title: Portal (video game)

paragraphs: Portal is a puzzle video game made by Valve Corporation set inside the "Half-Life" series. It was originally sold in "The Orange Box", a game collection deal which came with the Valve-made games "Portal", "Half-Life 2", and "Team Fortress 2". It is now sold by itself and is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac and PC.

paragraphs: The player plays as a woman named Chell who has to go though tests while being watched by a computer named GLaDOS, an acronym for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. GLaDOS provides all of the game's dialog and is known for being clever, funny, and sarcastic, promising the player character a cake if all of the tests are finished. GLaDOS and the testing rooms were created by a company called Aperture Science, which competes with Black Mesa. The player must use a gun, called the Portal Gun, that makes two linked holes, called portals, to solve puzzles. The two portals, one blue and one orange, are linked together and let the player get from one place to another. When the player enters the blue portal, they will come out of the orange portal. When the player enters the orange portal, they will come out of the blue portal.

paragraphs: Portal has many jokes in it that have become popular on the internet, for example, "the cake is a lie". Because the game was very popular, Valve made a sequel in 2011, called "Portal 2".

paragraphs: The game starts with Chell waking up in a small glass room that has only a bed, a toilet, and a radio inside. She is told by GLaDOS that testing will start soon, and an orange portal opens on one of the walls. Once the player goes through, she enters the testing rooms and begins testing. There are 20 testing rooms, called Test Chambers, in all.

paragraphs: The tests start out simple. Chell has to pick up boxes, called Weighted Storage Cubes (Cubes for short), and put them on buttons, which will open the door to the exit of the chamber. At this point, GLaDOS speaks to Chell as a guide, praises her, and promises her cake when the tests are over. Near the beginning of the game, Chell gets the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, also known as the Portal Gun. At first, her Portal Gun only makes blue portals and the orange portals are made by GLaDOS. Later, Chell gets the full Portal Gun and can make both blue and orange portals.

paragraphs: The tests become more and more dangerous farther into the game. In some rooms, there is poison on the floor. In others, there are balls of electricity called High Energy Pellets which will kill Chell if she touches them. During these tests, GLaDOS becomes more and more sarcastic, giving Chell useless advice, such as "The floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it." At one point, GLaDOS tells Chell a chamber is broken and she must go through a chamber full of sentry guns, called Turrets, instead. If a Turret sees Chell, it will shoot at her until she dies. In this chamber is a hidden room. In the hidden room are drawings and writing on the walls left by an unknown person. The writing says things like "the cake is a lie" and "she's always watching" with a picture of a camera. There are more rooms like this in later chambers.

paragraphs: In another chamber, Chell has to use the Weighted Companion Cube, which looks like a Weighted Storage Cube with hearts on it, to solve the test. During the test, GLaDOS tells Chell several times that the Companion Cube is not alive, but at the end of the test, she tells Chell she has to "kill" the Companion Cube to get to the next test.

paragraphs: During the last test, Chell has to stand on a moving platform. At the end of the platform's track, it will carry her into a fire pit. GLaDOS thanks Chell for doing the tests. At the last minute, Chell uses her Portal Gun to escape the trap. While trying to escape the building, Chell is led into a room where she finds GLaDOS. Chell breaks a white ball that fell out of GLaDOS. GLaDOS tells her she was stupid to break it because they did not know what it was, but GLaDOS quickly figures out it was her morality core. She tells Chell the people who worked for Aperture Science installed it to make her stop killing them with "Deadly Neuro-Toxin". Because Chell broke it, GLaDOS can use the Neuro-Toxin again. Chell has a time limit of 6 minutes to kill GLaDOS before the Neuro-Toxin kills Chell. After breaking pieces off of her and burning them, GLaDOS is destroyed and Chell escapes the building.

paragraphs: After Chell escapes, she faints, and a robot drags her back into the building. During the credits, GLaDOS sings a song called "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton, that says even though Chell killed her, she is still alive.

paragraphs: "Portal" is a first-person shooter game, which means that it is played from the view of the player character, Chell. When players get the fully-powered portal gun, they can make two portals that are linked together on some white surfaces. Chell starts out with nothing, only able to do what GLaDOS lets her, such as entering portals created by GLaDOS and using cubes that GLaDOS gives her. Once Chell gets a half-powered portal gun, she can fire a blue portal that connects to orange portals that GLaDOS puts in the rooms. When Chell gets the fully-powered portal gun, she can put both portals anywhere.

paragraphs: The portals are linked, making a tunnel that Chell can walk through. The tunnel works in both directions, so if Chell enters a blue portal, she will exit from an orange portal, and if she enters an orange portal, she will exit from a blue portal. The purpose of the portals is to make shortcuts to different areas, for example, if the player needs to get to a high ledge but is unable to jump to it, they can put a blue portal at their level and fire an orange portal above the ledge. Going through those portals will get the player onto the ledge.

paragraphs: The portals can be used in different ways, notably as a way to catapult Chell. If the player cannot put a portal on a high ledge but can put one on a wall across from the ledge and one on the floor below, these portals can be used to propel Chell forward far enough to reach the ledge. This is because portals do not affect forward momentum. When Chell enters the portal in the floor and exits the portal in the wall, she will fall, gaining speed. If she goes through the portal on the floor again while falling, she will be going fast enough that when she exits the wall portal again, she will be able to land on the ledge.

paragraphs: The different ways the portals work together mean there are multiple ways to solve the puzzles in the Test Chambers.


title: Valve Corporation

paragraphs: Valve Corporation is an American video game developer and digital distributor company in Bellevue, Washington. It was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, two Microsoft employees. The company is widely known for Steam and its critically acclaimed first-person shooter series, "Half-Life", with the first being released in 1998.


title: Sistan and Baluchestan Province

paragraphs: Sistān o Balūchestān is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the southeast of the country. It has borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its capital is Zahedan.

paragraphs: The province is the largest in Iran, with an area of 181,785 km² and a population of 2.4 million. The counties of the province are Iran Shahr, Chabahar, Khash, Zabol, Zahedan, Saravan, and Nik Shahr.

paragraphs: The region is also home to Iran's Baloch Sunni minority.


title: Balochistan (region)

paragraphs: Balochistan or Baluchistan is an arid region on the Iranian plateau. The plateau is in Southwest Asia and South-central Asia, between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The area is named after the numerous Baloch tribes. The Baloch are of Aryan and other races who moved into the area from the west around A.D. 1000. All natives are considered Baloch even if they do not speak the Balochi language; Pashto, Persian, Hazaragi language, and Brahui languages are also spoken in the region. The southern part of Balochistan is known as Makran. Now it is recognised by UNPO as an Unrepresented Nation.

