title: Guan Gong

paragraphs: Guan Gong, also known as Guan Yu or Guan Yun Chang (160 – 219) was a general who lived close to two thousand years ago in China. He helped his sworn brother Liu Bei to fight against the dynasty of Wei that seized the throne from the last Han-Emperor. He was also the sworn brother of Zhang Fei, another warrior of Liu Bei's.

paragraphs: The Three Brothers conquered the Southwest of China and founded a Dynasty named Shu Han (because Liu Bei claimed to be the rightful heir of the Han Dynasty). They also battled with Eastern Wu, another Chinese dynasty at this time, and during one of the battles, Guan Yu was captured by the Wu general Lü Meng and executed (along with his son Guan Ping).

paragraphs: In later centuries, Guan Yu became a Chinese deity and was given the name Guan Gong, meaning "Lord Guan".


title: Subsistence farming

paragraphs: Subsistence farming is the kind of farming done by farmers who have small plots, enough only for themselves. Literally, subsistence agriculture means no extra food is produced to sell or trade. This means farming doesn't give them money to buy things. However, today most subsistence farmers also do trade to some degree. From time to time they may need money to buy essential things to keep going.

paragraphs: Subsistence farming may also mean shifting farming or nomadic herding (see nomadic people).


title: River Clyde

paragraphs: The River Clyde (, ) is a river in Scotland. It flows through Glasgow before opening up into the Firth of Clyde.


title: Electric charge

paragraphs: Electric charge is a basic property of electrons, protons and other subatomic particles. Electrons are negatively charged while protons are positively charged. Things that are negatively charged and things that are positively charged pull on (attract) each other. This makes electrons and protons stick together to form atoms. Things that have the same charge push each other away (they "repel" each other). This is called the "Law of Charges". It was discovered by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb. The law that describes how strongly charges pull and push on each other is called Coulomb's Law.

paragraphs: Things that have equal numbers of electrons and protons are "neutral". Things that have more electrons than protons are negatively charged, while things with fewer electrons than protons are positively charged. Things with the same charge repel each other. Things that have different charges attract each other. If possible, the one with too many electrons will give enough electrons to match the number of protons in the one that has too many protons for its load of electrons. If there are just enough electrons to match the extra protons, then the two things will not attract each other anymore. When electrons move from a place where there are too many to a place where there are too few, that is called an electrical current.

paragraphs: When a person shuffles their feet on a carpet and then touches a brass doorknob, they may get an electrical shock. If there are enough extra electrons then the force with which those electrons push each other away may be enough to make some of the electrons jump across a gap between the person and the doorknob. The length of the spark is a measure of voltage or "electrical pressure." The number of electrons that move from one place to another per unit of time measured as amperage or "rate of electron flow."

paragraphs: If a person gets a positive or negative charge, it may make the person's hairs stand up because the charges in each hair push it away from the others.

paragraphs: Electric charge felt when one gets a shock from a doorknob or other object usually is between 25 thousand and 30 thousand volts. However, the electric current only flows briefly, so the flow of electrons through the person's body does not cause physical harm. On the other hand, when clouds gain electrical charges they have even higher voltages and the amperage (the number of electrons that will flow in the lightning strike) can be very high. That means that electrons can jump from a cloud to the earth (or from the earth to a cloud). If those electrons go through a person, then the electric shock can FUCK YOU

paragraphs: The following experiment is described by James Clerk Maxwell in his work "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" (1873). Normally, glass and resin are both neutrally charged. However, if they are rubbed together and then separated, they will become able to attract each other.

paragraphs: If a second piece of glass is rubbed with a second piece of resin, the following things will be seen:

paragraphs: If a charged and an uncharged object are brought together, attraction will be very weak.

paragraphs: Bodies that are able to attract or repel things in this way are said to be 'electrified', or to be 'charged with electricity'. When two different substances are rubbed together, an electrical charge is produced because one of them will give electrons to the other. The reason is that the atoms in the two substances have unequal power to attract electrons. So the one that is more able to attract electrons will take electrons from the one that has a lower attractive force. If glass is rubbed against something else, it may either give or take electrons. What happens depends on what the other thing is.

paragraphs: Things that have taken electrons are called "negatively charged", and things that have given up electrons are called "positively charged". There is no special reason for these names. It is just an arbitrary (random choice) convention (agreement).

paragraphs: Besides being electrified by friction, bodies may be electrified in many other ways.


title: Argyroxiphium

paragraphs: Argyroxiphium is a small genus of plants in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. Its members are known by the common names of silversword or greensword due to their long, narrow leaves and the silvery hairs on some species.

paragraphs: The Silversword plant grows only at high elevations on the Island of Maui in Hawaii.

paragraphs: The silversword is a noticeable, round-shaped rosette plant with rigid (swordlike), succulent leaves densely covered by silver hairs. When a plant flowers at the end of its life, it produces a spectacular flowering stalk 0.5-2.0 m (1.6-6.4 ft) tall, typically with hundreds of maroon sunflowerlike flower heads. This plant receives more attention from visitors to Haleakala National Park than any other plant or animal because of its striking appearance and restricted distribution.

paragraphs: The strikingly beautiful Haleakala silversword has always aroused the curiosity of human visitors to Haleakala Volcano. In pre-park days, plants were often removed by travelers to Haleakala Volcano as proof that the party had reached the summit, a practice that eventually seriously affected the silversword population. Browsing by feral goats and domestic cattle was also a significant factor in the silversword decline, but it was not a species preferred by these animals. By the 1920s, silversword numbers were so depleted that the Maui Chamber of Commerce sent a petition to Washington, DC, requesting that a serious effort be made to save the species (Loope and Crivellone 1986).


title: Mr. Pacman

paragraphs: Mr. Pacman is an American pop music band from Colorado. They use sounds from old video games to create their music. Mr. Pacman has recorded 2 CDs & made 4 music videos.


title: Music video

paragraphs: A music video or music clip is a short movie that represents a song on a television screen. Most music videos feature the artist who recorded the song singing or lip-syncing it on screen. TV network channels that are famous for playing music videos are MTV, VH1, BET, and CMT.

paragraphs: In most countries in East Asia, music videos are called PVs. PV stands for "Promotional Video."


title: Hip hop

paragraphs: Hip hop is a type of culture/art style that started in the 1970s in the Bronx. It began in Jamaican American, African American, and stateside Puerto Rican urban areas in some of the larger cities of the United States. Hip hop uses rapping, where the rapper or group chants or says words with a rhythm that rhymes. The lyrics of hip hop songs are often about the life of urban people in the big cities. Some hip hop song lyrics are about gangs, violence, crime, strippers, partying, money, sex and illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, promethazine, xanax, percocets, ecstasy and molly. Hip hop music also uses musical styles from pop music such as disco and reggae. Rap and hip hop music have become successful music genres.

paragraphs: Hip hop as a culture involves the music as well as a style of dressing called "urban" clothes (baggy pants, Timberland leather work boots, and oversize shirts); a dancing style called breakdancing or "B-boying"; and graffiti, a street art in which people paint pictures or words on walls. In the 2000s, hip hop music and hip hop culture are very popular in the United States and Canada. Hip hop musicians usually use nicknames. Many of the popular hip hop musicians from the 2000s use nicknames, such as Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lil' Wayne, and 50 Cent. Cities that produce the most hip hop are New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston and Memphis. Despite most rappers being of African American or black descent, hip hop’s audience is mostly white. 60% of rap buyer are suburban, middle-class White Americans. Hip hop culture was banned in China in 2018.

paragraphs: Rapping is a form of singing. It is a mix between singing and talking. The words are spoken with rhythm and in the text there are rhymes. The urban youth made rhyming games based on rap. The beat in the background is a simple loop that is sometimes made by the rapper themself or sometimes copied from a sample CD. The simple loop carries out through the entire song usually, except for the chorus. It developed in the ethnic minority urban (city) areas, as an American form of Jamaican "toasting" (chanting and rhyming with a microphone).

paragraphs: Run DMC and The Sugarhill Gang were early popular hip hop groups in the 1980s. When rappers began to use violent language and gestures, the music was then liked by gangsters. This kind of music was called "gangsta rap". Gangsta rap often has lyrics which are about guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the street. This genre also began in the 1980s and is still produced.

paragraphs: Some well known early rappers include: Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, The Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, and Sean "P-Diddy" Combs. During the 1990s there was a rivalry between the two big record labels "Death Row Records" and "Bad Boy Records". The rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were murdered. Later, the two record labels stopped the rivalry. Because most of the rappers who rapped for "Death Row Records" were from the West Coast of the US and most of the rappers who rapped for "Bad Boy Records" were from the East Coast, this rivalry was called "the West Coast – East Coast beef".

paragraphs: More modern rappers include Lil Wayne, 50-Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z, Nas, Drake, Travis Scott, Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Tyga, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, Big Sean and Kanye West. The top selling hip hop artists of all time are Eminem, Drake, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida and Tupac Shakur. Rap is now produced in almost every nation of the world. Hip hop emerged in the 1980s and the 1990s in African countries like Burkina Faso, Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

paragraphs: The fastest rapper according to Guinness World Records is Twista. In 1992, he rapped 11 syllables in one second. In 2013, the song Rap God by Eminem took the record for most words in a song; 1,560 in a little over 6 minutes, which is about 4 words per second.


title: Color blindness

paragraphs: People with color blindness cannot tell the difference between certain colors. They may not see colors at all.

paragraphs: Most color blindness is heritable, usually as simple Mendelian inheritance. Sometimes, it is the result of damage to the eyes, nerves, or the brain. It can be caused by coming into contact with certain chemicals.

paragraphs: Most color blindness is permanent. Some conditions can lead to temporary color blindness. During certain kinds of migraine, some people are unable to tell the difference between certain colors. There is no treatment cure for permanent color blindness.

