered a landslide defeat. He remained leader of the Liberal Party for another two years, and continued on as a Member of Parliament (MP) until his death, due to a stroke.Early lifeMackenzie was born on January 28, 1822, in Logierait, Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Mary Stewart (Fleming) and Alexander Mackenzie Sr. (born 1784) who were married in 1817. The site of his birthplace is known as Clais-'n-deoir (the Hollow of

the Weeping), where families said their goodbyes as the convicted were led to nearby Gallows Hill. The house in which he was born was

Ashoka (; Brāhmi: 𑀅𑀲𑁄𑀓, Asoka, IAST: Aśoka), also known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, son of Bindusara, who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from to 232 BCE. Ashoka promoted the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia. Considered by many to be one of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka expanded Chandragupta's empire to reign over territory stretching from present-day Afghanistan in the west to present-day Bangladesh in the east. It covered the entire Indian subcontinent except for parts of present-day Tamil Nadu. The empire's capital was Pataliputra (in Magadha, present-day Patna), with provincial capitals at Takshashila (later Taxila) and Ujjain. Ashoka, after the war of Kalinga, got upset with the bloodshed and vowed to never fight again. He patronized Buddhism during his reign.Ashoka waged a particularly destructive war against the state of Kalinga (modern Odisha), which he conquered in about 260 BCE. According to an interpretation of his Edicts, he converted to Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War, which he had waged out of a desire for conquest and which reportedly directly resulted in more than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations. He is remembered for erecting the Ashoka pillars and spreading his Edicts, for sending Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and Central Asia, and for establishing monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha.Beyond the Edicts of Ashoka, biographical information about him relies on legends written centuries later, such as the 2nd-century CE Ashokavadana ("Narrative of Ashoka", a part of the

Divyavadana), and in the Sri Lankan text Mahavamsa ("Great Chronicle"). The emblem of the modern Republic of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka.

The meaning of the word American in the English language varies according to the historical, geographical, and political context in which it is used. American is derived from America, a term originally denoting all of the Americas (also called the Western Hemisphere). In some expressions, it retains this Pan-American sense, but its usage has evolved over time and, for various historical reasons, the word came to denote people or things specifically from the United States of America.In modern English, American generally refers to persons or things related to the United States of America; among native English speakers this usage is almost universal, with any other use of the term requiring specification. However, some linguists in the past have argued that "American" should be widened to also include people or things from anywhere in the American continents.The word can be used as either an adjective or a noun (viz. a demonym). In adjectival use, it means "of or relating to the United States"; for example, "Elvis Presley was an American singer" or "the man prefers American English". In its noun form, the word generally means a resident or citizen of the US, but is also used for someone whose ethnic identity is simply "American". The noun is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States when intending a geographical meaning. When used with a grammatical qualifier, the adjective American can mean "of or relating to the Americas", as in Latin American or Indigenous American. Less frequently, the adjective can take this meaning without a qualifier, as in "American Spanish dialects and pronunciation differ by country", or the name of the Organization of American States. A third use of the term pertains specifically to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, for instance, "In the 16th century, many Americans died from imported diseases during the European conquest", though this usage is rare, as "indigenous", "First Nations" or "Amerindian" are considered less confusing and generally more appropriate.Compound

constructions which indicate a minority ethnic group, such as "African-Americans" likewise refer exclusively to people in or from the United States of America, as does the prefix "Americo-". For instance, the Americo-Liberians and their language Merico

Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for design by contract (DbC), extremely strong typing, explicit concurrency, tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and non-determinism. Ada improves code safety and maintainability by using the compiler to find errors in favor of runtime errors. Ada is an international technical standard, jointly defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). , the standard, called Ada 2012 informally, is ISO/IEC 8652:2012.Ada was originally designed by a team led by French computer scientist Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull under contract to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) from 1977 to 1983 to supersede over 450 programming languages used by the DoD at that time. Ada was named after Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), who has been credited as the first computer programmer.Features Ada was originally designed for embedded and real-time systems. The Ada 95 revision, designed by S. Tucker Taft of Intermetrics between 1992 and 1995, improved support for systems, numerical, financial, and object-oriented programming (OOP).Features of Ada include: strong typing, modular programming mechanisms (packages), run-time checking, parallel processing (tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and nondeterministic select statements), exception handling, and

generics. Ada 95 added support for object-oriented programming, including dynamic dispatch.The syntax of Ada minimizes choices of ways to perform basic operations, and prefers English keywords (such as "or

Alfonso Cuarón Orozco ( , ; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican filmmaker. Cuarón is the first Mexico-born filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director. He is one of four people who have been nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories, the other three being Walt Disney, George Clooney, and Kenneth Branagh.Cuarón has received 10 Academy Award nominations, winning four including Best Director for Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018), Best Film Editing for Gravity, and Best Cinematography for Roma. His other notable films from a variety of genres include the family drama A Little Princess (1995), the romantic drama Great Expectations (1998), the coming of age road film Y tu mamá también (2001), the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and the science fiction dystopian thriller Children of Men (2006).Early lifeAlfonso Cuarón Orozco was born in Mexico City, the son of Alfredo Cuarón, a doctor specializing in nuclear medicine, and Cristina Orozco, a pharmaceutical biochemist. He has two brothers, Carlos, also a filmmaker, and Alfredo, a conservation biologist. Cuarón studied philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and filmmaking at CUEC (Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos), a school within the same university. There he met the director Carlos Marcovich and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and they made what would be his first short film, Vengeance Is Mine.Career1990s: Early careerCuarón began working on television in Mexico, first as a technician and then as a director. His television work led to assignments as an assistant director for several film productions including La Gran Fiesta, Gaby: A True Story and Romero, and in 1991 he landed his first big-screen directorial assignment.In 1991, Cuarón directed Sólo con tu pareja, a sex comedy about a womanizing businessman (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho) who, after having sex with an attractive nurse, is fooled into believing he's contracted AIDS. In addition to writing, producing and directing, Cuarón co-edited the film with Luis Patlán. The film, which also starred cabaret singer Astrid Hadad and model/actress Claudia Ramírez (with whom Cuarón was linked between 1989 and 1993) was a big hit in Mexico. After this success, director Sydney Pollack hired Cuarón to direct an episode of Fallen Angels, a series of neo-noir stories produced for the Showtime premium cable network in 1993;

other directors who worked on the series included Steven Soderbergh, Jonathan Kaplan, Peter Bogdanovich, and Tom Hanks.In 1995, Cuarón released his first feature film

Arianism (, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Ptolemais, Libya Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God the Father with the difference that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten within time by God the Father, therefore Jesus was not co-eternal with God the Father. With regard to the Trinity, there are, theoretically speaking, two possibilities: Either to affirm unity and deny plurality in God, and vice versa. All trinitarian heresies are but variations on these two "choices" ('choices' being the meaning of the Greek ).Arius' trinitarian theology, later given an extreme form by Aetius and his disciple Eunomius and called anomoean [dissimilar], asserts a total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father. Arianism holds that the Son is distinct from the Father and therefore subordinate to him. The term Arian is derived from the name Arius; it was not what the followers of Arius's teachings called themselves, but rather a term used by outsiders. The nature of Arius's teachings and his supporters were opposed to the theological doctrines held by Homoousian Christians, regarding the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ.There was a controversy between two interpretations of Jesus' divinity (Homoousianism and Arianism) based upon the theological orthodoxy of the time, one Trinitarian and the other also a derivative of Trinitarian orthodoxy, and both of them attempted to solve its respective theological dilemmas. Homoousianism was formally affirmed by the first two ecumenical councils; since then, Arianism has always been condemned as "the heresy or sect of Arius". As such, all mainstream branches of Christianity now consider Arianism to be heterodox and heretical. Trinitarian (homoousian) doctrines were vigorously upheld by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria, who insisted that Jesus (God the Son) was "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. Arius stated: "If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son

was not." The ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325, convened by Emperor Constantine to ensure church unity, declared Arianism to be a heresy. According

EventsPre-160030 BC – Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.AD 69 – Batavian rebellion: The Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of Gaius Julius Civilis. 527 – Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire. 607 – Ono no Imoko is dispatched as envoy to the Sui court in China (Traditional Japanese date: July 3, 607). 902 – Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid army, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.1203 – Isaac II Angelos, restored Byzantine Emperor, declares his son Alexios IV Angelos co-emperor after pressure from the forces of the Fourth Crusade.1291 – The Old Swiss Confederacy is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.1469 – Louis XI of France founds the chivalric order called the Order of Saint Michael in Amboise.1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.1571 – The Ottoman conquest of Cyprus is concluded, by the surrender of Famagusta.1601–19001620 – Speedwell leaves Delfshaven to bring pilgrims to America by way of England.1664 – Ottoman forces are defeated in the battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led

by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.1714 – George, Elector of Hanover, becomes King George I of Great

Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius (19 September 86 – 7 March 161) was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was one of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.Born into a senatorial family, Antoninus held various offices during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. He married Hadrian's niece Faustina, and Hadrian adopted him as his son and successor shortly before his death. Antoninus acquired the cognomen Pius after his accession to the throne, either because he compelled the Senate to deify his adoptive father, or because he had saved senators sentenced to death by Hadrian in his later years. His reign is notable for the peaceful state of the Empire, with no major revolts or military incursions during this time. A successful military campaign in southern Scotland early in his reign resulted in the construction of the Antonine Wall.Antoninus was an effective administrator, leaving his successors a large surplus in the treasury, expanding free access to drinking water throughout the Empire, encouraging legal conformity, and facilitating the enfranchisement

of freed slaves. He died of illness in 161 and was succeeded by his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus

EventsPre-16008 – Roman Empire general Tiberius defeats the Dalmatae on the river Bosna.435 – Deposed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, is exiled by Roman Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt.881 – Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeats the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied.908 – Battle of Eisenach: An invading Hungarian force defeats an East Frankish army under Duke Burchard of Thuringia.1031 – Olaf II of Norway is canonized as Saint Olaf by Grimketel, the English Bishop of Selsey.1057 – Frederik van Lotharingen elected as first Belgian Pope Stephen IX.