paragraphs: Baluchistan's landscape is made of barren, rugged mountains and fertile land. During the summer, some regions of Baluchistan are the hottest. Most of the land is barren, particularly the Iranian and Afghan side of the region. Relatively few people live there. In the south (Makran) is the desert through which Alexander the Great passed with great difficulty.


title: Naked mole rat

paragraphs: The naked mole rat ("Heterocephalus glaber"), (or sand puppy) is a burrowing rodent. The species is native to parts of East Africa. It is one of only two known eusocial mammals (the other is the Damaraland mole rat). Both species are similar in many respects.

paragraphs: The animal has unusual features, adapted to its harsh underground environment.

paragraphs: The animals do not feel pain in their skin. They also have a very low metabolism.

paragraphs: Typically, the animals are between eight and ten centimetres long, and weigh about 30 grams. Their eyes are quite small, and they do not see very well. Their legs are thin and short. Nevertheless, they are very good at moving underground and can move backward as fast as they can move forward. They have large, protruding teeth, which they use to dig. Their lips are sealed just behind the teeth to prevent soil from filling their mouths while digging. They have little hair and wrinkled pink or yellowish skin.

paragraphs: The naked mole rat is well adapted for the limited availability of oxygen within the tunnels that are its habitat: its lungs are very small and its blood has a very strong affinity for oxygen, increasing the efficiency of oxygen uptake. It has a very low respiration and metabolic rate for an animal of its size, about two thirds that of a mouse of the same size. It only uses very little oxygen. In long periods of hunger, such as a drought, its metabolic rate can reduce by up to twenty-five percent.

paragraphs: The naked mole rat can only regulate its body temperature in the typical mammalian fashion over a relatively narrow range of temperatures. Outside this range, it overheats or cools. It can overcome this by its behaviour. When cold, naked mole rats huddle together or bask in the shallow parts of their burrow systems. When they get too hot, they retreat to the deeper, cooler parts of their tunnel system.

paragraphs: The naked mole rat is native to the drier parts of the tropical grasslands of East Africa, mainly South Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

paragraphs: Colonies averaging 75-80 individuals live together in complex systems of burrows in arid African deserts. The tunnel systems built by naked mole rats can stretch up to two or three miles in cumulative length.

paragraphs: The naked mole rat is one of the two species of mammals that are eusocial. Only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony are workers. Workers do different things. Some are tunnellers, expanding the large network of tunnels within the burrow system, and some primarily as soldiers, protecting the group from outside predators.

paragraphs: This eusocial organisation social structure, similar to that found in ants, termites, and some bees and wasps, is very rare among mammals.

paragraphs: The relationships between the queen and the breeding males may last for many years. "Reproductive suppression" causes the other females not to reproduce: the infertility in the working females is only temporary, and not genetic. Queens live from 13 to 18 years, and are extremely hostile to other females behaving like queens, or producing hormones for becoming queens. When the queen dies, another female takes her place, sometimes after a violent struggle with her competitors.

paragraphs: Males and females are able to breed at one year of age. Gestation is about 70 days. A litter is usually from three to twelve pups, but may be as large as 28. The average litter size is 11. In the wild, naked mole-rats usually breed once a year, if the litter survives. In captivity, they breed all year long and can produce a litter every 80 days. The young are born blind and weigh about 2 gm. The queen nurses them for the first month; after which the other members of the colony feed them feces until they are old enough to eat solid food.

paragraphs: Naked mole rats feed primarily on very large tubers (weighing as much as 1000 times the body weight of a typical mole rat) that they find deep underground through their mining operations, but also eat their own feces (coprophagia). A single tuber can provide a colony with a long-term source of food—lasting for months, or even years, as they eat the inside but leave the outside, allowing the tuber to regenerate. Symbiotic bacteria in their intestines help them digest the fibres.

paragraphs: The naked mole rat is also of interest because it is extraordinarily long-lived for a rodent of its size (up to 28 years) and holds the record for the longest living rodent. The secret of their longevity is debated, but is thought to be related to the fact that they can shut down their metabolism during hard times, and so prevent oxidative damage. This has been summed up as "They're living their life in pulses".

paragraphs: Due to their extraordinary longevity for such a small rodent, an international effort was put into place to sequence the genome of the naked mole rat. Results came in 2011 and 2014. Transcriptome sequencing showed that genes related to mitochondria and oxidation reduction processes have high expression levels in the naked mole-rat as compared to mice. This may contribute to their longevity.

paragraphs: The DNA repair transcriptomes of the liver of humans, naked mole rats and mice were compared. The maximum lifespans of humans, naked mole rats, and mice are respectively ~120, 30 and 3 years. The longer-lived species, humans and naked mole rats, expressed DNA repair genes at a higher level than did mice. In addition, several DNA repair pathways in humans and naked mole rats were up-regulated compared with mice. These findings suggest that increased DNA repair makes for greater longevity. The findings are consistent with the DNA damage theory of aging.

paragraphs: Naked mole rats are not threatened. Despite their tough living conditions, naked mole rats are quite widespread and numerous in the drier regions of East Africa.


title: Capsaicin

paragraphs: Capsaicin is a chemical substance. It is responsible for the sense of "spiciness" or "hotness" found in chili peppers. In mammals, it causes a sensation of "burning" of the tissues it comes in contact with. Capsaicin, and other similar substances called capsaicinoids are produced by chili peppers and other plants, probably as a protection against being eaten. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, crystalline to waxy compound.

paragraphs: Capsaicinoids are added to food to make it have a "hot" taste, but it can also be used as an analgesic, a painkiller. Such painkillers are often directly used on the skin. The "burning" of the capsaicin will mask the real pain. Capsaicin is also the main agent in pepper spray.

paragraphs: Capsaicin is not soluble in water; it binds to oil and fat. Soap can be used to wash it off. If something too hot has been eaten, milk or yoghurt can be used.


title: Football team

paragraphs: A football team refers to a group of players who together play football.

paragraphs: A football team may represent a football club, or their nation, group or other associations. In general, there may be 11-18 members in such a team depending on the type of football, i.e., whether it is association football or American football or any other format of the game.


title: West Ham station

paragraphs: West Ham station is a London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and National Rail station. It is on the District Line, Hammersmith & City Line, Jubilee Line and is served by c2c train services. It is in Travelcard Zone 3, and is managed by London Underground. All open platforms have step-free access to the street and each other.


title: Wimbledon station

paragraphs: Wimbledon station is a National Rail, London Underground, and Tramlink station in Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton. It is the only London station that provides an interchange between rail, Underground, and Tramlink services. The station serves as a junction for services from London Underground's District line and National Rail operators (South West Trains and First Capital Connect), as well as Tramlink route 3. Some early morning services on the First Capital Connect route are provided by Southern. The station is in Travelcard Zone 3.

