293 résultats pour "based"
- « Life is a self-replicating, evoluing system based on organic chemistry » Qu’est ce qui est vivant ?
- To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird, motion picture about a Southern lawyer who defends a black man in a rape trial, based on a novel by Harper Lee.
- The Godfather The Godfather, box-office hit motion picture about the fortunes of a prominent Mafia family during the 1940s and 1950s, based on a best-selling novel by Mario Puzo.
- Schindler's List Schindler's List, motion picture about a German factory owner who saves a large number of Jewish people from death during the Holocaust, based on Thomas Keneally's book about Oskar Schindler.
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Steven Spielberg
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INTRODUCTION
Steven Spielberg
The imaginative films of Steven Spielberg are known for their technical creativity and memorable characters.
Courtesy of Everett Collection Spielberg teamed up with writer-producer George Lucas in the 1980s to make the action-adventure Indiana Jones film series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Other directorial projects during this period included the science-fiction fantasy E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial , at the time the highest-grossing film ever made; The Color Purple (1985), a drama based on the novel...
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Carbon - chemistry.
Graphite is black and slippery and conducts electricity. In graphite, the atoms form planar, or flat, layers. Each layer is made up of rings containing six carbon atoms.The rings are linked to each other in a structure that resembles the hexagonal mesh of chicken wire. Each atom has three sigma bonds (with 120° between any two ofthe bonds) and belongs to three neighboring rings. The fourth electron of each atom becomes part of an extensive pi bond system. Graphite conducts electricity,because th...
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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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Astronomy - astronomy.
Telescopes may use either lenses or mirrors to gather visible light, permitting direct observation or photographic recording of distant objects. Those that use lenses arecalled refracting telescopes, since they use the property of refraction, or bending, of light ( see Optics: Reflection and Refraction ). The largest refracting telescope is the 40-in (1-m) telescope at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, founded in the late 19th century. Lenses bend different colors of light by d...
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Alphabet
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INTRODUCTION
Bengali Script
India developed a number of different writing systems over the course of its history.
A Pictographic and Ideographic Systems Early systems of writing used pictures to represent things and then to represent the sounds of those things. Pictographic writing, in which a simplified picture of the sunstood for the word sun, was probably the first step toward a written language. Chinese began as a pictographic language. To represent abstract ideas, the Chinese writing system combined pictographs. For example, the pictographs for sun and tree were combined to represent the concept of...
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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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Ukraine - country.
a major hazard, especially to Ukraine’s water supply. The Chernobyl’ complex was finally shut down completely in December 2000, with the financial assistance ofWestern nations. The funds were to pay for the completion of two other nuclear power plants that would produce enough power to make up for the loss of the powersupply from the Chernobyl’ plant. III PEOPLE OF UKRAINE The population of Ukraine was estimated in 2008 at 45,994,287, giving the country a population density of 76 persons per s...
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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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Indian Music
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INTRODUCTION
Classical Dance of South India
The southern Indian kathakali is a dance drama that dates from the 17th century.
Sangita Ratnakara, was written in the 13th century. However, subsequent writers tended to focus on the emotional connotations of individual ragas, associating them with moods, performance times, colors, and deities, and grouping them in terms of families. The modern theoretical system began in the 16th century, when ragasbegan to be classified according to scale—72 in the Karnāṭak system and 10 principal ones in the Hindustani. The 72 mela, as the Karn āṭak scales are called, are derived thro...
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Martial Arts.
These movements are based on stylized renditions of ancient kung fu arm and foot blows. C Tae Kwon Do Tae kwon do (Korean for 'way of hands and feet') was founded in 1955 by a group of masters led by Korean general Choi Hong Hi. It is the national sport and pastimeof Korea and is also popular throughout the world. Often referred to as Korean karate, tae kwon do is reputedly based on ancient Korean and modern Japanesemethods of combat. Basic to tae kwon do are many spectacular kicks, particularl...
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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...
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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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Hong Kong - geography.
higher than China’s average standard of living. In 2006 Hong Kong’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $27,679.20, although much of the wealth isconcentrated into relatively few hands. IV ECONOMY Hong Kong’s position as one of the world’s most important economic centers is based on several factors. It is located midway between Japan and Singapore, and it liesastride the main shipping and air routes of the western Pacific. It also has long served as a major port of entry and trade for...
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Wireless Communications.
were large, heavy units. After the invention of the transistor in 1948, radios shrank in size to small handheld radio transceivers. Public two-way radios with severalfrequency options are widely available as well. Usually limited in range to a few miles, these units are great aids for such mobile professionals as construction workers,film crews, event planners, and security personnel. Simpler two-way radios, called walkie-talkies, have been popular children’s toys for years. Most walkie-talkiesb...