1342 – The Siege of Algeciras commences during the Spanish Reconquista.1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001.AES is a variant of the Rijndael block cipher developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, who submitted a proposal to NIST during the AES selection process. Rijndael is a family of ciphers with different key and block sizes. For AES, NIST selected three members of the Rijndael family, each with a block size of 128 bits, but three different key lengths: 128, 192 and 256 bits.AES has been adopted by the U.S. government. It supersedes the Data Encryption Standard (DES), which was published in 1977. The algorithm described by AES is a symmetric-key algorithm, meaning the same key is used for both encrypting and decrypting the data.In the United States, AES was announced by the NIST as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 (FIPS 197) on November 26, 2001. This announcement followed a five-year standardization process in which fifteen competing designs were presented and evaluated, before the Rijndael cipher was selected as the most suitable (see Advanced Encryption Standard process for more details).AES is included in the ISO/IEC 18033-3 standard. AES became

effective as a U.S. federal government standard on May 26, 2002, after approval by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. AES is available in many different encryption packages, and is the first (and only) publicly accessible cipher approved by the U.S. National Security

EventsPre-16001348 – Czech king Karel IV founds the Charles University in Prague, which was later named after him and was the first university in Central Europe.1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux.1478 – The Pazzi family attack on Lorenzo de' Medici kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral.1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown).1601–19001607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry.1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz.1768 – The Royal Academy of Arts hosts its first art opening. 1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France.1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia.1900 – Fires destroy Canadian cities Ottawa and Hull, reducing them to ashes in 12 hours. 12,000 people are left without a home.1901–present1903 – Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded1915 – World War I: Italy secretly signs the Treaty of London pledging to join the Allied Powers. 1920 – Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring seven goals in Canada's 12–1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match.1923 – The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey.1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann

Göring.1933 – Nazi Germany issues the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities limiting the amount of Jewish students able to attend public

Anisotropy () is the property of a material which allows it to change or assume different properties in different directions, as opposed to isotropy. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physical or mechanical properties (absorbance, refractive index, conductivity, tensile strength, etc.).An example of anisotropy is light coming through a polarizer. Another is wood, which is easier to split along its grain than across it.Fields of interestComputer graphicsIn the field of computer graphics, an anisotropic surface changes in appearance as it rotates about its geometric normal, as is the case with velvet.Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the point of view. Older techniques, such as bilinear and trilinear filtering, do not take into account the angle a surface is viewed from, which can result in aliasing or blurring of textures. By reducing detail in one direction more than another, these effects can be reduced.Chemistry A chemical anisotropic filter, as used to filter particles, is

a filter with increasingly smaller interstitial spaces in the direction of filtration so that the proximal regions filter out larger particles and distal regions

Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and thereby transforms or 'decays' into a different atomic nucleus, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the nucleus of a helium-4 atom, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It has a charge of and a mass of . For example, uranium-238 decays to form thorium-234.Alpha particles have a charge , but as a nuclear equation describes a nuclear reaction without considering the electrons – a convention that does not imply that the nuclei necessarily occur in neutral atoms – the charge is not usually shown.Alpha decay typically occurs in the heaviest nuclides. Theoretically, it can occur only in nuclei somewhat heavier than nickel (element 28), where the overall binding energy per nucleon is no longer a maximum and the nuclides are therefore unstable toward spontaneous fission-type processes. In practice, this

mode of decay has only been observed in nuclides considerably heavier than nickel, with the lightest known alpha emitters being the lightest isotopes (mass numbers 104–109) of tellurium (element 52). Exceptionally, however, beryllium-8 decays to two alpha particles.Alpha decay is by far the

Extreme poverty, deep poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, is the most severe type of poverty, defined by the United Nations (UN) as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services" (UN 1995 report of the World Summit for Social Development). Historically, other definitions have been proposed within the United Nations.In 2018, extreme poverty mainly refers to an income below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (in 2011 prices, ), set by the World Bank. In October 2017, the World Bank updated the international poverty line, a global absolute minimum, to $1.90 a day. This is the equivalent of $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression "living on less than a dollar a day". The vast majority of those in extreme poverty reside in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2018, it is estimated that the country with the most people living in extreme poverty is Nigeria, at 86 million.In the past, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions of extreme poverty. The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty fell from over 80% in 1800 to under 20% by 2015. According

to UN estimates, roughly 734 million people or 10% remained under those conditions. The number had previously been measured as 1.9 billion in 1990, and 1.2 billion in 2008. Despite the significant

The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical calculator.The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the logical structure of the Analytical Engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era. The Analytical Engine is one of the most successful achievements of Charles Babbage.Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until 1941 that Konrad Zuse built the first general-purpose computer, Z3, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering Analytical Engine in 1837.Design Babbage's first attempt at a mechanical computing device, the Difference Engine, was a special-purpose machine designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials. Construction of this machine was never completed; Babbage had conflicts with his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, and ultimately the British government withdrew its funding for the project.During this project, Babbage realised that a much more general design, the Analytical Engine, was possible. The work on the design of the Analytical Engine started in c. 1833.The input, consisting of programs ("formulae") and data, was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter, and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. It employed ordinary base-10 fixed-point arithmetic.There was to be a store (that is, a memory) capable of holding 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each (ca. 16.6 kB). An arithmetic unit (the "mill") would be able to perform all four arithmetic operations, plus comparisons and optionally square roots. Initially (1838) it was conceived as a difference engine curved back upon itself, in a generally circular layout, with the long store exiting off to one side. Later

drawings (1858) depict a regularised grid layout. Like the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer, the mill would rely upon its own internal procedures, to be stored in the form of

Caesar Augustus (23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor, reigning from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. His status as the founder of the Roman Principate (the first phase of the Roman Empire) has consolidated a legacy as one of the most effective leaders in human history. The reign of Augustus initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana. The Roman world was largely free from large-scale conflict for more than two centuries, despite continuous wars of imperial expansion on the Empire's frontiers and the year-long civil war known as the "Year of the Four Emperors" over the imperial succession.Originally named Gaius Octavius, he was born into an old and wealthy equestrian branch of the plebeian gens Octavia. His maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC and Octavius was named in Caesar's

will as his adopted son and heir; as a result, he inherited Caesar's name, estate, and the loyalty of his legions. He, Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate to

The geography of Antarctica is dominated by its south polar location and, thus, by ice. The Antarctic continent, located in the Earth's southern hemisphere, is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle. It is washed by the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. It has an area of more than 14 million km2.Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, the world's largest ice sheet and also its largest reservoir of fresh water. Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2.5 km below sea level; subglacial lakes of liquid water also occur (e.g., Lake Vostok).

Ice shelves and rises populate the ice sheet on the periphery.In September 2018, researchers at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency released a high resolution terrain map (detail down to the size of a car, and less in some areas) of Antarctica, named

Transport in Antarctica has transformed from explorers crossing the isolated remote area of Antarctica by foot to a more open era due to human technologies enabling more convenient and faster transport, predominantly by air and water, but also by land as well. Transportation technologies on a remote area like Antarctica need to be able to deal with extremely low temperatures and continuous winds to ensure the travelers' safety. Due to the fragility of the Antarctic environment, only a limited amount of transport movements can take place and sustainable transportation technologies have to be used to reduce the ecological footprint.The infrastructure of land, water and air transport needs to be safe and sustainable. Currently thousands of tourists and hundreds of scientists a year depend on the Antarctic transportation system.Land transportRoadsWinds continuously blow snow on roads in Antarctica.The South Pole Traverse (McMurdo–South Pole highway) is approximately long and links the United States McMurdo Station on the coast to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. It was constructed by leveling snow and in crevasses, but is not paved. There are flags to mark the road.Also, the United States Antarctic Program maintains two ice roads during the austral summer. One provides access to Pegasus Field on the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice road between Pegasus Field and McMurdo Station is about . The other road provides access to the Ice Runway, which is on sea ice. The road between the Ice Runway and McMurdo Station varies in length from year to year depending on many factors, including ice stability. These roads are critical for resupplying McMurdo Station, Scott Base, and Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station.VehiclesThe scarcity and poor quality of road infrastructure limits land transportation by conventional vehicles.A normal car

on tires has very limited capability in Antarctic conditions. Scientific bases are often built on snow-free areas (oases) close to theocean.

The geography of Alabama describes a state in the Southeastern States in North America. It extends from high mountains to low valleys and sandy beaches. Alabama is 30th in size and borders four U.S. states: Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. It also borders the Gulf of Mexico.Physical featuresExtending entirely across the state of Alabama for about northern boundary, and in the middle stretching farther north, is the Cumberland Plateau, or Tennessee Valley region, broken into broad tablelands by the dissection of rivers. In the northern part of this plateau, west of Jackson county, there are about of level highlands from above sea level. South of these highlands, occupying a narrow strip on each side of the Tennessee River, is a country of gentle rolling lowlands varying in elevation from . To the northeast of these highlands and lowlands is a rugged section with steep mountain-sides, deep narrow coves and valleys, and flat mountain-tops. Its elevations range from . In the remainder of this region, the southern portion, the most prominent feature is Little Mountain,

extending about from east to west between two valleys, and rising precipitously on the north side above them or above the sea.Adjoining the Cumberland Plateau region on the southeast is the Appalachian Valley (locally known as

The governor of Alabama is the head of government of the U.S. state of Alabama. The governor is the head of the executive branch of Alabama's state government and is charged with enforcing state laws.There have officially been 54 governors of the state of Alabama; this official numbering skips acting and military governors. The first governor, William Wyatt Bibb, served as the only governor of the Alabama Territory. Five people have served as acting governor, bringing the total number of people serving as governor to 59, spread over 63 distinct terms. Four governors have served multiple non-consecutive terms: Bibb Graves, Jim Folsom, and Fob James each served two, and George Wallace served three non-consecutive periods. Officially, these non-consecutive terms are numbered only with the number of their first term. William D. Jelks also served non-consecutive terms, but his first term was in an acting capacity.The longest-serving governor was George Wallace, who served 16 years over four terms. The shortest term for a non-acting governor was that of Hugh McVay, who served four and a half months after replacing the resigning Clement Comer Clay. Lurleen Wallace, wife of George Wallace, was the first woman to serve as governor of Alabama, and the third woman to serve as governor of any state. The current governor is Republican Kay Ivey, who took office on April 10, 2017 following Governor Robert J. Bentley's court-mandated resignation following a guilty plea-deal amidst a corruption scandal. She is the second female governor of Alabama.GovernorsGovernor of the Territory of AlabamaAlabama Territory was formed on March 3, 1817, from Mississippi Territory. It had only one governor appointed by the President of the United States before it became a state; he became the first state governor.Governors of the State of AlabamaAlabama was

admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819. It seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, and was a founding member of the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861. Following the end of the American Civil War, Alabama during Reconstruction was part of the Third

Apocrypha (, 'the hidden [things]') are the biblical books received by the early Church as part of the Greek version of the Old Testament, but not included in the Hebrew Bible, being excluded by the non-Hellenistic Jews from their canon. Their position in Christian usage has been ambiguous.There are several levels of dubiety within the general concept of apocryphal works in Judeo-Christian biblical writings. Apocrypha per se are outside the Hebrew Bible canon, not considered divinely inspired but regarded as worthy of study by the faithful. Pseudepigrapha are spurious works ostensibly written by a biblical figure. Deuterocanonical works are those that are accepted in one canon but not in all.Biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Septuagint

and the Latin Vulgate, but not in the Hebrew Bible. While the Catholic tradition considers seven of these books to be deuterocanonical, Protestants consider fourteen intertestamental books as Apocrypha, that is, non-canonical books that

