1248 résultats pour "soma"

• Wyoming (state) - USA History.

  The basins, which lie in the rain shadow of mountains, are very dry, with an average annual precipitation of about 250 mm (about 10 in) or less; the Great Plains regionhas an annual average of about 380 mm (about 15 in), and the Black Hills region receives slightly more. Thunderstorms and hailstorms are relatively frequent insummer. The annual snowfall ranges from about 500 mm (about 20 in) in the Bighorn Basin to well over 5,100 mm (over 200 in) in the higher mountains, where annualprecipitatio...

• Sri Lanka - country.

  acacias, and orchids are found in many areas. The animal life of Sri Lanka includes 88 species of mammals, 21 of which are threatened with extinction. The Asian elephant, cheetah, leopard, and several species ofmonkey are endangered and officially protected. The island’s many species of primates include the long-tailed langur, toque macaque, and slender loris. Other mammalsinclude the sloth bear, several species of deer, mongoose, and wild boar. Reptiles are numerous, with 144 known species. Som...

• Birding - biology.

  swallows, and rock doves nest on buildings in cities, towns, and farms. The chimney swift has abandoned hollow trees for chimneys as a nest site in urban areas.Mallards and Canada geese—once exclusively wild, migratory species—now live year-round in the open spaces found in city parks and golf courses. Nearly all purplemartins, a songbird species that once used the abandoned nests of woodpeckers or the natural cavities of cliffs or dead trees, now live primarily in structures specificallyconstru...

• Missouri - geography.

  Saint Francois Mountains, at the eastern end of the crest of the dome. Only in these mountains have the sedimentary rocks been sufficiently eroded away so that theunderlying igneous rocks are exposed. They form the rounded, knoblike peaks of an old mountain range. The peaks project, in isolation or in clusters, between 230 and300 m (750 and 1,000 ft) above the surrounding sedimentary basins. One of these knobs, Taum Sauk Mountain, reaches 540 m (1,772 ft) above sea level and is thehighest point...

• Missouri - USA History.

  Saint Francois Mountains, at the eastern end of the crest of the dome. Only in these mountains have the sedimentary rocks been sufficiently eroded away so that theunderlying igneous rocks are exposed. They form the rounded, knoblike peaks of an old mountain range. The peaks project, in isolation or in clusters, between 230 and300 m (750 and 1,000 ft) above the surrounding sedimentary basins. One of these knobs, Taum Sauk Mountain, reaches 540 m (1,772 ft) above sea level and is thehighest point...

• Austria - country.

  Wildlife is generally scarce in Austria. Chamois, deer, and marmot are still present; bear, which were once abundant, are now almost completely absent. Hunting isstrictly regulated to protect the remaining species. F Environmental Issues Industrial emissions, a high volume of tourist traffic, and significant air pollution from other countries—principally the former East Germany, Slovakia, and the CzechRepublic—combine to make acid rain the major environmental problem in Austria. One-quarter of...

• North Carolina - geography.

  The drainage divide in North Carolina follows the Blue Ridge range on the eastern margin of the mountain region. This is called the “Eastern Continental Divide.” West ofthis divide, rivers drain into the Mississippi River through the Tennessee River and other tributaries of the Ohio River. The French Broad, the largest, and the LittleTennessee flow into the Tennessee River. The New River flows into the Kanawha River of West Virginia which in turn flows into the Ohio River. Most of the state’s ri...

• North Carolina - USA History.

  The drainage divide in North Carolina follows the Blue Ridge range on the eastern margin of the mountain region. This is called the “Eastern Continental Divide.” West ofthis divide, rivers drain into the Mississippi River through the Tennessee River and other tributaries of the Ohio River. The French Broad, the largest, and the LittleTennessee flow into the Tennessee River. The New River flows into the Kanawha River of West Virginia which in turn flows into the Ohio River. Most of the state’s ri...

• Cosmology - astronomy.

  In 1917 American scientist Harlow Shapley measured the distance to several groups of stars known as globular clusters. He measured these distances by using amethod developed in 1912 by American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. Leavitt’s method relates distance to variations in brightness of Cepheid variables, a class of starsthat vary periodically in brightness. Shapley’s distance measurements showed that the clusters were centered around a point far from the Sun. The arrangement of theclusters was...

