Monday, March 05, 2007

People mover

A people mover or automated people mover is a completely automated, grade-separated transit system. The term is normally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks, but is sometimes useful to considerably more complex automated systems. The term does not involve any particular technology, and a people mover may use technologies such as monorail, duorail, automated guide way transit or maglev. Propulsion may engage conventional on-board electric motors, linear motors or cable traction.

A few complex APMs deploy fleets of small vehicles over a track network with off-line stations, and supply near non-stop service to passengers. These taxi-like systems are more frequently referred to as personal rapid transit. Other complex APMs have related characteristics to mass transit systems, and there is no clear cut difference between a complex APM of this type and an automated mass transit system.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Gold

Gold is a extremely sought-after valuable metal that for many centuries has been used as money, a store of value and in ornaments. The metal occurs as nugget or grains in rocks and in alluvial deposits and is one of the coinage metals. It is a soft, glossy, yellow, dense, malleable, and ductile change metal. Modern manufacturing uses include dentistry and electronics. Gold forms the basis for a financial typical used by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International resolution . Its ISO currency code is XAU.

Gold is a tinny element with a trait yellow color, but can also be black or ruby when finely alienated, while colloidal solutions are intensely tinted and often purple. These colors are the effect of gold's plasmon frequency lying in the visible range, which causes red and yellow glow to be reflected, and blue light to be engrossed. Only silver colloids show the same interactions with light, albeit at a shorter occurrence, making silver colloids yellow in color.

Gold is a good conductor of temperature and electricity, and is not precious by air and most reagents. Heat, damp, oxygen, and most corrosive agents have very little chemical effect on gold, making it well-suited for use in coins and jewelry; equally, halogens will chemically alter gold, and aqua regia dissolve it.

Pure gold is too soft for ordinary use and is hard-boiled by alloying with silver, copper, and other metals. Gold and its lots of alloys are most often used in jewelry, coinage and as a typical for monetary exchange in various countries. When promotion it in the form of jewelry, gold is calculated in karats , with pure gold being 24k. However, it is more commonly sold in lower capacity of 22k, 18k, and 14k. A lower "k" indicates a higher percent of copper or silver assorted into the alloy, with copper being the more typically used metal between the two. Fourteen karat gold-copper alloy will be almost identical in color to definite bronze alloys, and both may be used to produce polish and added badges. Eighteen karat gold with a high copper content is establish in some traditional jewelry and will have a distinct, though not dominant copper cast, giving an attractively warm color. A comparable karat weight when alloyed with silvery metals will appear less humid in color, and some low karat white metal alloys may be sold as "white gold", silvery in exterior with a slightly yellow cast but far more resistant to decay than silver or sterling silver. Karat weights of twenty and higher is more general in modern jewelry. Because of its high electrical conductivity and confrontation to decay and other desirable combinations of physical and chemical properties, gold also emerged in the late 20th century as an vital industrial metal, particularly as thin plating on electrical card associates and connectors.





Sunday, February 18, 2007

Rice vinegar

Rice vinegar is vinegar prepared from fermented rice or rice wine in China and Japan. Japanese rice vinegar is very soft and mellow and ranges in colour from colourless to pale yellow. There are two different types of Japanese vinegar: one is made from fermented rice and the other is made by adding rice vinegar to sake. Chinese rice vinegars are stronger than Japanese ones, and range in colour from clear to different shades of red and brown. Chinese and especially Japanese vinegars are very mild and sweet compared to purify and more acidic Western vinegars which, for that reason, are not proper substitutes for rice vinegars. White rice vinegar is colorless to pale yellow liquid, superior in vinegar content and more similar to Western vinegars, but still less acidic and milder in flavor.

Black rice vinegar is popular in southern China. Chinkiang vinegar, which originated in the city of Zhenjiang in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, China, is measured the best of the black rice vinegars. Usually black rice vinegar is made with glutinous rice, although millet or sorghum may be used instead. It is dark in colour, and has a deep, almost smoky flavor. In addition to Zhenjiang, it is too produced in Hong Kong.

Red rice vinegar is darker than white rice vinegar, and paler than black rice vinegar, with a typical red colour from Red yeast rice, which is cultivated with the mold Monascus purpureus. This vinegar has a distinctive flavour of its own due to the red mold. In Chinese cookbooks, ½ tablespoon of Western white vinegar is equivalent in strength to 1 tablespoon Chinkiang vinegar. Many Chinese people who grow up with rice vinegars take time to raise accustomed to the strength of Western vinegars when they begin to encounter them. Rice vinegar is also used to make sushi.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Chinese White Dolphin

The Chinese White Dolphin also called Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphin, is a species of the Humpback dolphin and is one of eighty cetacean species. The adult dolphin is generally white or grey in colour. The population along the Chinese coast is unique in that they display a pink-coloured skin. This colour of the skin is not an effect of colour pigmentation, but is actually from blood vessels used for thermoregulation to avoid overheating during exertion. The adult's body length is about 220 - 250 centimeters and the infant's body length is about 1 meter. The normal weight of an adult is around 150 to 230 kilograms.
The Indo-Pacific dolphins can be found throughout Southeast Asia, and they breed from South Africa to Australia. There are two types, with Sumatra, one of the Indonesian islands, as the dividing line between the Chinese and the Western subspecies, Sousa chinensis plumbea. The two subspecies vary in color and size of their dorsal fin. The subspecies found in Southeast Asia has pinkish white skin and a bigger dorsal fin but lacks the fatty hump of its South African and Australian counterparts.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Jewellery