The Antarctic Treaty and related agreements, collectively known as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), regulate international relations with respect to Antarctica, Earth's only continent without a native human population. It was the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War, setting aside the continent as a scientific preserve, establishing freedom of scientific investigation, and banning military activity; for the purposes of the treaty system, Antarctica is defined as all the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude. Since September 2004, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which implements the treaty system, is headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.The main treaty was opened for signature on December 1, 1959, and officially entered into force on June 23, 1961. The original signatories were the 12 countries active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries had established over 55 Antarctic research stations for the IGY, and the subsequent promulgation of the treaty was seen as a diplomatic expression of the operational and scientific cooperation that had been achieved. As of 2019, the treaty has 54 parties.HistoryInternational conflicts Various international conflicts motivated the creation of an agreement for the Antarctic. After the Second World War, the U.S. considered establishing a claim in Antarctica. From August 26, 1946, and until the beginning of 1947, Operation Highjump was carried out, the largest military expeditionary force that the United States has sent to Antarctica to the present, consisting of 13 ships, 4700 men and numerous aerial devices. Its goals were to train military personnel and test material in conditions of extreme cold for a hypothetical war in the Antarctic.Some incidents had occurred during World War

II, and a new one occurred in Hope Bay on February 1, 1952, when the Argentine military fired warning shots at a group of Britons. The response of the United

Alfred William Lawson (March 24, 1869 – November 29, 1954) was a professional baseball player, aviator and utopian philosopher. He was a baseball player, manager, and league promoter from 1887 through 1916 and went on to play a pioneering role in the U.S. aircraft industry. He published two early aviation trade journals.He is frequently cited as the inventor of the airliner and was awarded several of the first air mail contracts, which he ultimately could not fulfill. He founded the Lawson Aircraft Company in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to build military training aircraft and later the Lawson Airplane Company in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to build airliners.The crash of his ambitious Lawson L-4 "Midnight Liner" during its trial flight takeoff on May 8, 1921, ended his best chance for commercial aviation success.In 1904, he wrote a utopian novel, Born Again, in which he developed the philosophy which later became Lawsonomy.Baseball career (1888–1907)He made one start

for the Boston Beaneaters and two for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys during the 1890 season. His minor league playing career lasted through 1895. He later

Ames () is a city in Story County, Iowa, United States, located approximately north of Des Moines in central Iowa. It is best known as the home of Iowa State University (ISU), with leading agriculture, design, engineering, and veterinary medicine colleges. A United States Department of Energy national laboratory, Ames Laboratory, is located on the ISU campus.In 2020, Ames had a population of 66,427, making it the state's ninth largest city. Iowa State University was home to 33,391 students as of fall 2019, which make up approximately one half of the city's population.Ames also hosts United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sites: the largest federal animal disease center in the United States, USDA's Agricultural Research Service's National Animal Disease Center (NADC), as well as, one of two national USDA sites for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which comprises the National Veterinary Services Laboratory and the Center for Veterinary Biologics. Ames also hosts the headquarters for the Iowa Department of Transportation.History The city was formed in 1864 as a station stop on the Cedar Rapids and

Missouri Railroad and was named after 19th century U.S. Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, who was influential in the building of the transcontinental railroad. Ames was founded by local resident Cynthia Olive Duff (née Kellogg) and railroad

Abalone ( or ; via Spanish , from Rumsen aulón) is a common name for any of a group of small to very large marine gastropod molluscs in the family Haliotidae.Other common names are ear shells, sea ears, and, rarely, muttonfish or muttonshells in parts of Australia, ormer in the UK, perlemoen in South Africa, and the Maori name for three species in New Zealand is pāua.Abalones are marine snails. Their taxonomy puts them in the family Haliotidae, which contains only one genus, Haliotis, which once contained six subgenera. These subgenera have become alternate representations of Haliotis. The number of species recognized worldwide ranges between 30 and 130 with over 230 species-level taxa described. The most comprehensive treatment of the family considers 56 species valid, with 18 additional subspecies.The shells of abalones have a low, open spiral structure, and are characterized by several open respiratory pores in a row near the shell's outer edge. The thick inner layer of the shell is composed of nacre (mother-of-pearl), which in many species is highly iridescent, giving rise to a range of strong, changeable colors which make the shells attractive to humans as decorative

objects, jewelry, and as a source of colorful mother-of-pearl.The flesh of abalones is widely considered to be a desirable food,

In Catholicism, an abbess (Latin abbatissa, feminine form of abbas, abbot) is the female superior of a community of nuns, which is often an abbey.DescriptionIn the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic and Anglican abbeys, the mode of election, position, rights, and authority of an abbess correspond generally with those of an abbot. She must be at least 40 years old and have been a nun for 10 years. The age requirement in the Catholic Church has evolved over time, ranging from 30 to 60. The requirement of 10 years as a nun is only 8 in Catholicism. In the rare case of there not being a nun with the qualifications, the requirements may be lowered to 30 years of age and 5 of those in an "upright manner", as determined by the superior. A woman who is of illegitimate birth, is not a virgin, has undergone non-salutory public penance, is a widow, or is blind or deaf, is typically disqualified for the position, saving by permission of the Holy See. The office is elective, the choice being by the secret votes of the nuns belonging to the community. Like an abbot, after being confirmed in her office by the Holy See, an abbess is solemnly admitted to her office by a formal blessing, conferred by the bishop in whose territory the monastery is located, or by an abbot or another bishop with appropriate permission. Unlike the abbot, the abbess receives only the ring, the crosier, and a copy of the rule of the order. She does not receive a mitre as part of the ceremony. The abbess also traditionally adds a pectoral cross to the outside of her habit as a symbol of office, though she continues to wear a modified form of her religious habit or dress, as she is unordained—females cannot be ordained—and so does not vest or

use choir dress in the liturgy. An abbess serves for life, except in Italy and some adjacent islands.Roles and responsibilitiesAbbesses are, like abbots, major superiors according to canon law, the equivalents of abbots or bishops (the

The term abdominal surgery broadly covers surgical procedures that involve opening the abdomen (laparotomy). Surgery of each abdominal organ is dealt with separately in connection with the description of that organ (see stomach, kidney, liver, etc.) Diseases affecting the abdominal cavity are dealt with generally under their own names (e.g. appendicitis).Types The most common abdominal surgeries are described below.Appendectomy—Surgical opening of the abdominal cavity and removal of the appendix. Typically performed as definitive treatment for appendicitis, although sometimes the appendix is prophylactically removed incidental to another abdominal procedure.Caesarean section (also known as C-section) is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen (laparotomy) and uterus (hysterotomy) to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus.Inguinal hernia surgery—This refers to the repair of an inguinal hernia.Exploratory laparotomy—This refers to the opening of the abdominal cavity for direct examination of its contents, for example, to locate a source of bleeding or trauma. It may or may not be followed by repair or removal of the primary problem.Laparoscopy—A minimally invasive approach to abdominal surgery where rigid tubes are inserted through small incisions into the abdominal

cavity. The tubes allow introduction of a small camera, surgical instruments, and gases into the cavity for direct or indirect visualization and treatment of the abdomen. The abdomen is inflated with carbon dioxide gas to facilitate visualization and, often, a small video camera is used

Abduction may refer to:Of a person or people Alien abduction, memories of being taken by apparently nonhuman entities from a different planet Bride kidnapping, a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry Child abduction, the abduction or kidnapping of a young child (or baby) by an older person Express kidnapping, a method of abduction where a small ransom that a company or family can easily pay is requested International child abduction Kidnapping, the taking away of a person against the person's will Raptio, large scale abduction of women, either for marriage or enslavement Tiger kidnapping, taking a hostage to force a loved one or associate

of the victim to do somethingSciences Abduction (anatomy), a type of movement which draws a structure or limb away from the median plane of the body Abductive reasoning, a method of reasoning in logicMediaFilm and television "Abduction" (The Outer Limits), a 2001 television

Abensberg () is a town in the Lower Bavarian district of Kelheim, in Bavaria, Germany, lying around 30 km southwest of Regensburg, 40 km east of Ingolstadt, 50 northwest of Landshut and 100 km north of Munich. It is situated on the river Abens, a tributary of the Danube.GeographyThe town lies on the Abens river, a tributary of the Danube, around eight kilometres from the river's source. The area around Abensberg is characterized by the narrow valley of the Danube, where the Weltenburg Abbey stands, the valley of the Altmühl in the north, a left tributary of the Danube, and the famous Hallertau hops-planting region in the south. The town is divided into the municipalities of Abensberg, Arnhofen, Holzharlanden, Hörlbach, Offenstetten, Pullach and Sandharland.DivisionsSince the administrative reforms in Bavaria in the 1970s, the town also encompasses the following Ortsteile: In the town: Abensberg (main settlement), Aunkofen (civil parish), Badhaus (village) To the east: Gaden (village), See (village), Offenstetten (civil parish) To the north east: Arnhofen (civil

parish), Baiern (village), Pullach (civil parish), Kleedorf (village) To the north: Sandharlanden (civil parish), Holzharlanden (civil parish), Buchhof (small hamlet) To the west: Schwaighausen (village), Schillhof (hamlet), Gilla (small hamlet) To the south: Aumühle (small hamlet), Allersdorf (hamlet) To the south

Arminianism is a branch of Protestantism based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the Remonstrance (1610), a theological statement submitted to the States General of the Netherlands. This expressed an attempt to moderate the doctrines of Calvinism related to its interpretation of predestination. The Synod of Dort (1618–19) was called by the States General to consider the Five Articles of Remonstrance.Classical Arminianism, to which Arminius is the main contributor, and Wesleyan Arminianism, to which John Wesley is the main contributor, are the two main schools of thought.Many Christian denominations have been influenced by Arminian views on the will of man being freed by grace prior to regeneration, notably the Baptists in 17th century, the Methodists in the 18th century, and the Pentecostals in the 20th century.HistoryPrecursor movements and theological influences According to Roger E. Olson, Arminius’ beliefs, i.e. Arminianism, did not begin with him. Denominations such as the Waldensians and other groups prior to the Reformation have similarly to Arminianism affirmed that each person may choose the contingent response of either resisting God's grace or yielding to it. Anabaptist theologian Balthasar Hubmaier also promoted much the same view as Arminius nearly a century before him. The soteriological doctrines of Arminianism and Anabaptism are roughly equivalent. In particular, Mennonites have been historically Arminian whether they distinctly espoused the Arminian viewpoint or not, and rejected Calvinism soteriology. Anabaptist theology seems to have influenced Jacobus Arminius. At least, he was "sympathetic to the Anabaptist point of view, and Anabaptists were commonly in attendance on his preaching." Similarly, Arminius mentions Danish Lutheran theologian Niels Hemmingsen as holding the basic view of soteriology he held and he may have been influenced by Hemmingsen.Emergence of ArminianismJacobus Arminius was a Dutch pastor and theologian in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He was taught by Theodore Beza, Calvin's hand-picked successor, but after examination of the scriptures, he rejected his teacher's theology that it is God who unconditionally elects some for salvation. Instead Arminius

proposed that the election of God was of believers, thereby making it conditional on faith. Arminius's views were challenged by the Dutch Calvinists, especially Franciscus Gomarus, but Arminius died before a national synod could occur.Arminius died before he could satisfy Holland's State General's request

