132 résultats pour "factor"
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Environment.
escape into space of the infrared energy radiated back out by Earth. This process is referred to as the greenhouse effect. These gases, primarily carbon dioxide,methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor, insulate Earth’s surface, helping to maintain warm temperatures. Without these gases, Earth would be a frozen planet with anaverage temperature of about -18°C (about 0°F) instead of a comfortable 15°C (59°F). If the concentration of these gases rises, they trap more heat within theatmosphere, caus...
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Perception (psychology).
A4 Closure According to the law of closure, we prefer complete forms to incomplete forms. Thus, in the drawing below, we mentally close the gaps and perceive a picture of a duck. This tendency allows us to perceive whole objects from incomplete and imperfect forms. A5 Common Fate The law of common fate leads us to group together objects that move in the same direction. In the following illustration, imagine that three of the balls are moving in one direction, and two of the balls are mo...
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Horse Racing.
interested parties claim the same horse at the same price, lots are drawn to determine the winning offer. Knowledgeable owners and trainers may use claiming races toobtain, at bargain prices, horses whose former owners underestimated the potential of their animals. Two other types of contests are match races and walkovers. A match race pits only two horses, almost always that season’s most successful racers, in a head-to-headduel. A walkover occurs when only one horse has not been scratched (w...
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Atlantic Slave Trade.
members of the planters’ society. Through most of the years of the Atlantic trade, prices for Africans remained favorable in relation to the price of the crops theyproduced. They were, thus, the best economic solution for plantation owners seeking inexpensive labor. The Atlantic slave trade began as a trickle in the 1440s and grew slowly through the 17th century. By 1700, 25,000 slaves, on average, were crossing the Atlantic everyyear. After 1700 the trade grew much more rapidly to a peak in the...
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Advertising.
Advertising agencies make money in a variety of ways. When the agency uses the client’s advertising budget to buy time for an ad on the radio or on television or whenit buys space for an ad in a newspaper or magazine, the media outlet allows the agency to keep 15 percent of the cost of the space or the time as a commission. The15 percent commission has become an advertising industry standard and usually accounts for the largest portion of the agency’s income. Agencies also charge clientsfor the...
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Terrorism.
exploitation, ethnic discrimination, and religious persecution. Perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth and political power have led some terrorists to attempt tooverthrow democratically elected governments. To achieve a fairer society, they would replace these governments with socialist or communist regimes. Left-wingterrorist groups of the 1960s and 1970s with such aims included Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and the Weather Underground ( see Weathermen) in the...
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Japan - country.
island’s fertile soils support agriculture and provide the vast majority of Japan’s pasturelands. In addition, Hokkaidō contains coal deposits, and the cold currents off itsshores supply cold-water fish. Winters are long and harsh, so most of Hokkaid ō is lightly settled, housing about 5 percent of Japan’s population on approximately 20 percent of its land area. However,its snowy winters and unspoiled natural beauty attract many skiers and tourists. Hokkaid ō is thought of as Japan’s northern fr...
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Russian Revolutions of 1917 (Histoire) .
as Marxists. They believed that the working class—with its struggles to organize trade unions and to bring about political reforms of benefit to the majority ofpeople—would become the primary force for revolutionary change. The Russian Marxists formed the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1898. By 1903,however, the RSDLP had split into two factions. The faction called the Bolsheviks (from the Russian word for “majority”), led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, favored a more centralized a...
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Evolución humana - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Los cambios genéticos pueden mejorar la capacidad de los organismos para sobrevivir, reproducirse y, en animales, criar a su descendencia. Este proceso se denominaadaptación. Los progenitores transmiten mutaciones genéticas adaptativas a su descendencia y finalmente estos cambios se generalizan en una población —un grupo de organismos de la misma especie que comparten un hábitat local particular. Existen numerosos factores que pueden favorecer nuevas adaptaciones, pero los cambios delentorno d...
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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...
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Child Development.
developmental scientists have studied how cultural values guide the skills and attitudes that children acquire as they mature, and how brain maturation influences thedevelopment of thinking and feeling. For a more detailed discussion of child development theories, see the Theories of Child Development section of this article. III BASIC QUESTIONS A Nature and Nurture Scholars have long debated the relative importance of nature (hereditary influences) and nurture (environmental influences) i...