paragraphs: Many more males are color blind than females. Between five and eight percent of males, but less than one percent of females, are color blind.

paragraphs: Color blindness is usually thought of as a disability. However, people who are color blind have one advantage: they are sometimes better at seeing through some types of camouflage.

paragraphs: In 1798, English chemist John Dalton published the first scientific article about color blindness. That was after he found out that he was color blind. The article was called "Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours". Because of this, the condition is sometimes called "daltonism". As of 2009, the word "daltonism" is used only for the type of color blindness called deuteranopia.

paragraphs: There are three steps in the process of telling the difference between colors:

paragraphs: Inside the human eye is a part called the retina. The retina receives the images that the eye sees. It sends the images to the brain. The retina has two types of cells: Rod cells and Cone cells. They work in different types of light.

paragraphs: Parts of the thalamus and the visual cortex in the brain are involved in "seeing", also seeing colors. Color blindness can therefore also result if these areas of the brain, the optic nerve or the retina have been damaged. These types of color blindness usually happen because of an accident. They are not inherited. Inherited forms of color blindness affect the retina only.

paragraphs: That way it is possible that only a part of the visual field is affected by color blindness, but in the rest, there is no color blindness.

paragraphs: Some types of color blindness, but not inherited color blindness, can be cured.

paragraphs: There are several different problems that can cause color blindness.

paragraphs: This condition is very rare. People who suffer from it can only see in black, gray and white: They can perceive only differences in "brightness" and do not see "color". This is called "monochromacy".

paragraphs: There are two main types of total color blindness:

paragraphs: There are two kinds of red-green color blindness: protanopia or deuteranopia. Deuteranopia is the most common form of color blindness; between five and ten percent of males suffer from it. It is called Daltonism because John Dalton discovered it. Those affected have trouble telling the difference between red and green. As seen by protanopes (people suffering from protanopia), red is darkened. Most often, this is because they lack the receptors for long (protanopia) or medium (deuteranopia)-length light waves or because these receptors have changed their sensitivity.

paragraphs: Although the name is blue-yellow color blindness (tritanopia), people affected by this type of color blindness can usually tell the difference between blue and yellow. Instead they cannot tell the difference between blue and green, and also yellow and violet. It is different from the other types of color blindness because it is not linked to sex. It is equally possible for anyone to develop blue-yellow color blindness. It is caused by having few or no cones in the retina which can sense short wavelength light.

paragraphs: Sometimes, people do not have problems seeing color, but their brain has trouble "telling" the color, and interprets it wrong. It is also possible that only certain parts of the eye have color blindness; people may become color blind because of other diseases, but after the disease goes away, see normally again. This seems to be the case with certain forms of migraine.

paragraphs: Males have one X and one Y chromosome; females have two X chromosomes. Many of the genes involved in making color vision work are on the X chromosome: they are sex linked. For this reason, men are more often affected by color blindness than women.

paragraphs: The "color blind" gene allows non-color blind people see the difference between red and green. The gene is located on the X chromosome. This means that a male will be color blind if the single X he inherits from his mother contains the color blind version of the "color blind" gene. A female will inherit color blindness only if she inherits two X chromosomes containing defective (mutant) color gene alleles. In other words, a female needs to inherit "color blind" genes from both parents in order to be color blind.

paragraphs: The Ishihara plate test has been in use since 1917. Each plate has an image with dots of different size and color. People will then "see" different images (most often Arabic numbers). Those with certain types of color blindness will see different numbers from those not affected by color blindness.

paragraphs: Because many young children have not learned numbers yet, other tests have been developed. They use symbols, like a square, a circle or a car instead of numbers.

paragraphs: A color code is when there is much information in the color of certain item. Such codes cannot be understood easily by those who are color blind. For this reason, color should not be used alone to give information. Good graphic design avoids using color coding or color differences alone to give information. This does not only help color blind people, but also normally sighted people.

paragraphs: Cascading Style Sheets can be used on web pages. They allow to give a different color scheme for color blind people. Certain color scheme generators help graphic designers see color schemes as eight types of color blind people see them.

paragraphs: Color blindness is very sensitive to changes in material. A red-green color blind person may be unable to see the difference between colors on a map printed on paper. The same map on a computer screen or television may appear normally. In addition, some color blind people find it easier to tell the difference between colors on artificial materials, such as plastic or in acrylic paints, than on natural materials, such as paper or wood. Thirdly, for some color blind people, color can only be distinguished if there is enough color: thin lines might appear black, but a thicker line of the same color can be seen in the correct color.

paragraphs: In certain cases when it is important to understand information very quickly, the visual system may drop the colors, and only work in shades of gray. This is important to know when designing the interfaces for objects that need to be used in an emergency situation, like emergency brakes, or emergency telephones.

paragraphs: Because color blind people may not see the difference between colors such as red and green, some countries, such as Romania have refused to give them driving licenses. In Romania, people have started to change the laws so that color blind people will also be able to drive legally.

paragraphs: In the United Kingdom, electricity wires in houses used to be red, black and green. They were changed to brown, blue and green/yellow to help color blind people see the difference between the "live" and "earth" wires.

paragraphs: Many people do not understand color blindness. People who are color blind never swap the colors they are blind to. They may have trouble telling two colors from one another. That way they may have a problem finding the right kind of apple in the supermarket. The image below first shows the way that two apples look to a person with normal vision, and then the way it looks to a person with red-green color blindness. The left apple is a "Braeburn"; it is red in color. The apple on the right is a "Granny Smith"; it is green. To someone with red-green blindness, the apples look like they are almost the same color.


title: Sopron

paragraphs: Sopron is a city of Hungary, near the western border of Hungary with Austria, at the foot of the Alps, 60 km from Vienna (in Austria) and 220 km from Budapest. The people of this city are famous for their loyalty to their country, and their hometown. A famous monument is 'Gate of Faith' which is the symbol of the people's faith to Hungary in 1921.

paragraphs: At the time of the Roman Empire, there was a city here called Scarbantia. The main square of Sopron is in the same place as the forum (or main square) of Roman times.

paragraphs: After this, the city was probably deserted. When the Hungarians arrived in the area, it was in ruins. In the 9th–11th centuries Hungarians strengthened the old Roman city walls and built a castle. The town got its Hungarian name of Sopron from a steward of the castle named Suprun. By 1153 it was an important town.

paragraphs: In 1273 King Otakar II of Bohemia took over the castle and took the children of Sopron's noble families as hostage. But the people of the city opened the gates when the army of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary arrived. The King Ladislaus made Sopron a free royal town.

paragraphs: In 1528 Hungary was invaded by Ottoman Turks who destroyed many parts of the city but did not take it over. Many people from other towns fled to Sopron for safety.

paragraphs: In 1676 most of the ancient buildings in the city were destroyed by a fire. When they were replaced, they were in a new style, called Baroque. Many of the Baroque buildings are standing today.

paragraphs: Sopron was an important town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the World War I it became part of Austria. But the townspeople were not happy with this and in December 1921 they voted that the city should be part of Hungary. Since that day the city has been called "Civitas Fidelissima", ("The Most Loyal Town" which in Hungarian is "A Leghűségesebb Város"). A holiday is held every year to celebrate.

paragraphs: In World War II Sopron suffered badly. It was bombed several times. There were many Jewish people living in Sopron before the war. The Nazis and their Hungarian allies sent the Jews of Sopron to death camps and killed nearly all of them, as well as other people who disagreed with Nazi ideas.

paragraphs: The Soviet Red Army captured the city on April 1, 1945. Sopron, as part of Hungary, was ruled by a Socialist government. At this time many factories were built around Sopron. The Socialist government took away a lot of the freedom that people had. In August 1989, in Sopron there was a big protest against the Socialist government, which was called the "Pan-European Picnic". While this was happening more than 200 people who lived in East Germany (which was Socialist) escaped to the West. This was the beginning of a big change for all the Socialist countries of Europe. People who had not been allowed to travel or live in other countries were finally allowed to be free.

paragraphs: Hungary is now part of the European Union. Sopron now has trade with other countries, most importantly Austria. There are many German-speaking people who live in Sopron so most street signs are written in both Hungarian and German.

paragraphs: The city of Sopron shows signs of its long history in its buildings. There are still walls and foundations from the Ancient Roman times and also building from the Middle Ages. The medieval Kecske Church ("Goat Church") was where coronations (crowning kings) and parliament took place. There is also a very old Jewish synagogue.

paragraphs: Many old buildings whose architecture are from the 1600s and 1700s and are in the Baroque style which often has a lot of decoration. Stornó House is one of the most well-known buildings, because of its elegant Baroque architecture, its connection with King Matthias and its interesting collection. There is also a famous statue of the Holy Trinity from this time. the "Várkerület" is part of the city built where the ancient moat was; The inner row of houses follow the line of the castle wall. Várkerület has a famous Maria Statue. The Town Hall built in 1896 and the Ursuline Church is an important building in the Gothic Revival style.

paragraphs: Sopron is popular as a holiday place because it is set in beautiful countryside where people like to walk in the hills, enjoying the pure air, the forests and mountain springs. There are many hiking paths and look-out towers. Near to Sopron is Lake Fertő.

paragraphs: The Löverek, is a beautiful hilly area south of the city, with forests of spruce, oaks and chestnut trees. The flowers that bloom there include "Lily of the Valley" and cyclamens.

paragraphs: Sopron is a wine producing region, that is one of the few in Hungary to make both red and white wines. The grapes grown here include Kékfrankos for red wine and Traminer (Gewürztraminer) for white wine. In climate it is similar to the Burgenland wine region nearby in Austria, and several winemakers make wine in both countries.

paragraphs: MFC Sopron is a football team based in Sopron.


title: Sumo

paragraphs: In sumo, a wrestler ("rikishi") attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring (dohyō) 4.55 metres in diameter. Also, the "rikishi" try to use their skill to force an opponent to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of his feet.