The Alan Parsons Project were a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. They were accompanied by a varying number of session musicians and some relatively consistent session players such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, arranger Andrew Powell, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalists Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow. Parsons was an audio engineer and producer by profession, but also a musician and a composer. A songwriter by profession, Woolfson was also a composer, a pianist, and a singer. Almost all the songs on the Project's albums are credited to "Woolfson/Parsons".The Alan Parsons Project released eleven studio albums in its 15-year career, including the successful I Robot and Eye in the Sky. Some of their most notable songs are "The Raven", "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether", "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You", "Games People Play", "Time", "Snake Eyes", "Sirius"/"Eye in the Sky", "Old and Wise", and "Don't Answer Me".Career1974–1976: Formation and debut Alan Parsons met Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in the summer of 1974. Parsons acted as Assistant Engineer on the Beatles' albums Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), engineered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the

Moon (1973), and produced several acts for EMI Records. Woolfson, a songwriter and composer, was working as a session pianist while composing material for a concept album based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.Woolfson's idea was to manage Alan and help his already

In mathematics, the term "almost all" means "all but a negligible amount". More precisely, if is a set, "almost all elements of " means "all elements of but those in a negligible subset of ". The meaning of "negligible" depends on the mathematical context; for instance, it can mean finite, countable, or null.In contrast, "almost no" means "a negligible amount"; that is, "almost no elements of " means "a negligible amount of elements of ".Meanings in different areas of mathematicsPrevalent meaningThroughout mathematics, "almost all" is sometimes used to mean "all (elements of an infinite set) but finitely many". This use occurs in philosophy as well. Similarly, "almost all" can mean "all (elements of an uncountable set) but countably many".Examples: Almost all positive integers are greater than 1,000,000,000,000. Almost all prime numbers are odd (as 2 is the only exception). Almost all polyhedra are irregular (as there are only nine exceptions: the five platonic solids and the four Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra). If P is a nonzero polynomial, then P(x) ≠ 0 for almost all x (if not all x).Meaning in measure theoryWhen speaking about the reals, sometimes "almost all" can mean "all reals but a null set". Similarly, if S is some set of reals, "almost all numbers in S" can mean "all numbers in S but those in a null set". The real line can be thought of as a one-dimensional Euclidean space. In the more general case of an n-dimensional space (where n is a positive integer), these definitions can be generalised to "all points but those in a null set" or "all points in S but those in a null set" (this time, S is a set of points in the space). Even more generally, "almost all" is sometimes used in the sense of "almost everywhere" in measure theory, or in the closely related sense of "almost surely" in probability theory.Examples: In a measure space, such as the real line, countable sets are null. The set of rational numbers is countable, and thus almost all real numbers are irrational. As Georg Cantor proved in his first set theory article, the set of algebraic numbers is countable as well, so almost all reals are transcendental. Almost all reals are normal. The Cantor set is null as well. Thus, almost all reals are

not members of it even though it is uncountable. The derivative of the Cantor function is 0 for almost all numbers in the unit interval. It follows from the previous

Aromatic compounds are those chemical compounds (most commonly organic) that contain one or more rings with pi electrons delocalized all the way around them. In contrast to compounds that exhibit aromaticity, aliphatic compounds lack this delocalization. The term "aromatic" was assigned before the physical mechanism determining aromaticity was discovered, and referred simply to the fact that many such compounds have a sweet or pleasant odour; however, not all aromatic compounds have a sweet odour, and not all compounds with a sweet odour are aromatic compounds. Aromatic hydrocarbons, or arenes, are aromatic organic compounds containing solely carbon and hydrogen atoms. The configuration of six carbon atoms in aromatic compounds is called a "benzene ring", after the simple aromatic compound benzene, or a phenyl group when part of a larger compound.Not all aromatic compounds are benzene-based; aromaticity can also manifest in heteroarenes, which follow Hückel's rule (for monocyclic rings: when the number of its π electrons equals 4n + 2, where n = 0, 1, 2, 3, ...). In these compounds, at least one carbon atom is replaced by one of the heteroatoms oxygen, nitrogen, or sulfur. Examples of non-benzene compounds with aromatic properties are furan, a heterocyclic compound with a five-membered ring that includes a single oxygen atom, and pyridine, a heterocyclic compound with a six-membered ring containing one nitrogen atom.Benzene ring model Benzene, C6H6, is the least complex aromatic hydrocarbon, and it was the first one named as such.

The nature of its bonding was first recognized by August Kekulé in the 19th century. Each carbon atom in the hexagonal cycle has four electrons to share. One goes to the hydrogen atom,

An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns.The concept of the abbey has developed over many centuries from the early monastic ways of religious men and women where they would live isolated from the lay community about them. Religious life in an abbey may be monastic. An abbey may be the home of an enclosed religious order or may be open to visitors. The layout of the church and

associated buildings of an abbey often follows a set plan determined by the founding religious order.Abbeys are often self-sufficient while using any abundance of produce or skill to provide care to the poor and needy, refuge

The Annales school () is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and monographs. The school has been highly influential in setting the agenda for historiography in France and numerous other countries, especially regarding the use of social scientific methods by historians, emphasizing social and economic rather than political or diplomatic themes.The school deals primarily with late medieval and early modern Europe (before the French Revolution), with little interest in later topics. It has dominated French social history and influenced historiography in Europe and Latin America. Prominent leaders include co-founders Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Henri Hauser (1866-1946) and Marc Bloch (1886–1944). The second generation was led by Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) and included Georges Duby (1919–1996), Pierre Goubert (1915–2012), Robert Mandrou (1921–1984), Pierre Chaunu (1923–2009), Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014), and Ernest Labrousse (1895–1988). Institutionally it is based on the Annales journal, the SEVPEN publishing house, the (FMSH), and especially the 6th Section of the École pratique des hautes études, all based in Paris. A third generation was led by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (born 1929) and includes Jacques Revel, and Philippe Ariès (1914–1984), who joined the group in 1978. The third generation stressed history from the point of view of mentalities, or

mentalités. The fourth generation of Annales historians, led by Roger Chartier (born 1945), clearly distanced itself from the mentalities approach, replaced by the cultural and linguistic turn, which emphasize analysis of the social history

In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles are generated daily at particle acceleratorstotal artificial production has been only a few nanogramsand in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form antiatoms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling.Theoretically, a particle and its antiparticle (for example, a proton and an antiproton) have the same mass, but opposite electric charge, and other differences in quantum numbers. For

example, a proton has positive charge, while an antiproton has negative charge.A collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual annihilation, giving rise to various proportions of intense photons (gamma rays),

Casa Batlló () is a building in the center of Barcelona. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, and is considered one of his masterpieces. A remodel of a previously built house, it was redesigned in 1904 by Gaudí and has been refurbished several times after that. Gaudí's assistants Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió also contributed to the renovation project.The local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), as it has a visceral, skeletal organic quality. It is located on the Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district, and forms part of a row of houses known as the Illa de la Discòrdia (or Mansana de la Discòrdia, the "Block of Discord"), which consists of four buildings by noted Modernista architects of Barcelona.Like everything Gaudí designed, Casa Batlló is only identifiable as Modernisme or Art Nouveau in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work. There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís). The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the lance of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia, Gaudí's home), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.In 2005, Casa Batlló became an UNESCO World Heritage Site among the other Works of Antoni Gaudí, and is visited by people from around the world.HistoryInitial construction (1877)The building that is now Casa Batlló was built in 1877, commissioned by Lluís Sala Sánchez. It was a classical building without remarkable characteristics within the eclecticism

traditional by the end of the 19th century. The building had a basement, a ground floor, four other floors and a garden in the back.Batlló familyThe house was bought by Josep Batlló in

Parc Güell ( ; ) is a privatized park system composed of gardens and architectural elements located on Carmel Hill, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Carmel Hill belongs to the mountain range of Collserola – the Parc del Carmel is located on the northern face. Park Güell is located in La Salut, a neighborhood in the Gràcia district of Barcelona. With urbanization in mind, Eusebi Güell assigned the design of the park to Antoni Gaudí, a renowned architect and the face of Catalan modernism.The park was built from 1900 to 1914 and was officially opened as a public park in 1926. In 1984, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site under "Works of Antoni Gaudí".DescriptionPark Güell is the reflection of Gaudí's artistic plenitude, which belongs to his naturalist phase (first decade of the 20th century). During this period, the architect perfected his personal style through inspiration from organic shapes. He put into practice a series of new structural solutions rooted in the analysis of geometry. To that, the Catalan artist adds creative liberty and an imaginative, ornamental creation. Starting from a sort of baroquism, his works acquire a structural richness of forms and volumes, free of the rational rigidity or any sort of classic premises. In the design of Park Güell, Gaudí unleashed all his architectonic genius and put to practice much of his innovative structural solutions that would

become the symbol of his organic style and that would culminate in the creation of the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family (Catalan: Sagrada Familia).Güell and Gaudí conceived this park, situated within a natural park. They imagined an organized grouping of high-quality homes, decked out

Casa Milà (, ), popularly known as La Pedrera () or "The stone quarry", a reference to its unconventional rough-hewn appearance, is a Modernista building in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was the last private residence designed by architect Antoni Gaudí and was built between 1906 and 1912.The building was commissioned in 1906 by and his wife . At the time, it was controversial because of its undulating stone facade, twisting wrought iron balconies and designed by Josep Maria Jujol. Several structural innovations include a self-supporting stone façade, and a free-plan floor, underground garage and the spectacular terrace on the

roof.In 1984, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Since 2013 it has been the headquarters of the

In particle physics, every type of particle is associated with an antiparticle with the same mass but with opposite physical charges (such as electric charge). For example, the antiparticle of the electron is the antielectron (which is often referred to as positron). While the electron has a negative electric charge, the positron has a positive electric charge, and is produced naturally in certain types of radioactive decay. The opposite is also true: the antiparticle of the positron is the electron.Some particles, such as the photon, are their own antiparticle. Otherwise, for each pair of antiparticle partners, one is designated as the normal particle (the one that occurs in matter usually interacted with in daily life). The other (usually given the prefix "anti-") is designated the antiparticle.Particle–antiparticle pairs can annihilate each other, producing photons; since the charges of the particle and antiparticle are opposite, total charge is conserved. For example, the positrons produced in natural radioactive decay quickly annihilate themselves with electrons, producing pairs of gamma rays, a process exploited in positron emission tomography.The laws of nature are very nearly symmetrical with respect to particles and antiparticles. For example, an antiproton and a positron can form an antihydrogen atom, which is believed to have the same properties as a hydrogen atom. This leads to the question of why the formation of matter after the Big Bang resulted in a universe consisting almost entirely of matter, rather than being a half-and-half mixture of matter and antimatter. The discovery of charge parity violation helped to shed light on this problem by showing that this symmetry, originally thought to be perfect, was only approximate.Because charge is conserved, it is not possible to create an antiparticle without either destroying another particle of the same charge (as is for instance the case when antiparticles are produced naturally via beta decay or the collision of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere), or by the simultaneous creation of both a particle and its antiparticle, which can occur in particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.Although particles and their antiparticles have opposite charges, electrically neutral particles need not be identical to their antiparticles. The neutron, for example, is made out of quarks, the antineutron from antiquarks, and they are distinguishable from one another because neutrons and antineutrons annihilate each other upon contact. However, other neutral particles are their own antiparticles, such as photons, Z0 bosons,  mesons, and

hypothetical gravitons and some hypothetical WIMPs.HistoryExperiment In 1932, soon after the prediction of positrons by Paul Dirac, Carl D. Anderson found that cosmic-ray collisions produced these particles in a cloud chamber— a particle detector in which moving electrons (or positrons) leave behind trails as

