1612 résultats pour "mór"
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El Salvador - country.
III PEOPLE The Spanish subjugated the native population of El Salvador in the 16th century. Few Spanish women came to the country, however, so many Spanish men took NativeAmerican women as their mates. Today nearly 90 percent of the population is mestizo , of mixed European and Native American descent. People of purely Native American descent represent about 5 to 10 percent of the population, while people of European descent represent only about 1 percent. El Salvador’s population, 5.2 millio...
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Bacteria - biology.
A2 b Bacterial Killers Some dramatic infectious diseases result from exposure to bacteria that are not part of our normal bacterial community. Cholera, one of the world’s deadliest diseasestoday, is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae . Cholera is spread in water and food contaminated with the bacteria, and by people who have the disease. After entering the body, the cholera bacteria grow in the intestines, often along the surface of the intestinal wall, where they secrete a toxin (poiso...
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Uranus (planet) - astronomy.
V COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE A Interior of Uranus Uranus contains mostly rock and water, with hydrogen and helium (and trace amounts of methane) in its dense atmosphere. Astronomers believe that Uranus, likeNeptune, formed from the same material—principally frozen water and rock—that composes most of the planet’s moons. As the planet grew, pressures andtemperatures in the planet’s interior increased, heating the planet’s frozen water into a hot liquid. Uranus probably has a relatively small roc...
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American Westward Movement - U.
British expansion. However, Native Americans of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley lashed out against the English in an attempt to preserve their independence, theirland, and their way of life. With the Ottawa chief Pontiac as their most visible leader, the tribes waged a bloody and costly war. As a result, the British governmentdecided to keep the white settlers apart from the Native Americans. It issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, banning all white settlement beyond the Appalachians andstatin...
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Peter the Great
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INTRODUCTION
Peter the Great or Peter I (1672-1725), tsar and, later, emperor of Russia (1682-1725), who is linked with the Westernization of Russia and its rise as a great power.
V LATER REIGN Before long, however, these and other reform measures had to cede center stage to the prosecution of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden. Peter’sjourney west did not result in a great alliance against the Ottomans, but it led to one against Sweden. Russia fought together with Denmark and the union of Polandand Saxony against Sweden to win the Baltic coastline, the 'window into Europe,' and to break Swedish dominance over the northern part of the continent. At the tim...
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Peter the Great.
V LATER REIGN Before long, however, these and other reform measures had to cede center stage to the prosecution of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden. Peter’sjourney west did not result in a great alliance against the Ottomans, but it led to one against Sweden. Russia fought together with Denmark and the union of Polandand Saxony against Sweden to win the Baltic coastline, the 'window into Europe,' and to break Swedish dominance over the northern part of the continent. At the tim...
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Sydney (Australia) - geography.
blocks in the eastern suburbs and around railway stations elsewhere; and homes on large lots in the outer suburbs, especially those to the northwest. For publichousing, the state government built a number of high-rise apartment blocks in run-down inner suburbs after World War II (1939-1945). These housing projects weresoon deemed unsuccessful and were discontinued because they fostered crime and other social problems. More recently, public housing has taken the form of separateor semidetached ho...
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Electronic Games.
arcade game of all time. With Pizza Time Theaters legitimizing the idea of arcades and hits such as Ms. Pac-Man , Asteroids , Donkey Kong , Tempest , Frogger , and Defender bringing new excitement to gaming, the coin-operated video game business boomed. In 1981 Americans spent 75,000 person-years and $5 billion playing video games at anestimated 4,300 arcades in the United States. Many popular arcade games also were translated for use on the Atari 2600 and its chief rivals in the homemarket—M...
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Human Sexuality.
About six weeks after conception, if a Y chromosome is present in the embryo's cells (as it is in normal males), a gene on the chromosome directs the undifferentiatedgonads to become testes. If the Y chromosome is not present (as in normal females), the undifferentiated gonads will become ovaries. If the gonads become testes, they begin to produce androgens (male hormones, primarily testosterone) by about eight weeks after conception. These androgens stimulate development of the one set of the...
