Sunday, July 08, 2007

Deadheading

Deadheading is the act of removing spent flowers or flowerheads for aesthetics, to prolong bloom for up to several weeks or endorse rebloom, or to put off seeding.Deadheading is beneficial to most herbaceous ornamental plants. It can get better overall look of a plant, give a fresh new look to an otherwise finished or even distracting item, and can promote vegetative and root increase rather than seed production and help retain the plant's healthy appearance.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Bean

Bean is a common name for large plant seeds of several genera of Fabaceae used for food or feed. They are also known as legumes.The term Bean at first referred to the seed of the broad bean, but was later broadened to include members of the genus Phaseolus such as the common bean or haricot and the runner bean and the related genus Vigna. The term is now applied in a general way to many other related plants such as soybeans, peas, lentils, kidney beans, vetches and lupins.Bean can be used as a near synonym of pulse, an edible legume, though the term "pulses" is usually reserved for leguminous crops harvested for their dry grain. Pulses frequently exclude crops mainly used for oil extraction (like soybean and peanut) or those used exclusively for sowing purposes (clover and alfalfa). Leguminous crops harvested green for food, such as snap beans, green peas etc, are classified as vegetable crops.In English usage 'beans' sometimes also refer to seeds or other organs of non leguminosae which bear a resemblance to the vegetable, for example coffee beans, castor beans and cocoa beans ,and vanilla beans .

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Solar System

Solar System consists of the Sun and the other space objects gravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their 162 known moonsthree currently recognized dwarf planets (including Pluto) and their four known moons, and billions of small bodies. This last group includes asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids and interplanetary dust.

In wide terms, the charted regions of the Solar System consist of the Sun, four terrestrial inner planets, an asteroid belt composed of small rocky bodies, four gas giant outer planets, and a second belt, called the Kuiper belt, collected of icy objects. Beyond the Kuiper belt lies the scattered disc, the heliopause, and eventually the hypothetical Oort cloud.

In sort of their distances from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the eight planets are in turn orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after Earth's Moon, and each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other particles. All the planets apart from Earth are named after gods and goddesses from Greco-Roman mythology. The three dwarf planets are Pluto, the largest known Kuiper belt object; Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt; and Eris, which lies in the scattered disc.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Butterfly Koi

Butterfly Koi, Longfin Koi, or Dragon Carp are a type of ornamental fish notable for their elongated finnage. The fish are a breed of the common carp, Cyprinus carpio, (which includes numerous wild carp races as well as domesticated koi ("Nishikigoi").

Butterfly Koi originated in the mid 20th century as a result of an effort to increase the hardiness of traditional koi. Japanese breeders interbred wild Indonesian Longfin river carp with traditional koi. The resulting fish had longer fins, long barbells, pompom nostrils, and were hardier than koi. These were known in Japan as “onagaoi” or "hire naga koi", or translated in English “long tail koi”. Randy LeFever, the son of Wyatt LeFever, a noted breeder of koi, is credited with suggesting they looked like butterflies, a trait for which the breed is named. They are also sometimes referred to as Dragon Koi.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Blue rose

Since roses lack a gene to create delphinidin, the primary plant pigment that produces true blue flowers, blue roses were usually created by dyeing white roses. So-called "blue roses" have been breed by conventional hybridization methods, but the results, such as "Blue Moon" are more precisely described as lilac in color. However, after 13 years of joint research by an Australian company Florigene, and Japanese company Suntory, a blue rose was formed in 2004 by genetic engineering. The delphinidin gene was cloned from the petunia and inserted into a mauve-blend rose, the Old Garden Rose 'Cardinal de Richelieu.' (a Rosa gallica) However, since the pigment cyanidin was still present, the rose was more dark burgundy than true blue. Further work on the rose using RNAi technology to depress the production of cyanidin produced a very dark mauve plant, with only trace amounts of cyanidin.
Blue roses conventionally signify mystery or attaining the impossible. They are supposed to be able to grant the owner youth or grant wishes. This symbolism derives from the rose's meaning in the language of plants common in Victorian times.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Star

A star is an enormous, luminous ball of plasma. Stars cluster together to form galaxies, and they dominate the visible universe. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth, together with daylight. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun. A star shines because nuclear fusion in its core releases energy which traverses the stars internal and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were produced inside the cores of stars.