Kim Renard Nazel (born June 17, 1965), better known by his stage names Arabian Prince or Professor X, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and DJ. He is best known as a founding member of N.W.A.Early lifeNazel was born in Compton, California to the son of Joseph "Skippy" Nazel Jr., a prominent African-American author and radio talk show host. His musical background came from his mother, a piano teacher and classical musician. His family tried its best to shelter him, sending him to a Catholic school and keeping him busy with football to keep him away from the gangs. The younger Nazel got his first experience with making music at the radio station his father hosted his talk show on; Nazel used the radio station's equipment to put together mixtapes that he would sell at school. Nazel went on to

graduate from Junípero Serra High School in nearby Gardena.Music careerNazel took the stage name of DJ Prince and started selling mixtapes at school. While working at a luggage store at the Del Amo Mall, its owner Sam

This day marks the approximate midpoint of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and of winter in the Southern Hemisphere (starting the season at the June solstice).EventsPre-1600 461 – Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer. 626 – The Avar and Slav armies leave the siege of Constantinople. 768 – Pope Stephen III is elected to office, and quickly seeks Frankish protection against the Lombard threat, since the Byzantine Empire is no longer able to help. 936 – Coronation of King Otto I of Germany.1461 – The Ming dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.1479 – Battle of Guinegate: French troops of King Louis XI were defeated by the Burgundians led by Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg.1601–19001679 – The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.1714 – The Battle of Gangut: The first important victory of the Russian Navy.1743 – The Treaty of Åbo ended the 1741–1743 Russo-Swedish War.1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.1786 – The first federal Indian Reservation is created by the United States.1789 – The United States Department of War is established.1791 – American troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in

the Northwest Indian War.1794 – U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.1819 – Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.1858 – The first Australian rules football match

EventsPre-1600 870 – Treaty of Meerssen: King Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald partition the Middle Frankish Kingdom into two larger east and west divisions.1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.1264 – Mudéjar revolt: Muslim rebel forces took the Alcázar of Jerez de la Frontera after defeating the Castilian garrison.1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland.1509 – Krishnadeva Raya is crowned Emperor of Vijayanagara at Chittoor.1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven.1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage.1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines: The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England.1601–1900 1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill: English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces.1648 – Mehmed IV (1648–1687) succeeds Ibrahim I (1640–1648) as Ottoman Emperor.1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal.1786 – Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.1831 – Four hundred Shawnee people agree to relinquish their lands in Ohio in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Wapakoneta.1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).1863 – American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor

Carol of Romania.1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.1901–present 1903 – Black Saturday occurs, killing 12 in a stadium collapse in Philadelphia.1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his

EventsPre-160069 – Defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum, Otho commits suicide. 73 – Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the First Jewish–Roman War.1346 – Stefan Dušan, "the Mighty", is crowned Emperor of the Serbs at Skopje, his empire occupying much of the Balkans.1520 – The Revolt of the Comuneros begins in Spain against the rule of Charles V.1582 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Lerma founds the settlement of Salta, Argentina.1601–19001746 – The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in Scotland. After the battle many highland traditions were banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants.1780 – Franz Friedrich Wilhelm von Fürstenberg founds the University of Münster.1799 – French Revolutionary Wars: The Battle of Mount Tabor: Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.1818 – The United States Senate ratifies the Rush–Bagot Treaty, limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.1838 – The French Army captures Veracruz in the Pastry War.1847 – Shooting of a Māori by an English sailor results in the opening of the Wanganui Campaign of the New Zealand Wars.1853 – The Great Indian Peninsula Railway opens the first passenger rail in India, from Bori Bunder to Thane.1858 – The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up.1862 – American Civil War: Battle at Lee's Mills in Virginia. 1862 – American Civil War: The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia, becomes law.1863 – American Civil War: During

the Vicksburg Campaign, gunboats commanded by acting Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter run downriver past Confederate artillery batteries at Vicksburg.1878 – The Senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland issued a declaration establishing a city of Kotka on

In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs.Within an expression containing two or more occurrences in a row of the same associative operator, the order in which the operations are performed does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed. That is (after rewriting the expression with parentheses and in infix notation if necessary), rearranging the parentheses in such an expression will not change its value. Consider the following equations:Even though the parentheses were rearranged on each line, the values of the expressions were not altered. Since this holds true when performing addition and multiplication on any real numbers, it can be said that "addition and multiplication of real numbers are associative operations".Associativity is not the same as commutativity, which addresses whether the order of two operands affects the result. For example, the order does not matter in the multiplication of real numbers, that is, , so we say that the multiplication of real numbers is a commutative operation. However, operations such as function composition and matrix multiplication are associative, but (generally) not commutative.Associative operations are abundant in mathematics; in fact, many algebraic structures (such as semigroups and categories) explicitly require their binary operations to be associative.However, many important and interesting operations are non-associative; some examples include subtraction, exponentiation, and the vector cross product. In contrast to the theoretical properties of real numbers, the addition

of floating point numbers in computer science is not associative, and the choice of how to associate an expression can have a

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the Apache HTTP Server, and incorporated on March 25, 1999. As of 2021, it includes approximately 1000 members.The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized open source community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License and is a non-copyleft form of free and open-source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license, which is to say that it allows developers who receive the software freely, to re-distribute it under nonfree terms. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. The ASF is a meritocracy, implying that membership of the foundation is granted only to volunteers who have actively contributed to Apache projects. The ASF is considered a second generation open-source organization, in that commercial support is provided without the risk of platform lock-in.Among the ASF's objectives are: to provide legal protection to volunteers working on Apache projects; to prevent the Apache brand name from being used by other organizations without permission.The ASF also holds several ApacheCon conferences each year, highlighting Apache projects and related technology.HistoryThe history of the Apache Software Foundation is linked to the Apache HTTP Server, development beginning in February 1993. A group of eight developers started working on enhancing the NCSA HTTPd daemon. They came to be known as the Apache Group. On March 25, 1999, the Apache Software Foundation was formed. The first official meeting of the Apache Software Foundation was held on April 13, 1999. The initial members of the Apache

Software Foundation consisted of the Apache Group: Brian Behlendorf, Ken Coar, Miguel Gonzales, Mark Cox, Lars Eilebrecht, Ralf S. Engelschall, Roy T. Fielding, Dean Gaudet, Ben Hyde, Jim

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or ADA () is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.In 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended the enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988. The final version of the bill was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush. It was later amended in 2008 and signed by President George W. Bush with changes effective as of January 1, 2009.Disabilities includedADA disabilities include both mental and physical medical conditions. A condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability. Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission regulations provide a list of conditions that should easily be concluded to be disabilities: deafness, blindness, an intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), partially or completely missing limbs or mobility impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,

The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The idea of selling the computer came from Wozniak's friend and co-founder Steve Jobs. The Apple I was Apple's first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only motorized means of transportation, a VW Microbus, for a few hundred dollars (Wozniak later said that Jobs planned instead to use his bicycle to get around), and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. Wozniak demonstrated the first prototype in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.Production was discontinued on September 30, 1977, after the June 10, 1977 introduction of its successor, the Apple II, which Byte magazine referred to as part of the "1977 Trinity" of personal computing (along with the PET 2001 from Commodore Business Machines and the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy Corporation).HistoryOn March

5, 1975, Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in Gordon French's garage. He was so inspired that he

Apatosaurus (; meaning "deceptive lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Othniel Charles Marsh described and named the first-known species, A. ajax, in 1877, and a second species, A. louisae, was discovered and named by William H. Holland in 1916. Apatosaurus lived about 152 to 151 million years ago (mya), during the late Kimmeridgian to early Tithonian age, and are now known from fossils in the Morrison Formation of modern-day Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah in the United States. Apatosaurus had an average length of , and an average mass of . A few specimens indicate a maximum length of 11–30% greater than average and a mass of .The

cervical vertebrae of Apatosaurus are less elongated and more heavily constructed than those of Diplodocus, a diplodocid like Apatosaurus, and the bones of the leg are much stockier despite being longer, implying that Apatosaurus was a more robust animal. The tail was held above the ground during normal

Allosaurus () is a genus of large carnosaurian theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 145 million years ago during the Late Jurassic epoch (Kimmeridgian to late Tithonian). The name "Allosaurus" means "different lizard" alluding to its unique (at the time of its discovery) concave vertebrae. It is derived from the Greek () ("different, other") and () ("lizard / generic reptile"). The first fossil remains that could definitively be ascribed to this genus were described in 1877 by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. As one of the first well-known theropod dinosaurs, it has long attracted attention outside of paleontological circles.Allosaurus was a large bipedal predator. Its skull was light, robust and

equipped with dozens of sharp, serrated teeth. It averaged in length for A. fragilis, with the maximum length estimate being 9.7 meters long.

The AK-47, officially known as the Avtomat Kalashnikov (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is a gas-operated assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, it is the originating firearm of the Kalashnikov (or "AK") family of rifles. After more than seven decades, the AK-47 model and its variants remain the most popular and widely used rifles in the world.The number "47" refers to the year the rifle was finished. Design work on the AK-47 began in 1945. It was presented for official military trials in 1947, and, in 1948, the fixed-stock version was introduced into active service for selected units of the Soviet Army. In early 1949, the AK was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces and used by the majority of the member states of the Warsaw Pact.The model and its variants owe their global popularity to their reliability under harsh conditions, low production cost (compared to contemporary weapons), availability in virtually every geographic region, and ease of use. The AK has been manufactured in many countries, and has seen service with armed forces as well as irregular forces and insurgencies throughout the world. , "of the estimated 500 million firearms worldwide, approximately 100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s".

