767 résultats pour "high"
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Vancouver (British Columbia) - Geography.
The Fraser Delta—Burrard Inlet area that is now Vancouver was occupied by Coast Salish people of the Musqueam, Kwantlen, Tsawwassen, and Capilano bands whenthe Spanish explorer José Maria Narvaez and the British naval officer George Vancouver visited the area in the early 1790s. The first permanent white settlement, established around the Hastings sawmill in the 1860s, was colloquially known as Gastown (after a talkative leading citizen, “Gassy”Jack Deighton). This settlement was renamed Granvil...
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Edmonton - Geography.
both of which built fur trading posts near present-day Edmonton in 1795. The posts were rebuilt several times, always along the North Saskatchewan River, whichprovided the traders’ main transportation route. The last move came in 1830, when Fort Edmonton was erected on the high bluff where the Alberta Legislature nowstands. For the next 50 years, the fort was the major trading center on the western plains. The modern city began to take shape after 1900, when central Alberta was opened to Europea...
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Kansas City (Missouri) - geography.
vicinity of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church is where many Italian immigrants settled. The West Side, bordering the Armourdale industrial district, is a Hispanic area. Blackneighborhoods comprise a large area south of downtown, and the neighborhoods east of the central business district have been mainly black for generations. An extensivearea of black and mixed race neighborhoods borders the central business district of Kansas City, Kansas. Many neighborhoods in northeastern Kansas City are inhab...
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Tornado.
In winter, tornado activity is usually confined to the Gulf Coastal Plain. In spring, the most active tornado season, tornadoes typically occur in central Tornado Alley andeastward into the Ohio Valley. In summer, most tornadoes occur in a northern band stretching from the Dakotas eastward into Pennsylvania and southern New YorkState. The worst tornado disasters in the United States have claimed hundreds of lives. The Tri-State Outbreak of March 18, 1925, had the highest death toll: 740 people d...
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Supercomputer.
the specific model and configuration of the supercomputer. In July 1995, computer scientists at the University of Tokyo, in Japan, broke the 1 teraflop (1 trillion floating-point operations per second) mark with a computer theydesigned to perform astrophysical simulations. Named GRAPE-4 (GRAvity PipE number 4), this MPP supercomputer consisted of 1,692 interconnected processors. InNovember 1996, Cray Research debuted the CRAY T3E-900, the first commercially available supercomputer to offer teraf...
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Wolf - biology.
VIII RED WOLF The red wolf is smaller than the gray wolf. An adult red wolf stands about 65 cm (about 2 ft) high at the shoulder, measures 100 to 130 cm (3 to 4 ft) in lengthexcluding the tail, and weighs 20 to 36 kg (45 to 80 lb). It has long legs and ears and its head is not as wide as that of the gray wolf. The coat of red wolves varies incolor from light tan to black with reddish head, ears, and legs. Scientists have debated whether the red wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf, a separate...
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Child Labor.
States, are usually not subject to state laws because they do not fulfill residency requirements, and they are often unable to attend local schools, which have noprovisions for seasonal increases in school enrollment. Other children exempted from federal and state labor laws are children employed as actors and performers inradio, television, and motion pictures, as newspaper deliverers and sales personnel, or as part-time workers at home. IV INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS In the early 21st century, ch...
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Saskatoon - Geography.
were suspended after being charged with dumping two indigenous men at the outskirts of the city in the middle of the winter. They froze to death. The city requested aspecial Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force to investigate the matter. VII HISTORY Indigenous peoples inhabited the Saskatoon area for more than 5,000 years before white settlers arrived. The original settlement was designed in 1882 to be theadministrative center of a temperance colony led by Ontario Methodists. The city grew...
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Corn - biology.
small larvae of the cucumber beetles feed on the root system of the developing plants. VII PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION World output of corn at the beginning of the 21 st century was about 603 million metric tons annually; in volume of production, corn ranked first, ahead of rice and wheat. A net gain of about 51 percent in production was realized during the last two decades; intensive cultivation with heavy use of fertilizer and herbicides wasresponsible for the increase. The United States is t...
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Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Although the drugs are prescribed most often to treat ADHD among children, increasingly adults are taking the drugs for ADHD. From 2002 to 2005 the number ofprescriptions written for adults reportedly increased by 90 percent. In the United States about 2.5 million children and about 1.5 million adults take ADHD drugs. Amember of the FDA advisory panel noted that adults are more likely to have a higher risk of heart problems. Most of the 25 sudden deaths, however, were amongchildren. The prelimin...