Astronomers can establish the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its development and eventual fate. Other individuality of a star that is determined by its evolutionary history includes the diameter, rotation, movement and temperature. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram), allows the current age and evolutionary state of a particular star to be determined.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Shrimp fishery

A shrimp fishery is a fishery directed toward harvesting either shrimp or prawns. Fisheries do not usually differentiate between the two taxa, and the terms are used interchangeably. This article therefore refers to the catching of either shrimp or prawns.
A number of the larger species, including the Atlantic white shrimp (Penaeus setiferus), are caught commercially and used for food. Recipes utilizing shrimp form part of the cuisine of many cultures: examples include jambalaya, okonomiyaki, poon choi, bagoong, Kerala and scampi.Preparing shrimp for consumption usually involves removing the shell, tail, and "sand vein". As with other seafood, shrimp is high in calcium, protein and low in food energy.Shrimp and prawns are versatile ingredients, and are often used as an accompaniment to fried rice. Common methods of preparation comprise baking, boiling and frying. As stated in the movie Forrest Gump

Sunday, May 27, 2007

The key benefit of RAM

The key benefit of RAM over types of storage which need physical movement is that retrieval times are short and consistent. Short because no physical movement is required, and consistent because the time taken to retrieve a piece of data does not depend on its current distance from a physical head; it requires practically the equal amount of time to access any piece of data stored in a RAM chip.

Because of this speed and consistency, RAM is used as 'main memory' or primary storage: the working area used for loading, displaying and manipulate applications and data. In most personal computers, the RAM is not an essential part of the motherboard or CPU—it comes in the easily upgraded form of modules called memory sticks or RAM sticks about the size of a few sticks of chewing gum, which can be quickly detached and replaced when they become damaged or too small for current purposes. A smaller amount of random-access memory is also integrated with the CPU, but this is usually referred to as "cache" memory, rather than RAM.

The disadvantage of RAM over physically moving media is cost and the loss of data when power is turned off. For these reasons, almost all PCs have disc storage as "secondary storage". Small PDAs and music players (up to 8 GiB in Jan 2007) may allot with disks, but rely on flash memory, to retain data between sessions of use.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Moore machine

Moore model control of a winch door in the theory of computation, a Moore machine is a finite state automaton where the outputs are determined by the current state alone. The state diagram for a Moore machine will include an output signal for each state. Compare with a Mealy machine, which maps transitions in the machine to outputs.

The name Moore machine comes from that of its supporter, Edward F. Moore, a state-machine pioneer who wrote "Gedanken-experiments on Sequential Machines".

Most digital electronic systems are designed as clocked sequential systems. Clocked sequential systems are a limited form of Moore machine where the state changes only when the global clock signal changes. Typically the current state is stored in flip-flops, and a global clock signal is connected to the "clock" input of the flip-flops. Clocked chronological systems are one way to solve met stability problems.

A typical electronic Moore machine includes a combinatorial logic chain to decode the current state into the outputs. The instant the current state changes, those changes ripple through that chain, and almost instantaneously the outputs change. There are design techniques to ensure that no glitches occur on the outputs during that brief period while those changes are rippling through the chain, but most systems are designed so that glitches during that brief transition time are ignored or are irrelevant. The outputs then stay the same indefinitely, until the Moore machine changes state again.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Sunglass

Sunglasses are a kind of visual correction aid, variously termed spectacles or glasses, which feature lenses that are colored or darkened to screen out strong light from the eyes.
Many people find direct sunlight too bright to be comfortable, particularly when reading from paper on which the sun directly shines. In outdoor activities like skiing and flying, the eye can receive more light than usual. It has been recommended to wear these kinds of glasses on sunny days to protect the eyes from ultraviolet radiation, which can lead to the development of a cataract. Sunglasses have also been linked with celebrities and film actors mainly due to the desire to mask identity, but in part due to the lighting involved in production being typically stronger than natural light and uncomfortable to the naked eye.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Vehicle

Vehicles are non-living means of moving. They are most often man-made, although some other means of moving which are not made by man can also be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and floating tree trunks. Vehicles may be propelled by animals, e.g. a chariot or an ox-cart. However, animals on their own, though used as a means of transportation, are not called vehicles. This includes humans carrying another human, for example a child or a disabled person. Vehicles that do not travel on land are often called crafts, such as watercraft, sail craft, aircraft, hovercraft and spacecraft most land vehicles have wheels. Please see the wheel article for examples of vehicles with and without wheels. Movement without the help of a vehicle or an animal is called locomotion. The word vehicle itself comes from the Latin vehicular.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

History of Postage Stamp

The world's initial stamp was the Penny Black the adhesive postage stamp and the uniform postage rate were devised in Great Britain by James Chalmers around 1834. The same ideas were brought forward by Lovrenc Kosir, a Slovenian postal clerk at the Viennese court in 1835, but did not meet a positive reply. Later, the concept of the adhesive postage stamp was published by Rowland Hill, in Postal Reform: its Importance and Tractability in 1837. In it he argued that it would be better for the sender to pay the cost of release, rather than the addressee who could refuse the letter if they could not or did not want to pay, as sometimes happened at the time. He also argued for a uniform rate of one penny per letter, no matter where its destination. Accounting costs for the government would thus be cut; postage would no longer be charged according to how far a letter had traveled, which required each letter to have an individual entry in the Royal Mail's accounts. Chalmers' ideas were lastly adopted by Parliament in August, 1839 and the General Post Office launched the Penny Post service the next year in 1840 with two prepaid-postage pictorial envelopes or wrappers: one valued at a penny and one valued at two pence.