One universal issue is control over who could wear what jewellery, a point which indicate the powerful symbolism the wearing of jewellery evoked. In ancient Rome, for instance, only convinced ranks could wear rings; later, sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what type of jewellery; again based on rank. Cultural dictate have also played a important role; for example, the wearing of earrings by Western men was considered "effeminate" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. on the other hand, the jewellery industry in the early 20th century launched a crusade to popularize wedding rings for men — which caught on — as well as appointment rings for men , going so far as to make a false history and claim that the practice had Medieval roots. By the mid 1940s, 85% of weddings in the U.S. feature a double-ring ceremony, up from 15% in the 1920s.Religion has also played a role: Islam, for instance, consider the wearing of gold by men as a social taboo,and many religions have edicts against extreme display.

Monday, January 29, 2007

The computer

A computer is a machine for manipulate data according to a list of commands known as a program. Computers are tremendously adaptable. In fact, they are universal information-processing machines. According to the Church–Turing theory, a computer with a positive minimum entrance capability is in principle capable of performing the responsibilities of any other computer. Therefore, computers with capability ranging from those of a personal digital supporter to a supercomputer may all achieve the same tasks, as long as time and memory capacity are not consideration. Therefore, the same computer design may be modified for tasks ranging from doling out company payrolls to controlling unmanned spaceflights. Due to technical progression, modern electronic computers are exponentially more capable than those of preceding generations. Computers take plentiful physical forms. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, while whole modern embedded computers may be lesser than a deck of playing cards. Even today, huge computing conveniences still exist for focused scientific computation and for the transaction processing necessities of large organizations. Smaller computers designed for personage use are called personal computers. Along with its convenient equivalent, the laptop computer, the personal computer is the ubiquitous in order processing and communication tool, and is typically what is meant by "a computer". However, the most general form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are usually comparatively simple and physically small computers used to control one more device. They may control equipment from fighter aircraft to industrial robots to digital cameras. in the beginning, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, frequently with the aid of a mechanical calculating device or analog computer. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.
Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a completely programmable computer as early as 1820, In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.
but due to a combination of the restrictions of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an incapability to resist tinkering with his design, the device was never really constructed in his lifetime. By the end of the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove helpful in computing had appeared, out such as the punch card and the vacuum tube, and large-scale automated data giving using punch cards was performed by tabulating equipment designed by Hermann Hollerith.During the first half of the 20th century, many technical computing wants were met by increasingly difficult special-purpose analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a base for subtraction . Sequence of gradually more powerful and stretchy computing devices were construct in the 1930s and 1940s.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Chaka Khan

Chaka Khan is the stage name of American singer Yvette Marie Stevens.Khan first came to the attention of the music world as the singer of the funk band Rufus in the mid-1970s and with the help of Stevie Wonder, broke into both the pop and R&B charts in 1974 with the hit "Tell Me Something Good". Throughout the 1970's and early 1980's, the band had a number of R&B hits including "Ain't Nobody", "Masterjam", "Sweet Thing", "Do You Love What You Feel?", and "Everlasting Love". In 1978, launched her smash hit: "I'm Every Woman". A few years later, Khan released her hip-hop based hit, "I Feel for You", written by Prince, which launched her recording career back into full gear.
Khan's career has been gratifying in terms of record sales, but she continues to record and expand musically. Her legacy as a soul icon is indisputable.In September 2004 her 25 year old son Damien Patrick Holland was arrested on charges of murder in the first degree.On December 3, 2004, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Vienna

Vienna is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city; with a population of about 1.6 million, Vienna is by far the largest city in Austria as well as its cultural, economic and political centre. Vienna lies in the south-eastern corner of Central Europe and is close to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Vienna is the seat of a number of United Nations offices and various international institutions and companies, including the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Furthermore, the 1980 Diplomatic Conference was held in Vienna that led to the adoption of the United Nations Convention of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Additionally, Vienna is the seat of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's secretariat.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Stalinism

The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications, shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivization. The rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world, even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a program in which it promised the establishment of communism within thirty years.
However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state that dominated every aspect of life. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented the legitimacy of the Soviet system.
Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party adopted the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone.This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

White tigers

White tigers are Bengal tigers or tigers of mixed Bengal/Amur ancestry with pink noses, white-to-creme coloured fur and black, grey or chocolate-coloured stripes. Their eyes are usually blue, but may be green or amber. There are several hundred captive white tigers worldwide, all of whom can trace their ancestry back to a white Bengal tiger caught in Rewa, India.
Due to the opinion that their colouration is widely considered striking, white tigers have become popular attractions in zoos and entertainment that showcases exotic animals; the magicians Siegfried and Roy are famous for using several trained white tigers in their shows. Contrary to popular belief, white tigers are not a separate species in their own right, but are a mutant form of the orange Bengal tigers.