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Blues
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INTRODUCTION
Listening to the Blues
Blues music comes in a variety of styles and forms, including acoustic blues, electric blues, rock, and jazz.
recording of “How Many More Years” demonstrate this structure: a. How many more years do I got to let you dog me around?a. How many more years do I got to let you dog me around?b. I just as soon be dead, sleeping six feet in the ground. Each lyric line is typically sung over the first half (first two bars) of a four-bar line. After each lyric line (the “call”), an instrumental response is commonly played, alsoconsisting of approximately two bars. The tension created by the two-bar call-and-res...
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Koala - biology.
V REPRODUCTION Female koalas become sexually mature around 18 to 24 months of age. They can produce one offspring a year until they reach about 13 years of age. Males begin toproduce sperm around age 2 and, in the absence of older, stronger males, they may breed at that young age. More often, however, a male must grow big enough tocompete with other males for females, and mating generally begins for males at about 4 years of age. The breeding season for koalas is from October to May, during the...
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Race - biology.
distributed as a cline, generally varying along a north-south line. Skin color is lightest in northern Europeans, especially in those who live around the Baltic Sea, andbecomes gradually darker as one moves toward southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and into northern Africa and northern subtropical Africa. Skin isdarkest in people who live in the tropical regions of Africa. The lack of clear-cut discontinuities makes any racial boundary based on skin color totally arbitrary. Sim...
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Memory (psychology).
memory span —how many items people can correctly recall in order. Researchers would show people increasingly long sequences of digits or letters and then ask them to recall as many of the items as they could. In 1956 American psychologist George Miller reviewed many experiments on memory span and concluded that peoplecould hold an average of seven items in short-term memory. He referred to this limit as “the magical number seven, plus or minus two” because the results of thestudies were so consi...
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Mexico City - geography.
The park houses some of Mexico's most important public buildings, including Chapultepec Castle. Construction of the castle began in 1783. Positioned on the park’shighest elevation, the castle functioned as a fortress during colonial times. It once served as the presidential residence and now houses the National Museum of History,which includes murals by 20th-century Mexican painter Juan O'Gorman. Los Pinos, the official residence and working offices of the president, is also on the grounds, buti...
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Iran-Iraq War - History.
The Iranian offensives of 1982 set a pattern that continued for the rest of the war. Exploiting their superiority in numbers, Iran sent its Revolutionary Guard on theattack, supported by regular military forces. Outnumbered Iraqi forces inflicted heavy losses on the Iranians but ultimately fell back. As soon as the initial Iranian thrusthad exhausted itself, however, the Iraqi army exploited Iranian disorganization and lack of equipment to retake much of the lost territory. As the war continued,...
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Montana - geography.
(191 sq mi), is Montana’s largest lake, and the largest natural freshwater lake in the contiguous states west of the Mississippi River. C Climate Climatic regions in Montana coincide roughly with the two major physiographic regions. In western Montana, as compared with the eastern plains area, winters tend tobe milder while summers are cooler. Precipitation is more evenly distributed throughout the year in the west, and it is cloudier and somewhat more humid in all seasons.In addition, the grow...
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Montana - USA History.
(191 sq mi), is Montana’s largest lake, and the largest natural freshwater lake in the contiguous states west of the Mississippi River. C Climate Climatic regions in Montana coincide roughly with the two major physiographic regions. In western Montana, as compared with the eastern plains area, winters tend tobe milder while summers are cooler. Precipitation is more evenly distributed throughout the year in the west, and it is cloudier and somewhat more humid in all seasons.In addition, the grow...
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Afghanistan - country.
D Climate Most of Afghanistan has a subarctic mountain climate with dry and cold winters, except for the lowlands, which have arid and semiarid climates. In the mountains and afew of the valleys bordering Pakistan, a fringe effect of the Indian monsoon, coming usually from the southeast, brings moist maritime tropical air in summer.Afghanistan has clearly defined seasons: Summers are hot and winters can be bitterly cold. Summer temperatures as high as 49°C (120°F) have been recorded in thenorth...
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Criminal Punishment.
In the United States and Canada, younger offenders may be sentenced to highly regimented, military-style correctional programs known as boot camps. Generally,offenders volunteer to participate in boot camp programs to avoid other types of incarceration. At boot camps, officials subject offenders to strict discipline and physicaltraining. They also provide educational or vocational programs. Boot camps serve as an alternative to traditional, long-term incarceration and attempt to train offenderst...