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Oklahoma - geography.
portion and the Panhandle are classified as a steppe, where precipitation, typically 250 to 500 mm (10 to 20 in), is the controlling characteristic. January is usually the coldest month with an average of about 3°C (38°F) and extremes from -33°C (-27°F), the lowest ever recorded, to 33°C (92°F). Summer arelong and hot with temperatures in the upper 30°s C (lower 100°s F) common from May until September across the state. The growing season varies from less than 180days in the western Panhandle to...
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Oklahoma - USA History.
portion and the Panhandle are classified as a steppe, where precipitation, typically 250 to 500 mm (10 to 20 in), is the controlling characteristic. January is usually the coldest month with an average of about 3°C (38°F) and extremes from -33°C (-27°F), the lowest ever recorded, to 33°C (92°F). Summer arelong and hot with temperatures in the upper 30°s C (lower 100°s F) common from May until September across the state. The growing season varies from less than 180days in the western Panhandle to...
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Relativity
I
INTRODUCTION
Albert Einstein
In 1905 German-born American physicist Albert Einstein published his first paper outlining the theory of relativity.
in calculating very large distances or very large aggregations of matter. As the quantum theory applies to the very small, so the relativity theory applies to the verylarge. Until 1887 no flaw had appeared in the rapidly developing body of classical physics. In that year, the Michelson-Morley experiment, named after the American physicistAlbert Michelson and the American chemist Edward Williams Morley, was performed. It was an attempt to determine the rate of the motion of the earth through t...
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Nutrición humana - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Las proteínas son nutrientes que no se almacenan en el organismo, por lo que es necesario incluirlas en la dieta diaria. La cantidad de proteínas que se debe ingerir cada díadepende de muchos factores, como la edad o el estado de salud. Por lo general, las necesidades proteicas de un adulto sano son aproximadamente 0,8-1 g/kg de peso ydía. Cuando se ingieren proteínas en exceso, lo cual es frecuente en países con dietas ricas en carne, las proteínas sobrantes se descomponen en compuestos product...
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Egypt - country.
Egypt has a wide variety of mineral deposits, some of which, such as gold and red granite, have been exploited since ancient times. The chief mineral resource ofcontemporary value is petroleum, found mainly in the Red Sea coastal region, at Al ‘Alamayn (El ‘Alamein) on the Mediterranean, and on the Sinai Peninsula. Otherminerals include phosphates, manganese, iron ore, and uranium. Natural gas is also extracted. D Plants and Animals The vegetation of Egypt is confined largely to the Nile Delta,...
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Herencia (biología) - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Cromosomas de la mosca de la frutaLos cromosomas de la mosca de la fruta o del vinagre, Drosophila melanogaster, se prestan a la experimentación genética. Son sólo 4pares (frente a los 23 pares de la dotación genética humana); uno de ellos, marcado aquí con las letras X e Y, determina el sexo de lamosca; además, son muy grandes. Thomas Hunt Morgan y sus colaboradores basaron su teoría de la herencia en estudios realizadoscon Drosophila. Observaron que los cromosomas pasaban de los progenitores a...
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Avión - ciencia y tecnologia.
flujo incide en el ala. También es proporcional, para valores medios, a la inclinación del ángulo de ataque del eje de la superficie de sustentación respecto al de la corrientede aire. Para ángulos superiores a 14 grados, la sustentación cambia con rapidez hasta llegar a la pérdida total cuando, por efecto de esos valores, el aire se mueveproduciendo torbellinos en la superficie de las alas. En esta situación se dice que el perfil aerodinámico ha entrado en pérdida. Cuando un avión está mantenie...
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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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Detroit - geography.
of German and Irish immigrants. In the first half of the 20th century, the percentage of foreign-born residents declined, even though many immigrants arrived fromeastern Europe. During World War II (1939-1945), both whites and blacks were attracted from the South to work in the city’s defense industries. In 1950 foreign-bornand black residents each made up about 16 percent of the total population. In the five decades after 1950, the city lost almost half of its population, as many white resident...