The model is the basis for the development of many other types of individual, crew-served and specialised firearms.HistoryOrigins During World War II, the Sturmgewehr 44 rifle

The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital computer. Limited by the technology of the day, and execution, the device has remained somewhat obscure. The ABC's priority is debated among historians of computer technology, because it was neither programmable, nor Turing-complete. Conventionally, the ABC would be considered the first electronic ALU (arithmetic logic unit) which is integrated into every modern processor's design. Its unique contribution was to make computing faster by being the first to use vacuum tubes to do the arithmetic calculations. Prior to this, slower electro-mechanical methods were used by the Harvard Mark I and Konrad Zuse's machines. The first electronic, programmable, digital machine, the Colossus computer from 1943 to 1945, used similar tube-based technology as ABC.OverviewConceived in 1937, the machine was built by Iowa State College mathematics and physics professor John Vincent Atanasoff with the help of graduate student Clifford Berry. It was designed only to solve systems of linear equations and was successfully tested in 1942. However, its intermediate result storage mechanism, a paper card writer/reader, was not perfected, and when John Vincent Atanasoff left Iowa State College for World War II assignments, work on the machine was discontinued. The ABC pioneered important elements of modern computing, including binary arithmetic and electronic switching elements, but its special-purpose nature and lack of a changeable, stored program distinguish it from modern computers. The computer was designated an IEEE Milestone in 1990.Atanasoff and Berry's computer work was not widely known until it was rediscovered in the 1960s, amidst patent disputes over the first instance of an electronic computer. At that time ENIAC, that had been created by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, was considered to be the first computer in the modern sense, but

in 1973 a U.S. District Court invalidated the ENIAC patent and concluded that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject matter

The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains () are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S - 20°S latitude), and has an average height of about . The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, separated by intermediate depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaus—some of which host major cities such as Quito, Bogotá, Cali, Arequipa, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Sucre, Mérida, El Alto and La Paz. The Altiplano plateau is the world's second-highest after the

Tibetan plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate: the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet

Ancylopoda is a group of browsing, herbivorous, mammals in the Perissodactyla that show long, curved and cleft claws. Morphological evidence indicates the Ancylopoda diverged from the tapirs, rhinoceroses and horses (Euperissodactyla) after the Brontotheria, however earlier authorities such as Osborn sometimes considered the Ancylopoda to be outside Perissodactyla or, as was popular more recently, to be related to Brontotheria.Macrotherium, which is typically from the middle Miocene of Sansan, in Gers, France, may indicate a distinct genus. Limb-bones resembling those of Macrotherium, but relatively stouter, have been described from the Pliocene beds of Attica and Samos as Ancylotherium. In the Americas, the names Morothorium and Moropus have been

applied to similar bones, in the belief that they indicated Xenarthrans. Macrotherium magnum must have been an animal of about nine feet in length.ReferencesChalicotheresEocene first appearancesPleistocene extinctions

An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ancora, which itself comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα (ankȳra).Anchors can either be temporary or permanent. Permanent anchors are used in the creation of a mooring, and are rarely moved; a specialist service is normally needed to move or maintain them. Vessels carry one or more temporary anchors, which may be of different designs and weights.A sea anchor is a drag device, not in contact with the seabed, used to minimise drift of a vessel relative to the water. A drogue is a drag device used to slow or help steer a vessel running before a storm in a following or overtaking sea, or when crossing a bar in a breaking sea.OverviewAnchors achieve holding power either by "hooking" into the seabed, or mass, or a combination of the two. Permanent moorings use large masses (commonly a block or slab of concrete) resting on the seabed. Semi-permanent mooring anchors (such as mushroom anchors) and large ship's anchors derive a significant portion of their holding power from their mass, while also hooking or embedding in the bottom. Modern anchors for smaller vessels have metal flukes which hook on to rocks on the bottom or bury themselves in soft seabed.The vessel is attached to the anchor by the rode (also called a cable or a warp) It can be made of rope, chain or a combination of rope and chain. The ratio of the length of rode to the water depth is known as the scope (see below).Holding groundHolding ground is the area of sea floor which holds an anchor, and thus the attached ship or boat. Different types of anchor are designed to hold in different types of holding ground. Some bottom materials hold better than others; for instance, hard sand holds well, shell very poorly. Holding ground

may be fouled with obstacles. An anchorage location may be chosen for its holding ground. In poor holding ground, only the

Anbar (, ,) also known by its original ancient name, Peroz-Shapur, was an ancient and medieval town in central Iraq. It played a role in the Roman–Persian Wars of the 3rd–4th centuries, and briefly became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate before the founding of Baghdad in 762. It remained a moderately prosperous town through the 10th century, but quickly declined thereafter. As a local administrative centre, it survived until the 14th century, but was later abandoned.Its ruins are near modern Fallujah. The city gives its name to the Al-Anbar Governorate.HistoryOrigins The city is located on the left bank of the Middle Euphrates, at the junction with the Nahr Isa canal, the first of the navigable canals that link the Euphrates to the River Tigris to the east. The origins of the city are unknown, but ancient, perhaps dating to the Babylonian era and even earlier: the local artificial mound of Tell Aswad dates to .Sasanian period The town was originally known as Misiche (Greek: ), Mesiche (), or Massice ( mšyk; mšyk). As a major crossing point of the Euphrates, and occupying the northernmost point of the complex irrigation network of the Sawad, the town was of considerable strategic significance. As the western gate to central Mesopotamia, it was fortified by the Sasanian ruler Shapur I () to shield his capital, Ctesiphon, from the Roman Empire. After his decisive defeat of the Roman emperor Gordian III at the Battle of Misiche in 244, Shapur renamed the town to Peroz-Shapur (Pērōz-Šāpūr or Pērōz-Šābuhr, from ,

meaning "victorious Shapur"; in ; in ). It became known as Pirisapora or Bersabora () to the Greeks and Romans.The city was fortified by a double wall, possibly through the use of Roman prisoner labour; it was sacked and burned after an agreement with its garrison in March

Anazarbus (, medieval Ain Zarba; modern Anavarza; ) was an ancient Cilician city. Under the late Roman Empire, it was the capital of Cilicia Secunda. Roman emperor Justinian I rebuilt the city in 527 after a strong earthquake hit it. It was destroyed in 1374 by the forces of Mamluk Empire, after their conquest of Armenia.Location It was situated in Anatolia in modern Turkey, in the present Çukurova (or classical Aleian plain) about 15 km west of the main stream of the present Ceyhan River (or classical Pyramus river) and near its tributary the Sempas Su.A lofty isolated ridge formed its acropolis. Though some of the masonry in the ruins is certainly pre-Roman, the Suda's identification of it with Cyinda, famous as a treasure city in the wars of Eumenes of Cardia, cannot be accepted in the face of Strabo's express location of Cyinda in western Cilicia.History According to the Suda, the original name of the place was Cyinda or Kyinda or Quinda (); and that it was next called Diocaesarea (Διοκαισάρεια). A city in Cilicia called Kundu rebelled against the Assyrian king Esarhaddon in 7th century BC, but it's unclear if there is a connection. At least it's known a city called Anazarbus (Ἀνάζαρβος) or Anazarba (Ἀνάζαρβα), situated on the river Pyramus, existed in the first century BC and was a part of the small client-kingdom of Tarcondimotus I until it was annexed by Rome. How the city obtained the name is a matter of conjecture. According to Stephanus of Byzantium, after the city was destroyed by an earthquake, the emperor Nerva sent thither one Anazarbus, a man of senatorial rank, who rebuilt the city, and gave to it his own name. This account cannot be accurate, as Valesius remarks, for it was called Anazarbus in Pliny's time. Dioscorides is called a native of Anazarbus; but the period of Dioscorides is not certain. It was also the home of the poet Oppian. Its later name was Caesarea ad Anazarbum, and there are many medals of the place in which it is both named Anazarbus and Caesarea at or under Anazarbus. On the division of Cilicia it became the

chief place of the Roman province of Cilicia Secunda, with the title of Metropolis. Early in the sixth century, in the reign of

An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word anagram itself can be rearranged into nag a ram, also the word binary into brainy and the word adobe into abode.The original word or phrase is known as the subject of the anagram. Any word or phrase that exactly reproduces the letters in another order is an anagram. Someone who creates anagrams may be called an "anagrammatist", and the goal of a serious or skilled anagrammatist is to produce anagrams that reflect or

comment on their subject.ExamplesAnagrams may be created as a commentary on the subject. They may be a parody, a criticism or satire. For example: "New York Times" = "monkeys write" "Church of Scientology" = "rich-chosen goofy cult" "McDonald's restaurants" = "Uncle Sam's standard

The Anadyr () is a river in the far northeast Siberia which flows into the Gulf of Anadyr of the Bering Sea and drains much of the interior of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Its basin corresponds to the Anadyrsky District of Chukotka.GeographyThe Anadyr is long and has a basin of . It is frozen from October to late May and has a maximum flow in June with the snowmelt. It is navigable in small boats for about to near Markovo. West of Markovo it is in the Anadyr Highlands (moderate mountains and valleys with a few trees) and east of Markovo it moves into the Anadyr Lowlands (very flat treeless tundra with

lakes and bogs). The drop from Markovo to the sea is less than .It rises at about 67°N latitude and 171°E longitude in the Anadyr Highlands, near the headwaters of the Maly Anyuy, flows southwest receiving the waters of the rivers Yablon and Yeropol, turns east

André-Marie Ampère (, ; ; 20 January 177510 June 1836) was a French physicist, mathematician and lay catholic who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". He is also the inventor of numerous applications, such as the solenoid (a term coined by him) and the electrical telegraph. As an autodidact, Ampère was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and professor at the École polytechnique and the Collège de France.The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him. His name is also one of the 72 names inscribed on

the Eiffel Tower.Early lifeAndré-Marie Ampère was born on 20 January 1775 to Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère,

Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3. A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. It is a common nitrogenous waste, particularly among aquatic organisms, and it contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to 45 percent of the world's food and fertilizers. Ammonia, either directly or indirectly, is also a building block for the synthesis of many pharmaceutical products and is used in many commercial cleaning products. It is mainly collected by downward displacement of both air and water.Although common in natureboth terrestrially

and in the outer planets of the Solar Systemand in wide use, ammonia is both caustic and hazardous in its concentrated form. In many countries it is classified as an extremely hazardous substance,

Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz. The name comes from the Koine Greek αμέθυστος amethystos from α- a-, "not" and μεθύσκω (Ancient Greek) / μεθώ (Modern Greek), "intoxicate", a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness. Ancient Greeks wore amethyst and carved drinking vessels from it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication.Amethyst, a semiprecious stone, is often used in jewelry and is the traditional birthstone for February.StructureAmethyst is a purple variety of quartz (SiO2) and owes its violet color to irradiation, impurities of iron and in some cases

other transition metals, and the presence of other trace elements, which result in complex crystal lattice substitutions. The hardness of the mineral is the

Albertosaurus (; meaning "Alberta lizard") is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaurs that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, about 71 million years ago. The type species, A. sarcophagus, was apparently restricted in range to the modern-day Canadian province of Alberta, after which the genus is named, although an indeterminate species ("cf. Albertosaurus sp.") has been discovered in the Corral de Enmedio and Packard Formations in Mexico. Scientists disagree on the content of the genus, with some recognizing Gorgosaurus libratus as a second species.As a tyrannosaurid, Albertosaurus was a bipedal predator with tiny, two-fingered hands and a massive head that had dozens of large, sharp teeth. It may have been at the top of the food chain in its local ecosystem. While Albertosaurus was large for a theropod, it was much smaller than its larger and more famous relative Tyrannosaurus rex, growing and possibly weighing to 4 tonnes (4.4 short tons)Since the first discovery in 1884, fossils of more than 30 individuals have been recovered, providing scientists with a more detailed knowledge of Albertosaurus anatomy than is available for most other tyrannosaurids. The discovery of 26 individuals at one site provides evidence of pack behaviour and allows studies of ontogeny and population biology, which are impossible with lesser-known dinosaurs due to their remains being rarer and more fragmentary compared to those of Albertosaurus.History of discoveryNamingAlbertosaurus was named by Henry Fairfield Osborn in a one-page note at the end of his 1905 description of Tyrannosaurus rex. The name honours Alberta, the Canadian province established the same year, in which the first remains were found. The generic name also incorporates the Greek term /sauros ("lizard"), the most common suffix in dinosaur names. The type species is Albertosaurus sarcophagus; the specific

name is derived from Ancient Greek σαρκοφάγος () meaning "flesh-eating" and having the same etymology as the funeral container with which it shares its name: a combination of the Greek words σαρξ/ ("flesh") and / ("to eat"). More than