paragraphs: Sumo tournaments ("basho") take place in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. There are a total of 6 major professional tournaments (known as "honbasho") per year, in January, March, May, July, September and November.

paragraphs: A tournament normally lasts for 15 days and features matches from different divisions. The top 5 ranks are known as the "Top division", also called the "Makuuchi" (幕内) or "Makunouchi" (幕の内). It is fixed in size and always contains 42 "rikishi".

paragraphs: The ranks included in the top division are yokozuna, ozeki, sekiwake, komusubi and maegashira.

paragraphs: Sumo wrestlers ("rikishi") are ranked into a hierarchy based on win-loss statistics in competitive tournaments.

paragraphs: Those who have earned the highest rank are grand champions ("yokuzuna").

paragraphs: For a full list of those rikishi who have held the title of "Yokozuna", see List of yokozuna.

paragraphs: Sumo has changed in modern times. Foreign-born wrestlers are part of the sport. For example, Konishiki and Akebono are Hawaiian-born athletes who earned places for themselves.

paragraphs: In 2008, Kotooshu from Bulgaria won a championship. In that same year, two top wrestlers, Asashoryu and Hakuho, were Mongolian. Hakuho won the Nagoya tournament with no losses, 15-0.


title: Bremen (state)

paragraphs: Bremen is the smallest state in Germany. It is a city-state with an area of . Bremen has a population of 664,000 people.

paragraphs: The official name is "Freie Hansestadt Bremen". This is because Bremen used to be in the "Hanseatic League" which was a group of cities which did a lot of trading. Many goods were sent from the port of Bremen or bought from the port from other countries. "Free" means it was independent of the local dukes and princes.

paragraphs: There are two cities that make up Bremen. These cities are Bremen and Bremerhaven. The local football club is named Werder Bremen.


title: Saxony-Anhalt

paragraphs: Saxony-Anhalt is a Bundesland (state) in Germany. It has an area of . 2,580,626 people live there. The capital is Magdeburg.

paragraphs: Some big cities and towns in Saxony-Anhalt are:


title: Erfurt

paragraphs: Erfurt is the capital city of the German state of Thuringia. It has an area of . In December 2015 it had a population of 210,000 people. The River Gera runs through the city.

paragraphs: People have lived in the area for about 100,000 years. The city was first mentioned in writing in 742, in a letter to the Pope from St Boniface. St Boniface established Christianity in the area. He set up a church in Erfurt in 742. Erfurt Cathedral was later built on the same site.

paragraphs: The city is in the centre of Germany. It was on the Via Regia, a medieval trade road network that stretched across Europe. It became an important trading centre in the Middle Ages. Erfurt was a member of the Hanseatic League, an alliance of trade associations and market towns. It was also famous for producing woad. Blue indigo dye is made from the woad plant.

paragraphs: Erfurt is on the Way of St. James pilgrams' path (Spanish: "Camino de Santigo"; German: "Jakobsweg"). In the Middle Ages a number of monasteries were set up in the city. Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation, lived at St. Augustine's Monastery from 1505 until 1511. A famous philosopher and theologian called Meister Eckhart lived at the Dominican Monastery from about 1275 until 1311.

paragraphs: The city was part of the Holy Roman Empire. It became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1802. From 1949 until 1990 Erfurt was in the communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

paragraphs: Modern day Erfurt is a transport hub for high speed trains and other German and European transport networks. This makes logistics one of its main industries. Other important industries are agriculture, horticulture and microelectronics.

paragraphs: The German Federal Labour Court (German:"Bundesarbeitsgericht") is in Erfurt.

paragraphs: The University of Erfurt was first set up in 1379. It closed in 1816, but was reopened in 1994. Martin Luther studied there from 1501 to 1505. It is also thought that Johannes Gutenberg, who developed the printing press, enrolled there in 1418. Erfurt also has a "Fachhochschule", a University of Applied Sciences.

paragraphs: Many visitors come to see the historic medieval town centre. One of the main tourist attractions is the Krämerbrücke (the Merchants' Bridge). The bridge was built in its current form in 1472. It has buildings with shops and houses on it. People still live on it.

paragraphs: The city is well known for its festivals throughout the year. Two million people visit the Christmas markets each year.

paragraphs: Other important sites in the city include:


title: Magdeburg

paragraphs: Magdeburg is the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany. The city covers an area of . About 236,000 people live there (2016).

paragraphs: A demonstration of air pressure (called the Magdeburg spheres) was done here by Otto von Guericke in 1656. Also, the 18th century composer Georg Philipp Telemann was born here.


title: Romance languages

paragraphs: The Romance languages (also sometimes called Romanic languages) are a language family in the Indo-European languages. They started from Vulgar Latin (in Latin, "vulgar" is the word for "common" and so "Vulgar Latin" means "Common Latin"). The most spoken Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.

paragraphs: They are called "Romance languages" because they originate from Latin, the language spoken by the Western Roman Empire. Their grammatical inflection system has been simplified and lost most of the complex case structure of classical Latin.

paragraphs: The area that the Romance languages are spoken in Europe is mostly extent of the Western Roman Empire. The Greek language superseded Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire. Latin survived in Romania, whose language, Romanian, is a Romance language. In Moldova it is sometimes called Moldovan.

paragraphs: The Romance language family is one of the biggest in the world, and in total, there are almost a billion first and second language speakers.

paragraphs: Spanish is the most widely used Romance language, follow[Portuguese]] and then French.

paragraphs: Spanish is spoken mainly in Spain and Latin America. Portuguese is mostly used/spoken in Brazil, Portugal and parts of Africa. French is spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, and in some areas of Africa. Romanian is spoken in Romania and Moldova.


title: Stellar evolution

paragraphs: Stellar evolution is the study of how a star changes over time. Stars can change very much between when they are first created and when they run out of energy. Because stars can produce light and heat for millions or billions of years, scientists study stellar evolution by studying many different stars in different stages of their life.

paragraphs: The stages in a star's life are: nebula, main-sequence star, red giant and either white dwarf followed by black dwarf, neutron star or black hole.

paragraphs: A star starts its life as a cloud of dust and gas called a nebula. This is pulled together by gravity which causes it to heat up. It also starts to spin and to look like a ball. When it gets hot enough, it starts to release energy through nuclear fusion, changing hydrogen to helium. This makes it shine very brightly and become what astronomers think of as a main-sequence star. It may stay a main-sequence star, looking about the same, for billions of years.

paragraphs: Sooner or later, almost all of the hydrogen at the center has changed to helium. This causes the nuclear reaction in the middle of the star to stop and the center will start to get smaller due to the star's gravity. The layer of the star just outside the center will begin to change hydrogen to helium, releasing energy.

paragraphs: The outer layers of the star will get much, much bigger. The star will make much more light, sometimes as much as ten thousand times as much as it did at first. Since the surface of the star will get bigger, this energy will be spread out over a much larger area. Because of this, the temperature of the surface will go down and the color will change to red or orange. It will become a red giant. It can swallow up any planets that orbit around it.

paragraphs: Later, the red giant that was left over from a star like ours stops burning. A cloud of gas is given off and a smaller star called a white dwarf is left behind. After a really long time, the white dwarf cools down into a black dwarf.

paragraphs: But, when a big red giant explodes, the explosion is a lot larger and is called a supernova. Instead of a white dwarf, it leaves behind a much smaller, much denser ball called a neutron star. A neutron star is created because the force of gravity is so strong that the atoms left behind would not have any electrons orbiting the nucleus of the atoms. A teaspoon of that matter might weigh as much as the entire Earth.

paragraphs: A much bigger red giant leaves behind a black hole. A black hole is created because gravity is so strong that even the protons and neutrons collapse in on themselves. Even light can no longer escape a black hole. Since there is nothing we know of stronger than the force that holds atomic nuclei (the plural of 'nucleus') together, some physicists think that a black hole collapses all the way down to a mathematical point called a singularity.


title: Genetics

paragraphs: Genetics is a discipline of biology. It is the science of heredity. This includes the study of genes, and the inheritance of variation and traits of living organisms. In the laboratory, genetics proceeds by mating carefully selected organisms, and analysing their offspring. More informally, genetics is the study of how parents pass some of their characteristics to their children. It is an important part of biology, and gives the basic rules on which evolution acts.

paragraphs: The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been known since prehistoric times, and used to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics seeks to understand the process of inheritance. This began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century. Although he did not know the physical basis for heredity, Mendel observed that organisms inherit traits via discrete units of inheritance, which are now called genes.

paragraphs: Living things are made of millions of tiny self-contained components called cells. Inside of each cell are long and complex molecules called Deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA stores information that tells the cells how to create that living thing. Parts of this information that tell how to make one small part or characteristic of the living thing – red hair, or blue eyes, or a tendency to be tall – are known as genes.

paragraphs: Every cell in the same living thing has the same DNA, but only some of it is used in each cell. For instance, some genes that tell how to make parts of the liver are switched off in the brain. What genes are used can also change over time. For instance, a lot of genes are used by a child early in pregnancy that are not used later.

paragraphs: A person has two copies of each gene, one from their mother, and one from their father. There can be several types of a single gene, which give different instructions: one version might cause a person to have blue eyes, another might cause them to have brown. These different versions are known as "alleles" of the gene.

paragraphs: Since a living thing has two copies of each gene, it can have two different alleles of it at the same time. Often, one allele will be "dominant", meaning that the living thing looks and acts as if it had only that one allele. The unexpressed allele is called "recessive". In other cases, you end up with something in between the two possibilities. In that case, the two alleles are called "co-dominant".

paragraphs: Most of the characteristics that you can see in a living thing have multiple genes that influence them. And many genes have multiple effects on the body, because their function will not have the same effect in each tissue. The multiple effects of a single gene is called "pleiotropism". The whole set of genes is called the "genotype", and the total effect of genes on the body is called the "phenotype". These are key terms in genetics.