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Religion.
By the end of the 19th century, scholars were making religion an object of systematic inquiry. Müller’s comparative approach was adopted in many European andJapanese universities, and as a result the common features of world religions (such as gods, prayer, priesthood, and creation myths) were the subjects of sustainedscholarly investigation. In addition, field anthropologists had begun to compile firsthand accounts of the religions of peoples who previously had been dismissed assavages. The stu...
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New Hampshire - geography.
Washington. D1 Temperature The coldest parts of the state are in the White Mountains and the extreme north. Average January temperatures range from about -11° C (about 12° F) along theCanadian border to about -3° C (about 26° F) along the coast. July temperatures range from about 17° C (about 63° F) in the mountains to about 21° C (about 70° F)in the south. D2 Precipitation Precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year over most of the state. However, the higher peaks of the White Mo...
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New Hampshire - USA History.
Washington. D1 Temperature The coldest parts of the state are in the White Mountains and the extreme north. Average January temperatures range from about -11° C (about 12° F) along theCanadian border to about -3° C (about 26° F) along the coast. July temperatures range from about 17° C (about 63° F) in the mountains to about 21° C (about 70° F)in the south. D2 Precipitation Precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the year over most of the state. However, the higher peaks of the White Mo...
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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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Fredericton - Geography.
As a provincial center for government, forestry, military activities, and agriculture, Fredericton grew from 4400 residents in 1848 to 7117 by 1901. Telegraph lines wereestablished in 1851, telephones in 1888, and radio broadcasts in 1923. Early newspapers included the New Brunswick Reporter (1844-1902) and the Maritime Farmer (1879-1905). After 1850 Fredericton flourished as an industrial town. Sawmills, shipyards, tanneries, boot and shoe factories, carriage shops, iron foundries, brickyard...
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Cáncer (medicina) - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Tumores del aparato reproductor femeninoEl aparato reproductor femenino puede verse afectado por diversas formas tumorales, algunas de ellas de desarrollo maligno. Enparticular, el tumor del cuello uterino representa la primera causa de muerte por tumor en las mujeres, después del cáncer de mama.Los fibromas y tumores de los ovarios suelen tener un pronóstico más favorable. Lo que resulta de fundamental importancia en eltratamiento de estas patologías es la precocidad del diagnóstico y, por tant...
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Ecosistema - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Todos los medios y ecosistemas naturales se enfrentan ahora a una dificultad sin precedentes: la humanidad. El ser humano ha comprimido en unos pocos siglos cambiosque en su ausencia hubiesen exigido miles o millones de años. Las consecuencias de estos cambios están todavía por ver. A continuación se describen los impactos másimportantes de la actividad de los seres humanos sobre los ecosistemas ( véase Impacto ambiental). 4.1 Destrucción y fragmentación de hábitats La influencia más directa...
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Animal Courtship and Mating - biology.
activity. These animals frequently copulate in water, and the penis helps transfer sperm before it is carried away by the currents Ostriches and rheas also contain apenis within the cloaca. Virtually all snakes and lizards display yet another variation of internal fertilization. Located in the tail are two penises, called hemepenes, which are covered by spinesand knobs that help lock it into place during mating. The male uses one hemepene at a time for copulation. Male salamanders secrete large...
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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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Depression (psychology).
IV CAUSES Some depressions seem to come out of the blue, even when things are going well. Others seem to have an obvious cause: a marital conflict, financial difficulty, or somepersonal failure. Yet many people with these problems do not become deeply depressed. Most psychologists believe depression results from an interaction betweenstressful life events and a person’s biological and psychological vulnerabilities. A Biological Factors Depression runs in families. By studying twins, researche...
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Water Pollution.
Cryptosporidium in the water supply of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sickened more than 400,000 people and killed more than 100. H Thermal Pollution Water is often drawn from rivers, lakes, or the ocean for use as a coolant in factories and power plants. The water is usually returned to the source warmer than when itwas taken. Even small temperature changes in a body of water can drive away the fish and other species that were originally present, and attract other species in placeof them. Thermal pol...