In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language), sometimes abbreviated asm, is any low-level programming language in which there is a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported.Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an assembler. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, who, however, used the term to mean "a program that assembles another program consisting of several sections into a single program". The conversion process is referred to as assembly, as in assembling the source code. The computational step when an assembler is processing a program is called assembly time. Assembly language may also be called symbolic machine code.Because assembly depends on

the machine code instructions, each assembly language is specific to a particular computer architecture.Sometimes there is more than one assembler for the same architecture, and sometimes an assembler is specific to an operating system or to particular

In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (, ) is the food or drink of the Greek gods, often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it. It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves and served by either Hebe or Ganymede at the heavenly feast.Ambrosia is sometimes depicted in ancient art as distributed by a nymph labeled with that name and a nurse of Dionysus.DefinitionAmbrosia is very closely related to the gods' other form of sustenance, nectar. The two terms may not have originally been distinguished; though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods; it was with ambrosia Hera "cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh", and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away, and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her. On the other hand, in Alcman, nectar is the food, and in Sappho and Anaxandrides, ambrosia is the drink. A character in Aristophanes' Knights says, "I dreamed the goddess poured ambrosia over your head—out of a ladle." Both descriptions could be correct, as ambrosia could be a liquid considered a food (such as honey).The consumption of ambrosia was typically reserved for divine beings. Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains. In one version of the myth of Tantalus, part of Tantalus' crime is that after tasting ambrosia himself, he attempts to steal some to give to other mortals. Those who consume ambrosia typically have ichor, not blood, in their veins.Both nectar and ambrosia are fragrant, and

may be used as perfume: in the Odyssey Menelaus and his men are disguised as seals in untanned seal skins, "...and the deadly smell of the seal skins vexed us

Ambrose of Milan (; ), venerated as Saint Ambrose, was the Bishop of Milan, a theologian and statesman. He expressed himself prominently as a public figure, fiercely promoting the Latin Church against Arianism and paganism. He left a substantial collection of writings, of which the best known include the ethical commentary De officiis ministrorum (377–391), and the exegetical (386–390). His preachings, his actions and his literary works, in addition to his innovative musical hymnography, made him one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century.Ambrose was serving as the Roman governor of Aemilia-Liguria in Milan when he was unexpectedly made Bishop of Milan in 374 by popular acclamation. As bishop, he took a firm position against Arianism and attempted to mediate the conflict between the emperors Theodosius I and Magnus Maximus. Tradition credits Ambrose with developing an antiphonal chant, known as Ambrosian chant, and for composing the "Te Deum" hymn, though modern scholars now reject both of these attributions. Ambrose's authorship on at least four hymns, including the well-known "Veni redemptor gentium", is secure; they form the core of the Ambrosian hymns, which includes others that are sometimes attributed to him. He also had notable influence on Augustine of Hippo (354–430), particularly in converting him to Christianity.Before the 16th century, Western Christianity identified Ambrose as one of its four traditional Doctors of the Church. He is considered a saint by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, and various Lutheran denominations, and venerated as the patron saint of Milan and beekeepers.Life and background Legends about Ambrose had spread through the empire long before his biography was written, making it difficult for modern historians to understand his true character and fairly place his behavior

within the context of antiquity. Most agree he was the personification of his era. As such, Ambrose was a genuinely spiritual man who spoke up

Ambracia (; , occasionally , Ampracia) was a city of ancient Greece on the site of modern Arta. It was captured by the Corinthians in 625 BC and was situated about from the Ambracian Gulf, on a bend of the navigable river Arachthos (or Aratthus), in the midst of a fertile wooded plain.HistoryIt was founded between 650 and 625 BC by Gorgus, son of the Corinthian tyrant Cypselus, at which time its economy was based on farmlands, fishing, timber for shipbuilding, and the exportation of the produce of Epirus. After the expulsion of Gorgus's son Periander its government developed into a strong democracy. The early policy of Ambracia was determined by its loyalty to Corinth (for which it probably served as an entrepot in the Epirus trade), and its consequent aversion to Corcyra (as Ambracia participated on the Corinthian side at the Battle of Sybota, which took place in 433 BC between

the rebellious Corinthian colony of Corcyra (modern Corfu) and Corinth).Ambraciot politics featured many frontier disputes with the Amphilochians and Acarnanians. Hence it took a

Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used in jewelry. It has also been used as a healing agent in folk medicine.There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams.EtymologyThe English word amber derives from Arabic (ultimately from Middle Persian ambar) via Middle Latin ambar and Middle French ambre. The word was adopted in Middle English in the 14th century as referring to what is now known as ambergris (ambre gris or "grey amber"), a solid waxy substance derived from the sperm whale. In the Romance languages, the sense of the word had come to be extended to Baltic amber (fossil resin) from as early as the late 13th century. At first called white or yellow amber (ambre jaune), this meaning was adopted in English by the early 15th century. As the use of ambergris waned, this became the main sense of the word.The two substances ("yellow amber" and "grey amber") conceivably became associated or confused because they both were found washed up on beaches. Ambergris is less dense than water and floats, whereas amber is too dense to float, though less dense than stone.The classical names for amber, Latin electrum and Ancient Greek (ēlektron), are connected to a term ἠλέκτωρ (ēlektōr) meaning "beaming Sun". According to myth, when Phaëton son of Helios (the Sun) was killed, his mourning sisters became poplar trees, and their tears became elektron, amber. The word elektron gave rise to the words electric, electricity, and their relatives because of amber's ability to bear a charge of static electricity.History Theophrastus discussed amber in the 4th century BCE, as did Pytheas (c. 330 BCE), whose work "On the

Ocean" is lost, but was referenced by Pliny the Elder (23 to 79 CE), according to whose The Natural History (in what

Amalaric (; Spanish and Portuguese: Amalarico; 502–531) was king of the Visigoths from 522 until his death in battle in 531. He was a son of king Alaric II and his first wife Theodegotha, daughter of Theoderic the Great.BiographyWhen Alaric II was killed while fighting Clovis I, king of the Franks, in the Battle of Vouillé (507), his kingdom fell into disarray. "More serious than the destruction of the Gothic army," writes Herwig Wolfram, "than the loss of both Aquitanian provinces and the capital of Toulose, was the death of the king." Alaric had made no provision for a successor, and although he had two sons, one was of age but illegitimate and the other, Amalaric, the offspring of a legal marriage but still a child. Amalaric was carried for safety into Spain, which country and Provence were thenceforth ruled by his maternal grandfather, Theodoric the Great, acting through his vice-regent, an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. The older son, Gesalec, was chosen as king but his reign was disastrous. King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths sent an army, led by his sword-bearer Theudis, against Gesalec, ostensibly on behalf of Amalaric; Gesalec fled to Africa. The Ostrogoths then drove back the Franks and their Burgundian allies, regaining possession of "the south of Novempopulana, Rodez, probably even Albi, and even Toulose". Following the 511 death of Clovis, Theoderic negotiated a peace with Clovis' successors, securing Visigothic control of the southernmost portion of Gaul for

the rest of the existence of their kingdom.In 522, the young Amalaric was proclaimed king, and four years later, on Theoderic's death, he assumed full royal power, although relinquishing Provence to his cousin Athalaric.

The alphorn or alpenhorn or alpine horn is a labrophone, consisting of a straight several-meter-long wooden natural horn of conical bore, with a wooden cup-shaped mouthpiece. Traditionally the Alphorn was made of one single piece, or two parts at most, and made from the wood of a red pine tree. Sometimes the trees would bend from the weight of snow during the wintertime, and this caused them to have the larger and bent mouthpiece at their ends. Modern Alphorns are sometimes made from three distinct parts that can be stuck together, this is to make them easier to transport via automobile, or even carried by hand, and today are more frequently made from the wood of a spruce tree or fir tree. It is used by mountain dwellers in the Swiss Alps. Similar wooden horns were used for communication in most mountainous regions of Europe, from the Alps to the Carpathians. Alphorns are today used as musical instruments.History For a long time, scholars believed that the alphorn had been derived from the Roman-Etruscan lituus, because of their resemblance in shape, and because of the word liti, meaning Alphorn in the dialect of Obwalden. There is no documented evidence for this theory however, and also the word liti was probably borrowed from 16th–18th century writings in Latin, where the word lituus could describe various wind instruments, such as the horn, the crumhorn, or the cornett. Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner used the words lituum alpinum for the first known detailed description of the alphorn in his De raris et admirandis herbis in 1555. The oldest known document using the German word Alphorn is a page from a 1527 account book from the former Cistercian abbey St. Urban near Pfaffnau mentioning the payment of two Batzen for an itinerant alphorn player from the Valais.17th–19th century collections of alpine myths and legends suggest that alphorn-like instruments had frequently been used as signal instruments in village communities since old times or earlier, sometimes substituting for the lack of church bells. Surviving artifacts, dating back to as far as ca. AD 1400, include wooden labrophones in their stretched form, like the alphorn, or coiled versions, such as the "Büchel" and the "Allgäuisches Waldhorn"

or "Ackerhorn". The alphorn's exact origins remain indeterminate, and the ubiquity of horn-like signal instruments in valleys throughout Europe may indicate a long history of cross influences regarding their construction and usage.Construction and qualitiesThe alphorn is carved from solid

An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" [feminine]), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or county. It may also include aviation assets by possessing an army aviation component. Within a national military force, the word army may also mean a field army.In some countries, such as France and China, the term "army", especially in its plural form "armies", has the broader meaning of armed forces as a whole, while retaining the colloquial sense of land forces. To differentiate the colloquial army from the formal

concept of military force, the term is qualified, for example in France the land force is called Armée de terre, meaning Land Army, and the air and