paragraphs: We know that man started breeding domestic animals from early times, probably before the invention of agriculture. We do not know when heredity was first appreciated as a scientific problem. The Greeks, and most obviously Aristotle, studied living things, and proposed ideas about reproduction and heredity.

paragraphs: Probably the most important idea before Mendel was that of Charles Darwin, whose idea of "pangenesis" had two parts. The first, that persistent hereditary units were passed on from one generation to another, was quite right. The second was his idea that they were replenished by 'gemmules' from the somatic (body) tissues. This was entirely wrong, and plays no part in science today. Darwin was right about one thing: whatever happens in evolution must happen by means of heredity, and so an accurate science of genetics is fundamental to the theory of evolution. This 'mating' between genetics and evolution took many years to organise. It resulted in the modern evolutionary synthesis.

paragraphs: The basic rules of genetics were first discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in around 1865. For thousands of years, people had already studied how traits are inherited from parents to their children. However, Mendel's work was different because he designed his experiments very carefully.

paragraphs: In his experiments, Mendel studied how traits were passed on in pea plants. He started his crosses with plants that bred true, and counted characters that were either/or in nature (either "tall" or "short"). He bred large numbers of plants, and expressed his results numerically. He used test crosses to reveal the presence and proportion of recessive characters.

paragraphs: Mendel explained the results of his experiment using two scientific laws:

paragraphs: Mendel's laws helped explain the results he observed in his pea plants. Later, geneticists discovered that his laws were also true for other living things, even humans. Mendel's findings from his work on the garden pea plants helped to establish the field of genetics. His contributions were not limited to the basic rules that he discovered. Mendel's care towards controlling experiment conditions along with his attention to his numerical results set a standard for future experiments. Over the years, scientists have changed and improved Mendel's ideas. However, the science of genetics would not be possible today without the early work of Gregor Mendel.

paragraphs: In the years between Mendel's work and 1900 the foundations of cytology, the study of cells, was developed. The facts discovered about the nucleus and cell division were essential for Mendel's work to be properly understood.

paragraphs: At this point, discoveries in cytology merged with the rediscovered ideas of Mendel to make a fusion called cytogenetics, (cyto = cell; genetics = heredity) which has continued to the present day.

paragraphs: During the 1890s several biologists began doing experiments on breeding. and soon Mendel's results were duplicated, even before his papers were read. Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries were the main rediscoverers of Mendel's writings and laws. Both acknowledged Mendel's priority, although it is probable that de Vries did not understand his own results until after reading Mendel. Though Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted because he did not understand Mendel's laws. Though de Vries later lost interest in Mendelism, other biologists built genetics into a science.

paragraphs: Mendel's results were replicated, and genetic linkage soon worked out. William Bateson perhaps did the most in the early days to publicise Mendel's theory. The word "genetics", and other terminology, originated with Bateson.

paragraphs: Mendel's experimental results have later been the object of some debate. Fisher analyzed the results of the F2 (second filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1. It is sometimes suggested that Mendel may have censored his results, and that his seven traits each occur on a separate chromosome pair, an extremely unlikely occurrence if they were chosen at random. In fact, the genes Mendel studied occurred in only four linkage groups, and only one gene pair (out of 21 possible) is close enough to show deviation from independent assortment; this is not a pair that Mendel studied.

paragraphs: During the process of DNA replication, errors sometimes occur. These errors, called mutations, can have an effect on the phenotype of an organism. In turn, that usually has an effect on the organism's fitness, its ability to live and reproduce successfully.

paragraphs: Error rates are usually very low—1 error in every 10–100 million bases—due to the "proofreading" ability of DNA polymerases. Error rates are a thousandfold higher in many viruses. Because they rely on DNA and RNA polymerases which lack proofreading ability, they get higher mutation rates.

paragraphs: Processes that increase the rate of changes in DNA are called mutagenic. Mutagenic chemicals increase errors in DNA replication, often by interfering with the structure of base-pairing, while UV radiation induces mutations by causing damage to the DNA structure. Chemical damage to DNA occurs naturally as well, and cells use DNA repair mechanisms to repair mismatches and breaks in DNA—nevertheless, the repair sometimes fails to return the DNA to its original sequence.

paragraphs: In organisms which use chromosomal crossovers to exchange DNA and recombine genes, errors in alignment during meiosis can also cause mutations. Errors in crossover are especially likely when similar sequences cause partner chromosomes to adopt a mistaken alignment; this makes some regions in genomes more prone to mutating in this way. These errors create large structural changes in DNA sequence—duplications, inversions or deletions of entire regions, or the accidental exchanging of whole parts between different chromosomes (called translocation).

paragraphs: Developed by Reginald Punnett, Punnett squares are used by biologists to determine the probability of offspring having a particular genotype.

paragraphs: If B represents the allele for having black hair and b represents the allele for having white hair, the offspring of two Bb parents would have a 25% probability of having two white hair alleles (bb), 50% of having one of each (Bb), and 25% of having only black hair alleles (BB).

paragraphs: Geneticists (biologists who study genetics) use pedigree charts to record traits of people in a family. Using these charts, geneticists can study how a trait is inherited from person to person.

paragraphs: Geneticists can also use pedigree charts to predict how traits will be passed to future children in a family. For instance, genetic counselors are professionals who work with families who might be affected by genetic diseases. As part of their job, they create pedigree charts for the family, which can be used to study how the disease might be inherited.

paragraphs: Since human beings are not bred experimentally, human genetics must be studied by other means. One recent way is by studying the human genome. Another way, older by many years, is to study twins.

paragraphs: Identical twins are natural clones. They carry the same genes, they may be used to investigate how much heredity contributes to individual people. Studies with twins have been quite interesting. If we make a list of characteristic traits, we find that they vary in how much they owe to heredity. For example:

paragraphs: The way the studies are done is like this. Take a group of identical twins and a group of fraternal twins. Measure them for various traits. Do a statistical analysis (such as analysis of variance). This tells you to what extent the trait is inherited. Those traits which are partly inherited will be significantly more similar in identical twins. Studies like this may be carried further, by comparing identical twins brought up together with identical twins brought up in different circumstances. That gives a handle on how much circumstances can alter the outcomes of genetically identical people.

paragraphs: The person who first did twin studies was Francis Galton, Darwin's half-cousin, who was a founder of statistics. His method was to trace twins through their life-history, making many kinds of measurement. Unfortunately, though he knew about mono and dizygotic twins, he did not appreciate the real genetic difference. Twin studies of the modern kind did not appear until the 1920s.

paragraphs: The genetics of bacteria, archaea and viruses is a major field of research. Bacteria mostly divide by asexual cell division, but do have a kind of sex by horizontal gene transfer. Bacterial conjugation, transduction and transformation are their methods. In addition, the complete DNA sequence of many bacteria, archaea and viruses is now known.

paragraphs: Although many bacteria were given generic and specific names, like "Staphylococcus aureus", the whole idea of a species is rather meaningless for an organism which does not have sexes and crossing-over of chromosomes. Instead, these organisms have strains, and that is how they are identified in the laboratory.

paragraphs: Gene expression is the process by which the heritable information in a gene, the sequence of DNA base pairs, is made into a functional gene product, such as protein or RNA. The basic idea is that DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins. Proteins make many of the structures and all the enzymes in a cell or organism.

paragraphs: Several steps in the gene expression process may be modulated (tuned). This includes both the transcription and translation stages, and the final folded state of a protein. Gene regulation switches genes on and off, and so controls cell differentiation, and morphogenesis. Gene regulation may also serve as a basis for evolutionary change: control of the timing, location, and amount of gene expression can have a profound effect on the development of the organism. The expression of a gene may vary a lot in different tissues. This is called pleiotropism, a widespread phenomenon in genetics.

paragraphs: Alternative splicing is a modern discovery of great importance. It is a process where "from a single gene a large number of variant proteins can be assembled". One particular Drosophila gene (DSCAM) can be alternatively spliced into 38,000 different mRNA.

paragraphs: Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity which are "not" caused by changes in the DNA sequence. It is the study of gene expression, the way genes bring about their phenotypic effects.

paragraphs: These changes in gene activity may stay for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for many generations of cells, through cell divisions. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism. Instead, non-hereditary factors cause the organism's genes to behave (express themselves) differently.

paragraphs: Hox genes are a complex of genes whose proteins bind to the regulatory regions of target genes. The target genes then activate or repress cell processes to direct the final development of the organism.

paragraphs: There are some kinds of heredity which happen outside the cell nucleus. Normal inheritance is from both parents via the chromosomes in the nucleus of a fertilised egg cell. There are some kinds of inheritance other than this.

paragraphs: Mitochondria and chloroplasts carry some DNA of their own. Their make-up is decided by genes in the chromosomes and genes in the organelle. Carl Correns discovered an example in 1908. The four o'clock plant, "Mirabilis jalapa", has leaves which may be white, green or variegated. Correns discovered the pollen had no influence on this inheritance. The colour is decided by genes in the chloroplasts.

paragraphs: This is caused by a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with a microorganism.

paragraphs: In this case nuclear genes in the female gamete are transcribed. The products accumulate in the egg cytoplasm, and have an effect on the early development of the fertilised egg. The coiling of a snail, "Limnaea peregra", is determined like this. Right-handed shells are genotypes "Dd" or "dd", while left-handed shells are "dd".

paragraphs: The most important example of maternal effect is in "Drosophila melanogaster". The protein product maternal-effect genes activate other genes, which in turn activate still more genes. This work won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1995.