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Whale - biology.
III BEHAVIOR OF WHALES Studies of whales in captivity have taught scientists much about the complex social behavior of whales. Since the late 1980s, advances in the use of satellite trackingsystems have also broadened opportunities for scientists to observe how whales behave in the wild. A Swimming and Diving Whales swim by making powerful up-and-down movements of the tail flukes, which provide thrust. The power comes from body muscles that flex the lower spine upand down in a wavelike motion...
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Kansas - geography.
at the adjoining cities of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. Its chief headstreams are the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, which join to form the KansasRiver at Junction City. Each of the headstreams has numerous tributaries. The Kansas River proper is only 270 km (170 mi) long, but the Smoky Hill River has a lengthof 870 km (540 mi), and the Republican River has a length of 720 km (450 mi). The main tributary flowing into the Kansas River is the Big Blue River. The Arkansas Rive...
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Kansas - USA History.
at the adjoining cities of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. Its chief headstreams are the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers, which join to form the KansasRiver at Junction City. Each of the headstreams has numerous tributaries. The Kansas River proper is only 270 km (170 mi) long, but the Smoky Hill River has a lengthof 870 km (540 mi), and the Republican River has a length of 720 km (450 mi). The main tributary flowing into the Kansas River is the Big Blue River. The Arkansas Rive...
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Zebra - biology.
C Life Span Captive zebras have lived into their late 30s. Life expectancy in the wild, where predators abound, is probably not much more than 12 years. IV SOCIAL BEHAVIOR Like horses, zebras have large brains and a wide variety of social behaviors. Although they cannot match the overall intelligence of mammals that hunt, zebras interactwith each other in complex ways. Zebras usually live in groups known as herds, but the social structure of these groups depends on the species. The plains zeb...
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Marriage.
In many traditional societies, marriage typically involved transfers of property from the parents to their marrying children or from one set of parents to the other. Thesecustoms persist in some places today and are part of the tradition of arranged marriages. For example, in some cultures the bride’s parents may give property (knownas a dowry) to the new couple. The practice of giving dowries has been common in countries such as Greece, Egypt, India, and China from ancient times until thepresen...
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Homer
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INTRODUCTION
Homer, the name traditionally assigned to the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two major epics that have survived from Greek antiquity.
Apollo ), and some have argued that portions of the texts, such as the concluding scenes of the Odyssey, were added by another hand. However, they generally believed that Homer was a poet (or at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they knew from their own experience. They believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey, although based on traditional materials, were independent, original, and largely fictional. In the last 200 years, however, this view has changed radically, following the emer...
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Homer.
Apollo ), and some have argued that portions of the texts, such as the concluding scenes of the Odyssey, were added by another hand. However, they generally believed that Homer was a poet (or at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they knew from their own experience. They believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey, although based on traditional materials, were independent, original, and largely fictional. In the last 200 years, however, this view has changed radically, following the emer...
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Coral - biology.
Soft corals lack a distinct skeleton. Although they live in colonies, the individual polyps are fused into a complex body, usually strengthened by small lumps or spikesknown as sclerites, which are made of protein and calcite. Soft corals come in a variety of shapes, including undulating sheets, upright mushroomlike shapes, andbeautiful shapes that form branches. A number of other octocorals have skeletons made from a hard or horny protein, sometimes strengthened with more brittle calcareous dep...
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
disorder that local white officials would be forced to end segregation to restore normal business relations. The strategy did not work in Albany. During months ofprotests, Albany’s police chief jailed hundreds of demonstrators without visible police violence. Eventually the protesters’ energy, and the money to bail out protesters,ran out. The strategy did work, however, in Birmingham, Alabama, when SCLC joined a local protest during the spring of 1963. The protest was led by SCLC member FredShut...
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
disorder that local white officials would be forced to end segregation to restore normal business relations. The strategy did not work in Albany. During months ofprotests, Albany’s police chief jailed hundreds of demonstrators without visible police violence. Eventually the protesters’ energy, and the money to bail out protesters,ran out. The strategy did work, however, in Birmingham, Alabama, when SCLC joined a local protest during the spring of 1963. The protest was led by SCLC member FredShut...