• Feudalism I INTRODUCTION Feudalism, contractual system of political and military relationships existing among members of the nobility in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

  lord”; thus, it was not rebellion for a subvassal to fight against his lord’s lord. In England, however, William the Conqueror and his successors required their vassals’vassals to take oaths of fealty to them. B Duties of a Vassal Military service in the field was basic to feudalism, but it was far from all that the vassal owed to his lord. When the lord had a castle, he might require his vassals togarrison it, a service called castle-guard. The lord also expected his vassals to attend his cour...

• Astrobiology - astronomy.

  water to help reactions along. American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tested part of Oparin and Haldane’s hypothesis in the early 1950s by simulating conditions of the early Earth. In whathas become known as the Miller-Urey experiment, the two scientists connected two flasks with a loop of glass tubing that allowed the gases to pass between the flasks.They filled the upper flask with methane, ammonia, and hydrogen—components thought to have been in the early atmosphere. They filled the...

• Labor Union.

  B The Legal Environment The legal environment, which permits certain types of union activities and prohibits others, also influences the extent of union organization. States with right-to-worklaws have much lower unionization rates than other states. In the United States, the states with the lowest unionization rates are North Carolina, South Carolina, SouthDakota, and Arkansas—states that have right-to-work laws. In 2000 the unionization rate in these states ranged from 4.44 percent to 6.7 per...

• Ice Hockey.

  Each period begins with a face-off at the blue dot at center ice. During the face-off one player from each team lines up at the dot with the stick blade on the ice. After the referee drops the puck, the two players attempt to gain possession of it. Quick hands and strength are essential qualities for players participating in the face-off. Once the puck is dropped, it is in play until an official’s whistle stops it, a goal is scored, or time expires. The team on offense tries to move the puck f...

• Europe .

  D Vegetation Although much of Europe, particularly the west, was originally covered by forest, the vegetation has been transformed by human habitation and the clearing of land.Only in the most northerly mountains and in parts of north central European Russia has the forest cover been relatively unaffected by human activity. On the otherhand, a considerable amount of Europe is covered by woodland that has been planted or has reoccupied cleared lands. The largest vegetation zone in Europe, cuttin...

• Europe - Geography.

  D Vegetation Although much of Europe, particularly the west, was originally covered by forest, the vegetation has been transformed by human habitation and the clearing of land.Only in the most northerly mountains and in parts of north central European Russia has the forest cover been relatively unaffected by human activity. On the otherhand, a considerable amount of Europe is covered by woodland that has been planted or has reoccupied cleared lands. The largest vegetation zone in Europe, cuttin...

• Mythology.

  Across cultures, mythologies tend to describe similar characters. A common character is the trickster. The trickster is recklessly bold and even immoral, but through hisinventiveness he often helps human beings. In Greek mythology, Hermes (best known as the messenger of the gods) was a famous trickster. In one version of acharacteristic tale, Hermes, while still an infant, stole the cattle of his half-brother Apollo. To avoid leaving a trail that could be followed, Hermes made shoes from thebark...

• Republican Party.

  the reaction to the depression that the Republican Party controlled Congress for only 4 of the 48 years between 1932 and 1980. The Republicans did win the presidencyfour times during that period—in 1952, 1956, 1968, and 1972—when the Democratic Party split or when some unusual combination of circumstances occurred. Fromthe 1930s through the 1970s, however, the Democratic Party was the dominant party in the United States. The response of the Republicans to this new situation was confusion, anger,...

• Molecule - chemistry.

  attracted to the negatively charged electrons between them. The electrons belong to the molecule as a whole. However, each hydrogen atom now has a complete outershell of two electrons. The formula H 2 describes a hydrogen molecule, a discrete unit. When a molecule contains just two atoms, such as the hydrogen molecule does, it is called a diatomic molecule. Some atoms can form covalent bonds with more than one other atom and thus create a larger molecule. Atoms form molecules with covalent bo...

• Supernova - astronomy.

  The term hypernova has been proposed for an extremely massive core-collapse supernova—possibly more than 100 times the mass of the Sun. A hypernova is thought to form a black hole. Just before it explodes, a hypernova may release a huge burst of gamma rays in a jet from the rotating black hole at its center. These jets mayexplain the so-called long gamma-ray bursts detected by astronomers. According to some researchers, massive stars with over 40 solar masses may sometimescollapse directly int...

