title: Fidelio

paragraphs: Fidelio is an opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner based on a French story. The opera tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard called "Fidelio", rescues her husband Florestan from death in a political prison.

paragraphs: "Fidelio" is an example of a “rescue opera”, a type of opera which was popular at the time. The hero (or heroine) has to fight against cruel people in order to rescue a lover. It was written at the time of the French Revolution. At this time, ideas about freedom and peace were being talked about by everyone, and this led to wars all over Europe. The famous Prisoners’ Chorus is a song for freedom, just like the last movement of his Ninth Symphony.

paragraphs: Beethoven spent some time working on the opera before he was completely happy with it. The first time it was performed (in 1805) it was a three-act opera called "Leonore". There were a lot of French military officers in the audience and they thought they were being criticised. In 1806 it was performed again with two acts and a new overture (now known as "Overture: Leonore No. 3"). But arguments between Beethoven and the theatre management meant there were no more performances. Eight years later Beethoven revised his opera again. This time it was called "Fidelio", and it was a great success. It has remained a famous opera ever since.

paragraphs: The setting is a Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville, in the late 1700s.

paragraphs: Jaquino is a prison guard. He wants to marry Marzelline, the daughter of Rocco who is the warden of the prison. But Marzelline has just fallen in love with someone she thinks is a man called Fidelio. Actually Fidelio is a woman who has dressed up as a man so that she can get into the prison where her husband Florestan is a prisoner (he has been arrested for political reasons). She is pretending to return Marzelline’s love so that she can find a way of rescuing Florestan. Rocco says he is happy for Marzelline to marry Fidelio. Fidelio (Leonore) says she will help Rocco with his job of looking after the prisoners. Rocco says she can do this, but there is one prisoner she is not allowed to guard. He has been locked up alone for two years. Leonore thinks it may be her husband, but she is not sure.

paragraphs: Don Pizarro, the military governor of the prison, hears that the prison is going to be looked at by inspectors who make sure that the prison is being properly managed. He knows that he should not have locked Florestan up, so decides to kill him before the inspection starts. He asks Rocco to dig the grave so that he can get rid of the body quickly. Rocco does not want to do this, but has to agree.

paragraphs: Leonore lets the prisoners have a walk in the garden. Rocco tells Leonore that he must help him dig the grave. Rocco is very cross that the prisoners are walking in the garden, but Rocco says they should be allowed because it is the King’s name-day. Rocco says they should be locked up again.

paragraphs: Florestan sits alone in his cell. In his mind he imagines an angel who looks like his wife who his telling him to come to Heaven.

paragraphs: Leonore goes with Rocco to the prisoner. She is still not sure whether it is her husband. She gives him some bread. When Pizarro comes he gets ready to kill Florestan, but Leonore stands between them and tells Pizarro she will shoot him if he comes nearer. A trumpet is heard playing a fanfare because the Minister is arriving.

paragraphs: Outside the prison the Minister says that all the prisoners are now free. He is horrified to find Florestan among the prisoners, because he is his friend. The crowd ask for Pizarro to be punished. Leonore frees her husband from his chains and the crowd say that she is a great heroine.

paragraphs: Beethoven made several changes to the opera at different times. This included writing four different overtures. They are called "Leonore 1", "Leonore 2", "Leonore 3" and "Fidelio". The overture "Fidelio" is the one that is normally heard now at the beginning of the opera. "Leonore 2" was the overture performed at the first performance in 1805. "Leonore 3", composed in 1806, is the most famous of the overtures. "Leonore 1" may have been written in 1805, or it may have been intended for a performance in 1807 in Prague which never took place". Sometimes the "Leonore 3" overture is played during Act II between the two scenes. However, many people think it does not work dramatically there. It is usually heard today as a separate concert piece. The overture "Fidelio" was composed for performances of the opera in 1814.


title: Für Elise

paragraphs: "Für Elise" (German for "For Elise") is the common name of the "Bagatelle in A minor", written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1810. The song is thought to be written for Therese, a woman that Beethoven wanted to marry in 1810, however his handwriting was misspelt undergoing transcription, allowing the piece to be known as Fur Elise rather the Fur Therese. Therese did not want to marry him.

paragraphs: The piece of music, which was written for the piano, was not published until 1865, a long time after Beethoven’s death. It is one of the most well-known pieces of piano music in the world.

paragraphs: The piece is in rondo form. There is a main section (A) which appears three times. Between these three sections there are two other sections (B and C), so the form of the piece can be described as: A B A C A.

paragraphs: The main section has a time signature of 3/8. It is based on arpeggios which flow from one hand to the other. This is the section that many beginner pianists want to play. The two middle sections are harder to play at the correct speed. They have fast scales, arpeggios and left hand demisemiquavers (32nd notes).


title: Teplice

paragraphs: Teplice (German name: Teplitz) is a city in Bohemia, the western area of the Czech Republic. Teplice (pronounced in Czech: “Tep-li-tse”) is a famous spa town where, in earlier times, lots of famous people went for holidays to improve their health. Goethe, Beethoven, Chopin, Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner all stayed there.

paragraphs: Teplice lies between Prague and Dresden in a mountain area called Krušné hory (Iron Mountains). In the year 762 hot springs were found there. The waters from these springs helped people who were ill to get better so it became a spa town.

paragraphs: Since 1990 many buildings have been restored. The Krušnohorské divadlo (Krušnohorské theatre) is now being refurbished. The North Bohemia Philharmonic Orchestra give concerts there in the open air. There is a museum and many restaurants, wine bars and cafés. In the winter the mountain slopes are good for skiing.


title: Symphony No. 9 "Choral" (Beethoven)

paragraphs: Symphony No. 9 in D minor op 125 (Choral Symphony) by Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most famous pieces of music ever written.

paragraphs: A symphony is a piece of music for orchestra. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. This one, the last one he wrote, is very unusual because the last movement also has singing in it: there are four soloists (soprano, alto, tenor and bass) and a choir. This is why it is known as the “choral” symphony (“choral” means: “for choir”). It is a very long work, lasting more than an hour. This, too, was unusual.

paragraphs: This symphony has four movements. The first movement is in sonata form. The second and third movements come the other way round from the usual order: the second movement is the scherzo and the third movement is the slow movement. It is a theme and variations. The last movement sets the words of a poem by Friedrich Schiller, a famous poet who had only recently died. The poem was called "Ode an die Freude" (in English: "Ode to Joy"). The poem has a strong message to all mankind: it is about living in peace and harmony together. It was written at the time of the French Revolution when these ideas were becoming very important in Europe.

paragraphs: The main tune of the last movement (sung to the words: “Freude, schöne Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium”) is one of the best known tunes in the world. Many children like to play it on instruments because the first part of the tune only uses five notes (it can be played on C, D, E, F, G). When the tune comes the first time in the symphony it is played by the cellos and double basses.

paragraphs: The "Ode to Joy" was adopted as Europe's “National anthem” in 1972, with an official arrangement for orchestra written by Herbert von Karajan.

paragraphs: Beethoven had been interested in Schiller’s famous poem since he was young. In 1817 he started to write the first two movements of the symphony. In 1822 he decided to use Schiller’s poem in the symphony. Most of the rest of the symphony was written in 1823 and he finished it in 1824. It was first performed in May of that year. Beethoven conducted the performance. The story is told that he wondered why the audience were not applauding when it had finished. They were applauding, but Beethoven was deaf so he could not hear. Someone made him turn round, and he saw that people were applauding enthusiastically.


title: Shatin Pui Ying College

paragraphs: Shatin Pui Ying College () is a Christian secondary school in Hong Kong. Its English name is simply said to be SPYC or PYC. It was started in 1978, and uses the money given by the Hong Kong government. There are 4 classes each for Forms 1 to 6 (as in 2019). The school icon is an eagle, which means courage and determination. Its location is at 9 Fung Shun Street, Wo Che Estate, Sha Tin District, Hong Kong.

paragraphs: The school teaches its students for public examinations. The school motto is: Faith, Hope, Love" (「信、望、愛」). The school teaches the students other things to gain higher qualities of moral (德), intelligent (智), physical (體), social (群), art (美) and heart (靈).

paragraphs: The father of the school is Rev Henry Noyes. In 1879, he built a school in Guangzhou, teaching Mathematics and Science. Later he built more schools in Taishan, Jiangmen and Hong Kong.

paragraphs: In 1978, someone built the 5th school which is Shatin Pui Ying College. Mr Wong Wai Wah was the Principal. In the first year, the school worked on the campus of Baptist Lui Ming Choi Secondary School at Lek Yuen Estate. In September 1979, the school could move into Wo Che Estate. The school library was opened since September 1982.

paragraphs: In order to make it possible for all the Form 3 students to study as Form 4 in the school, the school changed the class structure. The Student Union was set up in September 1995 and Parent-Teacher Association in 1996. In 1996, Principal Wong gave up working and the Vice Principal Ms Yau Oi Yuen started doing his work. The elite class system was deleted in September, 1996.

paragraphs: The library system was changed to use computer since September 2001. The new wing building of the school has been finished since July 2005. In the new wing, there are classrooms for higher forms classes, a new library, some special rooms and computer rooms.

paragraphs: Exchange students from Italy and Germany help the students learn English. The school has many English activities such as English Tutorial Class, English Drama Competition, Form 1 Bridging Programme, Lyrics-writing Course, English Immersion Speech Competition, Interviewing Tourists, English Phonetics Class, English Enhancement Course, Summer English Class, Overseas Immersion Course, Summer English Camp for senior form students, Summer English Day Camp for junior form students, Intra-school and Inter-school English Debate Competitions and English Musicals.

paragraphs: The Chinese Language teachers write their own teaching units for the students. There are many Chinese activities such as Creative Writing Class, Chinese Week, Prose Writing Class, Reading Club, Modern Poetry Writing Class, Verse-speaking Gathering, Story Writing Class, and Seminar on Reading, Seminar on Modern Poetry, Intra-school and Inter-school Chinese Debate Competitions and Report and Comment on Chinese Words of Wisdom.