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New Orleans - geography.
levees bordering Lake Pontchartrain. On the 17th Street Canal, a section about 90 m (about 300 ft) wide collapsed, allowing a torrent of water to enter the city. The rapidlyrising waters flooded more than 80 percent of New Orleans. The disaster prompted a mandatory evacuation of the entire city. A week after the storm, the U.S. Army Corpsof Engineers finished patching the 17th Street Canal levee and began pumping water out of the city. But by then the damage was catastrophic. The city’s low-lyin...
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Judicial Branch.
courts or from state courts, and a handful come from other parts of the Court’s jurisdiction ( see Supreme Court of the United States: Selecting Cases). The Court typically issues written decisions in fewer than a hundred cases a year. All cases are heard and decided by the entire Court, except in rare cases when a justice choosesnot to participate because of a conflict of interest or other potential prejudicial interest in a case. As with all other federal judges, members of the Supreme Court a...
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Microprocessor.
thin layer of oxide about 75 angstroms deep (an angstrom is one ten-billionth of a meter). Nearly every layer that is deposited on the wafer must be patterned accurately into the shape of the transistors and other electronic elements. Usually this is done in aprocess known as photolithography, which is analogous to transforming the wafer into a piece of photographic film and projecting a picture of the circuit on it. A coatingon the surface of the wafer, called the photoresist or resist, changes...
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Tampa - geography.
The Port of Tampa is the country’s deepwater port closest to the Panama Canal and is among the nation’s busiest; products passing through the port include cement,citrus fruits, coal, petroleum, ammonia, phosphate, and sulfur. The port also is home to a shrimp fleet and is increasingly a port of departure for cruise ships. A number of highways and expressways link Tampa to the rest of the metropolitan region and the state. Interstate 4 leads inland toward Orlando and forms the axis ofthe eastern...
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Crafts.
VI POTTERY Ceramic objects can be molded completely by hand or thrown (shaped) on a potter's wheel, a device with a rotating horizontal disk. When the clay hardens, it is fired ina high-temperature oven, or kiln, to strengthen it. To make the object waterproof, glazes may then be applied and the piece fired again. Although hand construction iseasy to master, throwing on the potter's wheel requires practice. Several simple tools are used by potters, including sponges, trimming tools, wooden sha...
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Owl - biology.
Among the largest species of typical owls are the eagle owls. They have tufts of feathers on their heads that are called “ears.” The great horned owl is the only eagleowl found in the Americas. It is about 60 cm (25 in) in length with a wingspan of 1.4 m (60 in). Numerous species of eagle owls inhabit Europe, Africa, and Asia. Mostwidely distributed is the northern eagle owl, found from Scandinavia and Spain to Japan. It is about 71 cm (28 in) long with a wingspan of about 2m (72 in). Nearly asl...
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Steam Engine.
wear caused by this pressure, steam-engine valves are frequently made in a cylindrical form entirely enclosing the piston, so that the pressure is equal all around thevalve and friction is minimized. The development of this type of valve is attributed to the American inventor and manufacturer George Henry Corliss. In other types ofslide valves, the moving portion of the valve is designed so that steam does not press directly on the back of the valve. The linkage between the piston of the engine...
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Gymnastics.
harmoniously with the equipment to perform a graceful and error-free routine. There are also two team events in which five competitors perform together. At thehighest international levels, rhythmic gymnastics is judged on a 30-point scale rather than with the traditional 10-point scoring system. IV TRAMPOLINE Trampoline first appeared in the Olympics as a medal sport at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, with a men’s individual event and a women’s individual event.Contestants bounce up and d...
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Berlin - geography.
new offices of the federal government. Near Tiergarten is the Kulturforum complex, including the Museum of Applied Arts, and the Bauhaus Archives and Museum, whichdocuments the modernist Bauhaus school of architecture and design that flourished from 1919 to 1933. A museum complex lines the south edge of Tiergarten. West of the city center, in the contemporary borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, is the Kurfürstendamm, a boulevard that became the commercial center of West Berlinafter the end of...
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Nile - Geography.
The Nile is also a source of hydroelectric power ( see Waterpower), although the river’s potential as a source of electricity has yet to be fully exploited. Dams to provide hydroelectricity (and control flooding) have been constructed along the Nile in Egypt, Sudan, and Uganda. Additional hydroelectric projects are planned. IV HISTORY OF THE NILE A Ancient Egypt and the Nile The first great African civilization developed in the northern Nile Valley in Egypt in about 3300 BC. Settlements alon...