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Ice Skating.
cold climate. Competitors for these events are chosen from the best skaters in each participating country, usually through preliminary national competitions. Speedskaters also compete on a World Cup circuit, which pits the world’s best skaters against one another during the year. A Figure Skating The major types of competitive figure skating are individual men’s and women’s competitions, pairs skating, ice dancing, and precision skating. In individualcompetitions a single skater performs requir...
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Indo-Pakistani Wars - History.
wrest Jammu and Kashmīr from India through the use of force. This effort failed as India held its ground, and the war ended in a stalemate after almost two months ofarmed conflict. Although the second war over the territory was shorter than the first, the increased firepower of the two nations resulted in a more deadly war, with atotal of about 6,800 battle casualties. A Events Before the War A number of factors precipitated the second conflict over Jammu and Kashm īr. In the wake of a border w...
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Pan-Africanism.
(in New York City). These congresses were attended by increasing numbers of representatives from the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Severalimportant factors affected the growing popularity of the congresses. First, many delegates were sponsored by international labor movements, which were growing insize and power in the 1920s. A second factor was the growth of the black nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey. The Garvey movement was important in the UnitedStates as a popular ex...
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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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Sexual Harassment.
A person who believes he or she has experienced sexual harassment on the job has a limited period of time in which to file a complaint with the EEOC. After the EEOCinvestigates the matter, it issues a right to sue letter, regardless of its conclusions about the matter. The victim then has 90 days to file a lawsuit against the employer in federal court. If he or she is successful in the lawsuit, the victim can receive up to $300,000 in compensatory damages for each incident of unlawful harassme...
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Flower - biology.
insects. The sepals unfurl as the flower opens and often resemble small green leaves at the flower’s base. In some flowers, the sepals are colorful and work with thepetals to attract pollinators. E Variations in Structure Like virtually all forms in nature, flowers display many variations in their structure. Most flowers have all four whorls—pistil, stamens, petals, and sepals. Botanists callthese complete flowers. But some flowers are incomplete, meaning they lack one or more whorls. Incomplet...
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Nuclear Energy
I
INTRODUCTION
Gundremmingen Nuclear Power Plant, Germany
The first of three boiling-water nuclear reactors at Germany's Gundremmingen plant began operating in 1966 but was
permanently shut down after being decommissioned in 1983.
such as ¯U is induced by the absorption of a neutron as in producing cesium-140, rubidium-93, three neutrons, and 200 MeV, or 3.2 × 10 -11 J (7.7 × 10 -12 cal). A nuclear fission reaction releases 10 million times as much energy as is released in a typical chemical reaction. See Nuclear Chemistry. III NUCLEAR ENERGY FROM FISSION The two key characteristics of nuclear fission important for the practical release of nuclear energy are both evident in equation (2). First, the energy per fiss...
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Supreme Court of Canada.
whether the leave to appeal will be granted and the case heard by the Court. The Court has no specified criteria by which it determines whether to grant leave, and the Court does not give reasons for its decision. The key factor appears to be acase’s degree of national importance. Other factors might include the impact of uncertainty in the challenged law, the case’s appropriateness for developing the law torespond to changing social needs, and the presence of a split decision at the court of ap...
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Estonia - country.
protest the expansion of open-pit phosphorite mining in northeastern Estonia. Their success in stopping the expansion prompted further demonstrations as part of thecountry’s independence movement. Since independence Estonia has taken measures to protect the environment. The government has ratified international agreementsto reduce emissions of hazardous wastes and greenhouse gases, as well as to protect biodiversity, wetlands, and endangered species. Estonians cherish thecountryside, and 31 perc...
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Aboriginal Australians - History.
Until Europeans began to settle in Australia in 1788, the Aboriginal way of life was supported by hunting, gathering, and fishing. Like other hunting and gatheringpeoples, Aboriginal people had an extremely detailed knowledge of their environment, especially plant ecology and animal behavior. The deep connection betweenAboriginal people and the natural world influenced every part of their culture, including their food gathering, tools, trade, religion, art, music, language, and socialorganizatio...