paragraphs: The typical off-peak service frequency is:


title: Tube map

paragraphs: The Tube Map, is a map that navigates passengers around London using the London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway, and Emirates Air-line. To make the map easier to read, the lines of the tunnels are made straight instead of the shape they really follow.

paragraphs: The Tube Map was the first map to use these simplifying techniques that are now used in transport maps across the world. Transport for London (TfL) continue to expand the Tube map as more stations, lines and methods of transport are added.

paragraphs: The Tube Map helps navigate over a billion journeys a year in the biggest city in Europe.


title: Waterloo & City line

paragraphs: The Waterloo & City line, also nicknamed The Drain, is a short underground railway line in London. It was opened on 11 July 1898. It has two stations, Waterloo and Bank.


title: London Underground 1967 Stock

paragraphs: The London Underground 1967 Stock was a deep-level tube stock that ran on the Victoria line from 1968 to 2011. These trains do not run on the London Underground anymore as they were replaced by the London Underground 2009 tube stock between 2010 and 2011. The stock was built by Metro-Cammell. The trains have also ran on the Woodford–Hainault section of the Central Line in the past.

paragraphs: An order to buy 30½ 8-car trains of 1967 tube stock was made in March 1964. They were built by Metro-Cammell. Each train is made up of two 4-car units that are joined together. The trains cost £2.25 million to build. Today this would buy just three trains. The first unit was delivered to West Ruislip depot on 27 September 1967, and the fleet was bought to run the Victoria Line. The units were then tested at the depot, before they were moved to Hainault depot and being tried out in passenger service on the Woodford-Hainault shuttle on the Central line. Once the tests were finished, the trains were moved from Hainault to Northumberland Park Depot using a battery locomotive. The trains were looked after at this depot until they were scrapped. It is the only part of the Victoria line that is not Underground, and it is unusual because, unlike the rest of the London Underground network, there is a staff rail link from Seven Sisters station.

paragraphs: The trains had Automatic Train Operation (ATO). The train operator controls when the doors open and close and also starts the train by pressing two buttons at the same time. These buttons start the automatic process of driving the train. The trains were built with wrap-around windows in the driving cabs and were the first London Underground trains to have windows like this. The trains were delivered with a shiny grey coat, but this soon faded to a dull grey.

paragraphs: When the extension Victoria line to Brixton opened in July 1971, a further 72 cars of 1967 tube stock were ordered, which made up 9 trains. This brought the total number of 1967 tube stock trains to 39½.

paragraphs: In 1989, a refurbishment programme was started across the whole fleet of London Underground rolling stock, following the King's Cross fire in 1987. The Victoria line stock was chosen to be the first to be refurbished (repaired, changed and made to look newer). The refurbishment was carried out by Tickford Rail at Rosyth Dockyard. The refurbishment was due to take 5 years to complete, but the last train did not leave the works until 1997, because each train was slightly different to the next train. When the trains had completed the refurbishment the outside was painted in a white, blue and red colour scheme. The insides of the trains have fire-resistant materials and are finished in the Victoria line blue colours, though some have the Bakerloo line brown as they run on that line too.

paragraphs: The last 1967 stock in passenger service ran on 30th June 2011. It has been replaced by 2009 stock.


title: Victoria, London

paragraphs: Victoria is an informal area of inner city London. It is in the City of Westminster. It is named after Queen Victoria.


title: Walthamstow

paragraphs: Walthamstow is an area in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, North East London, England. It is northeast of Charing Cross.


Congestion


title: Traffic congestion

paragraphs: Traffic congestion is when vehicles travel slower because there is too much traffic on roads. This makes trip times longer, and increases queueing. This is also known as a traffic jam. Congestion may result from a decrease in capacity, for example accidents on the road or roads being closed. Bad road layouts can also restrict capacity. Increased traffic, for example by many cars leaving a sports stadium at the same time, can also cause congestion.

paragraphs: Where congestion is common, for example because of commuting in big cities, several methods are used to relieve it. Cars may be banned in certain districts or certain times, or made to carry passengers or pay a fee, or people may use public transport, such as rapid transit, which travel independently of car traffic and are not affected by traffic jams.


title: Private bill

paragraphs: A Private bill is a proposal for a law that would apply to just a person or a group of individuals. This is unlike public law which applies to everyone within its jurisdiction.


title: British Transport Commission

paragraphs: The British Transport Commission (BTC) was created by Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government. It was a part of its nationalisation programme. Its objective was to provide "an efficient, adequate, economical and properly integrated system of public inland transport and port facilities within Great Britain for passengers and goods", excluding transport by air. The BTC came into operation on 1 January 1948. Its first chairman was Lord Hurcomb. Miles Beevor was the Chief Secretary.


title: London Underground 2009 Stock

paragraphs: The London Underground 2009 Stock is a type of London Underground train. It is built by Bombardier Transportation at their Litchurch Lane Works in Derby, England. The stock belongs to Bombardier's "Movia" type of train. Bombardier Transportation UK used to be known as ADtranz, and before that ABB Asea Brown Boveri. ABB Asea Brown Boveri built the 1992 tube stock which is currently used on the Central and Waterloo & City lines.

paragraphs: Forty-seven 8-car units will be built for use on the Victoria line. These replace the line's original 1967 tube stock. The trains are still being built. They were introduced by 2012, when all of the 1967 tube stock trains were completely replaced. The first 2009 tube stock train started running on the line with passengers on board on 21 July 2009. One new train will enter service every two weeks from early 2010.

paragraphs: The trains are part of a 3.4 billion pound contract that was awarded to Bombardier by Metronet. The contract was to supply new trains featuring Automatic Train Operation and signalling for the Victoria and sub-surface lines. When it is finished this upgrade should make the lines and trains more reliable. There should also be an 8% decrease in journey times between stations, and a 16% overall decrease in journey times. This decrease is partly because the new trains have better performance than the 1967 tube stock that they are replacing. The new trains have a higher top speed of , a faster maximum acceleration of 1.3 m/s, a normal service deceleration of 1.14 m/s, and an emergency brake deceleration of 1.4 m/s. This is the same as the 1992 tube stock.

paragraphs: During the busiest times of the day, or the "peaks", 43 trains should be available in service. This will be an increase of 6 trains over the 37 units of 1967 tube stock. The trains have seats for 252 people and standing space for an estimated 1196 passengers. This gives a 19% increase in capacity. The new trains also have wider doors for easier boarding and alighting (to descend or step down) of passengers to decrease the times that the trains have to wait at stations.

paragraphs: The new trains are being built wider than the current 1967 tube stock. This is because the Victoria line has a larger than normal loading gauge compared to the other deep level tube lines. The larger size means that the new trains cannot leave the Victoria line except by road as they are too wide to travel on the other London Underground deep level tube lines. This means that to move the units, each car has to be uncoupled, loaded onto a lorry, and then re-coupled when they are delivered. The trains have been built using Bombardier's technology called FICAS, which gives them a thinner bodyshell. Along with the larger size this gives more space for passengers.