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Silk Road - History.
and high in value because they were carried on the backs of the limited number of camels in each caravan. Thus, of necessity they were luxury items, not bulky rawmaterials or essential goods for daily use. The oases and towns along the route, which were located in or near remote areas, profited from the Silk Road trade and reliedon it for their existence. The great empires of Persia, China, and Rome, however, could easily have survived without the commerce in luxury goods. V SPREAD OF RELIGION A...
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Excerpt from Antony and Cleopatra - anthology.
They seize Cleopatra Guard her till Caesar comes. Exit Gallus IRAS. Royal queen! CHARMIAN. O Cleopatra! Thou art taken, queen. CLEOPATRA. Quick, quick, good hands! She draws a dagger PROCULEIUS. Hold, worthy lady, hold! He disarms her Do not yourself such wrong, who are in thisRelieved, but not betrayed. CLEOPATRA. What, of death too,That rids our dogs of languish? PROCULEIUS. Cleopatra,Do not abuse my master's bounty byTh'undoing of yourself. Let the world seeHis nobleness well acted, which you...
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Forensic Science.
barbiturates, cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. When a body is discovered in a lake, stream, river, or ocean and the lungs are found to be filled with water, the medical examiner must determine if the drowningoccurred where the body was found or elsewhere. A standard microscope that can magnify objects to 1500 times their actual size is used to look for the presence orabsence of diatoms, single-celled algae that are found in all natural bodies of water. The absence of diatoms raises the possi...
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Exercise.
broad, and most studies suggest a positive relationship between physical fitness and mental achievement. The relationship between regular aerobic exercise and cardiovascular health and longevity is well established. Regular exercise leads to a reduction in the risk ofcoronary heart disease, in which fatty deposits (plaque) form in blood vessels supplying the muscular wall of the heart, compromising oxygen delivery to the heartmuscle. In addition, with regular exercise the efficiency of the heart...
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San Diego - geography.
Qualcomm Stadium is the home of the San Diego Chargers, playing major league football. PETCO Park is the home of the San Diego Padres, playing major leaguebaseball. Major sporting events in the city include a professional golf tournament in February, hydroplane races on Mission Bay in late summer, and the Holiday Bowlpostseason college football game in December. VI ECONOMY The total value of all the goods and services produced in San Diego make it one of the most powerful economies in the worl...
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Liberia - country.
West Atlantic, or Kwa linguistic groups. D Education Education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 15. However, a scarcity of educational facilities means that few Liberians progress beyondprimary school. Almost all children of primary school-age attend school, but the figure drops to 23 percent (1999–2000) for secondary school-age children. Just 60percent of the population was literate in 2005. Higher education is provided by the University of Liberia (1862), in Monro...
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Lima (Peru) - geography.
home to a wide range of museums, many focusing on Peru’s indigenous heritage. These include the National Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, the GoldMuseum of Peru, the Museum of the Central Reserve Bank, and the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum, which specializes in pre-Hispanic ceramics. Art and history museumsare also found in metropolitan Lima, including the National Museum of the Republic, the Museum of Peruvian Culture, and the Museum of the Inquisition, in the buildingwhere colonial Cathol...
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Zambia - country.
The Livingstone Museum, at Livingstone, has a collection relating to the archaeology and natural history of southern Africa. The Institute for African Studies of theUniversity of Zambia publishes studies relating to central Africa. IV ECONOMY The wealth of Zambia is based largely on mining in the rich copper belt, and downturns in copper prices have severely damaging economic consequences. Someprocessing and manufacturing has been started since independence, and during the 1970s attempts were...
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Richard Wagner
I
INTRODUCTION
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), German composer, conductor, and essayist, one of the most influential cultural figures of the 19th century.
May 1864 he was summoned to Munich by the 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who settled Wagner's debts, paid him a generous allowance, and provided himwith housing. Wagner was soon joined in his new home by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt’s daughter and the wife of German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Wagnerand Cosima began a relationship that produced three children before the dissolution of the Bülows' marriage in 1870. Mounting hostility toward Wagner by members ofLudwig’s court resulted...