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Banking.
loans, and some commercial loans in addition to checking accounts and time deposits. Credit unions, SLAs, and savings banks help encourage thriftiness by paying interest to consumers who put their money in savings deposits. Consequently, creditunions, SLAs, and savings banks are often referred to as thrift institutions. Of the various types of banks in the United States, commercial banks account for the greatest single source of the financial industry’s assets. In 2000 the 8,528commercial banks...
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Erosión - geografía.
Enclave natural Monument Rocks (Estados Unidos)Con su silueta destacada sobre la ondulada pradera de Kansas, las también conocidas como Pirámides de creta (Chalk Pyramids) seelevan algo más de 20 metros en el valle del río Smoky Hill. Estas singulares formaciones de creta, erosionadas por el viento y elagua, constituyen el primer monumento natural designado en el estado de Kansas y en el país.David Muench/Corbis En la costa, la erosión de acantilados rocosos y playas de arena es el resultado de...
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Intelligence.
education. Teachers had no way of knowing which of the “slow” students had true learning problems and which simply had behavioral problems or poor prior education.In 1904 the French Ministry of Public Instruction asked Binet and others to develop a method to objectively identify children who would have difficulty with formaleducation. Objectivity was important so that conclusions about a child’s potential for learning would not be influenced by any biases of the examiner. The governmenthoped tha...
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Toursim Today
sales of air conditioners are soaring. The output of the disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow," whose screenplay anchored on the theme of global warming has taken great liberties with science, but has reinforced these concerns. The effects of global warming are already being seen with, for example, the withdrawal of some glaciers, rising a few inches of sea level by thermal expansion of water as well as reduction in thickne...
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Sangre - ciencias de la naturaleza.
Leucocito granulosoLos glóbulos blancos presentes en la sangre incluyen los leucocitos granulosos y los no granulosos. Los leucocitos granulososrepresentados aquí son células polimorfonucleares que tienen un aspecto granular, de ahí su nombre común.Andrew Syred/Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc. Las células o glóbulos blancos de la sangre son de dos tipos principales: los granulosos, con núcleo multilobulado, y los no granulosos, que tienen un núcleo redondeado.Los leucocitos granulos...
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Clima - ciencias de la naturaleza.
2 CLIMATOLOGÍA Y ATMÓSFERA La climatología es una ciencia diferente a la meteorología, aunque se basa en sus análisis. La meteorología es la ciencia que estudia los fenómenos atmosféricos (viento,lluvia, aurora boreal, rayo...) y los mecanismos que producen el tiempo atmosférico actual; una de sus finalidades es elaborar pronósticos sobre el tiempo que hará en elfuturo. La climatología estudia la regularidad del tiempo, y se diferencia de la meteorología en que trabaja con datos medios en vez d...
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Barcos menores (diseño y construcción) - ciencia y tecnologia.
Cuando el volumen sumergido del barco ha sido diseñado para cumplir el requisito de que el peso del barco y su contenido sea igual al peso del agua desplazada, ladistribución debe ser establecida de modo apropiado. El peso de un motor fueraborda en la popa de un barco pequeño tiende a hundirlo más por ese extremo (trima a popa). Si esa tendencia no puede ser compensadacolocando un peso equivalente a proa, la realineación deberá obtenerse ensanchando el casco en la zona de popa de tal forma que u...
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Antiguo Egipto - historia.
prolonga hasta el corazón del África septentrional. Los antiguos egipcios distinguieron perfectamente el árido Deshret (“tierra roja”) y el fértil Kemet (“tierra negra”, por elcolor de su suelo aluvial). Sentían el primero, el desierto, como una tierra extraña, a la que solo se aventuraban para la obtención de metales (como el oro), minerales ypiedras preciosas. En cambio, consideraban el valle del Nilo su hogar; en él se sentían seguros y protegidos por una serie de de dioses que, indefectiblem...
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Affirmative Action.
hiring, purchasing, and other government business. In 1998 Washington State voters passed Initiative 200, a measure that banned affirmative action in state and localgovernment hiring, contracting, and education. Around the same time, federal courts began considering lawsuits from white students denied admission to state universities with affirmative action programs. In somecases, the courts have invalidated such programs on the grounds that they promote reverse racial discrimination. For example...