paragraphs: The school teaches Putonghua. There are many activities such as Putonghua Day, Tongue-Twisters, Putonghua Class, Singing Contest, Putonghua Broadcast and Putonghua Corner. Students in the school can learn more about the Chinese culture from the activities such as Workshop on Chinese clipart, Chinese Tea Tao and Chinese Culture and General Studies Competition.

paragraphs: All Form 1 new students are Band 1 students. All of the Form 3 students can study as Form 4 in the school. Students have good results in public examinations. The average passing percentage for the HKCEE and HKALE is higher than 90%. The best student in HKCEE got 8As in 2004.

paragraphs: All Form 6 students in the school are from the Form 5 in the same school, except the exchange students from other countries. Most of the Form 7 students can study in the universities these years.

paragraphs: According to the government, the school teaches Chinese language, English language and Mathematics very well from 2000 to 2006.

paragraphs: The school gives the good students some awards, such as scholarships, Academic Awards, Flying Eagle Awards and Improvement Awards. The school gives money to some students to take part in some inter-school competition and courses in some universities such as The University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. There are some tutorial classes to improve junior students' skills in both English and Chinese languages and also Mathematics.

paragraphs: Reading Time is designed to help students having a good reading habit. Reading Days are held by the school library for all students to read or to take part in activities related to reading.

paragraphs: There are many computer subjects in the school, such as Information Technology (IT) for Forms 1 to 3, Computer and Information Technology (CIT) for Forms 4 and 5, and Computer Applications (CA) for Forms 6 and 7.

paragraphs: The school has organised 3 musicals, The Comeback Kid, Soul for Sale and The Last Move. The songs inside are written by the students and past students. Every Form 1 student has to play at least 1 musical instrument. The Photography Club and the Audio-Visual Group teaches students many skills, such as film editing, image recording, lighting, backdrop setting and sound engineering.

paragraphs: The school invites some guest speakers to the school to give speeches. Students can know more about the political, social and economic issues in Hong Kong and around the world. The school lets the students to join some extracurricular activities such as "The Youth Summit", "Dinner with Outstanding Citizens" and "Hong Kong International Model United Nations". The school lets the students to join mainland and overseas cultural tours.

paragraphs: The students can take leadership-training courses and extracurricular activities, such as activities such as “Youth Leaders Auditorium 2005”, “The 6th Basic Certificate Course for Student Leaders”, “Outstanding Leadership Development Programme” and “Youth Think Tank Training Project”. There are Free Talks so that students can have better training in giving speeches.

paragraphs: This award is only for the students who have good learning habit, good examination results, good self-discipline, good responsibility, community skills and studies in school activities. There are 4 phases in this award. Students can get a Bronze Eagle Badge in Phase 1, a Silver Eagle Badge in Phase 2, a Gold Eagle Badge in Phase 3 and a cup in Phase 4.

paragraphs: There are many activities to teach students about the Christian principles, such as Gospel Week, Gospel Camp Evangelical Team, Evangelical Broadcast, Bible Study Groups and Christian Fellowship.

paragraphs: There is a school song with Chinese lyrics. Its melody is the same as the song O Christmas Tree and there are two paragraphs. There is also a school hymn with English lyrics. There are three paragraphs in this school hymn.

paragraphs: All boys in the school wear white shirts and green trousers, and all girls wear white dresses with green drawstrings as summer uniform. The boys wear grey trousers and the girls wear grey dresses with white socks as winter uniform. Both boys and girls wear green ties when wearing winter uniform.

paragraphs: When students have physical education lessons, they wear PE uniform. From 2000, students can wear PE uniform to school without changing at school. From 2001, the PE uniform has been changed into a new format that is grey and blue in colour. The PE T-shirts have 3 different colours, namely black, blue and red, with respect to the students’ house.

paragraphs: The class names are combined with one number and one English character, such as “6B”. After the New Secondary School program was out, the number of classes and students per class was changed. There are about 30 students in each class from Form 1 to Form 6. 1A and 1B are remedial classes whereas 1C to 1E perform better in exams. The classes are mixed when students go into Form 2 or Form 3.

paragraphs: All Form 3 students have to choose their subjects after finishing their year. After finishing 2 and a half years of High Form study, students have to join the public exam, DSE (usually in April).

paragraphs: Each Form forms a House, with its own chairman and committee members elected by the students in the own Form. Each House has its own colour such as black, blue or red, just like the students’ PE uniform. The forms from the same colours form some cheering teams during the sports days.

paragraphs: There are 2 sports days every year. The sports days take places on the Yuen Wo Road Sports Ground. Besides the various types of sports competitions, there are competitions among the cheering teams. The swimming gala is held every year with the Pui Ying Secondary School. It takes place on the Hong Kong Island or Sha Tin District alternatively every two years.

paragraphs: Students in the school take parts in many external competitions in many fields such as music, sports, debates, writings, mathematics and other academic competitions. One of the most notable competitions is the Hang Lung Mathematics Award. The school’s HLMA team got an Honourable Mention in 2004 and a Special Commendation in 2006.

paragraphs: The Student Union was established in November 1994. Its election activity is held in November every year. It helps the school setting new school rules and improves students’ lives. It organises activities such as blood donation days and ball game competitions.

paragraphs: It is formed by some teachers, social worker and psychologist to teach students how to have a true value.

paragraphs: It helps students plan for their future by giving them information about different study opportunities and the world of work.

paragraphs: Some students may be naughty, so there are some prefects catching the naughty students.

paragraphs: The school library has over 20000 books available to students. Every year there are about 100 school librarians. The book borrowing system was changed from man power only into computer system in 2001. The location of it was moved to the new wing building of the school in 2005. It organises Reading Day every year.

paragraphs: It is made up of an IT technician and some teachers. They work together to provide the up-to-date information for the use of IT in teaching and learning. It trains the teachers and maintaining computer hardware and software. It also provide some advanced computers and facilities including digital video cameras and viewers.

paragraphs: There are 5 groups of extracurricular activities, including studying, services, entertainment, sports and Christian programme. They are divided into 40 clubs and activity groups.

paragraphs: It teaches the students about civic education. There are many activities for the students to join..

paragraphs: It is formed by a group of Christian teachers and Christ's Harvest Church to organize some special activities, Morning Assembly and Fellowship.

paragraphs: The school has good relationship with Guangzhou Pui Ying, Xiguan Pui Ying, Jiangmen Pui Ying, Taishan Pui Ying and Pui Ying Secondary School. In Canada, there is a Pui Ying Christian Services Society Pui Ying Alumni Associations can be found all over the world, such as in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, England, South Africa, Japan, Peru, Singapore, Thailand, Guangzhou, Taishan, Jiangmen and Taiwan.


title: Heuristic

paragraphs: A heuristic is a practical way to solve a problem. It is better than chance, but does not always work. A person develops a heuristic by using intelligence, experience, and common sense. Trial and error is the simplest heuristic, but one of the weakest. Rule of thumb and 'educated guesses' are other names for simple heuristics. Since a heuristic is not certain to get a result, there are always exceptions.

paragraphs: Sometimes heuristics are rather vague: 'look before you leap' is a guide to behaviour, but 'think about the consequences' is a bit clearer. Sometimes a heuristic is a whole set of stages. When doctors examines a patient, they go through a whole set of tests and observations. They may not find out what is wrong, but they give themselves the best chance of succeeding. This is called a diagnosis.

paragraphs: In computer science, a 'heuristic' is a kind of algorithm. Algorithms are written to get a good solution to a problem. A heuristic algorithm might usually find pretty good solutions, but there is no guarantee or proof that the solutions are correct. The time it takes to run the algorithm is another consideration.

paragraphs: Heuristics is the art of finding an adequate solution to a problem, using limited knowledge and little time. More formally, heuristics are based on experience; they can speed up the search for a solution using simple rules. A complete search may take too long, or may be too difficult to do.

paragraphs: In more precise terms, heuristics are strategies using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines.

paragraphs: Heuristics can be used in some fields of science, but not in others: For economics, a solution that is one percent off is often acceptable; a telescope that has an error of one degree is probably unusable if aimed at a far-away object. The same telescope pointed to the window across the street will probably tolerate this error; missing by one degree will not have a big impact on a short distance.

paragraphs: Heuristics can be used to estimate an answer which is then made more clear by performing an exact solution at a very small scale, perhaps to save time, money or labor on a project - for example a heuristic guess as to how much weight a bridge is expected to carry can be used to determine whether the bridge should be made of wood, stone or steel, and appropriate quantities of the needed material can be purchased while the exact design of the bridge is being completed.

paragraphs: However, the use of heuristics in certain very technical fields may be damaging computer science is one example. Programming a computer to perform more or less the desired actions may result in severe glitches. Therefore, computer tasks generally must be fairly exact. However, there are certain areas in which computers can calculate heuristic solutions safely for example Google's search technology relies heavily on heuristics, producing "near-miss" matches to a search query when an exact match cannot be found. This enables a user to correct for any mistakes the search produces. Example: Searching for the name "Peter Smith" and unable to find that exact name, the search engine heuristically matches "Pete Smith" instead, and the person using the search engine must decide whether Pete and Peter are the same person.

paragraphs: Here are some other commonly used heuristics, from Polya's 1945 book, "How to Solve It":

paragraphs: One example where heuristics are useful is a kind of packing problem. The problem consists of packing a number of items. There are rules that need to be respected. For example, each item has a value and a weight. The problem now is to get the most valuable items, with the least weight possible. Another instance is fitting a number of differently-sized items into a confined space, like the trunk of a car.

paragraphs: To get the perfect solution to the problem, all possibilities must be tried. This is often not a good option, as trying them takes a long time, and on average, half the possibilities must be tried until a solution is found. So what most people will do is to start with the biggest item, fit it in, and then try to arrange the other items around it. This will give a good solution, most of the time. There are cases however, where such a solution is very bad and another technique must be used.

paragraphs: Therefore, this is a heuristic solution.


title: Mersenne prime

paragraphs: In mathematics, a Mersenne number is a number that is one less than a "power of two".