The family Alligatoridae of crocodylians includes alligators and caimans.PhylogenyThe superfamily Alligatoroidea includes all crocodilians (fossil and extant) that are more closely related to the American alligator than to either the Nile crocodile or the gharial. This is a stem-based definition for alligators, and is more inclusive than the crown group Alligatoridae. As a crown group, Alligatoridae only includes the last common ancestor of all extant (living) alligators, caimans, and their descendants (living or extinct), whereas Alligatoroidea, as a stem-based group, also includes more basal extinct alligator ancestors that are more closely related to living alligators than to crocodiles or gavialids. When considering only living taxa (neontology), this makes Alligatoroidea and Alligatoridae redundant.The simplified cladogram below shows Alligatoridae's relationships to other extant (living) crocodilians.The below detailed cladogram shows one proposal for the internal relationships within Alligatoridae (although the exact alligatoroid phylogeny is still disputed).EvolutionThe superfamily Alligatoroidea is thought to have split from the crocodile-gharial lineage in the late Cretaceous, about 87 million years ago. Leidyosuchus of Alberta is the earliest known genus. Fossil alligatoroids have been found throughout Eurasia as land bridges across both the North Atlantic and the Bering Strait have connected North America to Eurasia during the Cretaceous, Paleogene, and Neogene periods. Alligators and caimans split in North America during the early Tertiary or late Cretaceous (about 53 million to about 65 million years ago) and the latter reached South America by the Paleogene, before the closure of the Isthmus of Panama

during the Neogene period. The Chinese alligator split from the American alligator about 33 million years ago and likely descended from a lineage that crossed the Bering land bridge during the Neogene. The modern American alligator is well represented in the fossil record of the Pleistocene. The alligator's

Alders are trees comprising the genus Alnus in the birch family Betulaceae. The genus comprises about 35 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, a few reaching a large size, distributed throughout the north temperate zone with a few species extending into Central America, as well as the northern and southern Andes.Etymology The common name alder evolved from the Old English word alor, which in turn is derived from Proto-Germanic root aliso. The generic name Alnus is the equivalent Latin name, from whence French aulne and Spanish Alamo (Spanish term for "poplar").Description With a few exceptions, alders are deciduous, and the leaves are alternate, simple, and serrated. The flowers are catkins with elongate male catkins on the same plant as shorter female catkins, often before leaves appear; they are mainly wind-pollinated, but also visited by bees to a small extent. These trees differ from the birches (Betula, another genus in the family) in that the female catkins are woody and do not disintegrate at maturity, opening to release the seeds in a similar manner to many conifer cones.The largest species are red alder (A. rubra) on the west coast of North America, and black alder (A. glutinosa), native to most of Europe and widely introduced elsewhere, both reaching over . By contrast, the widespread Alnus alnobetula (green alder) is rarely more than a shrub.Ecology Alders are commonly found near streams, rivers, and wetlands. Sometimes where the prevalence of alders is particularly prominent these are called alder carrs. In the Pacific Northwest of North America, the white alder (Alnus rhombifolia) unlike other northwest alders, has an affinity for warm, dry climates, where it grows along watercourses, such as along the lower Columbia River east of the Cascades and the Snake River, including Hells Canyon.Alder leaves and sometimes catkins are used as food by numerous butterflies and moths.A. glutinosa and A. viridis are classed as environmental weeds in New Zealand. Alder leaves and especially the roots are important to the ecosystem because they enrich the soil with nitrogen and other nutrients.Nitrogen fixation and the Succession of woodland speciesAlder is particularly noted for its important symbiotic relationship with Frankia alni, an actinomycete, filamentous, nitrogen-fixing bacterium. This bacterium is found in root nodules, which may be

as large as a human fist, with many small lobes, and light brown in colour. The bacterium absorbs nitrogen from the air and makes it available to the tree. Alder, in turn, provides the bacterium with sugars,

Amos Bronson Alcott (; November 29, 1799 – March 4, 1888) was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a plant-based diet. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.Born in Wolcott, Connecticut in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might have a negative impact on his soul, he turned to teaching. His innovative methods, however, were controversial, and he rarely stayed in one place very long. His most well-known teaching position was at the Temple School in Boston. His experience there was turned into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and became a major figure in transcendentalism. His writings on behalf of that movement, however, are heavily criticized for being incoherent. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands, a transcendentalist experiment in community living. The project failed after seven months. Alcott and his family struggled financially for most of his life. Nevertheless, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of

his life in 1879. He died in 1888.Alcott married Abby May in 1830 and they eventually had four surviving children, all daughters. Their second was Louisa May, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women

Arachnophobia is a specific phobia brought about by the irrational fear of spiders and other arachnids such as scorpions.Signs and symptomsPeople with arachnophobia tend to feel uneasy in any area they believe could harbour spiders or that has visible signs of their presence, such as webs. If an arachnophobe sees a spider, they may not enter the general vicinity until they have overcome the panic attack that is often associated with their phobia. Some people scream, cry, have emotional outbursts, experience trouble breathing, sweat and feel increased heart rates when they come in contact with an area near spiders or their webs. In some extreme cases, even a picture, a toy,

or a realistic drawing of a spider can trigger intense fear.ReasonsArachnophobia may be an exaggerated form of an instinctive response that helped early humans to survive or a cultural phenomenon that is most common

Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that includes varieties of two different minerals: the fine-grained massive type of gypsum and the fine-grained banded type of calcite. Geologists define alabaster only as the gypsum type. Chemically, gypsum is a hydrous sulfate of calcium, while calcite is a carbonate of calcium.The two types of alabaster have similar properties. They are usually lightly colored, translucent, and soft stones. They have been used throughout history primarily for carving decorative artifacts.The calcite type is also denominated "onyx-marble", "Egyptian alabaster", and "Oriental alabaster" and is geologically described as either a compact banded travertine or "a stalagmitic limestone marked with patterns of swirling bands of cream and brown". "Onyx-marble" is a traditional, but geologically inaccurate, name because both onyx and marble have geological definitions that are distinct from even the broadest definition of "alabaster".In general, ancient alabaster is calcite in the wider Middle East, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, while it is gypsum in medieval Europe. Modern alabaster is probably calcite but may be either. Both are easy to work and slightly soluble in water. They have been used for making a variety of indoor artwork and carving, and they will not survive long outdoors.The two kinds are readily distinguished by their different hardnesses: gypsum alabaster (Mohs hardness 1.5 to 2) is so soft that a fingernail scratches it, while calcite (Mohs hardness 3) cannot be scratched in this way but yields to a knife. Moreover, calcite alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces when treated with hydrochloric acid, while gypsum alabaster remains almost unaffected.EtymologyThe origin of "alabaster" is in Middle English through Old French "alabastre", in turn derived from Latin "alabaster", and that from Greek "ἀλάβαστρος" ("alabastros") or "ἀλάβαστος" ("alabastos"). The Greek words denoted a vase of alabaster.The name may be derived further from ancient Egyptian "a-labaste", which refers

to vessels of the Egyptian goddess Bast. She was represented as a lioness and frequently depicted as such in figures placed atop these alabaster vessels. Ancient Roman authors, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, wrote that the stone

Ahab (; Aḫâbbu [a-ḫa-ab-bu]; Achaáb; ) was the seventh king of Israel, the son and successor of King Omri and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, according to the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible presents Ahab as a wicked king, particularly for condoning Jezebel's influence on religious policies and his principal role behind Naboth's arbitrary execution.The existence of Ahab is historically supported outside the Bible. Shalmaneser III of Assyria documented in 853 BC that he defeated an alliance of a dozen kings in the Battle of Qarqar; one of these was Ahab. He is also mentioned on the inscriptions of the Mesha Stele.Ahab became king of Israel in the thirty-eighth year of King Asa of Judah, and reigned for twenty-two years, according to 1 Kings. William F. Albright dated his reign to 869–850 BC, while Edwin R. Thiele offered

the dates 874–853 BC. Most recently, Michael Coogan has dated Ahab's reign to 871–852 BC.ReignKing Omri, Ahab's father and founder of the short-lived Omri dynasty, seems to have been a successful military leader; he is reported in the text of the Moabite Mesha Stele

In the realm of electronic technology, ASIC stands for "application-specific integrated circuit".An ASIC is an integrated circuit developed for a particular use, as opposed to a general-purpose integrated circuit.ASIC may also refer to: Accreditation Service for International Colleges, an educational accreditation agency in the UK Acid-sensing ion channels, a protein family Air and Space Interoperability Council Arfoire Syndicate of International Crime, the antagonist group in the video game Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 ASIC programming language, a dialect of BASIC Associated Signature Containers (ASiC) specifies the use of container structures to bind together one or more signed objects with either advanced electronic signatures or time-stamp tokens into one single digital container. Association Scientifique

Internationale pour le Café, see Andrea Illy Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Australia's corporate regulator Aviation Security Identification Card, an Australian identification cardSee also Asics, an athletic equipment company

Dasyproctidae is a family of large South American rodents, comprising the agoutis and acouchis. Their fur is a reddish or dark colour above, with a paler underside. They are herbivorous, often feeding on ripe fruit that falls from trees. They live in burrows, and, like squirrels, will bury some of their food for later use.Dasyproctids exist in Central and South America, which are the tropical parts of the New World. The fossil record of this family can be traced back to the Late Oligocene (Deseadan in the SALMA classification).As with all rodents, members of this family have incisors, pre-molars, and molars, but no canines. The cheek teeth are hypsodont and flat-crowned.Classification Fossil taxa follow McKenna and Bell, with modifications following Kramarz. Family Dasyproctidae Genus †Alloiomys Genus †Australoprocta Genus †Branisamys Genus †Incamys Genus †Neoreomys Genus †Megastus Genus †Palmiramys Genus Dasyprocta Azara's agouti, D. azarae Coiban agouti, D. coibae Crested agouti, D. cristata Black agouti, D. fuliginosa Orinoco agouti, D. guamara Kalinowski's agouti, D. kalinowskii Red-rumped agouti, D. leporina Mexican agouti, D. mexicana Black-rumped agouti, D. prymnolopha Central American agouti, D. punctata Ruatan Island agouti, D. ruatanica Genus Myoprocta Green acouchi, M. pratti Red acouchi, M. acouchyThe pacas (genus Cuniculus) are placed by some authorities in Dasyproctidae,

but molecular studies have demonstrated they do not form a monophyletic group.ReferencesExternal links Central American agouti at Smithsonian Dasyproctidae at Animaldiversity.org 2014 - Figueira et al. - Carrion consumption by Dasyprocta leporina (Rodentia: Dasyproctidae) and a review of meat use by agoutis Hystricognath rodentsRodent familiesExtant Chattian first appearancesMammals described in 1825

Algol , designated Beta Persei (β Persei, abbreviated Beta Per, β Per), known colloquially as the Demon Star, is a bright multiple star in the constellation of Perseus and one of the first non-nova variable stars to be discovered.Algol is a three-star system, consisting of Beta Persei Aa1, Aa2, and Ab – in which the hot luminous primary β Persei Aa1 and the larger, but cooler and fainter, β Persei Aa2 regularly pass in front of each other, causing eclipses. Thus Algol's magnitude is usually near-constant at 2.1, but regularly dips to 3.4 every 2.86 days during the roughly 10-hour-long partial eclipses. The secondary eclipse when the brighter primary star occults the fainter secondary is very shallow and can only be detected photoelectrically.Algol gives its name to its class of eclipsing variable, known as Algol variables.Observation historyAn ancient Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days composed some 3,200 years ago is said to be the oldest historical documentation of the discovery of Algol.The association of

Algol with a demon-like creature (Gorgon in the Greek tradition, ghoul in the Arabic tradition) suggests that its variability was known long before the 17th