• Artificial Intelligence.

  Work in AI has primarily focused on two broad areas: developing logic-based systems that perform common-sense and expert reasoning, and using cognitive andbiological models to simulate and explain the information-processing capabilities of the human brain. In general, work in AI can be categorized within three research anddevelopment types: symbolic, connectionist, and evolutionary. Each has characteristic strengths and weaknesses. A Symbolic AI Symbolic AI is based in logic. It uses sequences...

• Extreme Sports.

  racing events are the Raid Gauloises and the Eco-Challenge. Created in 1989 by French journalist Gerard Fusil, the Raid Gauloises is a grueling two-week adventure racein which five-person teams cross rugged and remote terrain. The inaugural Raid was held in New Zealand, and subsequent races have been staged in Costa Rica,Madagascar, Borneo, and Chile. The race has five separate stages designed to fit each location’s unique terrain. Stages may require horseback riding, white-waterpaddling, mounta...

• Telecommunications.

  commonly referred to as wireless communications, use technologies such as cordless telephones, cellular radio telephones, pagers, and satellites. Wirelesscommunications offer increased mobility and flexibility. In the future some experts believe that wireless devices will also offer high-speed Internet access. C Wires and Cables Wires and cables were the original medium for telecommunications and are still the primary means for telephone connections. Wireline transmission evolved fromtelegraph...

• Inuit.

  VII HOUSING, TRANSPORTATION, AND CLOTHING Inuit homes are of two kinds: walrus or sealskin tents for summer and huts or houses for winter. Winter houses are usually made of stone, with a driftwood orwhalebone frame, chinked and covered with moss or sod. The entrance is a long, narrow passage just high enough to admit a person crawling on hands and knees.During long journeys some Canadian Inuit build igloos, winter houses of snow blocks piled in a dome shape (the term igloo comes from the I...

• Folktales I INTRODUCTION "Little Red Riding Hood" The popular children's story "Little Red Riding

  seemed important to them. Thus, the Grimms postulated a common Indo-European origin for folktales, and the German philologist Theodor Benfey as well as theScottish writer William Clouston believed that stories diffused by way of travelers migrating east and west from India. Such theories, however, have proven incompleteand inadequate. Nevertheless, the research of these and other scholars greatly stimulated interest in folklore and folktales. The German scholar Max Muller held thatmyths originat...

• Hazardous Wastes.

  A Source Reduction The best way to eliminate hazardous wastes is not to generate them in the first place. For example, improvements have been made in the production of integratedcircuits: The toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons commonly used in the 1970s were replaced in the 1980s by less toxic glycol ethers and in the 1990s by low-toxicity estersand alcohols. B Recycling Recycling is the recovery or reuse of usable materials from waste. About 5 percent of hazardous waste in the United States is re...

• Frogs and Toads.

  Frogs and toads are disappearing in many parts of the world. One reason for their disappearance is thatpeople are clearing land and destroying places where frogs and toads live. However, some frogs andtoads seem to disappear for no reason. The golden toad of Costa Rica and the gastric brooding frog ofAustralia have become extinct. Both animals lived in wilderness areas. Some frogs with abnormal bodies have been discovered. Scientists worry that pollution is harming thesefrogs. To help frogs, som...

• Puzzle.

  Visual puzzles involve searching a picture to find hidden or disguised figures or answering a question about some part of a visual illusion. For instance, the popular 19th- century prints of American lithographic company Currier & Ives featured hidden people, animals, and other objects. A 16th-century painting from Bukhara, Uzbekistan,of a camel includes hidden figures of 17 people, 10 rabbits, a monkey, and a dragon (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). B Mathematical Puzzles and Logic...

• Assyria - USA History.

  villages and cities were ransacked and razed, but no attempt was made to annex their territories. In the course of time this pattern of conquest changed, and the Assyrian rulers began to make Assyria the center of a new empire by incorporating the conquered landsinto their domain, although probably not according to a conscious plan. Toward the end of the 10th century BC, for example, Adad-nirari II annexed the Aramaean state centering on Nisibis, east of the Habur River. His son, Tukulti-Ninurt...