paragraphs: Much modern research uses a mixture of genetics, cell biology and molecular biology. Topics which have been the subject of Nobel Prizes in either chemistry or physiology include:

paragraphs: Many well-known disorders of human behaviour have a genetic component. This means that their inheritance partly causes the behaviour, or makes it more likely the problem would occur. Examples include:

paragraphs: Also, normal behaviour is also heavily influenced by heredity:


title: Church Square Park

paragraphs: Church Square Park is a park in Hoboken, New Jersey between Garden Street and Willow Avenue and 5th and 6th Streets. The Hoboken Public Library is on its north side.


title: Supply

paragraphs: In economics, supply is the amount of something that firms are willing to provide in a market. The law of supply and demand will decide the price at which something will be bought and sold.

paragraphs: There are various factors that can make a seller more or less willing to produce and sell a good. The more common ones are:

paragraphs: There may be other factors that affect the supply of a good, especially since it depends on whether the seller is willing to produce and sell the good.


title: Demand

paragraphs: Demand is the total amount of goods or services which people want to buy, for a set price. The demand for an item indicates how much it is needed or wanted. This is important in economics, because the law of supply and demand will decide the price at which something will be bought and sold.

paragraphs: Demand is the amount of goods that people want to buy at a given price. Prices go up when supply is less, and demand is more. It follows the law of demand where as price increases, demand decreases and vice versa showing an inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price. This is known as the law of demand which assumes that the consumer will want more. Demand forecasting tries to predict how demand will change in the future.

paragraphs: Sometimes the demand does not change much no matter what the price is. One example is when people are addicted to illegal drugs. These people need to get their drugs, they will pay any price they can afford. This effect is known as elasticity.


title: Transaction

paragraphs: A transaction is an exchange. Money, goods, and services are often exchanged. They are bought, sold or traded.

paragraphs: A bank transaction is when money is taken out of or put into a bank.


1680s BC


1080s BC


title: Sunset

paragraphs: A sunset, which in some American dialects is called a sundown, is the time where the Sun goes below the horizon to the West. It is not dusk, which is the point when darkness begins, which can be sometime after the Sun sets, this begins twilight. The opposite of the sunset is the sunrise.


title: Pop punk

paragraphs: Pop-Punk or Punk-Pop, is a form of popular music that blends punk rock with pop music and rock music. Pop-punk music has a lighter, happier sound than most punk rock and hardcore punk music. Most punk rock and hardcore punk music sounds angry and harsh, and has lyrics (words) about protest and anger.

paragraphs: There are several types of pop-punk. An early type of pop-punk was developed right after Punk rock became popular in the late 1970s. Most of this kind of music is very much like Punk rock, but it features things from other kinds of music like pop music and older rock music, and country music, so different people can enjoy it. Some people call the Ramones a pop-punk band. The Ramones were a band from the United States.

paragraphs: In the 1990s, pop-punk became very popular in North America. Bands such as Green Day, Blink-182 and Zebrahead sold millions of recordings and did many tours.

paragraphs: In the 2000s and 2010s, which is the decade we are in now, many bands have joined, or contributed to the pop punk genre. They include Fall Out Boy, Relient K, FM Static, Hawk Nelson, and Amber Pacific.

paragraphs: Some people who like 1970s punk rock or 1980s hardcore punk do not like pop-punk. The 1970s punk rock or 1980s hardcore punk was usually angry, rebellious protest music. In contrast, 2000s pop-punk songs are nicer and lighter. Some people think 2000s pop-punk is too commercialized and nothing like the older punk music from the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Sheryl Crow

paragraphs: Sheryl Crow (born February 11, 1962) is an American singer-songwriter. She can also play guitar and bass guitar.

paragraphs: Many of her songs have charted and are still popular. They include "The First Cut Is the Deepest", "Soak Up the Sun", "If It Makes You Happy" and "All I Wanna Do".

paragraphs: Crow has never married. She has two adopted sons, Wyatt Steven Crow (born in 2007) and Levi James Crow (born in 2010).


title: Chubby Checker

paragraphs: Ernest Evans (born October 3, 1941) better known as Chubby Checker, is a pop singer from the United States. He is most famous for his dance songs. After his famous appearance on American Bandstand, his cover version of Hank Ballard's "The Twist" hit #1 became a popular dance.


title: Irish people

paragraphs: The Irish are an ethnic group who come from or came from the island of Ireland. There are two countries on the island of Ireland: the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Historically, the Irish have been primarily a Celtic people. Many countries, especially English-speaking countries, have people with Irish roots.

paragraphs: In Northern Ireland, there have been violent fights between the Unionists, who identify as British and are mainly Protestant, and the Nationalists, who identify as Irish and are mainly Catholic. Irish people have a strong culture and beliefs.

paragraphs: Due to problems in Ireland, most importantly a famine between 1845 and 1852, caused by the potatoes in Ireland being destroyed by disease, many Irish moved out of Ireland and to other countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. At present, many more Irish live in the United States than in Ireland, with many of them living in large American cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The population of Irish people in the United States is over seven times more populated than that of those who live in the original homeland of Ireland.


title: Claude Debussy

paragraphs: Achille-Claude Debussy (born St Germain-en-Laye, 22 August 1862; died Paris, 25 March, 1918) was a French composer. He was one of the most important composers of the early 20th century. Most of his compositions are for orchestra or for piano. He also wrote some songs, chamber music and one opera. He made his music very different from the Romantic style that other composers were using at the time. He is often called an Impressionistic composer because he was influenced by the group of painters called “Impressionists”. They were not so much interested in making their paintings look exactly like the real world, but preferred to paint things such as the effect of the sunlight shining on water. Debussy often did this in his music, which creates a special atmosphere.

paragraphs: Claude Debussy did not have an easy childhood. His father was a travelling salesman and his mother worked as a seamstress. He learned the piano when he was young and was inducted into the Paris Conservatoire at age 11. For a time it seemed that he would become a concert pianist, but he did not do well enough in his examination. After winning an important prize, the Prix de Rome, he went to Rome for two years but he did not enjoy it. He visited Bayreuth in 1888 and 1889 to hear Wagner’s operas but he did not like them. He preferred sounds like that of the Javanese gamelan which he heard in Paris at the World Exhibition.

paragraphs: In 1899 he married a young woman named Rosalie Texier. He got a job as music critic of a journal called "La revue blanche". He wrote his opera "Pélleas et Mélisande" which was performed at the Opéra-Comique. It was extremely successful and was performed 100 times there during the next ten years. He wrote exciting music for orchestra: "Fêtes galantes" and a work called "La Mer" ("The Sea") which he worked at while staying in Brighton on the south coast of England. It is one of the most exciting pieces of music about the sea.

paragraphs: Debussy was starting to become very famous. His personal life changed. He left his wife because he had fallen in love with Emma Bardac who was an amateur singer for whom Gabriel Fauré had written a song cycle "La Bonne Chanson". Her husband was a banker. She bought an apartment and Debussy lived with her there for the rest of his life. They had a daughter called Chou-Chou, born in 1905. They married in 1908.

paragraphs: Debussy’s next orchestral work was called "Images". He began composing a set of preludes for piano. Other works followed: "Khamma", "Le martyre de St Sébastian" and the ballet "Jeux", which was produced in 1913 by Dyagilev’s company. People soon forgot about this work because only two weeks later the same ballet company produced Stravinsky’s "Rite of Spring" which caused a riot.

paragraphs: By this time Debussy was ill with colorectal cancer. His visit to London in 1914 was his last trip to another country. He wrote more piano works: a set of Études and a piano duet called "En blanc et noir" ("In white and black"). He planned to write six sonatas, each for a different group of instruments, but he only wrote three of them: one for cello and piano, one for flute, viola and harp and one for violin and piano. The "Sonata for violin and piano" (1917) was the last work he played in public (he played the piano part). He died of colorectal cancer in 1918.

paragraphs: Saint-Saëns, for example, did not understand the way that the musical ideas flowed gently into one another. He was always an enemy of Debussy.

paragraphs: There is a lot of variety in Debussy’s piano music.　Some of it is very difficult to play, e.g. the "Études" and pieces such as "L’isle joyeuse" ("The happy island"). Other collections are much simpler, e.g. "Suite bergamasque" which includes the very popular piece called "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight"). He wrote two books of preludes. Each of the pieces has a title, but the titles are printed at the end of each piece, as if he did not want the listener to know what it was about until afterwards.

paragraphs: Debussy wrote wonderfully for the voice, making the music just right for the rhythm of the French language. This can be heard in his songs and his opera. Using melodies and harmonies which are often quite simple he creates a special kind of dream-world which can be very powerful. He often uses the whole tone scale and the pentatonic scale which give the music a hazy feeling because it does not seem to be clearly in one particular key. He liked to use unusual chords just for their own sake, not in order to make them lead to a particular key. He also used the old scales known as the church modes.

paragraphs: Debussy’s music had a great influence on many composers in the 20th century. Cage, Messiaen, Boulez and Stockhausen all learned from listening to his music.


title: P.O.D.

paragraphs: P.O.D. (which stands for Payable on Death) is a metal band from San Diego, California. Its fans are called "The Warriors", and the band is known for its Christian messages.

paragraphs: The members are Sonny Sandoval (lead singer), Marcos Curiel (guitar player), Wuv Bernardo (drummer) and Traa Daniels (bass player).

paragraphs: The band released an album in 1999 called "The Fundamental Elements of Southtown", which became very popular, and P.O.D. made a lot of fans who saw the band on MTV.

paragraphs: In 2001, P.O.D. made a second album called "Satellite", which had a more nu metal post-grunge vibe and several hit songs, like "Boom," "Alive," "Youth of the Nation," "Set It Off," "Satellite," and "Portrait." In 2003, P.O.D. made the album "Payable On Death", which had a heavy neo-grunge sound and a hint of reggae.

paragraphs: Their next album, "Testify", was released in 2006. It was similar to "Satellite" in sound and featured two duets with Matisyahu. In 2008, P.O.D. released the album "When Angels & Serpents Dance".