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Bicycle.
narrow as possible to minimize weight and interference with pedaling. F Specialty Bicycles Many other types of bicycles are designed for special purposes. Although not as common as standard single-rider racing, touring, mountain, or recreational bicycles,they nonetheless have significant niches. Recumbent bicycles are bicycles on which the rider sits upright as if in a chair, with legs and feet stretched out in front. Because they support the rider’s lower back,recumbents allow the rider far mo...
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Kansas City (Missouri) - geography.
Major institutions of higher education in Kansas City are a branch (established in 1929) of the University of Missouri, Avila College (1916), Rockhurst College (1910),DeVry Institute of Technology (Missouri) (1931), and the Kansas City Art Institute (1885). Schools in neighboring suburbs include Park University (1875), in Parkville,and William Jewell College (1849), in Liberty. Baptist, Nazarene, and Methodist theological schools are also located in the area. Midwest Research Institute, one of 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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Heredity - biology.
allele from the mother and a mutated allele from the father. In both of these cases, the child will be a carrier. The child develops the disease only if he or she receives amutated allele from each parent. When both parents are carriers, there is a 25 percent chance that a child will be disease-free, a 25 percent chance that it will have thedisease, and a 50 percent chance that it will be a carrier. Examples of genetic diseases that follow the dominant-recessive pattern include sickle-cell anemi...
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Paul Martin.
VI CONFLICT WITH THE PRIME MINISTER Martin’s success could not have been achieved without the support he received from Jean Chrétien. Yet relations between the two men continued to deteriorate. In partthis was because of their continuing disagreement about how best to deal with the separatist challenge in Québec. In the 1993 election, a majority of Québec seats hadgone to the Bloc Québécois, and in 1994 the provincial separatist party, the Parti Québécois, won election on a platform promising...
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Paul Martin - Canadian History.
VI CONFLICT WITH THE PRIME MINISTER Martin’s success could not have been achieved without the support he received from Jean Chrétien. Yet relations between the two men continued to deteriorate. In partthis was because of their continuing disagreement about how best to deal with the separatist challenge in Québec. In the 1993 election, a majority of Québec seats hadgone to the Bloc Québécois, and in 1994 the provincial separatist party, the Parti Québécois, won election on a platform promising...
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Galaxy - astronomy.
Astronomers have obtained images of young galaxies using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope, which resides in an orbit high above Earth’satmosphere and thus avoids atmospheric interference. Photos from the HST show galaxies that are as far as 13 billion light-years away from Earth, which means theyformed soon after the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago. The galaxies appear to be spherical in shape, and may be early precursors of elliptical and spiralgalaxies....
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Protests in the 1960s - U.
E Youth Culture Young people played an important role in the movements for social change during the 1960s. Numbers alone made them important; more than 76 million babies wereborn during the post-World War II “baby boom.” In addition, these young people spent more years in school and were more affluent than previous generations. In theearly 20th century, most young Americans had moved quickly from childhood to adulthood. In the 1920s only 1 in 5 Americans graduated from high school, and almostal...
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Evolution - biology.
genetic diversity to extinction. Sexual reproduction ensures that the genes in a population are rearranged in each generation, a process termed recombination. Although the combinations of genes inindividuals change with each new generation, the gene frequency, or ratio of different alleles in the entire population, remains relatively constant if no evolutionaryforces act on the population. One such force is the introduction of new genes into the genetic material of the population, or gene pool...
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Parkinson Disease.
III SYMPTOMS Parkinson disease most notably affects motor control (muscle activity). The disease progresses differently for each individual—symptoms develop swiftly in some peopleand slowly in others. Some Parkinson patients may develop problems that affect their intellect or ability to reason, or they may suffer from depression or anxiety. A Motor Control Problems Doctors look for the presence of four principal symptoms in patients they suspect may have Parkinson disease. Tremor (the involun...
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Ecology.
an input of nutrients exceeding the capability of the ecosystem to process them. Nutrients eroded and leached from agricultural lands, along with sewage and industrialwastes accumulated from urban areas, all drain into streams, rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These pollutants destroy plants and animals that cannot tolerate theirpresence or the changed environmental conditions caused by them; at the same time they favor a few organisms more tolerant to changed conditions. Thus,precipitation filled...