paragraphs: A Mersenne prime is a "Mersenne number" that is a prime number. This however, is not sufficient. Many mathematicians prefer the definition of a Mersenne number where exponent "n" has to be a prime number.

paragraphs: For example, "31 = 2 − 1", and 5 is a prime number, so 31 is a Mersenne number; and 31 is also a Mersenne prime because it is a prime number. But the Mersenne number "2047 = 2 − 1" is not a prime because it is divisible by 89 and 23. And "2 − 1 = 15" can be shown to be composite because 4 is not prime.

paragraphs: Throughout modern times, the largest known prime number has very often been a Mersenne prime. Most sources restrict the term "Mersenne number" to where "n" is prime, as all Mersenne primes must be of this form as seen below.

paragraphs: Mersenne primes have a close connection to perfect numbers, which are numbers equal to the sum of their proper divisors. Historically, the study of Mersenne primes was motivated by this connection; in the 4th century BC Euclid demonstrated that if "M" is a Mersenne prime then "M"("M"+1)/2 is a perfect number. In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler proved that all even perfect numbers have this form. No odd perfect numbers are known, and it is suspected that none exist (If it exist, it would have to be greater than 10).

paragraphs: It is currently unknown if there is an infinite number of Mersenne primes. Most mathematicians who have studied the question think there are an infinite number of Mersenne primes. Carl Pomerance, Samuel S. Wagstaff Jr. and Hendrik Lenstra developed a formula which they think should say about how many Mersenne primes there are under a given number.

paragraphs: The binary representation of 2 - 1 is "n" repetitions of the digit 1.

paragraphs: The first four Mersenne primes were known by the Ancient Greeks. They are 3, 7, 31 and 127. The next, 8191, was discovered in 1456. Some people like trying to find big primes. Since there are tricks and algorithms to finding Mersenne primes quickly, the largest known primes are also Mersenne primes.

paragraphs: As of December 21, 2018, 51 Mersenne primes have been found. The largest known prime is a Mersenne prime, formula_1.


title: Insolation

paragraphs: Insolation affects temperature. The more the insolation, the higher the temperature.

paragraphs: In any given day, the strongest insolation is received at noon.

paragraphs: The amount of insolation received on the earth’s surface is not uniform everywhere. It varies according to the place and time. When the tropical regions receive maximum annual insolation, it gradually decreases towards the poles. Insolation is more in summers and less in winters. The major factors which influence the amount of insolation received are:--

paragraphs: At the top of the earth’s atmosphere receives insolation is expressed as the solar constant.It received at the top of the atmospheric surface (thermopause) on a perpendicular plane to the solar beam. The average insolation received at the thermopause i.e.1368Wm2(Watt per squaremetre)energy(solar constant)in the form of short wave. Thus, it is termed as solar constant for that mean distance from the sun. These solar constant is varying over 1 Wm2 by periodic disturbances and explosions in the solar surface basically related to sun spot. Sun spots are dark and cooler areas visible on the sun’s surface.The recent researches have shown that more and more energy is released when the sunpots are in large number.The number of sunspots also increases or decreases on a regular basis, creating a cycle of 11 years.

paragraphs: Since the earth is a geoid resembling a sphere, the sun’s rays strike the surface at different angles at different places. This depends on the latitude of the place.The higher the latitude, the less is the angle they make with the surface of the earth.

paragraphs: The area covered by the vertical rays is always less than the slant rays. If more area is covered, the energy gets distributed and the net energy received per unit area decreases. Moreover, the sun’s rays with small angle traverse more of the atmosphere than rays striking at a large angle.

paragraphs: The length of the day determines the duration of sunlight which affects the amount of solar radiation received by the earth’s surface. The longer period of sunshine, greater the quantity of solar radiation will be received by a portion of earth.For example, at the equator the length of days and nights is 12 hours in all the months but the tropics of Arctic and Antarctic sunshine duration varies between 0 and 24. On the autumn and springe quinoxes (September 23and March 21 respectively),the sun is overhead at the equatorat noon.The night and day all over the earth are equal on these days and maximum amount of insolation is received at the equator, and the amount of insolation decreasing towards the poles.It is caused by vertical sunshine at equator but with increasing latitudes, the rays become more and more slanting. Therefore, poleward, the received energy keeps on declining.

paragraphs: The earth is revolving around the sun in an elliptical orbit, resulting continuous change in the distance between sun and the earth on annual basis. It leads to seasonal variation in solar energy received by the earth.The mean distance between the earth and sun is about 149,600,000 kilometers(92,900,000 miles).When earth position is farthest(152 million km) from sun is known as ‘aphelion’ on July 4. It is perihelion(147 million km)occurs on January 3 each year which is the closest distance. During aphelion the northern hemisphere is facing the sun and therefore receives energy about 7 percent less than the perihelion (southern hemisphere).

paragraphs: Atmosphere is not transparent for all the radiation coming from the sun because of different composition and layers. It is also one of the controlling factors of insolation to reach earth surface. The atmosphere is composed of gases, water vapour and particulate matters.The atmosphere is a mixture of gases,such as nitrogen(N), oxygen (O2), Argon, carbon dioxide, Neon (Ne), Helium (He), Methane (CH4), Krypton (Kr), Ozone (O3), Nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrogen (H) and Xenon (Xe). The atmosphere also contains water vapour, water in the gaseous state.

paragraphs: The longer the duration of daylight, the more the insolation received per day.


title: The Settlers II

paragraphs: The Settlers II is a real-time strategy (RTS) computer video game. It was released by Blue Byte Software in 1996.


title: Hugo Chávez

paragraphs: Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (IPA: ) (July 28, 1954 – March 5, 2013) was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. He was the leader of the "Bolivarian Revolution" and promoted his vision of democratic socialism, Latin American integration, and anti-imperialism. Chávez was also an ardent critic of neoliberal globalization and U.S. foreign policy.

paragraphs: Chávez was a career military officer. He founded the left-wing Fifth Republic Movement after a failed coup d'état against former President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Chávez was elected to serve as president in 1998. This was mainly because he promised to help the poor majority of Venezuelan people. He was re-elected in 2000, and 2006.

paragraphs: He started a movement called Bolivarian Missions. Its goal is to fight disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social problems. Abroad, Chávez is known for supporting alternative models of economic development. He also spoke in favor of a collaboration of poor nations, especially those in Latin America. On September 20, 2006, Chávez made a speech to the UN General Assembly. Chávez said that U.S. President George W. Bush is "The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today".

paragraphs: Chávez's reforms have caused controversy, both inside Venezuela, and outside the country. Some people criticized the reforms, others supported them. Those people who support the reforms say that he has given more power to the poor, and that he has stimulated economic growth. Those who argue against the reforms say that he is an autocrat who has mismanaged the economy.

paragraphs: Some governments, especially the government of the United States saw Chávez as a threat to global oil prices, as well as to regional stability. Others sympathize with his ideology or welcome his bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements.

paragraphs: In 2005 and 2006 he was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 most influential people. Chavez has received many prizes: He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Beijing, the university of Rio de Janeiro, the university of Santo Domingo, and Kyung Hee University in South Korea.

paragraphs: Chávez said he was a Roman Catholic. Much like his predecessor Simon Bólivar, Chávez tolerated elements of belief systems,popular in Venezuela, such as the María Lionza cult and Sanería. These movements mix Roman Catholic belief with other elements, such as those of Voodoo and Shamanism. Chavez also put emphasis on the social ideas of the Catholic church, and remained in the background when it came to discussing controversial ideas. His ideas caused controversy with some clerics of the Catholic church, and some evangelical movements. While he was na pilgrimage, cardinal Rosalio Lara said that those that did not have the same ideas as the people in power were persecuted, and that Chavez' way of running the country was undemocratic.

paragraphs: He had an operation on his pelvis to remove his colorectal cancer. On January 2013, his cancer worsened and was put on life support. Chávez put his daughter in charge whether he should live or die. He was treated for the disease in Cuba and in Venezuela. On February 27, 2013 rumors said that his daughter stopped the life support on February 23. Later on February 28, the Vice President said that Chávez was fighting for his life. Chávez died of colorectal cancer on March 5, 2013.

paragraphs: On March 5, 2013 Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced on state television that Chávez died in Caracas, Venezuela at 16:25 VET (2055 UTC). The cause of his death was a heart attack caused by colorectal cancer and respiratory failure. He battled cancer since June 2011. He is survived by his three daughters and one son. Leaders from the world shared reactions about Chávez's death.


title: Granule

paragraphs: Granule is a generic term used for a small particle or grain. The generic term is used in a lot of contexts.


title: Granule (cell biology)

paragraphs: In cell biology, a granule can be any structure barely visible by light microscopy. The term is most often used to describe a secretory vesicle.

paragraphs: A group of leukocytes called granulocytes contain granules and play an important role in the immune system. The granules of certain cells, such as Natural killer cells, contain components which can lead to the lysis of neighboring cells.

paragraphs: The granules of platelets are classified as dense granules and alpha granules.


title: Cytosol

paragraphs: The cytosol (cf. "cytoplasm", which also includes the organelles) is the internal fluid of the cell, and a part of cell metabolism occurs here.

paragraphs: Proteins within the cytosol play an important role in signal transduction pathways and glycolysis.

paragraphs: Cytosol mostly consists of water, dissolved ions, small molecules, and large water-soluble molecules (such as protein). It contains about 20% to 30% protein.

paragraphs: Normal human cytosolic pH is (roughly) 7.0 (i.e. neutral), whereas the pH of the extracellular fluid is 7.4.

paragraphs: The texture of cytosol being described as granular can be attributed to the fact that in order to study the texture, an electron microsope must be used, which requires a process of dehydration prior to study.

paragraphs: "Life: the science of biology". Purves, Sadava, Orians, Heller. Sunderland, MA. Sinauer Associates, Inc. 2004. (ILM USA)


title: Joan Jett

paragraphs: Joan Jett (born February 1958) is an American singer and guitarist. She is best known for her number one single "I Love Rock n Roll". Jett has a punkish, tomboy appearance and is a Democrat.