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Orthodox Church.
formally defined by an ecumenical council, as it was in Catholicism, some Orthodox theologians have taught that the act of becoming a monk or the service of burial canalso be sacraments. The sacramental practice of the Orthodox differs in many details from Western customs. Baptism is administered by immersing the child or adult three times under thewater, each time in the name of one of the persons of the Trinity. It is followed immediately by anointment with chrism, a sacred perfumed oil that r...
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Herman Melville
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INTRODUCTION
Herman Melville
These lines (recited by an actor) begin the novel Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville.
short novel Billy Budd in manuscript form. Melville’s death in New York City on September 28, 1891, went virtually unnoticed. None of his books was still in print. VI MELVILLE’S EARLY WORKS With the exception of Mardi , all of Melville’s early books are narratives of maritime adventure based upon his own experiences and on his wide reading. Although London publisher John Murray accepted Typee for his Home and Colonial Library as a strictly factual account of South Seas travel, he was lar...
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Trinidad and Tobago - country.
III PEOPLE The history of Trinidad and Tobago is reflected in the makeup of its population, among the most ethnically diverse in the Caribbean. Blacks of African ancestry andAsians of Indian ancestry each make up about 40 percent of the population. The remainder is mainly of mixed ancestry, although there are also small groups of peopleof Chinese, European, South American, and Middle Eastern descent. The ethnic diversity of Trinidad and Tobago owes its origins to slavery and its abolition. Afr...
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Geology.
terminology. Today the geologic time scale is generally agreed upon and used by scientists around the world, dividing time into eons, eras, periods, and epochs. Everyfew years, the numerical time scale is refined based on new evidence, and geologists publish an update. Geologists use several methods to determine geologic time. These methods include physical stratigraphy, or the placement of events in the order of their occurrence,and biostratigraphy, which uses fossils to determine geologic time...
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Portraiture
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INTRODUCTION
Portraiture, visual representation of individual people, distinguished by references to the subject's character, social position, wealth, or profession.
CaracallaCaracalla is a Roman portrait bust in marble of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, probably done circa ad 215. Theson of Septimius Severus, Caracalla (as he was known) was a brutal man whose qualities come through in this piece withits dramatic realism. The bust, which is now in the Louvre, Paris, evidently served as the inspiration for Michelangelo’sbust of Brutus more than one thousand years later.Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York The first representations of identifiable ind...
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History of Astronomy - astronomy.
Egypt, the Sun was directly overhead at noon. On the same date and time in Alexandria, Egypt, the Sun was about 7 degrees south of zenith. With simple geometryand knowledge of the distance between the two cities, he estimated the circumference of the Earth to be 250,000 stadia. (The stadium was a unit of length, derivedfrom the length of the racetrack in an ancient Greek stadium. We have an approximate idea of how big an ancient Greek stadium was, and based on that approximationEratosthenes was...
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George Frideric Handel
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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...
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Discrimination.
Throughout United States history many other groups have suffered racial or religious discrimination. Since Europeans first came to America, Native Americans havebeen forcibly deprived of their lands and denied civil rights. Congress enacted the Indian Civil Rights Act in 1968, and the federal courts have entertained a number ofsuits designed to restore to Native American tribes ancestral lands and hunting and fishing rights. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics, Jews, and others,have...
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Venus (planet) - astronomy.
level winds circle the planet at 360 km/h (225 mph), making a complete rotation in only four days. These winds are said to super-rotate because they travel muchfaster than the rotation of the planet itself. These high-speed winds cover the planet completely, blowing toward the west at virtually every latitude from equator topole. The motions of descending probes, however, have shown that the bulk of Venus’s tremendously dense atmosphere, closer to the planet’s surface, is almoststagnant. From th...
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William Shakespeare
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INTRODUCTION
William Shakespeare
English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s, is regarded as the greatest
dramatist in the history of English literature.
Avon, Warwickshire, a prosperous town in the English Midlands. Based on this record and on the fact that children in Shakespeare’s time were usually baptized two orthree days after birth, April 23 has traditionally been accepted as his date of birth. The third of eight children, William Shakespeare was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a locally prominent glovemaker and wool merchant, and Mary Arden, thedaughter of a well-to-do landowner in the nearby village of Wilmcote. The young Shakespeare...
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Ancient Egypt.
around 4500 BC. The style and decoration of the pottery found at these sites differ from those of pottery found in Upper Egypt. The northern type eventually fell out of use. Other differences between the peoples in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt include the nature of their architecture and the arrangements for burial of the dead, thelatter perhaps signifying differing religious beliefs. B Unification and Early Dynastic Period By 3500 BC, the settlement of Hierakonpolis, located on the west bank...