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Statistics
I
INTRODUCTION
Statistics, branch of mathematics that deals with the collection, organization, and analysis of numerical data and with such problems as experiment design and decision
making.
frequency, column (d), is the ratio of the frequency of an interval to the total count; the relative frequency is multiplied by 100 to obtain the percent relative frequency.The cumulative frequency, column (e), represents the number of students receiving grades equal to or less than the range in each succeeding interval; thus, thenumber of students with grades of 30 or less is obtained by adding the frequencies in column (c) for the first three intervals, which total 53. The cumulative relativef...
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The Gambia - country.
The population of The Gambia (2008 estimate) is 1,735,464, making it one of the least populous countries of Africa. Still, the country has a fairly high overall populationdensity of 174 persons per sq km (449 per sq mi), and the population is increasing at a rate of 2.7 percent a year. Banjul, formerly called Bathurst, is the capital andonly seaport. The largest city is Serrekunda, a transportation hub and commercial center. B Religion and Language The great majority of the people of The Gambia...
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Federal Reserve System.
and their powers were also expanded. For example, discount rates now had to be approved periodically by the board. Sales and purchases of governmentsecurities—the open-market operation that previously had been managed solely at the discretion of the presidents of the reserve banks—were centralized in the FederalOpen Market Committee (FOMC), consisting of the seven governors, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and four other reserve bank presidentsserving on a rotating basis....
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Yukon Territory - Geography.
Tourism is the second most important private sector industry in the Yukon. Visitors come to fish, hunt, enjoy the rugged scenery, and see the historic buildings andcreeks associated with the gold rush. Some marten, lynx, muskrat, wolverine, and other fur-bearing animals are still trapped, but the Yukon plays a minor role in Canadian fur production. The Yukon’s manufacturing industries consist almost exclusively of some mineral refining, printing, and sawmilling. Several hydroelectric plants gene...
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Comoros - country.
Since 1981 the currency has been the Comorian franc. The Comorian franc had a fixed exchange rate with the French franc of 50 to 1 until 1994, when the rate was changed to 75 Comorian francs to 1 French franc. In 2006, the Comorian franc exchanged at an average of 392 to U.S.$1. Transport between the islands is mostly by air, and there is an international airport at Hahaia on Njazidja where jets can land. Road networks have been built betweenmost of the main island settlements, but the mountai...
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Yukon Territory - Canadian History.
Tourism is the second most important private sector industry in the Yukon. Visitors come to fish, hunt, enjoy the rugged scenery, and see the historic buildings andcreeks associated with the gold rush. Some marten, lynx, muskrat, wolverine, and other fur-bearing animals are still trapped, but the Yukon plays a minor role in Canadian fur production. The Yukon’s manufacturing industries consist almost exclusively of some mineral refining, printing, and sawmilling. Several hydroelectric plants gene...
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Senegal - country.
Although most of the population works in agriculture, Senegal has a growing industrial sector, one of the largest in West Africa. Nevertheless, two cash crops remain atthe foundation of the economy—peanuts and cotton. Important technical and economic assistance has been provided by France and other countries of the EuropeanUnion and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank). In 2006 the gross domestic product (GDP) was $9.2 billion, or $760.90 a person. A Agriculture...
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Computer Science.
theoretical research is called algorithmic complexity. Computer scientists in this field seek to develop techniques for determining the inherent efficiency of algorithmswith respect to one another. Another area of theoretical research called computability theory seeks to identify the inherent limits of computation. Software engineers use programming languages to communicate algorithms to a computer. Natural languages such as English are ambiguous—meaning that theirgrammatical structure and vocab...
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Paris (city, France) - geography.
and its vibrant public square, frequented by street performers, soon became among the most popular landmarks in the city. West of the Pompidou Center is Les Halles, the site of the central market of Paris from the 12th century until 1969. The market was subsequently replaced by the Forum LesHalles, a multilevel underground complex featuring a shopping mall, museums, the Paris film library ( vidéothèque ), and a sports center. The street level of Les Halles features a garden, the Jardin des Halle...
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Richard Wagner.
which took place in August 1876. Wagner completed his final opera, Parsifal (which he called a 'festival drama of dedication' for the Festspielhaus), in 1882, and it premiered that July. In September Wagner moved to Venice, where in February 1883, after a heated argument with Cosima, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was buried in Bayreuth. III MUSIC AND THOUGHT In the early 19th century, an opera was structured as a succession of conventional self-contained forms such as aria (a vocal so...