• Excerpt from Bleak House - anthology.

  patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does notoften give—the warning, 'Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!' Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel who are never inany cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? There is the registrar below...

• Excerpt from Martin Chuzzlewit - anthology.

  But there is one other piece of evidence, bearing immediate reference to their close connextion with this memorable event in English History, which must carryconviction, even to a mind (if such a mind there be) remaining unconvinced by these presumptive proofs. There was, within a few years, in the possession of a highly respectable and in every way credible and unimpeachable member of the Chuzzlewit Family (for hisbitterest enemy never dared to hint at his being otherwise than a wealthy man...

• Marketing.

  Where advertising reaches a mass audience, personal or direct selling focuses on one customer at a time. That kind of individual attention makes direct sellingexpensive, but it also makes it effective. As the costs of personal selling have risen, the utilization of salespeople has changed. Simple transactions are completed byclerks. Salespeople are now used primarily where the products are complex and require detailed explanation, customized application, or careful negotiation over priceand paym...

• Animal Behavior - biology.

  The first motor program analyzed in much detail was the egg-rolling response of geese. When a goose sees an egg outside its nest, it stares at the egg, stretches itsneck until its bill is just on the other side of the egg, and then gently rolls the egg back into the nest. At first glance this seems a thoughtful and intelligent piece ofbehavior, but it is a mechanical motor program; almost any smooth, rounded object (the sign stimulus) will release the response. Furthermore, removal of the egg on...

• George Frideric Handel I INTRODUCTION Handel's Water Music In addition to his popular operas and oratorios, German-born composer George Frideric Handel wrote music in the 1700s for the church and for royal celebrations.

  During the 1720s and 1730s Handel worked primarily as a composer and producer of operas for the London stage. This extremely productive phase of his career beganwith the opening of the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1719. The Royal Academy was founded with the support of the king and aristocratic subscribers for theproduction of Italian operas. Its directors sent Handel to continental Europe to hire some of the world’s greatest singers. Handel was not the only composer writingoperas for Aca...

• 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...

• Roman Empire - history.

  the master of Rome. Three years later the Senate proclaimed him Augustus, the supreme ruler. III THE EMPIRE UNDER AUGUSTUS Roman Emperor AugustusAugustus, the first Roman emperor, brought peace, order, and prosperity to Rome after the civil wars that followed the assassinationof Roman leader Julius Caesar. Caesar had adopted the young Octavian, later known as Augustus, as his heir. After a victory overMark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, Augustus had absolute power over the entire Roman Empire....

• Bolivia - country.

  E Plants and Animals Because of the wide variations in elevation, plant and animal species of nearly every climatic zone are found in Bolivia. A coarse grass, called ichu, grows on the largelybarren high plateau in the west. Para rubber trees, more than 2,000 species of hardwood trees, and vanilla, sarsaparilla, and saffron plants are common in the tropicalforests of the east. The llama, found chiefly on the Altiplano, is an efficient beast of burden. Alpacas and vicuñas also inhabit the platea...

• Monkeys.

  Female monkeys usually give birth to only one baby at a time. The baby stays with its mother while itfeeds on her milk. In many species, the females stay with their mother’s family group for life. Malesoften leave their mother’s family group when they grow up. Compared to other animals, monkeys live a long time. It’s hard to know how long a monkey in the wildwill live. But some monkeys in zoos have lived to be more than 50 years old. WHAT DO MONKEYS EAT? What a monkey eats depends on the size of...

• Shrimp - biology.

  shrimp have a maximum length of about 20 cm (8 in). On the West Coast, the Franciscan Bay shrimp is caught commercially. Freshwater shrimp are most common in warm parts of the world. They include river shrimp, edible shrimp that are trapped or farmed in the tropics, and also all trueshrimp that have become adapted for life in caves. Cave shrimp are typically pale, with vestigial (nonfunctioning) eyes, and they find their way mainly by touch. Decapod shrimp also include animals that are rarely ea...

• Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam - anthology.

  That just divides the desert from the sown,Where name of Slave and Sultán is forgot—And Peace to Mahmúd on his golden Throne! 12A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! 13Some for the Glories of This World; and someSigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! 14Look to the blowing Rose about us—”Lo,Laughing,” she say...

• 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...