paragraphs: The stock is the first to be designed since the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations came into force. Because of this they will have more facilities for people with impaired mobility, including multi-purpose areas with tip-up seats and space for wheelchairs and pushchairs and offset centre door poles for wheelchair access.

paragraphs: The design of the trains was finalised in September 2004, and manufacture of two pre-production trains began in January 2005. The first train was scheduled to be completed by mid-2006. Metronet announced on 3 February 2006 that the first of the pre-production cars had been completed to allow it to be tested without being moved. From 21 July until 4 August 2006, an example of the train was on show at Euston Square Gardens, near Euston Square tube station, for a Customer Acceptance Test followed by public display. From September 2006, the first of the two trains underwent testing at Bombardier's manufacturing and test site at their Litchurch Lane Works in Derby. It was due to be delivered to London Underground by the end of 2006 for testing on the Victoria line during engineering hours (times after the line stops carrying passengers and repair and testing work is carried out), but this did not occur until May 2007. It will also be used for driver and maintenance training and familiarisation. The first of the trains was expected to begin passenger service for the Victoria line for evaluation purposes in July 2008, with the remainder of the fleet being delivered and entering passenger service in 2009. However, by October 2007 the date for the first train entering service had been moved to January 2009. The first train entered service on 21 July 2009, leaving Northumberland Park depot at 23:00 and forming train 277 leaving Seven Sisters at 23:55 to Brixton.


title: Uherské Hradiště

paragraphs: Uherské Hradiště is a town in the Czech Republic. About 26,280 people live there (2008). It is located in the South-East of the historical region Moravia in the Zlín region. It was founded on October 15 1257 by the Czech king Přemysl Otakar II.


title: Ice skate

paragraphs: An ice skate is a boot with a blade in it that is used in recreation or sports to move across an ice rink.


title: Boing

paragraphs: Boing is an Italian TV channel marketed at children and teenagers, produced and broadcast in Italy by Time Warner on its DVB-T frequencies.


title: Mir-Hossein Mousavi

paragraphs: Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (; born 29 September 1941) is an Iranian politician, painter and architect. He belongs to the Iranian reform movement.

paragraphs: He was the fifth Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989. After his term, the constitution was changed, and the post of prime minister was abolished. Mousavi is currently the president of the Iranian Academy of Arts. He also was a candidate for the 2009 presidential election.

paragraphs: Before his post as prime minister, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is also a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the High Council of Cultural Revolution. He has not attended their meetings for years. Political analysts think that he does not like these councils. In the early years of the revolution, Mousavi was the editor-in-chief of the official newspaper of the Islamic Republican Party, the "Jomhouri-e Eslami" (Islamic Republic) newspaper. In 2009 presidential election, Mousavi chose green as his campaign color, a color which has since become common in Iran.


title: René Lévesque

paragraphs: René Lévesque (August 24, 1922 – November 1, 1987) was a Minister of the Provincial Government of Quebec from 1960-1966. He was born in New Brunswick and raised in Quebec. He was the founder of the Parti Québécois. The Parti Québécois have twice tried to get Quebec to leave Canada and become a separate country.

paragraphs: Lévesque was a member of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1960 until 1967. He had the position of Minister of Natural Resources.

paragraphs: The goal of the Parti was to give Quebec its own Sovereignty, or to make it a separate country outside of Canada. The Parti Québécois won the 1976 Quebec provincial election. Soon after coming to power, Bill 101 was made a law. This law says that French is the only official language of Quebec. At this time, Canada had two official languages; English and French. In 1980 a vote was held. This vote was a referendum where the citizens of Quebec were asked if they wish to leave Canada and become a new country. 60% of the voters wanted to stay in Canada.

paragraphs: For most of his life, René smoked cigarettes. On November 1, 1987 he started having chest pains. He died of a heart attack later that day while in hospital in Quebec.


title: Dead Space

paragraphs: Dead Space is a third-person survival horror video game, made by Visceral Games for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The player plays as an engineer named Isaac Clarke. He fights against an alien infestation which turns humans into monsters called "Necromorphs" on a mining ship in space named the USG Ishimura.

paragraphs: He is the main character. He has a job as an engineer. The Concordance Extraction Corporation sent him to the USG Ishimura to repair it.

paragraphs: She is an engineer, too. She is good at network technology such as hacking. Her opinion often clashes with Hammond's.

paragraphs: He is Issac and Kendra's colleague. He is a black man and a senior guard.

paragraphs: She is Issac's former lover. She is a member of the USG Ishimura's crew. She sent the video asking for help to Issac.

paragraphs: Dead Space is part of 3 games. It has 2 sequels.


title: Ty Cobb

paragraphs: Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), also known as "The Georgia Peach," was a Major League Baseball player. He is known as the best player of the dead-ball era (before 1920) and as one of the best baseball players of all time.


title: Fulham Broadway tube station

paragraphs: Fulham Broadway is a London Underground station on the Wimbledon branch of the District Line. It is famous as the nearest station to Stamford Bridge stadium. The stadium is the home of Chelsea Football Club. The station was opened as Walham Green on 1 March 1880.


title: Tottenham

paragraphs: Tottenham () is an urban area of North London, England in the London Borough of Haringey. It is situated north-east of Charing Cross.


title: Manor House, London

paragraphs: Manor House is a district of North London.


title: Barbara Castle

paragraphs: Barbara Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn PC, GCOT (6 October 1910 – 3 May 2002) was a British politician. She was born as Barbara Anne Betts in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She grew up in Pontefract and Bradford, Yorkshire. She graduated from St Hugh's College, Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She adopted her family's politics, which were left wing. Castle joined the Labour Party. She was Member for Blackburn from 1945 to 1979. She was Minister of Transport from 23 December 1965 – 6 April 1968. She died in Chiltern, Buckinghamshire.


title: Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh

paragraphs: Richard William Marsh, Baron Marsh PC (14 March 1928 – 29 July 2011) was an English politician and business executive.


title: Weak interaction

paragraphs: Weak interaction, the weak force or weak nuclear force, is one of the four fundamental forces in the universe.

paragraphs: It is carried by particles known as the W and Z bosons, which are gauge bosons. The weak force causes beta decay, a form of radioactivity. At extremely high energy levels, the force of weak interaction and electromagnetism begin to act the same, and this is called electroweak interaction.

paragraphs: Beta decay is what scientists call a neutron breaking down, in contrast with alpha decay where an atom breaks down. These types of breaking down are more commonly known as radioactive decay. In a beta decay a neutron breaks into a proton, an electron and a neutrino. However, this is not a complete picture, there is an intermediary step. Notice that this process preserves the total charge. Conservation laws are very important when calculating the possible outcomes of this interactions.