Three months shortly the first prepaid-postage stamp, known as the Penny Black was issued with the profile of Queen Victoria printed on it. Because the United Kingdom issued the first stamps, the Universal Postal Union grants it an exception from its rule that the recognition of the issuing country must appear on a stamp in Roman script for use in international mails. Previous to joining the U.P.U. many countries did not do this; there are very few violations of the rule since this time, though one example is the U.S. Pilgrim Tercentenary series, on which the country designation was involuntarily excluded. Because of this the numerous early issues of China and Japan often confound new collectors unfamiliar with Oriental scripts. A stamp must also show a face value in the issuing country's currency. Some countries have issued stamp with a letter of the alphabet or designation such as "First class" for a face value. Because of the U.P.U. rules their use is constrained to domestic mail, but breach of this rule is often tolerated. Exceptions to this are the British "E" stamp and the South African "International Letter Rate" stamp.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Tourism

Tourism is travel for predominantly leisure or relaxation purposes, and also refers to the prerequisite of services in support of this act. Tourists are people who ,travel to and stay in places outside their common environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to work out of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.

Tourism has become an enormously popular, global activity. As a service industry, tourism has frequent tangible and intangible elements. Major tangible elements include transportation, accommodation, and other apparatus of a hospitality industry. Major intangible elements relate to the purpose or inspiration for becoming a tourist, such as rest, relaxation, the opportunity to meet new people and experience other cultures, or simply to do something different and have an adventure.

Tourism is crucial for many countries, due to the income generated by the expenditure of goods and services by tourists, the taxes levied on businesses in the tourism industry, and the prospect for employment and economic advancement by working in the industry.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Artificial intelligence (Collective and non-human intelligence)

Some thinkers have explored the idea of combined intelligence, arising from the harmonization of many people. A battleship, for instance, cannot be operated by a single person's knowledge, actions and intelligence; it takes a equivalent and interacting crew. Similarly, the interesting behaviors of a bee colony are not exhibited in the aptitude and actions of any single bee, but rather manifest in the performance of the hive. These ideas are explored as a basis for human thought, with applications for artificial intelligence, by MIT AI pioneers Norbert Wiener and Marvin Musky. Artificial intelligence has emerged from Computer science as a area of expertise which seeks to make computers act in gradually more intelligent ways, and provides insights into human thought processes.

When bearing in mind animal intelligence, a more general definition of intelligence might be applied: the "ability to adapt efficiently to the environment, either by making a change in oneself or by changing the surroundings or finding a new one". Many people have also speculated about the possibility of outer space intelligence.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Multitrack recording

Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the recording of multiple sound sources, whether at the same time or at different times. This is probably the most common technique of recording popular music: Musicians or singers can be recorded independently, then these performances can be edited together to create a cohesive result. It is also called 'multitracking' or just 'tracking' for short.Multitrack recording devices are available with varying capacities. When recording a segment of audio, which is also known as a track, audio engineers and musicians may select which track or tracks on the device will be used.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Traffic calming

Traffic reassuring is a set of strategies used by urban planners and traffic engineers which aims to slow down traffic and improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, although some of these features can also be dangerous to cyclists. It is now relatively common in Europe, especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.
Traffic calming has traditionally been justified on the grounds of pedestrian security and reduction of noise and local air pollution which are side effects of the traffic. However, it has become increasingly apparent that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For example, residents of streets with light traffic had, on average, three more friends and twice as many acquaintances as the people on streets with heavy traffic which were otherwise similar in dimensions, income, etc. For much of the twentieth century, streets were designed by engineers who were charged only with ensuring traffic flow and not with fostering the other functions of streets. The rationale for traffic calming is now broadening to include designing for these functions.
Displaced traffic is not fully pushed onto other routes, as some travelers may begin to walk or use other modes such as public transit and bicycles to get where they are going. Still, in most cases the affected motorists have few alternatives aside from either navigating the newly erected obstacles or finding a more palatable route. This happens because high traffic tends to be generated by motorists passing through the area and not by the local residents.