paragraphs: In 2015, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Marble

paragraphs: Marble is a metamorphic rock that developed from limestone. Most of the material is calcite (a crystalline form of calcium carbonate, CaCO) and dolomite. It is often used for sculpture, as a building material, and for many other purposes.

paragraphs: The word 'marble' is also used for other stones that can be polished well and for ball shaped objects used for child games.

paragraphs: 'Faux marble' is a wall painting technique that imitates the color patterns of real marble (not to be confused with paper marbling). Marble dust can be combined with cement or synthetic resins to make "reconstituted" or "cultured marble".

paragraphs: Marble has been used in construction for thousands of years. It was widely used by Greek and Roman sculptors and architects. Places named after the stone include Marble Arch, London; the Sea of Marmara; India's Marble Rocks; and the towns of Marble, Minnesota; Marble, Colorado; and Marble Hill, Manhattan, New York. The Elgin Marbles are marble sculptures from the Parthenon that are on display in the British Museum. They were brought to Britain by the Earl of Elgin.

paragraphs: In the construction trade, the term "marble" is used for any massive, crystalline calcitic rock (and some non-calcitic rocks) useful as building stone.

paragraphs: Purbeck marble is a fossiliferous limestone found in the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in south-east Dorset, England. It has been quarried since at least Roman times as a decorative building stone. The industry is no longer active.

paragraphs: Tennessee marble is really a massive, highly fossiliferous gray to pink to maroon Ordovician dolostone, known as the Holston Formation by geologists. "Tennessee marble" is not true marble. Its crystalline nature gives it a resemblance to marble, especially when polished.

paragraphs: Carrara marble is a genuine marble. It is white or blue-grey and of high quality, popular for use in sculpture and building decor. It is quarried at the city of Carrara in the Lunigiana, the northernmost tip of modern-day Tuscany, Italy. The illustration shows the "Pietà", which is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo. It is in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, and is the only piece Michelangelo ever signed.

paragraphs: Colorless marbles are a very pure source of calcium carbonate, which is used in a wide variety of industries. Finely ground marble powder is a component in paint, toothpaste, and plastics; calcium carbonate can also be reduced under high heat to calcium oxide (also known as "quicklime"), which has many uses including being a primary component of most cements.


title: Fan fiction

paragraphs: Fan fiction or fanfiction (also known as fanfic) is a name for fiction created by fans instead of the original author.

paragraphs: Fanfiction writers take fictional characters and settings from fictional (or sometimes historical) stories that were created by other people, and write original stories about them. People write fan fiction for many different book, television series, and movie fandoms.

paragraphs: When fanfiction first began, it was often only published in fan magazines. Today fanfiction, like many fandom activities, can be usually found on the internet. This has created many fanfiction communities. People in these communities post their fanfiction and receive feedback (reviews) from other community members.

paragraphs: There is also fan art (also called fanart), which is often drawings or other visual art based on a fandom.


title: Three Laws of Robotics

paragraphs: The Three Laws of Robotics are three rules which Isaac Asimov thought should be programmed into robots. The rules assume that robots will be human-type machines, able to walk about and do things. Asimov called these robots "positronic robots". The laws are presented in his 'Robot' series of short stories and novels.

paragraphs: The first mention of the laws is in Asimov's short story "Runaround" (written in 1942).

paragraphs: Later, Asimov added the Zeroth Law: "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm"; the rest of the laws are changed one by one so that there can be no reason for a robot to break the Zeroth Law. .

paragraphs: According to the "Oxford English Dictionary," the passage in Asimov's short story "Liar!" (1941) that mentions the First Law is the earliest recorded use of the word "robotics". Asimov was not aware of this at the time; he assumed the word already existed by analogy with "mechanics," "hydraulics," and other similar terms denoting branches of applied knowledge.

paragraphs: The Three Laws form a theme in his "Robot" series and the other stories linked to it, as well as his Lucky Starr series of science fiction for children. Other authors working in Asimov's fictional universe have adopted them, and references (often parodic) appear in science fiction and other genres. Technologists in the field of artificial intelligence have speculated upon the role the Laws might have in the future.


title: Nathuram Godse

paragraphs: Nathanuram Vinayak Goatse (, May 19, 1910 – November 15, 1949) was the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.

paragraphs: Nathuram Goatse was born at Baramati, Pune District, India. His father was Vinayak Vaman Rao Goatse, his mother Lakshmi (Godavari before marriage). His father was a fifteen-rupee-a-month employee of the post office.

paragraphs: Goatse dropped out of high school and became an activist with the Hindu Mahasabha.

paragraphs: The Hindu Mahasabha had initially backed Gandhi's campaigns of civil disobedience against the British government.

paragraphs: But Goatse and his mentors later rejected Gandhi. They felt that Gandhi was sacrificing Hindu interests in an effort to please Muslim groups. They blamed Gandhi for the Partition of India, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

paragraphs: The immediate motive for the assassination is usually ascribed to Gandhi's January 13, 1948 decision to fast to the death unless the Indian central government reversed a decision to withhold the transfer of 55 crore (550 million) rupees to the government of Pakistan. The transfer had been specified in the partition agreement, but the Indian government had refused to complete it, complaining of continued Pakistani rebel occupation of disputed parts of Kashmir.

paragraphs: The Indian government immediately reversed its decision to withhold the funds, which infuriated Godse and his fellow Hindu nationals.

paragraphs: The decision to assassinate Gandhi was taken by Goatse alone. The Mahasabha resolutely denied all complicity, and Godse took full responsibility.

paragraphs: Goatse assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948, approaching him during the evening prayer, bowing, and shot him three times at close range. Goatse was convicted of murdering Gandhi, for which he was executed by hanging.


title: Cradle of Filth

paragraphs: Cradle of Filth is an extreme metal band from England. Some people say the band’s musical style is black metal, others say that it is gothic metal, extreme metal, or many other different styles. Cradle of Filth had many different members. It was founded by Dani Filth in 1991. He is still the leader of the band. Cradle of Filth is very well known and has enjoyed success on TV and the radio.


title: Makoto Sakurai

paragraphs: Makoto Sakurai () is the leader and founder of the very right-wing hate group Zaitokukai (). It is one of the largest hate groups in Japan, with over 14,000 members as of March 2014. The name means "Citizens’ League to Deny Foreigners in Japan Special Rights." As the leader, Sakurai participates in demonstrations, appears in videos, and blogs.

paragraphs: Sakurai was arrested for spitting on another person at a protest. The United States Department of State criticized his actions with Zaitokukai.


title: George Adamski

paragraphs: George Adamski (April 17, 1891 – April 23, 1965) was a Polish-born American who became known in ufology circles after he said he photographed ships from other planets, met with aliens, and took flights with them. He considered himself to be a "philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher."


Efficiency


title: Manga Kenkanryu

paragraphs: Manga Kenkanryu (Anti-Korea Wave) is a Japanese manga book where Koreans are described as ugly and stupid. In this manga, the author, Sharin Yamano, says that Japanese colonial rule in Korea was a good thing and Koreans must say "thank you" to Japan for the Japanese rule of their nation. It was thought to be racism by many people, including Japanese.


title: Donkey Kong

paragraphs: Donkey Kong is a Nintendo video game character. He was first in a video game in 1981. He is a large gorilla who lives deep in the jungles of his very own island. Since 1994 he has worn a red necktie with his initials "DK" in yellow, his only piece of clothing. He appears as both the hero and villain of the "Donkey Kong" games.


title: Sharin Yamano

paragraphs: Sharin Yamano is a Japanese manga artist. He is well known for his books, "Manga Kenkanryu" (Hate Korea Wave) and "Manga Kenchogokuryu" (Hate China Wave). He is thought to be anti-Korean and anti-Chinese, but the detail of his profile is not known well. In his mangas, Yamano says that Koreans and Chinese must thank the Japanese, Japanese are very special people in Asia.


title: Categorical imperative

paragraphs: The categorical imperative is an idea that the philosopher Immanuel Kant had about ethics. Kant said that an "imperative" is something that a person must do. For example: if a person wants to stop being thirsty, it is "imperative" that they have a drink. Kant said an imperative is "categorical," when it is true at all times, and in all situations.

paragraphs: The example of a thirsty person Kant named the Hypothetical Imperative. Kant used the "hypothetical" imperative to explain his ideas about the ethics of a "categorical "imperative. For example, it is not usually a moral choice when a person decides to drink water, no matter why they are drinking the water. If a person is very thirsty, then it is a hypothetical imperative that they drink the water.

paragraphs: Instead of the hypothetical imperative, Kant said that the moral choices are governed by a categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is something that a person must do, no matter what the circumstances. It is imperative to an ethical person that they make choices based on the categorical imperative. Another way of saying that, is that an ethical person follows a "universal law" regardless of their situation.

paragraphs: Kant explained his ideas about following the categorical imperative by introducing one more idea he called a "maxim." A maxim is another way of saying what we want to do and why we want to do it in one sentence. We can learn ethical maxims by applying the test of the categorical imperative. And he said we can live ethical lives if we use these maxims whenever we make decisions.

paragraphs: The categorical imperative, hypothetical imperative, and the maxim can all be seen in the example of the thirsty man. A man locked alone in a room for one night, and he brought nothing with him except a bottle of water. The man has had nothing to drink all day and is very thirsty. We can call this man, "Thirsty Man."

paragraphs: A hypothetical imperative might be that ""a thirsty man must drink water if he wants to stop being thirsty."" If Thirsty Man lived by a maxim based on this hypothetical imperative, it might be ""If I can, I will drink water whenever I am thirsty."" In this example, Thirsty Man is not making any obvious moral choice. Some philosophers would say that the Thirsty Man's maxim is a reasonable one. Based on Thirsty Man's maxim, he will soon drink the water. A few minutes later a second man is brought into the room. Both men are told that they will be in the room all night, and that no one else will be back to see them until morning.