paragraphs: With more detail, beta decay begins with a neutron, which is made of one up quark and two down quarks. Since up quarks have a charge of +2/3, and each down quark has a charge of -1/3 this results as giving 2/3 -1/3 -1/3 = 0 charge. Due to weak force, if there are too many neutrons in an atom nucleus, one of the down quarks in one of the neutrons turns into an up quark. This would change the charge of the neutron from 0 to (2/3 +2/3 -1/3) = 1. From this, the neutron is no longer a neutron, but actually a proton ( a particle with a charge of +1).

paragraphs: In a strange quantum effect, this transformation releases a particle called a W boson. This is the gauge boson (force-carrying particle) of weak force. Oddly, the W boson has a mass about 80 times as much as a neutron. This sort of thing actually happens very often in quantum mechanics, but it follows the conservation of energy because it happens so quickly. After 3x10 seconds, the W boson breaks into an electron and an electron antineutrino. (The electron antineutrino doesn't really do much). This releases the electron and basically creates a proton from a neutron.


title: Cognition

paragraphs: Cognition is the scientific word for the thought process. This process is the way we think. The word comes from the Latin word "cognoscere", which means "to know" or "to recognize". Cognitive psychology is the science which studies cognition.


title: Medic Droid

paragraphs: The Medic Droid is an American electronic pop band. They are most notable for their fans making their own comedic music videos and posting them on YouTube as well as their song "Fer Sure".


title: Wood Street railway station

paragraphs: Wood Street railway station is in Walthamstow. It is a part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest in north east London. It is in Travelcard Zone 4. It was opened in 1873.

paragraphs: When the Victoria line was being planned, this station was going to be the end of the line instead of Walthamstow Central station. A decision was made in 1961 which meant that this did not happen. If this station had become the end of the Victoria line, the building would have been on the surface next to the British Railways station.


title: Chuck Yeager

paragraphs: Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager (born February 13, 1923) is a former major general of the United States Air Force. He was the first person to break the sound barrier. This was accomplished on 14 October 1947 in a Bell X-1 aircraft. Yeager also served in World War II.


title: Deep-level tube lines

paragraphs: Deep-level tube lines were built by tunnelling shields and are tunnels that are deep underground that allow trains to run through them. They are commonly found on the London Underground. An example is the Victoria line. The depth creates ventilation problems. Powerful fans must push clean air very far underground. In the event of a emergency the people trapped on-board cannot get off due to the insufficient space inside the tunnel compared to the subsurface line.


title: Bolsover

paragraphs: Bolsover is a town near Chesterfield in England. It is 145 miles (233 km) from London, 18 miles (29 km) from Sheffield and 54 miles (87 km) from Manchester.

paragraphs: Bolsover is mentioned in Domesday Book, where it is described as the property of William Peverel (or "Peveril"). The description refers to the villans (villains), the ploughs, 8 acres of meadow, and woodland pasture, which is given as two leagues by a league.

paragraphs: The district of Bolsover is notable for four sites of historical importance: Bolsover Castle, the cave art at Creswell Crags, the houses of Creswell Model Village and the Horror Story Museum. The major work of the area used to be coal mining.

paragraphs: Notable people to come from Bolsover include:


title: Sympathetic nervous system

paragraphs: The Sympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system. It becomes more active when you are stressed. It is a part of the "fight or flight" response. The sympathetic nervous system can increase heart rate; make bronchial passages wider; decrease motility (movement) of the large intestine; make blood vessels narrower; increase peristalsis in the esophagus; cause pupil dilation, piloerection (goose bumps) and perspiration (sweating); and raise blood pressure.


title: Pierre Monteux

paragraphs: Pierre Monteux (born Paris, 4 April 1875; died Hancock, Maine, 14 July 1964) was a French-born conductor who later became a American citizen. He was one of the great conductors of his time.

paragraphs: Monteux was born in Paris and started to learn the violin when he was six. When he was nine he learned at the Paris Conservatoire. When he was twelve he conducted an orchestra in Paris with the pianist Alfred Cortot as soloist. He played in orchestras, and was the principal of the viola section in the first performance of Debussy’s opera "Pelléas et Mélisande". He started to conduct some of the concerts in the series Concerts Colonne.

paragraphs: Monteux also played his viola in chamber music. He played a string quartet by Brahms with the composer in the audience.

paragraphs: Monteux soon became famous as a conductor. He conducted the orchestra for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, conducting the first performances of Stravinskys "'Petrouchka", "Rite of Spring" as well as Ravel’s "Daphnis et Chloé" and Debussy’s "Jeux". These were some of the greatest ballets of the 20th century.

paragraphs: In 1916 Monteux went to the USA and conducted the French operas at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1920 he moved to Boston, conducting many new works by Debussy, Chausson, Darius Milhaud and others. In 1924 he became assistant conductor at the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam. He started the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris in 1929, and also a school for conducting, the École Monteux, in Paris. Later he continued this teaching in his American home in Maine. Neville Marriner and André Previn were two of his pupils.

paragraphs: In 1936 he became conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He stayed with this orchestra until 1952. He made this orchestra internationally famous. In 1942 he became an American citizen. In the 1950s he often conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

paragraphs: Monteux continued to conduct until shortly before his death at the age of 89. In 1961 he was appointed chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, although he did not live long enough to fulfil this. He conducted this orchestra in 1963 in a performance of the "Rite of Spring", fifty years after he had conducted the first performance.

paragraphs: Monteux always prepared his work very carefully. He was not a conductor who liked to show off. He rehearsed his orchestras thoroughly, and conducted with small gestures. Although he made gramophone recordings, he did not like recordings. He preferred concerts with a live audience. He received many honours, including the Légion d’honneur and the Knight of the Order of Oranje Nassau.


title: Milhaud

paragraphs: Milhaud is a commune in the Gard department in France.


title: Willem Mengelberg

paragraphs: Willem Mengelberg (born Utrecht, 28 March 1871; died Zuort, Switzerland, 22 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor. He is famous for conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for fifty years, making them one of the world’s finest orchestras.

paragraphs: Willem Mengelberg studied music in Utrecht, Netherlands and at Cologne Conservatory. He had four years of experience conducting an orchestra in Lucerne. Then, in 1895, he was given the job which was to last him the rest of his working life: conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. He took over this job from Willem Kes who had started the orchestra five years earlier. At Kes’s farewell concert on 25 October 1895 Mengelberg performed as solo pianist.

paragraphs: Mengelberg soon made it into a great orchestra. He was particularly good at conducting the music of Richard Strauss and Mahler. He took the orchestra on tours to many countries, including Norway, Belgium, France, Germany, England and Switzerland. He celebrated his 25th year of conductor of the orchestra by performing all the orchestral works of Mahler.