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Ancient Egypt - USA History.
around 4500 BC. The style and decoration of the pottery found at these sites differ from those of pottery found in Upper Egypt. The northern type eventually fell out of use. Other differences between the peoples in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt include the nature of their architecture and the arrangements for burial of the dead, thelatter perhaps signifying differing religious beliefs. B Unification and Early Dynastic Period By 3500 BC, the settlement of Hierakonpolis, located on the west bank...
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Cuba - country.
Only two land mammals, the hutia, or cane rat, and the solenodon, a rare insectivore that resembles a rat, are known to be indigenous. The island has numerous batsand nearly 300 kinds of birds, including vultures, wild turkeys, quail, finches, gulls, macaws, parakeets, and hummingbirds. The bee hummingbird of Cuba is thesmallest bird in the world. Among the few reptiles are tortoises, caimans, the Cuban crocodile, and a species of boa that can attain a length of 3.7 m (12 ft). More than700 speci...
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Western Music
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INTRODUCTION
Bizet's Carmen
Georges Bizet's Carmen, first performed in Paris in 1875, was a milestone in the history of French opera.
church ceremonies during the period from the 5th to the 7th century. Roman chant became known as Gregorian chant after Pope Gregory I, the Great, who may havecomposed some of the melodies and who actively encouraged an orderly, ritualized use of music by the church. Because Gregory and later popes preferred Gregorianchant to the varieties that had developed elsewhere in Europe, Gregorian chant eventually superseded most of the others. Gregorian and other chant styles arepreserved in many manuscr...
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Criminal Law.
for rehabilitative treatment for the offender. On the other hand, the goals of punishment may at times conflict. The retributive and deterrence theories call for theinfliction of unpleasant experiences upon the criminal, including harsh prison treatment; but the prison environment may not be conducive to, or may even defeat,rehabilitation. No one theory of punishment addresses all the goals of criminal law. A combination of theories and goals plays a part in the thinking of the legislators who e...
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Mesoamerica.
for cooking. In other regions, the earliest ceramics are more sophisticated technically and aesthetically. At around 1800 BC in the Pacific coastal region of Soconusco (in what is now southeastern Chiapas State, Mexico), the earliest pottery was very complex both in forms and decoration. It seems to have had a social function and beenused primarily for ritual feasting. III MAJOR CIVILIZATIONS Over a period of 3000 years, beginning in about 1500 BC, a number of important cultures emerged in M...
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Uzbekistan - country.
E Environmental Issues The evaporation of the Aral Sea is one of the worst ecological disasters in the world. The Aral has shrunk so much that it now holds only about one-fifth the volume ofwater it held in 1960. The shrinkage is due to irrigation withdrawals from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, a practice that began on a massive scale in the early 1960s aspart of the Soviet Union’s ill-conceived drive to increase cotton yields in Central Asia. Growing cotton in the naturally arid and saline soil...
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Rhythm-and-Blues Music
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INTRODUCTION
Tina Turner
American singer Tina Turner began performing rhythm-and-blues music in a band led by her former husband, Ike Turner,
in the 1960s.
thousands of black Americans migrated from the rural South to Midwest, Northeast, and West Coast cities. In popular music, new styles were created to meet thechanging tastes of this demographic group, leading to the development of the urbane sounds of R&B. The profound sociological changes of the World War II period were accompanied by two significant technological developments: the invention of the electric guitar in thelate 1930s and the discovery of the German-invented tape recorder by the mu...
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Telescope - astronomy.
Observatory). In some telescopes designed in the 1990s, the mirror’s weight has been dramatically reduced by sandwiching a honeycomb pattern of glass ribs between a thin, butrigid, concave mirror and a flat back plate. Engineers have even developed meniscus mirrors—mirrors that are too thin to support their own weight. An adjustableframework supports the meniscus mirror, and servomechanical actuators, controlled by computer, continually adjust the shape of the mirror as it tracks celestial tar...
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Geography - Geography.
Geographers have developed a standard pattern of map symbols for identifying such cultural features as homes, factories, and churches; dams, bridges, and tunnels;railways, highways, and travel routes; and mines, farms, and grazing lands. C Analyzing Geographic Information Techniques that use mathematics or statistics to analyze data are known as quantitative methods. The use of quantitative methods enables geographers to treat a largeamount of data and a large number of variables in an objectiv...
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Women's Rights.
In 1840 Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Upon arrival, however, the women were barred fromparticipating in the conference and forced to sit behind a curtain. This experience of discrimination inspired them to organize the first women’s rights convention. Thisconvention met in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. The Seneca Falls Convention attracted more than 200 women and approximately 40 men. For theconvention,...