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Ecology - biology.
an input of nutrients exceeding the capability of the ecosystem to process them. Nutrients eroded and leached from agricultural lands, along with sewage and industrialwastes accumulated from urban areas, all drain into streams, rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These pollutants destroy plants and animals that cannot tolerate theirpresence or the changed environmental conditions caused by them; at the same time they favor a few organisms more tolerant to changed conditions. Thus,precipitation filled...
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French Revolution.
B2 Assembly of Notables and Estates-General To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries hethought would sympathize with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe that a financial crisis reallyexisted. They had been influenced by Necker’s argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only...
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French Revolution .
B2 Assembly of Notables and Estates-General To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries hethought would sympathize with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe that a financial crisis reallyexisted. They had been influenced by Necker’s argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only...
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Atom
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INTRODUCTION
Water Molecule
A water molecule consists of an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, which are attached at an angle of 105°.
spontaneously break apart and change, or decay, into other atoms. Unlike electrons, which are fundamental particles, protons and neutrons are made up of other, smaller particles called quarks. Physicists know of six different quarks.Neutrons and protons are made up of up quarks and down quarks —two of the six different kinds of quarks. The fanciful names of quarks have nothing to do with their properties; the names are simply labels to distinguish one quark from another. Quarks are unique amo...
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Country Music
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INTRODUCTION
Willie Nelson
Country singer and musician Willie Nelson gained national popularity during the 1970s for a string of country hits,
including the 1978 hits "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and "Georgia On My Mind.
Singer and mandolin player Bill Monroe is known as the father of bluegrass music. A virtuoso mandolin player, Monroe combined traditional folk ballads and gospel songswith string-band music played at very fast tempos. Monroe, with his band The Blue Grass Boys, performed from the mid-1920s until Monroe’s death in 1996. Otherwell-known bluegrass performers include banjo player Earl Scruggs, who played with Monroe during the 1940s; the Osborne Brothers, a duo from Kentucky known forits work during...
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Paleolithic Art
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INTRODUCTION
Cave Painting, Lascaux
This portion of a cave painting in what is now Lascaux, France, was done by Paleolithic artists about 13,000 bc.
Venus of WillendorfThis so-called Venus figurine from the area of Willendorf, Austria, is one of the earliest known examples of sculpture,dating from about 23,000 bc. The figure, which is carved out of limestone, is only 11.25 cm (4.5 in) high, and wasprobably designed to be held in the hand. It is believed the Venus may be a fertility symbol, which would explain theexaggerated female anatomy.Ali Meyer/Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York Paleolithic art usually is classified as either figura...
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Pornography.
censorship. Congress passed 20 obscenity laws between 1842 and 1956, most of which were variations of or amendments to the original Comstock Law. Later, Congress passed aseries of antipornography and anti-indecency laws dealing with new forms of technology and with the protection of children. The Protection of Children Against SexualExploitation Act of 1977 prohibits anyone from employing or inducing a minor to participate in sexual conduct or in the making of pornography. In 1988 Congresspassed...
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History of Chemistry - chemistry.
even better distillation apparatus than the Arabs had made and to condense the more volatile products of distillation. Among the important products obtained in thisway were alcohol and the mineral acids: nitric, aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric), sulfuric, and hydrochloric. Many new reactions could be carried outusing these powerful reagents. Word of the Chinese discovery of nitrates and the manufacture of gunpowder also came to the West through the Arabs. The Chinese atfirst use...
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Neandertals.
Neandertals made stone tools by striking flakes from rock “cores.” The cores were carefully selected and prepared so that only a single blow was normally required todetach a flake. A number of relatively standardized flakes were sometimes produced from a single core. These sharp flakes served as “blanks” that were further workedand shaped into the desired tools. Suitable stone was sometimes rare, and often tools were sharpened and resharpened to make new tools, yielding a whole variety ofshapes...
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Space Shuttle - astronomy.
The two SRBs, with their combined thrust of some 26 million newtons (about 5.8 million lb), provide most of the power for the first two minutes of flight. The SRBs takethe space shuttle to an altitude of 45 km (28 mi) and a speed of 4,973 km/h (3,094 mph) before they separate and fall back into the ocean to be retrieved,refurbished, and prepared for another flight. After the boosters fall away, the three main engines continue to provide thrust. These engines are clustered at the rear end of the...