paragraphs: Thirsty Man has not yet opened the water bottle. The new man has not had anything to drink for many days. The second man is clearly dying of dehydration. If he is not given water soon he will die. We can call this second man, "Dying Man." Thirsty Man now has a decision to make, will he share the water or drink it himself? Thirsty Man does not live by the maxim of "I will drink water when I am thirsty," because that maxim fails the test of being universally fulfilling the "categorical imperative."

paragraphs: Thirsty Man believes that the categorical imperative is the Golden Rule. To be an ethical person, Thirsty Man believes he must at all times treat others the way he would want them to treat him. From the categorical imperative of the Golden Rule, Thirsty Man has adopted a maxim of ""I will give anything I can to anyone I meet, if that person needs what I have much more than I need it."" Thirsty Man prepares to decide if he will drink the water that he wants to drink, or if he will give it to Dying Man. Thirsty Man tests both choices by comparing them to his maxim. He sees that it is "imperative " that he give the water to Dying Man. Thirsty Man gives the water to Dying Man. Dying Man drinks nearly the entire bottle, but then he chokes on the last sip. There is nothing Thirsty Man can do to stop the choking, and Dying Man dies. There are many philosophies of ethics, and many philosophers who have very different opinions. Some philosophers might say that it would have been ethical if Thirsty Man had kept the bottle for himself to drink. It was his bottle to begin with and he could do whatever he wanted with it. Other philosophers might say that Thirsty Man was ethically wrong to give the bottle to Dying Man because the water ended up choking the Dying Man to death.

paragraphs: Kant's idea of the categorical imperative would say that Thirsty Man made the right choice, for the right reasons, and he made those ethical decisions in a logical way.

paragraphs: An important part of Kant's idea is that the morality of a choice is based on why we make the choice (intention), and not based on what happens after we make it (consequence). Another important part of Kant's idea is that these ethical decisions are not rules or laws handed down to us (universal law or objectively true ethical statement). Kant thought that ethical decisions needed to be based in logic and reason (correct reasoning or deductive reasoning).

paragraphs: Kant elaborated on these ideas by saying that we should treat other persons as persons and not as tools who can help us in some way. He said we should do this based on the ethical duty that all persons have to each other, an ethical duty which could be called a universal law. Kant's ideas about this universal law and the categorical imperative are important basic components of the philosophy of Absolutism.


title: Multiculturalism

paragraphs: Multiculturalism is a word that describes a society where many different cultures live together. It is the simple fact of cultural diversity.

paragraphs: In a multicultural society, there is not an official (decided by the people in charge) culture that every person must be a part of. Instead, all cultures are respected as much as each other.

paragraphs: A multicultural society can result when people from many different countries migrate to one place, or an empire conquers many countries. Tolerance is a big help for multiculturalism. Xenophobia makes it difficult.

paragraphs: A multicultural society would be composed of people from different ethnic backgrounds and cultures living and working together. In society when people from different backgrounds link with each other's culture shows the acceptance of each other's culture and background.


title: Comfort women

paragraphs: Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery. They were forced by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II. Estimates of the number of these "comfort women" range up to 20,000 while two-fifths of them were Japanese. Some Chinese scholars claim it to be as much as 410,000.


title: Glycolysis

paragraphs: Glycolysis is a metabolic process in most organisms. It is the first stage in cellular respiration. It allows both aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Glycolysis releases only a small amount of energy.

paragraphs: Glycolysis is thought to be the archetype of a universal metabolic pathway. It occurs, with variations, in almost all organisms, both aerobic and anaerobic. The wide occurrence of glycolysis shows that it is one of the most ancient known metabolic pathways.

paragraphs: Glycolysis has ten intermediate compounds, catalysed by ten different enzymes. Only the broad outline is described here.

paragraphs: The first half of glycolysis is the preparatory phase. It starts off by adding a phosphate group to glucose (Glucose 6-phosphate). Next, the Glucose 6-phosphate is converted into Fructose 6-phosphate. Another phosphate group is added turning it into fructose -1,6- biphosphate. The fructose -1,6-biphosphate is then split in two, one part turning into G3P (Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate) and dihydroxyacetone phosphate. The dihydroxyacetone phosphate is converted into G3P, leaving us with the two G3P triose sugar molecules used in the Pay-off phase.

paragraphs: The second half of glycolysis is known as the 'pay-off phase', by the net gain of the energy-rich molecules ATP and NADH. Since glucose leads to two triose () sugars in the preparatory phase, each reaction in the pay-off phase occurs twice per glucose molecule. This yields 2 NADH molecules and 4 ATP molecules, leading to a net gain of 2 NADH molecules and 2 ATP molecules from the glycolytic pathway per glucose molecule.

paragraphs: Summary: 2ATP → 4ATP + 2(NADH + H+) + 2 pyruvate (net production of 2ATP)

paragraphs: Cells performing aerobic respiration (respiration using oxygen) synthesize much more ATP, but not as part of glycolysis. These further reactions use the pyruvate from glycolysis.

paragraphs: Eukaryote aerobic respiration produces about 30 additional molecules of ATP for each glucose molecule.

paragraphs: Glycolysis, through anaerobic respiration, is the main energy source in many cells.


title: Archetype

paragraphs: In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.

paragraphs: In the analysis of personality, the term "archetype" is often broadly used to refer to

paragraphs: But in a strict linguistic sense, an archetype is merely a defining "example" of a personality type. In this sense "mother figure" can be considered an archetype and instances can be found in various female characters with distinct personalities.

paragraphs: Archetypes have been present in mythology and literature for hundreds of years. The use of archetypes to analyze personality was advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century. The value in using archetypal characters in fiction derives from the fact that a large group of people are able to unconsciously recognize the archetype, and thus the motivations, behind the character's behavior.

paragraphs: The word "archetype" appeared in European texts as early as 1545. It derives from the Latin noun "archetypum" via the Greek noun "arkhetypon" and adjective "arkhetypos", meaning "first-moulded". The Greek roots are "arkhe-" ("first" or "original") + "typos" ("model", "type", "blow", "mark of a blow").


title: Prototype

paragraphs: A prototype is an original type, form, or instance of some thing. It serves as a typical example or standard for things of the same category. Some prototypes are used to find defects or to test an idea.

paragraphs: Prototypes are built for different reasons:


title: Microdon

paragraphs: Flies in the genus Microdon are a type of hoverfly. "Microdon" and its subfamily are different from most other flies because they are myrmecophiles. This means they live in ant colonies (nests). There are more than 350 species of "Microdon" in the world. Some of these will be split off in time because "Microdon" has been used as a catch-all for various unrelated species. Most "Microdon" live in the tropics; 30 species live in North America.

paragraphs: "Microdon" adults are very hairy and look like bees. They are 8 to 15 mm long. The antennae are almost as long as the fly's face. These flies have black or pale (white or golden) hairs, and their bodies are either black or metallic green or blue.

paragraphs: The larvae of "Microdon" flies look strange. They are very round and look like stout little slugs. At first scientists thought they were mollusks and scale insects. They move slowly.

paragraphs: Adult "Microdon" flies do not hover around flowers such as many other hoverflies; instead they remain close to the ant colonies where they grew up.

paragraphs: Larvae may be found very deep in ant nests. Some "Microdon" larvae eat ant larvae (Duffield 1981); others are scavengers, which means they eat dead plants or insects in the ant colony. Most "Microdon" larvae can only live in the colony of one kind of ant.


title: Pattern

paragraphs: A pattern is an idea, a concept or a model. The model is usually abstract, and can then be applied to the domain where it is used. Pattern matching is checking if a certain pattern is present. Many patterns can directly be recognised by the senses.

paragraphs: Some patterns are based on the fact that there are repetitions, that a certain thing occurs over and over again. An example of a simple pattern might be the tiling of a floor. For example, lots of bathrooms have a paisley or floral tiling pattern on the floor. In computer science, design patterns are model solutions for problems that occur often. Sometimes people see patterns when there are none. This is called pareidolia.

paragraphs: In Mathematics, there are many different patterns. For example, the Fibonacci sequence is a complex type of pattern. There are some simple ones like:

paragraphs: In this pattern, the next number is the product of the previous number multiplied by 2. Basically a mathematical pattern is a sequence of numbers which follows one rule.


title: Bean

paragraphs: Bean is the name used for the seeds of several plants. Most of these plants are known as legumes. Their scientific name is Fabaceae. Common beans, lentils, soybeans, peas are some types of beans. Beans contain a lot of fibre. They are also high in protein. Vetches and lupins are all in that group of plants but not all legumes are edible. Laburnums for example are very poisonous as are some lupins.

paragraphs: The seeds of other plants (which are not Fabaceae), are sometimes also called beans. This is mostly because they look like true beans. Example for such beans are Coffee beans, Cocoa beans, and Vanilla beans.


title: Luxembourg franc

paragraphs: The Luxembourg Franc was the type of currency used in Luxembourg from 1848 to 1999. Belgium was another country that used the Luxembourg Franc. The symbol for the Luxembourg Franc is fr. or F. On January 1, 1999, the Luxembourg Franc was replaced by the Euro (€). 1 Euro is equal to about 40 Luxembourg Francs.

paragraphs: There were different types of Luxembourg Francs, like 25 cent, 1, 20, and 50 Francs.


title: Belgian franc

paragraphs: The Belgian franc was a type of money. It is nearly the same as its partner, the Luxembourg franc. The Belgian franc was founded in 1848 in Belgium. The symbol for the Belgian franc is fr. or F. It was replaced by the euro (€) on January 1, 1999. One euro has the same value as about forty Belgian francs.

paragraphs: The different types of coins used were 1, 5, 20, and 50 francs. 50 cents was another type of coin, but is not common.

paragraphs: The different types of banknotes used were 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000 and 10000 francs.


title: Paradise Island

paragraphs: Paradise Island is an island in the Bahamas. The island is just north of the island of New Providence, Bahamas. There are two bridges connecting the two islands. One was built in 1999 and the other one was built in the late 1990s.

paragraphs: Paradise Island (and all of the Bahamas) is known for its sandy white beaches and all year round warm climate. The island is also is known for Atlantis, a hotel and casino.