paragraphs: He also conducted other orchestras abroad, including the Royal Philharmonic Society in London and, in the 1920s, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

paragraphs: Mengelberg also conducted other groups in the Netherlands, including Maatschappij Caecilia and the Amsterdam Toonkunst Choir.

paragraphs: Mengelberg worked hard to get good discipline in his orchestra. He worked to introduce his audiences to good music and to make them listen quietly to the music. He did a lot to help the musicians get better working conditions and he conducted a lot of music by Dutch composers, helping them to become better known.

paragraphs: During World War II he accepted invitations by the Nazis to conduct in Germany. After the war people in Holland were very cross that he had done this, and he was forbidden to conduct in Holland for six years. He said that he had only conducted in Germany for the sake of the musicians.

paragraphs: Mengelberg was very sad and went to live in Switzerland. He died just before his six year ban would have come to an end.


title: Willem Kes

paragraphs: Willem Kes (16 February 1856 in Dordrecht - 22 February 1934 in Munich) was a Dutch conductor. He was the first conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra (now called the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra).

paragraphs: Kes learned the violin, studying with the famous Joseph Joachim in Berlin. From 1876 he started his career as a conductor. When the Concertgebouw Orchestra was started in Amsterdam in 1888 Kes was its conductor. He made it into a good orchestra. He had this job until 1895 when Willem Mengelberg took over. Kes went to Glasgow to conduct the Scottish Orchestra. In 1898 he took a conducting job in Moscow. From 1905 to 1926, Kes was director of a music conservatory (college) in Koblenz. He also worked in Dresden.


title: Dragonair

paragraphs: Dragonair is an airline based in Hong Kong International Airport. It currently has a fleet of 42 airplanes, including Airbus A320s, A321s and A330s. It flies to 44 destinations in China and Asia. It has been named the "World’s Best Regional Airline" by Skytrax World Airline Awards four times. Dragonair will soon be changing its name to Cathay Dragon


title: Hong Kong International Airport

paragraphs: Hong Kong International Airport (ICAO airport code: VHHH), also known as Chek Lap Kok Airport is the airport of Hong Kong that was built at Chek Lap Kok on Lantau Island. It opened in 1998. It is one of the leading airports in the world, and has won "World Airport of the Year" from Skytrax for 7 times in 10 years. It is the hub for Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Hong Kong Airlines and Hong Kong Express. It is the third busiest airport in terms of passengers in Asia, and second busiest in the world in terms of cargo traffic.

paragraphs: The airport has a highly advanced highway and railway system linking it to the city of Hong Kong. The building project was one of the largest in the world, and featured in Discovery Channel's "Ten Greatest Modern Projects of the World". It was designed by the famous architect, Norman Foster. The aim of the airport was to increase traffic and capacity which the old Kai Tak Airport could not handle. It remains one of the best airport in the world, along with Singapore's Changi Airport and Seoul's Incheon International Airport.

paragraphs: Airport District of Hong Kong Police Force is responsible for the security of Hong Kong International Airport.


title: Parasympathetic nervous system

paragraphs: The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS or PSNS) is part of the autonomic nervous system. It does the opposite things of the sympathetic nervous system, the other part of the autonomic nervous system. This way, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems balance each other's effects. The sympathetic nervous system helps a person "fight or flight" when they are in danger. When the danger is gone, the parasympathetic nervous system lets the person "rest and digest," "feed and breed."

paragraphs: The parasympathetic nervous system has many different effects. It affects every part of the body, including:

paragraphs: Because of these effects, the parasympathetic nervous system always has to balance with the sympathetic nervous system. For example, if only the parasympathetic nervous system was working, a person's heart rate and breathing would keep getting lower and lower. Eventually the person would stop breathing or their heart would stop beating.

paragraphs: However, in a healthy person, the brain realizes when the parasympathetic nervous system's effects are getting too strong. For example, the brain may realize that the person is breathing too slowly, or that their heart rate is too low. The brain reacts by making the sympathetic nervous system kick in. Because the sympathetic nervous system has the opposite effects, it will make the person breathe faster and raise their heart rate. These two systems have to balance each other constantly for a person to stay healthy.

paragraphs: The parasympathetic nervous system is controlled mostly by the vagus nerve. This is an important nerve that comes from the brain and goes all the way down to the bottom of the spinal cord. The vagus nerve sends out chemical messengers called neurotransmitters - mostly one called acetylcholine. This chemical causes changes in many different parts of the body.


title: Heart rate

paragraphs: Heart rate (HR) is how many times a heart beats per minute (bpm). The average bpm for a man or women who does not exercise is 70 bpm. Heart rate varies between people because of fitness, age and genetics.


title: Vasoactive intestinal peptide

paragraphs: Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP, also polypeptide) is a kind of hormone that has 28 amino acid residues in it and is made in many areas of the human body including the gut, pancreas, and suprachiasmatic nuclei (which is a small part of the brain's midline) of the hypothalamus in the brain. In humans, the vasoactive intestinal peptide is encoded, or transforming information from one format into another, by the VIP gene.

paragraphs: VIP has a half-life in the blood of about two minutes.

paragraphs: VIP is made more than it should in a VIPoma.

paragraphs: Increase intestinal secretion, relaxes sphincters and smooth muscles. Released from nerve cells in mucosa and smooth muscle.


title: Pan European Game Information

paragraphs: Pan European Game Information (PEGI) is a European self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games. The PEGI system is used in more than thirty countries. PEGI has rated more than 15,000 video games from 2003 to 2010.


title: Psychiatrist

paragraphs: A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in psychiatry, and treats people with mental illness. Psychiatrists can prescribe psychiatric medication.

paragraphs: In the United States, psychiatrists train by going to university first, then they go to Medical School for 4 years. Then they must complete a residency. When they graduate, they get to use the initials M.D. or D.O. after their names. Then these doctors specialize by training for 3 or 4 years in Psychiatry. In other countries psychiatrists train in similar ways but may not have to go to a separate university and medical school.


title: Monifieth

paragraphs: Monifieth () is a town and former police burgh in the council area of Angus, Scotland.


title: Eugen Jochum

paragraphs: Eugen Jochum (pronounce: OY-gen YO-ghum) (born Babenhausen, 1 November 1902; died 26 March 1987) was a famous German conductor.

paragraphs: Jochum was born in Babenhausen, near Augsburg, in the south of Germany. He soon showed musical talent and was playing the organ for church services when he was eight. He studied at the Augsburg Conservatory and then the Munich National Theatre and at Mönchen-Gladbach. He became conductor of the Kiel Opera where, during three years, he conducted more than 50 operas in several German cities. Then, in 1934, he followed Karl Böhm and Karl Muck as the conductor of the Hamburg Staatsoper. He stayed there until 1949. He also was guest conductor in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and later he became chief conductor.