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Computer Memory.
been created, information can be retrieved but not changed. Newer technologies allow ROMs to be semi-permanent—that is, the information can be changed, but ittakes several seconds to make the change. For example, a FLASH memory acts like a ROM because values remain stored in memory, but the values can be changed. C External Memory External memory can generally be classified as either magnetic or optical, or a combination called magneto-optical. A magnetic storage device, such as a computer'shar...
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Classification - biology.
species based on the fewest number of shared changes that have occurred from generation to generation. IV HISTORY OF CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS Classification is one of the oldest sciences, but despite its age it is still a vigorous field full of new discoveries and methods. Much like other fields of science, greatthinkers have shaped the course of classification. One of the earliest classification schemes was established by Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived in the 300s BC. Aristotle believe...
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Coins and Coin Collecting.
U.S. coins dates from 1909, when the first Lincoln Cents appeared during the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. George Washington’s profile was used on thequarter-dollar of 1932, a coin originally intended as a one-year commemorative to honor the 200th anniversary of his birth. The design quickly became so popular thatit was retained for regular-issue quarters and is still being used today. Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower are theother Americ...
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Rio de Janeiro (city) - geography.
were coronated; and Our Lady of Candelária Church, thought by some to be the city’s most beautiful church. Another building of interest is the Imperial Palace, located several blocks west of Santos Dumont Airport. Originally constructed as Brazil’s colonial governor’s capitol in1743, it was converted to the royal palace during the city’s period as an imperial capital. It has recently been restored and now houses a cultural center. Otherimpressive 19th-century palaces include Itamaraty and Catete...
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Honey Bee - biology.
B Reproduction and Development The queen controls the sex of her offspring. When an egg passes from her ovary to her oviduct, the queen determines whether the egg is fertilized with sperm from thespermatheca. A fertilized egg develops into a female honey bee, either worker or queen, and an unfertilized egg becomes a male honey bee, or drone. The queen lays the eggs that will develop into more queens in specially constructed downward-pointing, peanut-shaped cells, in which the egg adheres to the...
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Babylonia - USA History.
Pharmacology, too, doubtless had made considerable progress, although the only major direct evidence of this comes from a Sumerian tablet written several centuriesbefore Hammurabi. C Legal System and Writing Law and justice were key concepts in the Babylonian way of life. Justice was administered by the courts, each of which consisted of from one to four judges. Often theelders of a town constituted a tribunal. The judges could not reverse their decisions for any reason, but appeals from their...
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Fruit - biology.
from a flower with several pistils. The ovary may have a single compartment, or carpel, which houses the ovule or ovules. Or the ovary may consist of two or morecarpels, each of which may contain one or more ovules. A drupe develops from an ovary with a single carpel and is characterized by an edible exocarp and mesocarp and an inedible, hard endocarp, or pit that encloses asingle seed. Cherries, peaches, apricots, and plums are examples of drupes. Almonds also are classified as drupes, but in a...
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Sewage Disposal.
greater load on the piping system and the treatment plant. The amount of storm-water drainage to be carried away depends on the amount of rainfall as well as on the runoff or yield of the watershed ( see Drainage). A typical metropolitan area discharges a volume of wastewater equal to about 60 to 80 percent of its total daily water requirements, the rest being used for washingcars and watering lawns, and for manufacturing processes such as food canning and bottling. B Composition The composi...
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Scramble for Africa.
additional territorial grabs. The most significant of these rules stated that colonial powers were obligated to notify each other when they claimed African territory.Further, subsequent “effective occupation” of the claimed area was necessary for the claim to remain valid. Through it all, as Europeans negotiated their rights toAfrican territory, not a single African was present. Once the conference was over, it was clear that a European Scramble for African territories was underway. Southern Afr...
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Anatomy.
The body defends itself against foreign proteins and infectious microorganisms by means of a complex dual system that depends on recognizing a portion of the surfacepattern of the invader. The two parts of the system are termed cellular immunity, in which lymphocytes are the effective agent, and humoral immunity, based on theaction of antibody molecules. When particular lymphocytes recognize a foreign molecular pattern (termed an antigen), they release antibodies in great numbers; other lymphocy...
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Frog (animal).
which means that their body temperature depends on the temperature of the surrounding environment. Few species can tolerate temperatures below 4°C (40°F) orabove 40°C (104°F), and many species can survive only within a narrower range of temperatures. In addition, frogs’ thin, moist skin offers little protection againstwater loss, and when on land the animals must guard against drying out. Many frogs are active at night because temperatures are cooler and humidity is higher thanduring the day. In...