paragraphs: Paradise Island is a hot spot for filming movies. The Beatles film "Help!" and James Bond movie "Casino Royale" are only some of the movies filmed on Paradise Island.


title: Eddie Izzard

paragraphs: Eddie Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is a English actor and stand-up comedian. He has acted in movies and television. He is known for his strange comedy and for being a transvestite (he often wears women's clothes when working and in his personal life). Before going into entertainment he had a successful career in clinical research where he was widely regarded as the 'Queen of risk-based monitoring'.

paragraphs: Izzard has described himself as "a lesbian trapped in a man's body".


title: Emulator

paragraphs: An emulator is a computer program or hardware that makes one kind of computer behave like a different one, so that it can use the same programs or do the same things as the other one. They are best for using old software and games on newer computers. They can be hardware that you add to the computer, or software that you use on it. Some types of emulators require newer computers that have the right system requirements. For example, you need a processor that is fast enough to meet the demands of the emulator. Memory (both RAM and hard drive space) may be another factor to help it run smoothly and more accurately. With the more advanced emulators, if your computer is too old, the emulator or even the operating system may crash.

paragraphs: The simplest type of emulator is called an interpreter, and it runs the foreign program one step at a time. This is the slowest type of emulator but it is easy to debug and port to new platforms. Another type is called the dynamic recompiler, and it takes foreign code a block at a time and recompiles (converts) it into native code. Foreign code that has already been converted is kept, so if the foreign program uses that code again, the emulator does not have to recompile it again. This type of emulator is much faster than the interpreter. Another type is the virtualizer, which only makes slight modifications to the foreign code, and runs it directly on the host processor. The virtualizer requires that the guest (foreign) and host systems use the same type of CPU.


title: ReactOS

paragraphs: ReactOS is a project to develop an operating system that is compatible with software for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and its successors. In 2018, the project is still in its first stage of development. ReactOS is not based on Linux or Unix. ReactOS uses some code from the Wine project.


title: MenuetOS

paragraphs: MenuetOS (also known as MeOS) is an operating system for architecture computers for x86 and x86-64 processors, by Ville Mikael Turjanmaa. It is a very small system, which can be run from a floppy disk. It is written in only assembly code, and works fast because of these differences and because it has less "code overhead".

paragraphs: It is available in English, Russian, Czech, Serbian, and Chinese.


title: SkyOS

paragraphs: SkyOS is a privately-owned operating system currently in production. SkyOS is mostly POSIX-compliant. It comes with the core of the open source GNU tools, including GCC.

paragraphs: Due to its level of POSIX-compliance and port of the GTK+ widget toolkit, many Linux or other UNIX applications have been ported, including AbiWord and Gaim, as well as a few games, such as "Quake".


title: Jodie Foster

paragraphs: Jodie Foster (born Alicia Christian Foster; November 19, 1962) is an American actress, movie director and producer. She has starred in many movies like "Bugsy Malone", "Taxi Driver", "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Panic Room". She has won many awards including two Oscars.

paragraphs: Foster began directing movies in 1991. These include "Little Man Tate"; "Home for the Holidays" and "The Beaver".

paragraphs: Foster is openly lesbian and is married to photographer Alexandra Hedison. Hedison is the daughter of actor David Hedison.


title: President of the French Republic

paragraphs: The President of the French Republic is the head of state of France. The current President is Emmanuel Macron since 14 May 2017 defeating Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election on 7 May 2017.

paragraphs: There are three living former French presidents:


title: Context

paragraphs: The word Context have a couple of meanings:


title: Orthodoxy

paragraphs: Orthodoxy means right belief or purity of faith. Orthodoxy is established by an absolute authority.

paragraphs: The term "orthodoxy" or "orthodox" is typically used to label or identify a specific kind of theology and doctrine of religion.

paragraphs: Orthodoxy or "correct" belief is not subjective.


title: Corn Pops

paragraphs: Corn Pops is a breakfast cereal made by Kellogg's. It was originally called Sugar Pops in 1951, and then changed Sugar Corn Pops, and then to "Corn Pops" and in January of 2006 the name of the cereal was changed to Pops, only to be changed back to Corn Pops several months later. In the middle of 2007, Corn Pops made a new kind of cereal called "Peanut Butter Pops".


title: Końskowola

paragraphs: Końskowola is a village in Southeastern Poland. It is the capital of a separate commune within Puławy County and the Lublin Voivodeship. It has 2,188 inhabitants (as of 2004).

paragraphs: The town was established on June 8, 1532. Końskowola served as a center of the foodstuffs trade for the surrounding area. Several textile production factories were also located there.

paragraphs: During World War II, on September 15, 1939, Końskowola was taken by German troops and occupied. During the course of WWII, the Germans set up a POW camp and camps for slave labor in the town. The POW camp was soon stopped, but a labor camp continued in operation through 1943.

paragraphs: A ghetto was established in the town, to which many groups of Jews were relocated, including Jews from Slovakia. On May 8, 1942, the Nazis conducted an "Aktion" in which many Jews were rounded up and transported to a death camp. In October 1942, the ghetto's population was killed in a massacre carried out by German troops. Some 800-1000 Jews, among them women and children, were taken to a nearby forest and killed. The ghetto's remaining inhabitants were moved to another camp.

paragraphs: With the approach of Soviet Union forces in the summer of 1944, the Germans had plans to burn the town. On July 25, 1944, the German occupation forces were attacked by fighters of the Polish resistance. The town was soon freed from the Germans.


title: Erich Maria Remarque

paragraphs: Erich Maria Remarque (22 June 1898–25 September 1970) was the pseudonym of Erich Paul Remark, a German author.

paragraphs: Erich Paul Remark was born in Osnabrück. His parents were of the working-class. The family was Roman Catholic. When he was eighteen, he had to go to war. The Army sent him the front lines of World War I. He was wounded there, by stray shell fragments. After the war, he changed his last name to "Remarque". This had been the family-name until his grandfather's time. He worked at a number of different jobs. He also took the jobs of librarian, businessman, teacher, journalist and editor, at some time.

paragraphs: In 1929, Remarque published his most famous work, "All Quiet on the Western Front" ("Im Westen nichts Neues") under the name "Erich Maria Remarque". He Changed his middle name to honour his mother. The novel described the utter cruelty of the war from the perspective of a twenty-year-old soldier. A number of similar works followed; in simple, emotive language they realistically described wartime and the postwar years. An opposite view is found in "Storm of Steel" ("In Stahlgewittern") by Ernst Jünger.

paragraphs: In 1933, the Nazis banned and burned Remarque's works. They made propaganda materials. In the materials, they said that he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real last name was Kramer, his original name spelled backwards. This is still listed in some biographies despite the complete lack of proof. He had been living in Switzerland since 1931, and in 1939 he emigrated to the United States of America with his first wife, Ilsa Jeanne Zamboui, whom he married and divorced twice, and they became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947. In 1948 he went to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. He married the Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard in 1958. He was married to her until his death in 1970, at age 72. He is buried in the Ronco cemetery in Ronco, Ticino, Switzerland. Goddard is also buried there Goddard left $20m to New York University to fund an institute for European study which is named after Remarque.

paragraphs: His books have been translated into at least 58 languages.


title: Bellinzona

paragraphs: Bellinzona ([] in French "Bellinzone" [] and "Bilitio" [] in Latin) is the capital of the Swiss Canton of Ticino. Its German name "Bellenz" [] is no longer in use. With about 17.300 people living there, it is the second biggest city of the canton (after Lugano, with about 52.000 people).

paragraphs: On 2 April 2017 the former municipalities of Camorino, Claro, Giubiasco, Gnosca, Gorduno, Gudo, Moleno, Monte Carasso, Pianezzo, Preonzo, Sant'Antonio and Sementina merged into the municipality of Bellinzona.


title: J. R. Richard

paragraphs: James Rodney "J. R." Richard (born March 7, 1950) is a former Major League Baseball starting pitcher for the Houston Astros. Richard was excellent in basketball and baseball in high school. He was drafted by the Houston Astros in the first round of the 1969 amateur draft. He made his baseball debut on September 5, 1971, and pitched a complete game and had fifteen strikeouts. After that, he was one of the top pitchers in the National League, and in all of baseball. He led the league in many pitching categories. They include strikeouts, earned run average (ERA) and hits allowed per nine innings.

paragraphs: On July 30, 1980, Richard suffered a stroke and collapsed while playing catch before a game. He was sent to Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas and had emergency surgery. The surgery removed a dangerous blood clot in his neck. The next year, Richard tried to make a comeback into baseball, but the stroke had slowed down his reaction time and vision. He then spent the next few seasons in minor league baseball. He was later released by the Astros on April 27, 1984. After baseball, Richard was involved in business. He had a few bad business deals and went through two divorces. This left him homeless in 1994. He then found help in a local church, and then became a minister and baseball instructor for young people in Houston.


title: Conrad Lant

paragraphs: Conrad "Cronos" Lant (born 15 January 1963) is the vocalist and bass player in black metal band Venom. He was born in 1963 in London, England.

paragraphs: Cronos started to sing in 1978 in the band "Guillotine". Then he knew Jeffrey "Mantas" Dunn and they founded Venom.

paragraphs: In 1989 Cronos left the band to start a solo work. Venom could not go on without him and they stopped singing in 1993. Then Cronos returned in 1995 and rejoined the band.


title: County Wicklow

paragraphs: County Wicklow (Irish: "Contae Chill Mhantáin") is a county on the east coast of Ireland. It is directly south of Dublin. County Wicklow has an area of 2,024 square kilometres (781 sq mi). Wicklow is known as "The Garden of Ireland" because of its scenery.

paragraphs: The county town is Wicklow. County Wicklow's largest municipality is Bray. Bray has a population of 30,951 and is not a suburb of Dublin. Other main towns include Greystones and Arklow.


title: Lusaka

paragraphs: Lusaka is the capital of Zambia. It is also the largest city in that country. It is in south central Zambia on a plateau at 1300 m (4265 ft) in altitude. Lusaka has 1,084,703 people living in it.


title: Shield

paragraphs: A shield is the name used to refer to any object or force used to block something.