title: Differential

paragraphs: Differential can refer to different concepts:


title: Blackbird

paragraphs: The blackbird ("Turdus merula", or common blackbird) is a thrush. It is a member of the passerine songbird family Turdidae.

paragraphs: It has a huge range across Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to Australia and New Zealand. It has a number of subspecies across its range. Depending on latitude, the common blackbird may be resident, partially migratory or fully migratory.

paragraphs: The adult male is black, with a yellow/orange bill (beak). Juveniles and females are brown, and less easy to see. Blackbirds are easy to find in gardens all over Europe and in Asia, South of the Arctic Circle. On average, Blackbirds live to be 2.4 years old, but some have been found to be 20 years old.

paragraphs: It is a terrific singer, and will breed whenever the weather is right.

paragraphs: The male common blackbird defends its breeding territory, chasing away other males or using a "bow and run" threat display. This is a short run, the head first being raised and then bowed with the tail dipped simultaneously. If a fight between male Blackbirds does occur, it is usually short and the intruder is soon chased away.

paragraphs: The female blackbird is also aggressive in the spring when it competes with other females for a good nesting territory, and although fights are less frequent, they tend to be more violent.

paragraphs: The male attracts the female with a courtship display: oblique runs and head-bowing movements, an open beak, and a "strangled" low song. The female stays still until she raises her head and tail to allow sex. This species is monogamous, and the established pair usually stay together as long as they both survive. Pair separation rates of up to 20% have been noted following poor breeding. Although socially monogamous, there have been studies showing as much as 17% extra pair paternity.

paragraphs: As long as winter food is available, both the male and female will stay in the territory throughout the year, although occupying different areas. Migrants are more social, travelling in small flocks and feeding in loose groups in the wintering grounds. The flight of migrating birds is bursts of rapid wing beats interspersed with level or diving movement, and differs from both the normal fast agile flight of this species and the more dipping action of larger thrushes.


title: Geta (footwear)

paragraphs: Geta are traditional Japanese sandals. They are stilted to keep the hem of a kimono above the ground. They are worn with tabi socks. Geta makes the person's feet stay out of the mud.

paragraphs: Usually Japanese people wear them with a casual kimono rather than formal one. It is common to wear them with bare feet when a yukata is worn. Also they are worn with western clothes.

paragraphs: Today, in Japan, most people rarely wear kimono and rarely wear geta. One reason for this is most gravel roads were changed to asphalt roads for Tokyo Olympic. Since 1995, the number of people who wear geta casually increased because of the pretty looks and sounds. In addition, the popularity of geta grew little by little through trend for yukata. At one time, Japanese people thought that it is hard to walk with geta and sometimes get injured by hanao. Hanao is a rope which is set between the big toe and second toe when geta are worn. However, because of efforts by yukata makers and footwear makers, Japanese people are starting to like to wear geta again.


title: Tabi

paragraphs: Tabi are traditional Japanese socks. The sock is divided at the toes that forms them into two groups. Tabi socks are worn with "zori" or "geta" sandals. The Tabi is of many different colours mainly white.


title: Bydgoszcz

paragraphs: Bydgoszcz (, ) is a city in the north of Poland, capital of Kujavia-Pomerania voivodship, on the Brda and Wisła rivers. As of 2012, 362,286 people live there.


title: The Mystery of Edwin Drood

paragraphs: The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the last novel written by Charles Dickens. The novel was not finished at the time of Dickens's death (9 June 1870) and his ending for it is unknown.

paragraphs: The story is set in a fictional town called Cloisterham, which is believed to be based on Rochester. It begins as John Jasper is leaving a place in London where opium (a powerful drug) is taken by lots of people. Jasper leads a choir (group of singers) in a large church in Cloisterham. The next day Jasper is visited by his nephew Edwin Drood. Edwin tells Jasper he is worried about getting married to a girl called Rosa Bud. He has to get married to her because his parents and Rosa’s parents said they had to.

paragraphs: The next day, Edwin finds Rosa in a nun’s house which is a school. At the same time, Jasper wants to learn about the graveyard, so he goes to find a man called Durdles, who knows a lot about the graveyard. A person called Neville Landless has a twin sister called Helena. They are both sent to a school in Cloisterham. Helena goes to live with Rosa in the nuns’ house, and Neville is taught by a reverend named Crisparkle.

paragraphs: We find out that Neville doesn’t like his stepfather who is a nasty man. He tells this to Crisparkle. Rosa tells Helena that she doesn’t like Jasper, who is her music teacher. She says she finds him scary. When Neville meets Rosa, he falls in love with her. He is angry that Edwin Drood doesn’t like her very much, but still wants to get married. Edwin makes Neville angry, and Neville attacks him. Jasper tells everyone that Neville is a violent (hurts a lot of people) person.

paragraphs: Reverend Crisparkle wants Edwin and Neville to be friends. He wants to say sorry to Edwin, but only is Edwin accepts the apology (saying sorry). They all decide to have dinner the day before Christmas at Jasper’s house, so that everyone can say sorry.

paragraphs: Mr. Gregious who takes care of Rosa, tells Rosa that she has a lot of money. This money is from her father who is dead. She asks him if they money will still be given to her if she doesn’t marry Edwin. Mr Gregious says that she will still get the money even if she doesn’t marry Edwin. Mr. Gregious meets Edwin and gives him a ring. The ring belonged to Rosa’s father, and gave is to Rosa’s mother when they got married. Mr Gregious says that if Edwin loves Rosa and wants to stay with her forever, he must give her the ring. If he doesn’t love Rosa, and doesn’t want to stay with her forever, he must give the ring back to Mr. Gregious. There is another man watching to make sure Mr. Gregious and Edwin follow the rules. Rosa and Edwin talk and they say they both don’t want to get married anymore. They want ask Mr. Grewgious to tell Jasper this. Edwin says he will soon give the ring back.

paragraphs: Meanwhile, Jasper is in the graveyard again with Durdles. Jasper gives Durdles some very strong wine, which makes him drunk. Jasper finds out that Durdles can tap the stone coffins and knows what is in them from this. Jasper is interested in this trick. Suddenly they see a boy called Deputy. Jasper thinks the boy was following them, so he holds him by the neck. He doesn’t kill him though, and lets him go.

paragraphs: On Christmas Eve, Neville buys a stick for walking. He wants to do some walking in his spare time in the countryside. Edwin goes to a jewellery shop because his watch is broken. A woman who uses opium (powerful drug) asks him what his first name is. He tells her. She says that she is happy his name is not Ned. She says that Ned is in danger. Edwin doesn’t listen to her, but he knows that Jasper sometimes calls him Ned.

paragraphs: They have the planned dinner, and everyone is friends again. Edwin and Neville go down to the river to see the storm. The next day, we find out that Edwin is missing. Jasper tells everyone that Neville killed him. Neville goes off for a walk, but the village people bring him back to the town.

paragraphs: Reverend Crisparkle stops Neville from going to jail by saying that he will look after him. He says that he will bring Neville forward whenever he is needed. Jasper is then told that Edwin and Rosa won’t get married. He is very upset. Crisparkle finds Edwin’s watch and other belongings at the river.

paragraphs: Half a year later Neville is living in London. A man called Mr. Tartar meets Neville and he wants to share his garden with him. He lives near Neville. A new character called Dick Datchery comes to Cloisterham. He lives near Jasper and watches him. Datchery meets Deputy and asks where Jasper lives. Deputy doesn’t ever go near there because he is afraid Jasper will choke (grab his neck) him again.

paragraphs: Jasper goes and visits Rosa. He tells her that he loves her. She tells him to leave. He doesn’t give up, and says he will destroy Neville unless she loves him. Because Neville is the brother of her friend Helena, Rosa is frightened. She goes to Mr. Grewgious in London, and Crisparkle follows her. Mr. Tartar meets him and asks him if he knows who he is. Crisparkle remembers that Tartar once saved him from dying in a river. They tell Rosa not to talk to Neville or Helena in case Jasper is watching. However, Tartar lets Rosa meet Helena. Grewgious finds a place for Rosa to live with another woman.

paragraphs: We see that Jasper is visiting the place where lots of people smoke opium in London. He has not been there for a long time. The woman who owns the place follows him. She promises not to lose him again like last time. She follows him all the way to Cloisterham. She meets Mr. Datchery, who tells her Jasper’s name. He also says that he is going to sing in the church service in the morning. The woman is called Princess Puffer. She goes to the service and shakes her fist (a sign of anger and hate) at Jasper.

paragraphs: Dickens died before the story was finished. He made a summary of the story as planned in a letter to his friend John Forster.

paragraphs: Despite its lack of completeness, the novel has a history of media exposure. There are two films (1935 and 1993) and three television versions (1960 and 2012 in English, and 1980 in Russian). The novel has been on radio and in the theatre. There are a number of versions in print.

paragraphs: In general, people have believed what Dicken's friend John Forster reported: Jasper murdered Drood. In 2015, the UK newspaper "The Daily Mail" and the University of Buckingham asked the public for their solution to the mystery. Out of 15,000 responses, the overwhelming verdict was that Jasper killed his own nephew and stashed his body in the church crypt, the same solution proposed by Dickens' friends and family.


title: Vientiane

paragraphs: Vientiane is the capital city of Laos. It is in the Mekong Valley, and over two hundred thousand people live in its central area.


title: Dome

paragraphs: A dome is a feature of architecture that usually looks like the upper half of a sphere on top of a building.

paragraphs: It is a feature that makes many religious and government buildings stand out, because if someone is speaking to others inside or under a dome, the voice sounds louder. Also a dome makes it easier to identify an important building, for example a temple or a palace.

paragraphs: A large stadium with a roof over the playing field is often called a "dome". One example of that usage is the Metrodome.


title: Address

paragraphs: An address (pronounced AD-dress or ad-DRESS) is a way to find or communicate with someone. It can be a postal address or an e-mail address. On forms, it is common to ask for someone's name, address and phone number, so that the person can be found easily.