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Blacks in Latin America.
Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean the slave population declined at the astonishing rate of 2 to 4 percent a year; thus, by the time slavery was abolished, theoverall slave population in many places was far less than the total number of slaves imported. The British colony of Jamaica, for example, imported more than 600,000slaves during the 18th century; yet, in 1838, the slave population numbered little more than 300,000. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti)imported mo...
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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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Heat (physics)
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INTRODUCTION
Heat Loss from a House
A thermograph shows the large amount of heat lost through a house's windows during winter.
Theoretically, the molecules of a substance would exhibit no activity at the temperature termed absolute zero. See Molecule. III TEMPERATURE SCALES Five different temperature scales are in use today: the Celsius scale, known also as the Centigrade scale, the Fahrenheit scale, the Kelvin scale, the Rankine scale, andthe international thermodynamic temperature scale ( see Thermometer). The Celsius scale, with a freezing point of 0° C and a boiling point of 100° C, is widely used throughout the...
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Exhibitions and Expositions.
A Louisiana Purchase Exposition In 1904, St. Louis, Missouri, organized an exposition in celebration of the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The exposition, which cost about $20 million, attractedalmost 20 million persons and showed a profit of about $25 million. B Panama-Pacific International Exposition The Panama-Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the construction and opening of the Panama Canal. More than $50 millionwas spent on this exposit...
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African Theater
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INTRODUCTION
African Theater, traditional, historical, and contemporary dramatic forms in Africa south of the Sahara.
The period after World War II ended in 1945 led to the struggle for and achievement of independence in many African countries. The new nation-states were oftenestablished along colonial boundaries and power was handed over to a bourgeois class who had been educated in Europe. The epoch-making era of nationalismproduced a number of African playwrights who merged African theatrical traditions with European forms. These plays are still widely performed and read in many partsof the continent. Nigeri...
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African Theater
I
INTRODUCTION
African Theater, traditional, historical, and contemporary dramatic forms in Africa south of the Sahara.
The period after World War II ended in 1945 led to the struggle for and achievement of independence in many African countries. The new nation-states were oftenestablished along colonial boundaries and power was handed over to a bourgeois class who had been educated in Europe. The epoch-making era of nationalismproduced a number of African playwrights who merged African theatrical traditions with European forms. These plays are still widely performed and read in many partsof the continent. Nigeri...
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Business.
The most common form of ownership is a sole proprietorship —that is, a business owned by one individual. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were more than 17 million sole proprietorships in the United States. These businesses have the advantage of being easy to set up and to dissolve because few laws exist to regulatethem. Proprietors, as owners, also maintain direct control of their businesses and own all their profits. On the other hand, owners of proprietorships are personallyrespon...
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Cheetah - biology.
animals such as zebras. Unlike most cats, cheetahs hunt during the day, when lions and hyenas that compete with them for prey are less likely to be active. Still,scientists in Tanzania have observed that cheetahs lose 10 to 13 percent of their kills to lions and hyenas. Alerted by the panic of a gazelle herd or by the circling ofvultures, lions and hyenas close in and easily drive the more timid cheetah away from a fresh kill. A cheetah usually stalks prey to within about 10 m (about 33 ft) and...
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Radioactivity
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INTRODUCTION
Marie Curie
Working with her husband, Pierre Curie, French physicist Marie Curie discovered the radioactive elements polonium and
radium in 1898.
Rutherford when he allowed an alpha-emitting substance to decay near an evacuated thin-glass vessel. The alpha particles were able to penetrate the glass and werethen trapped in the vessel, and within a few days the presence of elemental helium was demonstrated by use of a spectroscope. Beta particles were subsequentlyshown to be electrons, and gamma rays to consist of electromagnetic radiation of the same nature as X rays but of considerably greater energy. A The Nuclear Hypothesis Rutherford...
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United States (Overview) - country.
parts. IV UNITED STATES PEOPLE When Europeans first reached North America in the 1520s, they encountered other people—Native Americans—and they also encountered a new geography. Someimagined they were entering “a howling wilderness”—an environment filled with exotic flora and fauna but sparsely populated. In reality, they found their way to alandmass that was widely settled. But soon after the Europeans’ arrival, the population of the Americas plummeted, largely because Native Americans lacked...
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Relativity - astronomy.
beta, for example, might be as large as 0.5, and the mass of the electron doubled. The mass of a rapidly moving electron could be easily determined by measuring thecurvature produced in its path by a magnetic field; the heavier the electron, the greater its inertia and the less the curvature produced by a given strength of field ( see Magnetism). Experimentation dramatically confirmed Einstein's prediction; the electron increased in mass by exactly the amount he predicted. Thus, the kinetic ener...