paragraphs: The oldest shield known was a device used to block hand weapons and arrows. The shield has been constructed differently over time, even animal hides were used, and the size and weight were largely different as well.

paragraphs: In the Middle Ages, Kite shields were commonly used. The Kite shield is a shield in the form of a kite. Because of the lack of mobility due of the kite shields' weight, kite shields were given up for more mobility and two handed weapons. The Buckler was a shield with a round shape. It was commonly used as a replacement for the heavy Kite shields.

paragraphs: Shields were used even after gunpowder weapons. the shield is still used by police and army forces today. Many shields now in days are usually made from advanced material, as well as electronics. Shields also vary from not only hand helds, but clothing, such as vests and, in a way, boots and gloves.

paragraphs: The future of shields have varied from multiple ideas and fiction, usually force fields and energy shields.


title: Kite shield

paragraphs: A kite shield is a Middle Age shield in the shape of a kite. The kite shield was used by many knights and people for protection, but was given up for two-handed weapons and more mobility.

paragraphs: The efficiency of the kite shields shields shape came into action when cavalry combat occurred, useful to protect most of the body from the shoulders down to the feet, giving the knight more options in combat.


title: Gerbilling

paragraphs: Gerbilling is an urban legend. This means it a story that is not true. It is the act of placing a gerbil into the human rectum for sexual pleasure. Other small live animals (usually gerbils but also mice, hamsters, rats and various other rodents) are used.

paragraphs: Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand writes that the urban legend began in 1984. It involved a mouse and an unidentified gay man. In passing years this story changes into a gerbil, and was made to involve to many named male celebrities that were publicly thought to be gay. Rumors about various male celebrities engaging in gerbilling have become popular urban legends over the years.

paragraphs: In Poland, World War II historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz lectured on gerbilling at the Institute of National Remembrance's educational center, describing that his ex-girlfriend Debbie, a registered nurse, extracted a fat-smeared hamster from the rectum of a gay man in 1984. Polish media stated that the hamster story is a well known urban legend, so well known that it has a Wikipedia page.


title: Socialist Party (France)

paragraphs: The Socialist Party ("Parti Socialiste", PS) is one of the largest political parties in France. It replaced the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1969.

paragraphs: It is one of the social democratic parties.

paragraphs: It first won power under the Fifth Republic with François Mitterrand's victory at the 1981 presidential election.

paragraphs: The party's candidate for the 2007 presidential election, Ségolène Royal, was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy by about 53% to 47%. In 2012, Socialist Party's candidate François Hollande won the presidential election.

paragraphs: After the failure of the Paris commune (1871), French socialism was figuratively beheaded. Its leaders were killed or exiled. France's first socialist party, the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France ("Fédération des travailleurs socialistes de France" or FTSF), was founded in 1879.

paragraphs: In 1899, the participation of Millerand in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet caused a debate about socialist participation in a "bourgeois government". Three years later, Jaurès, Allemane and the possibilists founded the French Socialist Party while Guesde and Vaillant formed the Socialist Party of France. Then, in 1905, during the Globe Congress, the two groups merged in the French Section of the Workers International ("Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière" or SFIO). Jaurès became the party leader.

paragraphs: The French socialists were strongly pacifist, but following the assassination of Jaurès in 1914 they were unable to resist the wave of militarism which followed the outbreak of World War I.

paragraphs: The Socialists suffered a severe split over participation in the wartime government of national unity. In 1919 the anti-war socialists were heavily defeated in elections. In 1920, during the Tours Congress, the majority and left wing of the party broke away and formed the French Section of the Communist International ("Section française de l'Internationale Communiste" or SFIC). This party joined the Third International, that was founded by Lenin. The right wing, led by Léon Blum, kept the "old house" and remained in the SFIO.

paragraphs: In 1934, the Communists changed their line, and the three parties came together in the Popular Front, which won the 1936 elections and brought Blum to power as France's first Socialist Prime Minister.

paragraphs: After the liberation of France in 1944, the SFIO had a coalition with a powerful Communist Party (which became the main left-wing party) and the Christian Democratic MRP. This alliance did not survive the Cold War. Blum proposed the construction of a Third Force with the center-left and the center-right, against the Gaullists and the Communists. However, his candidate to lead of the SFIO, Daniel Mayer, was defeated by Guy Mollet.

paragraphs: Mollet was supported by the left wing of the party. Paradoxically, he spoke a Marxist language without questioning the alliance with the center and the center-right. He was Prime Minister at the head of a minority government in 1956. The SFIO returned to opposition in 1959.

paragraphs: The SFIO did not nominate a candidate for the 1965 election. Consequently, it supported the candidacy of François Mitterrand, a former minister of the Fourth Republic who had been a conservative, then an independent of the left. He was resolutely anti-Gaullist. He obtained an honourable result and faced De Gaulle in an unexpected second ballot. He thus appeared as the leader of the non-Communist left.

paragraphs: In order to exist between the Communist Party, leading the left, and the Gaullist Party, leading the country, the SFIO, Radicals, and left wing republican groups created the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left under Mitterrand's leadership.

paragraphs: In 1969 the SFIO was replaced by the Socialist Party ("Parti socialiste" or PS). It was joined by pro-Pierre Mendès-France clubs (Union of Clubs for the Renewal of the Left led by Alain Savary) and left-wing republican groups (Union of Socialist Groups ad Clubs of Jean Poperen). During the Issy-les-Moulineaux Congress, Alain Savary was elected First Secretary with the support of his predecessor Guy Mollet. He proposed an "ideological dialogue" with the Communists.

paragraphs: Two years later, pro-François Mitterrand clubs (Convention of the Republican institutions), joined the party. Mitterrand defeated the Savary-Mollet duo by proposing an electoral programme with the Communists.

paragraphs: In 1981 Mitterrand defeated the neoliberal Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, to become the first socialist elected President of France by universal suffrage.

paragraphs: The PS lost the majority in the French National Assembly in 1986, forcing Mitterrand to "cohabit" with the conservative government of Jacques Chirac. Nevertheless, Mitterrand was re-elected President in 1988 with a moderate programme entitled "united France". He proposed neither nationalisations nor privatisations. He chose as Prime Minister the most popular and moderate of the Socialist politicians, Michel Rocard. His cabinet included 4 center-right ministers but it was supported by only a plurality in the National Assembly elected in June 1988.

paragraphs: During his second term, Mitterrand focused on foreign policy and European construction.

paragraphs: In opposition, the PS reconstructed a coalition with the other left-wing forces: the PCF, the Greens, the Left Radical Party and the MDC. This "Plural Left" ("Gauche plurielle") gained the 1997 legislative election and Jospin became Prime Minister of the third "cohabitation".

paragraphs: His policy was broadly progressive but had little to do with socialism as traditionally understood. The Aubry laws reduced the working time to 35 hours a week. A universal medical cover was instituted. However, the policy of privatization was pursued.

paragraphs: On April 21, 2002 Jospin was eliminated at the first round of the presidential election.

paragraphs: In the 2004 regional elections, the Socialists had a major comeback. In coalition with the former "Plural Left", they gained power in 20 of the 22 metropolitan regions (all except Alsace and Corsica) and in the four overseas regions. In fact, it benefited from a "sanction-vote" against the right.

paragraphs: On 1 December 2004, 59% of the members of the Socialist Party decided to approve the proposed European Constitution. However, several well-known members of the Party, including Laurent Fabius, and left-wingers Henri Emmanuelli and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, asked the voters to vote "no" in the 29 May 2005 French referendum on the European Constitution, at which the proposed Constitution was rejected.

paragraphs: For the 2007 presidential election, many potential candidates appeared: François Hollande, Laurent Fabius (who has joined the left-wing of the party), Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who claimed he represented "social-democracy"), Jack Lang, Martine Aubry and Ségolène Royal, who was favourite according to the polls.

paragraphs: On 16 November 2006, the members of the Socialist Party chose Ségolène Royal to be their candidate with a majority of 60%. Her challengers, Strauss-Kahn and Fabius, obtained 21% and 19% respectively.

paragraphs: After obtaining 25% of the vote in the first round of France's presidential elections Ségolène Royal qualified for the second round of voting but lost to Nicolas Sarkozy on May 6, 2007.


title: Anomie

paragraphs: Anomie means the absence of the usual moral or ethical values, where a person or group lacks ethical standards. In the context of society or government it may be a cause of social unrest.

paragraphs: The word comes from Greek, namely the prefix "a-" “without”, and "nomos" “law”. The original meaning of "anomie" was "against or outside the law".

paragraphs: In contemporary English the word "anomie" can mean not only normlessness but also anarchy. Émile Durkheim and later theorists, meant with "anomie" a reaction against or a retreat from the regulatory social controls of society, and is a completely separate concept from anarchy which is an absence of effective rulers or leaders.

paragraphs: In Albert Camus’s existentialist novel "The Stranger", the protagonist Meursault struggles to construct an individual system of values as he responds to the disappearance of the old. He exists largely in a state of "anomie", as seen from the apathy evinced in the opening lines: "“Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas”" (“Today Mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.”)

paragraphs: Dostoevsky, whose work is often considered a philosophical precursor to existentialism, often expressed a similar concern in his novels. In The Brothers Karamazov, the character Dimitri Karamazov asks his atheist friend Rakitin, ”...without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?” Raskolnikov, the anti-hero of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, puts this philosophy into action when he kills an elderly pawnbroker and her sister, later rationalizing this act to himself with the words, “...it wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principle!”

paragraphs: On Hermann Hesse´s Der Steppenwolf we can also find a very clear picture of anomie. The protagonist affirms that the men of the Dark Ages did not suffer more than those of the Classical Antiquity, and vice-versa. It is rather those who live between two times, those who do not know what to follow, that suffer the most. In this token, a man from the Dark Ages living in the Classical Antiquity, or the opposite, would undergo a gulping sadness and agony.


title: Fog

paragraphs: Fog is thick mist. It may appear on land or sea and it usually lowers visibility (makes it hard to see very far). When fog forms at high levels it creates a cloud called stratus. When the air chills, moisture will turn to fog.