paragraphs: After World War II, Jochum became the first chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1949. He often conducted in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1975, the LSO gave him the title of conductor laureate.

paragraphs: He appeared regularly at Salzburg and, from 1953, Bayreuth. The first opera he conducted there was Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."

paragraphs: Jochum is remembered especially for his warm, romantic performances of Anton Bruckner's symphonies. He often conducted the passions of Bach and music by composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Wagner and Carl Orff.

paragraphs: Jochum died in Munich, Germany at the age of 84.


title: Big O notation

paragraphs: In mathematics and computer science, Big O notation is a way of comparing rates of growth of different functions. It is often used to compare the efficiency of different algorithms, which is done by calculating how much memory is needed, and how much time it takes to complete.

paragraphs: The Big O notation is often used in identifying how complex a problem is, also known as the problem's complexity class. The mathematician Paul Bachmann (1837-1920) was the first to use this notation, in the second edition of his book "Analytische Zahlentheorie", in 1896. Edmund Landau (1877-1938) made the notation popular. For this reason, when people talk about a Landau symbols, they refer to this notation.

paragraphs: Big O notation is named after the term "order of the function", which refers to the growth of functions. Big O notation is used to find the upper bound (the highest possible amount) of the function's growth rate, meaning it works out the longest time it will take to turn the input into the output. This means an algorithm can be grouped by how long it can take in a worst-case scenario, where the longest route will be taken every time.

paragraphs: More specifically, given two positive functions formula_1 and formula_2, we say that formula_3 is in the big O of formula_4 (written formula_5) if for large enough formula_6, formula_7 for some constant formula_8.

paragraphs: Big O is an expression that finds worst-case scenario run-time, showing how efficient an algorithm is without having to run the program on a computer. This is also useful due to the fact that different computers may have different hardware, and therefore need different amounts of time to complete it. Since Big O always assumes the worst-case, it can show a consistent measurement of speed: regardless of the hardware, formula_9 is always going to complete faster than formula_10, because they have different levels of efficiency.

paragraphs: The following examples all use code written in Python. Note that this is not a complete list of Big O types.

paragraphs: formula_9 always takes the same amount of time regardless of input. For example, take a function that accepts an integer (called x) and returns double its value:

paragraphs: After accepting the input, this function will always take one step to return an output. It is constant because it will always take the same amount of time, so it is formula_9.

paragraphs: formula_13 increases according to the size of the input, represented by formula_14. For example, for the following function that accepts n and returns every number from 1 to n:

paragraphs: If we were to input the value of 5, then this would output formula_15, requiring 5 loops to complete. Similarly, if we input 100, then it would output formula_16, requiring 100 loops to complete. If the input is formula_14, then the algorithm's run time is exactly formula_14 loops every time, therefore it is formula_13.

paragraphs: formula_10 increases in factorial amounts, meaning the time taken increases massively with the input. For example, say we wish to visit five cities around the world and want to see every possible ordering (permutation). An algorithm we could write using Python's itertools library is as follows:

paragraphs: This algorithm will calculate each unique permutation of our cities and then output it. Examples of output will include:

paragraphs: Here, our input list is 5 items long, and for every selection our remaining options decreases by 1. In other words, our 5 inputs choose formula_21 items (or formula_22). If our input is formula_14 cities long, then the number of outputs is formula_24; in general, assuming that we go through every permutation, then we will require formula_10 loops to complete it.

paragraphs: A related concept to big-O notation is little-o notation. Big-O is used to say that a function goes not grow faster than another function, while little-o is used to say that a function grows more slowly than another function. If two functions grow at the same rate, big-O can be used but little-o cannot. The difference between big-O and little-o is similar to the difference between formula_26 and formula_27.


title: QI

paragraphs: QI (Quite Interesting) is a British comedy television quiz show. It is now hosted by Sandi Toksvig who took over from Stephen Fry. There are four contestants in each show, of whom one is always Alan Davies. The shows' series are lettered (not numbered as most television shows are), for example the first series is Series A. To begin with, "QI" was shown on BBC Two but was moved to BBC One for Series F.


title: 21st Century Breakdown

paragraphs: 21st Century Breakdown is the eighth studio album by the punk rock band Green Day. It is the band's second rock opera, following "American Idiot", and its first record to be produced by Butch Vig. The band started work on the record in January 2006. 45 songs were written by vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong by October 2007, but the band members did not start studio work with the producer, Butch Vig until January 2008. The writing and recording process was three years long. The band used four recording studios and was finished in April 2009.


title: Glossop North End A.F.C.

paragraphs: Glossop North End A.F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Bradford (Park Avenue) A.F.C.

paragraphs: Bradford Park Avenue A.F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Nelson F.C.

paragraphs: Nelson F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Darlington F.C.

paragraphs: Darlington F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Newport County A.F.C.

paragraphs: Newport County A.F.C. is a football club located in Wales that plays in the English league system.


title: Rotherham United F.C.

paragraphs: Rotherham United F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Bristol Rovers F.C.

paragraphs: Bristol Rovers F.C. is a football club which plays in Bristol, People who live in North Bristol traditionally support Bristol Rovers, however people you live in South Bristol support their fierce rivals Bristol City F.C.


title: Scunthorpe United F.C.

paragraphs: Scunthorpe United F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Oxford United F.C.

paragraphs: Oxford United F.C. is a football club in England.


title: Hereford United F.C.

paragraphs: Hereford United F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Mansfield Town F.C.

paragraphs: Mansfield Town F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Wrexham A.F.C.

paragraphs: Wrexham A.F.C. is a football club which plays in Wales.


title: Shrewsbury Town F.C.

paragraphs: Shrewsbury Town Football Club is a professionl football club from Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire in England. They currently compete in League One, the third level of football in England. They play their home games at New Meadow. The club was founded in 1886. They are nicknamed "The Shrews", "Salop", "The Blues" and "Town".


title: Cambridge United F.C.

paragraphs: Cambridge United F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Rushden & Diamonds F.C.

paragraphs: Rushden & Diamonds F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Yeovil Town F.C.

paragraphs: Yeovil Town F.C. is a football club that plays in England.


title: Peterborough United F.C.

paragraphs: Peterborough United F.C. is a football club which plays in England.


title: Robinson Sucroe

paragraphs: Robinson Sucroe, is a French animated series created by Claude Robinson.


title: National Health Service

paragraphs: The National Health Service is a government run health care organisation that provides health and medical services to citizens and residents of the United Kingdom. It was started in 1948 and intended by its creators to be "free at the point of service". This meant that people who use the NHS would not be required to pay for services each time they used them.

paragraphs: The NHS is paid for out of employee contributions from their wages and also from general government money raised in the form of taxes.

paragraphs: The promise of a health service that would be free at the point of service was broken almost right away with the start of prescription charges. Prescription charges are a set price that people within England must pay for each item on a prescription form. This charge is currently £8.60 for each item and is raised each year.