• Monkey (animal) - biology.

  traveling in troops, often take turns acting as sentinel, making specific alarm calls to alert their companions to approaching danger. In trees, monkeys have other waysof outwitting their enemies. Capuchins, for example, sometimes fend off inquisitive predators by urinating on them from high above or by jumping up and down tomake dead branches fall on the predators. Most monkeys can breed at any time of the year, so their troops often contain young of many different ages. Courtship is typically...

• Native American Art I INTRODUCTION Native American Art, the visual works crafted by indigenous people of North America, starting after their arrival on the continent thousands of years ago and continuing until the present.

  artists in the Ohio area cut delicate flat forms from sheets of mica in the shape of birds, human figures, and large hands. They also carved quite natural-looking birdsand animals on stone platform pipes. These figures sat on the pipe’s flat base, or platform, and on some pipes they were part of the pipe bowl. Prominent people ofthese cultures were buried with a wealth of ornaments, such as jewelry of shells and copper, and headdresses elaborated with animal forms. The period of Mississippian cu...

• Concepts

  suggested that concept possession need not consist in knowing a definition, but in appreciating the role of a concept in thought and practice. Moreover, he claimed, a concept need not apply to things by virtue of some closed set of features captured by a definition, but rather by virtue of ‘family resemblances' among the things, a suggestion that has given rise in psychology to ‘prototype' theories of concepts. Most traditional approaches to possession conditions have been concerned with t...

• Bird. I INTRODUCTION Bird, animal with feathers and wings. Birds are the only

  B Physical Adaptations for Flight The internal body parts of all birds, including flightless ones, reflect the evolution of birds as flying creatures. Birds have lightweight skeletons in which many of themajor bones are hollow. A unique feature of birds is the furculum, or wishbone, which is comparable to the collarbones of humans, although in birds the left and rightportions are fused together. The furculum absorbs the shock of wing motion and acts as a spring to help birds breathe while they...

• Bird - biology.

  B Physical Adaptations for Flight The internal body parts of all birds, including flightless ones, reflect the evolution of birds as flying creatures. Birds have lightweight skeletons in which many of themajor bones are hollow. A unique feature of birds is the furculum, or wishbone, which is comparable to the collarbones of humans, although in birds the left and rightportions are fused together. The furculum absorbs the shock of wing motion and acts as a spring to help birds breathe while they...

• Cloning - biology.

  found that such embryo cells are totipotent (able to give rise to all the different cell types in the body). Exploiting this characteristic, scientists developed three techniques to clone embryo cells: blastomere separation, blastocyst division, and somatic cell nuclear transfer. A Blastomere Separation In blastomere separation, scientists fertilize an egg cell with a sperm cell in a laboratory dish. The resulting embryo is allowed to divide until it forms a mass of aboutfour cells. Scientist...

• Ecosystem.

  work. The tiny bacteria and fungi feed upon the remains of the salmon. They break down the salmon intochemical nutrients. Nutrients from the salmon go into the soil. The roots of plants along the riverbank take up the nutrients. They use the nutrients to make food. Inthis way, nutrients get recycled back through the ecosystem. WHAT CAN HARM AN ECOSYSTEM? Any change in one living or nonliving part of an ecosystem can cause changes in other parts. Droughts,storms, and fires can change ecosystems....

• Dance I INTRODUCTION Dance Archive Films/BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc.

  features in its dance styles. The ordinary potential of the body can be expanded in dance, usually through long periods of specialized training. In ballet, for example, the dancer exercises to rotate,or turn out, the legs at the hips, making it possible to lift the leg high in an arabesque. In India, some dancers learn to choreograph their eyeballs and eyebrows.Costuming can extend the body's capabilities. Toe or pointe shoes, stilts, and flying harnesses are a few of the artificial aids employe...

• Collectibles and Collecting.

  common blond and thus commands a higher price. If there are different variations to a collectible, the least common one is usually worth more. Often there areinteresting stories behind rarities, such as the highly sought-after 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. At that time tobacco companies manufactured and distributedbaseball cards, and when the antitobacco Wagner complained, his card was pulled from production. Very few copies in good condition have ever been found. C Age Age is often an indic...

• Excerpt from Hard Times - anthology.

  Mr Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabularstatements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short it was the onlyclear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; thatthey were restless,...