It should be noted the some of these measures have a tendency to irritate and annoy drivers rather than calm them and others can actually increase traffic throughput. Some drivers who slow down at calming points, however, accelerate and speed after passing them in order to "catch up for lost time". For this reason, more advanced methods integrated into the design of the street, which make slower speeds seem more natural to drivers and less of an artificial imposition, are now preferred - the goal is to slow down the driver through psychological, at least partly subconscious means instead of simply forcing him to do so.
One major side effect of traffic reassuring is the impedance to emergency services. A police car can easily navigate most traffic reassuring measures. The same cannot be said for fire trucks and ambulances, however. They often have to slow down to safely cross speed bumps or chicanes. In some locales, the law prohibits traffic calming measures along the routes used by the urgent situation services.
There are 3 "E"'s that traffic engineers refer to when discussing traffic reassuring: engineering, education, and enforcement. Because neighborhood traffic management studies have shown that often it is the residents themselves that are largely contributing to the perceived speeding problem within the neighborhood, it is strained that the most effective traffic calming plans will entail all three components, and that engineering measures alone will not produce satisfactory results.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Goshawk

The Goshawk is a average large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as eagles, buzzards and harriers.

It is a extensive species throughout the moderate parts of the northern hemisphere. In North America it is named as the Northern Goshawk. It is mostly resident, but birds from colder regions of north Asia and Canada wander south for the winter.


Goshawk in flight this kind nests in trees, building a new nest each year. It hunts birds and mammals in woodland, relying on surprise as it flies from a perch or hedge-hops to cruel circle its prey unaware. Animals as large as hares and Pheasant are taken. Its call is a ferocious shriek. Many older goshawks refuse to attack hares, if it was previously acutely kicked by a hare which it tried to catch.


In Eurasia, the male is confusable with a female Sparrow hawk, but is larger, much bulkier and has comparatively longer wings. In spring, he has a stunning roller-coaster display, and this is the best time to see this enigmatic forest bird.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Major ice ages

There have been at least four main ice ages in the Earth's past.

The earliest hypothesized ice age is believed to have occurred around 2.7 to 2.3 billion years ago through the early Proterozoic Age.

Main article: Snowball Earth.

The most primitive well-documented ice age, and probably the most harsh of the last 1 billion years, occurred from 800 to 600 million years ago and it has been suggested that it formed a Snowball Earth in which permanent sea ice extensive to or very near the equator. It has been not compulsory that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Cambrian Explosion, though this theory is current and contentious.

The timing of ice ages all through geologic history is in part prohibited by the position of the continental plates on the surface of the Earth. When landmasses are determined near the Polar Regions, there is an increased chance for snow and ice to build up. Small changes in solar energy can tip the balance between summers in which the winter snow mass completely melts and summers in which the winter snow persists until the following winter. Due to the positions of Greenland, Antarctica, and the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America in Polar Regions, the Earth today is considered prone to ice age glaciations.

Proof for ice ages comes in a variety of forms, including rock scouring and scratching, glacial moraines, drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratic. Successive glaciations be inclined to distort and erase the geological proof, making it difficult to interpret. It took some time for the current theory to be worked out. Analyses of ice cores and ocean sediment cores unmistakably show the record of glacial and interglacial over the past few million years.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Banksia

Banksia is a genus of around 80 species in the plant family Proteaceae. They are native to Australia, occurring in all but the most arid areas. Easily recognized by their characteristic flower spikes and fruiting "cones", Banksia are a well-known Australian wildflower and a popular garden plant. They grow in forms varying from prostrate woody shrubs to trees up to 25 metres tall. They are normally known as Banksias or Australian Honeysuckle Trees.
Banksias grow as trees or woody shrubs. The largest trees, the Coast Banksia, B. integrifolia, and the River Banksia, B. seminuda, often grow over 15 metres tall, and may be up to 25 metres tall. Banksia species that grow as shrubs are typically erect, but there are some species that are prostrate, with branches that grow on or below the soil.
The leaves of Banksia vary greatly among species. Sizes vary from the narrow, 1–1½ centimetre long leaves of the Heath-leaved Banksia, B. ericifolia, to the very large leaves of the Bull Banksia, B. grandis, which may be up to 45 centimetres long. The leaves of most species have serrated edges, but a few, such as B. integrifolia, do not. Leaves are usually arranged along the branches in irregular spirals, but in some species they are crowded together in whorls.
Banksias are most without difficulty recognised by their characteristic flower spike, and the woody fruiting structures that appear after flowering. The flower spike consists of a central woody axis with a furry coating; it is usually held erect, but hangs down in a few species. This axis is enclosed in tightly-packed pairs of flowers, which are attached to the axis at right angles. A single flower spike may have over a thousand flowers.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Studio cameras

Most studio cameras stand on the floor, regularly with pneumatic or hydraulic mechanisms to adjust the height, and are typically on wheels. Any video camera when used along with other video cameras in a studio setup is controlled by a device well-known as CCU (camera control unit), to which they are linked via a Triax or Multicore cable. The camera control unit along with other equipments is installed in the production control room often documented as Gallery of the television studio. When used outside a studio, they are often on tracks. Initial models used analog technology, but digital models are becoming more common. Some studio cameras are light and small enough to be taken off the pedestal and used on a cameraman's shoulder, but they still have no recorder of their own and are cable-bound.