paragraphs: A postal address is usually the location of someone's house, but sometimes it is the person's Post Office Box. It is the information that is put on a letter to have the letter delivered to a person.

paragraphs: An email address is used to send someone an e-mail. It has a username, and this is followed by the name of the person's email provider. The at sign (@) separates the two. For example:

paragraphs: The "name" part can be made up of any letters or numbers, and a few special characters, but it cannot contain spaces. The "provider" part can be made up of any letters or numbers, but no special characters and no spaces. Some providers may restrict the "name" part in other ways. For example, Gmail does not allow underscores.


title: T cell

paragraphs: A T cell is a type of lymphocyte, a white blood cell. T-cells plays an important role in the immune system. They attack infected cells, foreign cells, and cancer cells and completely destroy them. This stops viruses or cancer from spreading to healthy cells.

paragraphs: The "T" in T cell stands for thymus. The thymus is where T cells mature.


title: Biscuit

paragraphs: A biscuit is a type of food. They are small baked breads or cakes.

paragraphs: In British English, Australian English, Canadian English and New Zealand English, biscuits are usually sweet and can be eaten with tea, milk or coffee. In North America these are called "cookies".

paragraphs: In spite of the difference, this is the meaning in the name of the United States' most famous maker of cookies and crackers, National Biscuit Company (now called Nabisco).

paragraphs: In American English, a "biscuit" is a small form of bread, similar to scones, made with baking powder or baking soda as a leavening agent rather than yeast. (Biscuits, soda breads, and corn bread, among others, are sometimes referred to all together as "quick breads" to show that they do not need time to rise before baking.)


title: Electromagnet

paragraphs: Electromagnets are temporary and artificial magnets.They are magnets that are only magnetic when there is a coil of wire with electricity running through it. The coil of wire is called a solenoid. The strength of the magnet is proportional to the current flowing in the circuit. The electricity running through the wire is called a current. The current is the flow of electrons, which are negatively charged particles. Electromagnets are used for a variety of purposes. In a simple example, an electromagnet can pick up pieces of iron, nickel, and cobalt.

paragraphs: Electromagnets can be made stronger by adding more coils to the copper wire, or adding an iron core through the coils (for example a nail). The current can also be increased to make the magnetism stronger. British electrician William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet in 1825.

paragraphs: An electromagnet is useful because it can be turned on and off easily (using an electric current), whereas a permanent magnet cannot be turned off and will continue to affect its immediate environment.

paragraphs: Different alloys act differently. Iron stops being an electromagnet very quickly, but steel takes time to wear off. To make an electromagnet, copper wire is wound around an iron rod. The two ends of the wire are connected to the + (positive) and - (negative) side of the battery.

paragraphs: Electromagnets are used in everyday items such as burglar alarms, electric relays and fire bells. Electric motors are basically electromagnets. Their ability to change from the state of non-magnetic to magnetic just by passing an electric current through it allows it to be used in many different items. This ability is used in relays.

paragraphs: Electromagnets can also be used to make electricity. Movement of a magnet back and forth in front of the electromagnet will make an electric current.

paragraphs: Electromagnets work because when electricity flows through a wire it makes a magnetic field around the wire. The direction of the magnetic field can be found by using the "right-hand rule". This means that if a person points the thumb of their right hand in the direction of the current, the magnetic field would go around the wire the same way their fingers would wrap around the wire.

paragraphs: The magnetic field made by a single wire is not usually very strong. To make an electromagnet normally the wire is wrapped in many loops to make the fields of each piece of wire add together into one stronger magnetic field.


title: Palau

paragraphs: Palau, officially the Republic of Palau, is an island nation. It is in the Pacific Ocean. Palau is 300 miles (500 km) east of the Philippines. It got independence from United Nations trusteeship administration (administered by the United States of America) in 1994. It is one of the world's youngest and smallest nations. It is sometimes referred to in English under its native name Belau. The capital city of Palau is Melekeok. This has been true since October 1, 2006.

paragraphs: Palau is divided into sixteen administrative states:

paragraphs: Palau has a tropical climate all year round. Average yearly temperature is around 82 °F (27 °C).


title: Island country

paragraphs: An island country (also sometimes called island nation or borderless country) is a country that is made up only of islands. They are not connected by land to any other nation. Each island only belongs to that country, so there are no borders. Examples of borderless countries are Iceland, Japan and Madagascar.

paragraphs: Many island nations get money from fishing.


title: Llivia

paragraphs: Llívia is a small Catalan town which is an exclave of Spain, being surrounded by France. The Spanish border is about one kilometre away. The town is part of Cerdanya, province of Girona. The French territory surrounding Llivia is the Pyrénées-Orientales "département". Llivia had a total population of 1252 in 2005.

paragraphs: People lived there in Roman times. Originally, the settlement was a Roman fort (known as an "oppidum)". The name of the oppidum was "Julia Libica".

paragraphs: Llivia was the capital of Cerdagne in antiquity, but in the early Middle Ages, Hix (a commune of Bourg-Madame, France) became the capital of the region.


title: Monkey Island

paragraphs: Monkey Island is a well-known adventure game series made and published by LucasArts.

paragraphs: The games are known for their humor, and often use parody and clichés, both from pirate stories as well as from films.

paragraphs: The story takes place in the Caribbean. In the different games. The first one involves main character Guybrush Threepwood, who wants to become a pirate, has many adventures. Each of the games usually involves the evil undead ghost/zombie pirate LeChuck and the island which gave the series its name.


title: Port Arthur massacre

paragraphs: The Port Arthur massacre was a mass killing that took place at Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 April 1996 35 people were killed, and 37 people were badly hurt. Martin Bryant used semi-automatic guns to shoot people who were visiting Port Arthur. Port Arthur is an old penal colony or large prison. More than 75,000 convicts from Britain and Ireland had been kept at the prison from the 1830s to the 1870s. The ruins of the prison are one of the biggest attractions for visitors to Tasmania. Bryant is in jail for the crime.

paragraphs: The massacre was the worst single-day mass murder incident in Australian history. 35 people died on 28 April 1996, the middle day of the massacre. After the massacre, Australia made new laws about gun control. People could not buy guns very easily anymore. New laws were changed which meant that Martin Bryant had to give many millions of dollars to the families of the people who were killed. This law does not exist anywhere else in the world.

paragraphs: Bryant had first killed the owners of a small guesthouse. The next day he went to the Port Arthur Historic Site. 20 of the people killed were shot in the Broad Arrow Cafe in a 90-second burst of gunfire. Bryant went into the cafe at lunchtime and began shooting. There were more than 60 people in the cafe. He then went into the gift shop and continued shooting. Two minutes later he went back to his car to get more guns. He continued to shoot and kill people outside in the gardens.

paragraphs: Bryant then took a hostage and went back to the Seascape Guest House. He killed the hostage and then set fire to the house. He finally gave himself up to the police after 18 hours. He was burned in the fire.

paragraphs: Bryant was found guilty of killing 35 people. He was sentenced to a life sentence for each murder. The court said he was never to be released.

paragraphs: The ruins of the cafe are now a memorial to the people who were killed in the massacre. A square pond has been built as a place for quiet thinking. The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard spoke at the memorial in 2006. This was to remember 10 years since the massacre.


title: Backpacker murders

paragraphs: Between 1990 and 1996, a total of seven people were killed in Australia. Since all of the people were backpackers, the events are known as backpacker murders today. All of their bodies were found in Belangalo State Forest, which is close to Sydney. Ivan Milat killed all of these people.

paragraphs: 7 people were found in Belangalo State Forest. Five of these people were visiting Australia - three Germans and two British people. The other two were visiting Sydney from other parts of Australia. Some of these people were by themselves. Some of these people were with a friend. The 7 people were all different from each other.

paragraphs: On the TV they said that tourists were killed, but not everyone who died was a tourist.

paragraphs: The 7 people were found all over Belangalo State Forest, which is a big area. One of them had their head chopped off. Someone had sex with some of them. Some of them had their clothes taken off. Some of them had bits of their bodies cut off and put somewhere else. Some of the bodies were by themselves.

paragraphs: Some of the people had been killed with a knife. Some had been killed with a gun. Some seemed to have been strangled.

paragraphs: The 7 people who died had nothing in common. People who tried to find out who did it said that there may have been more than one person who killed them. They said that they may have been a part of a gang.

paragraphs: Ivan Milat (born 1944 died 2019) was an Australian man from New South Wales who lived near Belangalo State Forest. So police arrested Milat and searched his house. They found out that:

paragraphs: Milat went to court, and people in court said that he did kill all of these people.

paragraphs: Some people think that other people helped Milat. Some people said his brothers helped him, or a girl, or lots of other people. Police have said that there are more than 30 people that went missing that might have been killed by Milat.


title: Death of Azaria Chamberlain

paragraphs: Azaria Chamberlain (11 June 1980 – 17 August 1980) was an Australian baby who was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, and went missing in 1980 near Ayers Rock, Northern Territory, Australia. The family were camping in a tent at the base of the rock. Her mother, Lindy Chamberlain, said that she had been taken by a dingo and killed. Police said that Lindy Chamberlain had murdered the baby and had lied about the dingo. After a long trial which was reported around the world, Chamberlain was convicted of murder and sent to jail. Chamberlain kept arguing that she was innocent. When some of the baby's clothes were found three years later near a dingo's den, the case was reopened.

paragraphs: After a long legal battle which involved three inquests, three appeals and a royal commission, she was released. In 2012, a fourth inquest found that Azaria had been taken by a dingo, and the death certificate has now been changed to show this. The inquest noted that there had been other dingo attacks in the region.