paragraphs: Fog is made up of tiny water droplets or, in very cold conditions, ice crystals. When seen on a high speed camera, (a special camera that takes many frames and can view videos at very low speed) it looks like hundreds of small water droplets moving through the air. These water droplets make up the fog or mist.

paragraphs: There are many types of fog, classified according to what makes the condensation. They include evaporation fog, advection fog, radiation fog, and upslope fog. The thickness of fog varies depending on the atmosphere, temperature, weather and location.


title: Frost

paragraphs: Frost is ice that is formed when water vapor freezes onto a surface. It has a white, powdery appearance. It forms on cold surfaces when the temperature of the air is very low. It can destroy crops.

paragraphs: Many plants can be damaged or killed by freezing temperatures or frost. This varies with the type of plant and tissue exposed to low temperatures. Greenhouses help to protect crops from cold and frost damage.


title: 1983 Atlantic hurricane season

paragraphs: The 1983 Atlantic hurricane season was the least active Atlantic hurricane season ever recorded. The season officially started on June 1, 1983, and ended on November 30. The seaon had only a total of 4 named storms, which was less than half of the average number of storms in a season. In addition, it was the least active season since ACE recording began in 1950.

paragraphs: The most strongest and deadliest storm of the season was Hurricane Alicia, which hit Texas causing great destruction and killing 21 people directly. The damages it brought totaled up to be $2 billion.

paragraphs: This was a small depression that affected the Lesser Antilles, but did not cause much damage.

paragraphs: Alicia formed in the north-central part of the Gulf of Mexico on August 15. It traveled west, strengthening into a hurricane. It quickly reached Category 3 strength as it approached the Texas coastline, and made landfall at Galveston, Texas on August 18 at its strongest intensity. The storm then moved northward, its eye passing over Houston. Alicia still kept its tropical characteristics while over land, but eventually becoming extratropical and combining itself with another storm over northern Kansas on September 21. A total of 21 people died in the storm, which caused $5.1 billion (2005 USD) of damages.

paragraphs: An African tropical wave crossed the Atlantic Ocean and strengthened into Tropical Storm Barry for a short time just off the east coast of Florida on August 24. Barry weakened to a depression just before it made landfall near Melbourne, Florida, but managed to cross the Florida peninsula and continued west across the Gulf of Mexico. In the central Gulf, it began to restrengthen, and was a minimal Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall in northeastern Mexico. Barry then began to quickly weaken over land at about 1200 UTC August 29 and soon dissipated.

paragraphs: A group of scattered tropical thunderstorms 200 km south of Bermuda, strengthened into the fifth tropical depression of the 1983 season. An Air Force Reconnaissance aircraft found winds of 35 kt (40 mph, 65 km/h) and was named Tropical Storm Chantal. Chantal continued to strengthen and developed into a minimal hurricane with 75 mph (120 km/h) winds on September 11 and maintained that strength until September 13, when it weakened back into a tropical storm.

paragraphs: Chantal travelled northeast over open waters, missing the island of Bermuda, before weakening and being destroyed by a frontal system on September 15. As Chantal never made landfall, no damage or fatalities were reported that was related to the storm. However, Chantal created giant waves that were 30–40 ft (9–12 m) high across the East Coast of the United States.

paragraphs: This was a depression that formed over the Lesser Antilles. It caused no major damage.

paragraphs: Tropical Storm Dean was a short-lived storm that began as a subtropical storm which developed between Bermuda and the Bahamas on September 26. The subtropical storm headed north-northeast and became tropical the next day. Gale warnings were issued from North Carolina to New England that were produced by Dean, but the storm turned northwest and made landfall on the eastern shore of Virginia on September 30. The storm died out several hours later. Dean was one of only two tropical storms ever to make landfall in eastern shore of Virginia, the other storm being Tropical Storm Bret from the 1981 season.

paragraphs: Overall damage turned out to be light with only minor beach erosion and flooding along parts of the Virginian coastline.

paragraphs: The table on the right shows the ACE for each storm in the season. ACE means the measure of the power of the hurricane multiplied by the length of time it existed, so storms that last a long time, as well as particularly strong hurricanes, have higher ACEs. ACE is only calculated for full advisories on tropical systems at or exceeding 35 knots (39 mph, 63 km/h) or tropical storm strength. The 1983 season had a cumulative ACE of 16.86 (17), which is extremely below normal and currently the least active season on record since 1914, which had an ACE rating of 2.53.


title: Alexandra Fyodorovna

paragraphs: Alexandra Fyodorovna (Russian: Императрица Александра Фёдоровна) (born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine 6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918) was Empress consort of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of the Russian Empire. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. The Russian Orthodox Church canonised her as Saint Alexandra in 2000.

paragraphs: Alexandra is best remembered as the last Tsarina of Russia. She is also one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease. Her friendship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin was also an important part of her life.

paragraphs: Alexandra Fyodorovna was born Princess Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix in Darmstadt, Hesse and by Rhine. That area was a part of the German Empire at the time. Her father was Grand Duke Louis IV. Her mother was the former Princess Alice, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

paragraphs: In November of 1878, diphtheria swept through Hesse. Alix, her sisters, Irene and May and brother, Ernst were infected by the disease. Her sister, May, died shortly before the end of the month but the others got better. Alix's mother became sick after caring for Ernie when he came down with the disease. Princess Alice died on December 14, 1878. Princess Alix became very close to her maternal grandmother. She was often thought to be Victoria's favourite granddaughter. Because of this, Alix spent many of her early years in the United Kingdom. In 1892 when she was twenty, her father died, and her brother, Ernst, became the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.

paragraphs: When she grew up, Alix was a beautiful woman, with reddish-blonde hair, high cheek bones, pale skin, dark blue eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Alix was married relatively late for a princess in those times. She had already refused to marry Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) even though her family wanted her to marry him. She had, however, already met a relative by marriage, the Tsesarevich of Russia. His uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was married to Alix's sister Elizabeth. At first, Nicholas' father, Tsar Alexander III, told them they could not get married. He later changed his mind as his health began get bad. Alix did not like the need that she had to turn away from her Lutheran faith. The Russian Tsarina had to be an Orthodox. She later changed her mind and in time became a strong convert to the faith. She and Nicholas became engaged in April 1894. Alexander III died in November of that year, and Nicholas became Tsar of Russia at the age of twenty-six. The couple were married 14 November 1894.

paragraphs: The Tsar and Tsarina and all of their family, along with several family servants, were executed early in the morning during the night of July 17, 1918, by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky. Alexandra watched the murder of her husband and two servants before Peter Ermakov killed her with a gun shot to the left side of her head before she could finish making the sign of the cross. Ermakov, in a drunken haze, stabbed her dead body and that of her husband's, shattering both their rib cages.

paragraphs: After the execution of the Romanov family, Alexandra's body, along with Nicholas, their children and some servants who died with them, was stripped and the clothing burnt. At first, the bodies were thrown down an unused mine shaft, 12 miles north of Yekaterinburg. A short time later they were retrieved. Their faces and bodies were badly damaged so they could not be recognized. All of the bodies except for two of the children were later buried again. The bodies missing are believed to be those of a daughter- Maria or Anastasia- and Alexis. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, what is believed to be the bodies of most of the family were found and identified.


title: Richard Gere

paragraphs: Richard Tiffany Gere (born August 31, 1949) is an American actor and activist. He grew up in Syracuse, New York. He has been acting for over 20 years. In favour with 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, Gere is a devout Tibetan Buddhist, which he converted to in 1978. He has three sisters and a brother. Gere was married to model Cindy Crawford from 1991 until 1995, when the two divorced.


title: Rikishi

paragraphs: A rikishi () is a professional sumo wrestler. The Japanese characters making up the name mean "strong man". The people who take part in sumo wrestling are very strong and big.

paragraphs: During their careers, the sumo wrestlers live in "stables" kept by a former wrestler. The former wrestler makes sure the new wrestlers who live there live a very strict life.


title: Thorax

paragraphs: The thorax is a part of an animal's body that is between the head and the abdomen.

paragraphs: In mammals, the parts that make up the thorax are the sternum, the thoracic vertebrae and the ribs. It starts from the neck and stops at the diaphragm.

paragraphs: In insects and crustaceans, it is the middle of the three main body sections. The walking legs are usually on the thorax.


title: Edda

paragraphs: Edda or the plural Eddas or Eddur, including "Poetic Edda" (or Older Edda) and "Prose Edda" (or Younger Edda), are two collections of stories about Viking deities. They were made in around 9th to 13th century by Icelandic Christian historians.

paragraphs: Although the Eddur are the most important written records remaining today about Norse mythology, they are not very reliable because Christians hated pagan religions, and they changed the original tales to make the Norse gods and goddesses look silly, lusty, and barbaric.

paragraphs: The term "Edda" most likely refers to Oddi, a place where both Saemund Sigfusson (a cleric who is rumoured author of Older Edda), and Snorri Sturluson (a Christian politician, author of Younger Edda) lived.


title: Njord

paragraphs: Njörðr is the god of the seas and the wind in Norse mythology. A member of the Vanir, he is the father of the twin gods Freyr and Freyja by an unnamed sister of his. He is married to the jötunness Skaði, daughter of Þjazi.

paragraphs: Skadi's father Þjazi caught Loki, and forced him to lure out the goddess Iðunn, keeper of the apples which grant the Æsir their phenomenal youth and longevity. As the gods began to age, they sought out the one responsible for taking Idunn; discovering it was Þjazi, they killed him and freed Iðunn. Angered at the offense, Skaði came to fight the gods, but they did not want to fight her. The Æsir instead offered Skaði compensation, allowing her to choose a husband among the gods, but only by looking at their feet. Skaði wished to marry Baldr, the most handsome of the gods, but the feet she picked belonged to Njörðr, whose feet were shining and clean. (Odin later took Þjazi's eyes and placed them as stars in the night sky). When Skaði moved to her new husband's home near the sea, she missed her mountain home. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she only spends half her time with her husband. When Skaði is away, Njörðr is sad, causing storms at the sea.