paragraphs: Lindy Chamberlain was released from jail on February 7 1986, but not cleared until September 15 1988, at which time Lindy and Michael (her husband) were declared innocent of all charges. She and Michael were divorced on June 27 1991. She met Rick Creighton on a speaking tour of the United States in February 1992 and married him on December 20 1992.

paragraphs: The disappearance of Azaria became one of the most argued about events in Australia. Many people thought that a dingo would be unable to kill a baby. This meant that the mother must have lied. People in Australia say "a dingo stole my baby" as a joke, when they think someone is lying. After a dingo killed a nine-year-old boy on Fraser Island in 2001, people have had to rethink their beliefs about dingos.

paragraphs: Author John Bryson wrote a book about the case, called "Evil Angels." This was later made into a movie called "Evil Angels" and starred Meryl Streep and Sam Neill. The movie was released in other countries as "A Cry in the Dark."

paragraphs: In 2005, a woman called Erin Horsburgh said that she was really Azaria Chamberlain and wanted police to do a DNA test to check. But police said that the woman was lying and they did not need to check. This created interest in the media, but there was no truth to the story.


title: Murder of Peter Falconio

paragraphs: Peter Falconio (20 September 1972 - c. 14 July 2001) was an English tourist who went missing in Northern Territory, Australia in 2001. Falconio was last seen near a place called Barrow Creek. This is one of Australia's greatest murder mysteries. Police say that he is dead. A trial decided that Bradley John Murdoch murdered Falconio.

paragraphs: Peter Falconio and his girlfriend Joanne Lees had been fighting with each other. Lees was going to leave Falconio because she had a new boyfriend in Australia. Some people think that Lees wanted to kill Falconio because of this. Some people think that she might have asked Murdoch to kill Falconio for her.

paragraphs: Bradley John Murdoch sold drugs to people. Falconio and Lees liked to use drugs. It is thought that they knew each other, and that Falconio and Lees bought drugs from Murdoch. Falconio owed a lot of money in taxes, and he was scared. Falconio had told people that he wanted to fake his own death. Many people say they saw Falconio over a week after police say that he died. It was known that Murdoch had hurt people before this. He had once shot at some aborigines just for fun. He had told people that he thought he was being followed and was going to get rid of them. Some people think that he raped some women too.

paragraphs: This remains a great mystery and many people have different stories as to what really happened. A movie called "Wolf Creek" was made that is similar to the story. It was not allowed to be shown until after the trial.


title: John Howard

paragraphs: John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is a former Australian politician who was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. John Howard is the second longest serving prime minister of Australia after Robert Menzies. John Howard is a member of the Liberal Party.

paragraphs: John Howard was a lawyer before he became a politician. He was in parliament from 1974 until 2007. From 1977 to 1983 he was the Treasurer in Malcolm Fraser's government. Malcolm Fraser lost the 1987 election to Bob Hawke. On 24 November 2007, John Howard lost to Kevin Rudd and his parliamentary seat to Maxine McKew. He became the second prime minister to lose a parliamentary seat after Stanley Bruce in 1929.

paragraphs: John Howard is the fourth son of Mona ("nee" Kell) and Lyall Howard. His parents were married in 1925. His eldest brother Stanley was born in 1926, followed by Walter in 1929, and Robert (Bob) in 1936. Lyall Howard was an admirer of Winston Churchill, and a sympathiser with the New Guard. Howard's ancestors were English, Scottish and Irish.

paragraphs: Howard was born and raised in the Sydney suburb of Earlwood, in a Methodist family. His mother had been an office worker until her marriage. His father and his paternal grandfather, Walter Howard, were both veterans of the First AIF in World War I. They also ran two Dulwich Hill petrol stations. Howard worked there as a boy.

paragraphs: Howard suffered from a hearing impairment in his youth. It ruled out the chances of him becoming a barrister as a likely career from his mind. To this day, John wears a hearing aid.

paragraphs: One of Howard's first initiatives was to unite the state governments of Australia to place a ban on gun ownership in Australia. This move came after the Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania in 1996, where 35 people were killed and a further 37 injured at the hands of a gunman. In 1998, Howard and his Treasurer, Peter Costello took a big tax reform (the GST) to the election and won.

paragraphs: In 1999 John Howard's government held a referendum on whether Australia should become a republic and have a President instead of a Queen. However, John Howard did not support the referendum and urged people to vote no. The Australian Labor Party opposition led by Kim Beazley criticised John Howard's handling of the 1998 Australian Waterfront Dispute.

paragraphs: In 1999, Howard led a United Nations force into East Timor (INTERFET), to help them set up an independent democracy.

paragraphs: After the September 11 attacks, John Howard was involved in world issues. He was close with George W. Bush who was the leader of the United States. George Bush called John Howard a "key ally". John Howard sent SAS troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to support the United States, and signed a free trade agreement with the United States. Despite this alliance, Australia remained fairly neutral on Israel and Palestine.

paragraphs: Like before Howard, Australian trade with Asia got bigger while John Howard was leader. He invited the Chinese leader Hu Jintao to speak to the Australian Parliament for the first time. After the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, John Howard called the President of Indonesia and offered a billion dollars to help. John Howard increased immigration a lot and people came to Australia from all over the world, but he tried to stop boats of people coming without asking for visas first.

paragraphs: In 2005, he made it easier for bosses to get rid of workers by introducing the controversial WorkChoices industrial legislation introduced by his Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews. This upset people and the Labor Party became more popular. On 24 November 2007, Kevin Rudd won an election and John Howard stopped being Prime Minister. John Howard also lost his seat in the Parliament to the Labor Party candidate Maxine McKew, a former ABC TV journalist.


title: Swedish language

paragraphs: Swedish () is a language mostly spoken in Sweden and in parts of Finland, typically along the southern and western coasts and on the Åland islands. More than nine million people speak Swedish. It is similar to two of the other Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Danish, and a person who understands one of these languages can understand the others. Other Scandinavian languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese, are less closely related and cannot be understood by Swedish speakers. Standard Swedish is spoken and written throughout Sweden, but there are some local dialects with differences in grammar and vocabulary in small towns and rural areas.

paragraphs: Swedish began as a dialect of Old Norse, which was a language that everyone in Scandinavia understood during the Viking Age. Around the 12th century Swedish began to slowly become different from the other dialects. These dialects later became what we today call Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and Danish. Swedish is a Germanic language with some similarities to English because of the Vikings that invaded England in the 10th Century. It is even more similar to German and Dutch, partly because of the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, when Sweden traded very openly with Germany.

paragraphs: There are three characters in the Swedish language that are not used in English. These are å, ä and ö. The letter å is a vowel sound between [a] and [o], similar to the English word "awe". The letter ä is a vowel sound similar to [ɛ], like in the English word "bed". The letter ö is a vowel sound between [o] and [ɛ], pronounced [øː] like the "u" in the English word "burn". These characters are also used in the Finnish language, while Norwegian and Danish languages replace ä and ö with similar characters æ and ø.

paragraphs: Swedish also has some important differences in grammar. Definite articles are suffixed onto the end of their nouns, so "ett hus" (a house) becomes "huset" (the house). Also unlike English, Swedish uses two grammatical genders called "Common" and "Neuter". Nouns of the Common gender are sometimes called "en words", and many words for living (or once-living) things are "en words". Nouns of the Neuter gender are sometimes called "ett words".


title: Walter Mikac

paragraphs: Walter Mikac is an Australian writer and motivational speaker.

paragraphs: Walter Mikac's wife and two small children were killed at the Port Arthur massacre. He has written two books, one called "To Have And To Hold" and the other is called "Circle of Life: Sustenance for the Soul". It is about handling grief and tragedy. He helped create the Alannah and Madeline Foundation to help children who are the victims of violent crime


title: Martin Bryant

paragraphs: Martin Bryant (born 7 May 1967) is an Australian criminal who killed 35 people in Tasmania in 1996, in the Port Arthur massacre. He is now in prison for the most murders in Australian recorded history.

paragraphs: Bryant has been given a sentence of life in gaol for each of the 35 murders. He is never to be released. He is held in solitary confinement (by himself) in Hobarts Risdon Prison.

paragraphs: Martin Bryant is believed to have an IQ (thinking level) of an 11-year-old. Guards and doctors report that his only interest seems to be himself. He has tried to kill himself several times in prison.


title: Rugby League

paragraphs: Rugby League is a ball sport. Two teams of thirteen players play against each other. The ball used is oval in shape. The field is a rectangle shape. It is 100 metres long and 70 metres wide. It is played for 80 minutes (40 minutes each half).

paragraphs: A "try" is scored when a player scores or touches the ball down in the in-goal area (the try line included). A try is worth 4 points and if its converted (the goal kicker kicks the ball in between the top of the goal post), the team gets an extra 2 points. Another method of scoring points is through drop goals which are worth 1 point, or penalty goals which are worth 2 points.

paragraphs: Rugby League is played in over 30 countries in the world. The countries that play it the most are Australia, England, Ireland and New Zealand. The Rugby League World Cup has been played by Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, France, Wales, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Scotland, United States, Italy, Cook Islands, Lebanon, Russia and South Africa. The current world champions are Australia, who won the 2017 Rugby League World Cup. The 2021 Rugby League World Cup will be held in England.


title: Dustin Hoffman

paragraphs: Dustin Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor. He has been in many movies.

paragraphs: Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California. He is the younger son of Lillian, a jazz pianist, and Harry Hoffman, who worked as a prop supervisor/set decorator at Columbia Pictures before becoming a furniture salesman. His brother, Ronald, is a lawyer and economist. Hoffman's family was Jewish, although he was not brought up religious. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955.

paragraphs: Hoffman starred in "The Graduate", "Midnight Cowboy", "Marathon Man", "All the President's Men", "Kramer vs. Kramer", "Tootsie", "Stranger than Fiction", "Meet the Fockers" and "Rain Man".

paragraphs: In 2013, Hoffman had successful treatment for cancer.