paragraphs: The NHS is made up of four systems: National Health Service (England), Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales. Each system is run by its government. For example, National Health Service (England) is ran by the UK Government. The systems are run in different ways depending on which country within the United Kingdom a person lives in. For instance, there are no charges for prescriptions in Scotland or Wales, but there are in England.

paragraphs: The service also provides basic dental services and prescription eyeglasses, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs and other services. There are normally charges at the point of service for these services unless one lives in a no-charge country or is considered a special needs case; such as children (aged up to 18, or up to 21 if you are a student), pregnant women or the elderly.

paragraphs: The coalition government has made cuts to the NHS. On 29 September 2013 around 50,000 people protested in Manchester. They set up a stage with banners saying things like 'Save Our NHS' around it. Hospitals can now earn up to 50% of their income from private work.

paragraphs: The NHS has been criticized for working through a 'postcode lottery', meaning that access to quality treatment depends on where you live. The percentage of diabetics getting the NICE recommended levels of care ranges from 6% to 69% depending on where they live.


title: Christiaan Eijkman

paragraphs: Christiaan Eijkman (August 11, 1858 - November 5, 1930) was a Dutch doctor. He won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Sir Frederick Hopkins, for the discovery of vitamins


title: Frederick Hopkins

paragraphs: Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins (20 June 1861 – 16 May 1947) was an English chemist. He won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Christiaan Eijkman, for the discovery of vitamins.


title: Windows CE

paragraphs: Windows CE (also known officially as Windows Embedded Compact post version 6.0, and sometimes abbreviated WinCE) is Microsoft's operating system for embedded devices and minimal computers. Windows CE is a different operating system and kernel. It is not a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows. It is not Windows XP Embedded which is NT-based.

paragraphs: The Zune portable media player, as well as the Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 smartphone platforms are based on Windows CE.

paragraphs: Version 8, or Windows Embedded Compact 2013, released in June 2013 is the only still supported version (until October 10, 2023).


title: Simon Cowell (presenter)

paragraphs: Simon Cowell MBE (born 19 April 1952) is a British television presenter and author who hosts the Animal Planet documentary series "Wildlife SOS". He is the co-founder of a Leatherhead, Surrey, based charity called Wildlife Aid.

paragraphs: In June 2005, Simon was awarded an MBE for his services to wildlife.

paragraphs: Simon lives in Leatherhead, Surrey. He received a PhD for Biological sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge.


title: Yasunari Kawabata

paragraphs: Yasunari Kawabata (14 June 1899–16 April 1972) was a Japanese writer. He was the winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the first Japanese author to receive the award.


title: Braille

paragraphs: The Braille system is a way of writing things. It is named after Louis Braille, the French man who invented it. The system is used by blind people to read and write. The Braille system uses a set of raised bumps or dots that can be felt with a finger. Each set of dots is a character in an alphabet, and the numbers and some punctuation.

paragraphs: Louis Braille was not the first person to think about how to let the blind read and write. In the 17th century the Italian Jesuit Francesco Lana thought about different systems of writing for the blind. He invented a system of dashes that could be felt.

paragraphs: Valentin Haüy was one of the first French who was interested in the problems the blind had when they wanted to communicate. Haüy was born in Picardie in 1745, and studied languages at the university in Paris. First he studied deaf people who could not speak, then blind people. In his opinion the biggest problem of the blind was that they could not read. He then invented a system which allowed them to read and write sentences and to do mathematics. Later he started a school for blind children. His writing system used two columns which had between one and six positions each. Vowels had a dot in the left column, for example.

paragraphs: Charles Barbier used a similar system, because Napoleon wanted a code that soldiers could use to exchange messages silently and without light at night. Barbier called it night writing. Night writing uses two columns of six dots. It uses phonemes (separate sounds), not letters. Barbier's system was too hard for soldiers to learn, and the military did not use it. From the year 1821, he started to test his system in the school Haüy had founded. There it became very successful. Even though the system was difficult to learn, it did help the blind to read better than earlier systems. Barbier had understood that it was better to use a system that used dots over one that used lines.

paragraphs: Barbier met Braille when he visited the National Institute of the Blind. Braille saw the biggest problem of the code: The human finger cannot feel the whole symbol at one time. This makes it impossible to move rapidly from one symbol to the next. Braille's change was to use a 6 dot cell — the braille system — which completely changed how the blind would read and write.

paragraphs: Braille can be seen as the world's first binary way of character encoding. The system as originally invented by Braille has two parts

paragraphs: Braille is used with different languages today. In each language, the letters are "encoded" differently, depending on the alphabet. The list of codes is known as braille code, or code page. There are also different braille codes in use for special purposes, like writing shorthand, mathematics or music.

paragraphs: To make it possible to read faster, certain transcriptions of Braille use shortened words, or contractions. This is known as "Grade 2 Braille".

paragraphs: Braille uses cells of six raised dots, in two columns of three dots. The dot positions on the left are numbered one, to three, the ones on the right four to six, as shown in the picture.

paragraphs: Each symbol is coded with certain dots present, and others absent. The dots are approximately 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) high; inside the cell, the dots are about 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) apart. The space between the dots of two cells is about 0.15 inches (3.75 mm) horizontally and 0.2 inches (5 mm) vertically. A standard braille page is 11 inches by 11 inches and typically has between forty and forty-two braille cells per line and twenty-five lines.

paragraphs: As first made by Louis Braille, the first group of characters, using just the top 4 dots of the braille cell, represents letters "a" through "j" (this group of ten characters is called a "decade"). Dot 3 (bottom left) is added to each of the "a" through "j" symbols to give letters "k" through "t". Both of the bottom dots (dots 3 and 6) are added to the first decade to give letters "u", "v", "x", "y", and "z". The letter "w" is left out of this group because French did not use the letter "w" when Louis Braille made his alphabet. The fifth decade is the same as the first decade, but shifted down by a row (dots 1 and 4 are blank).

paragraphs: English braille has codes for the letters and some punctuation, and some double letter signs and word signs directly, but capitalization and numbers need a prefix symbol. In practice, braille produced in the United Kingdom does not use capital letters.

paragraphs: There are braille codes for representing shorthand (produced on a machine which embosses a paper tape) and for representing mathematics (Nemeth Braille) and musical notation (braille music).

paragraphs: Braille can be made using a "slate" and a "stylus" in which each dot is created from the back of the page, writing in mirror image, by hand, or it may be produced on a special braille typewriter or "Perkins Brailler", or produced by a braille embosser attached to a computer. It may also be made using a refreshable braille display.

paragraphs: The six bit braille code is very limited, it only allows 64 different possible combinations. This means that many things need more than one braille character to be coded. One example for this is how numbers are coded in English braille: First there is a symbol that says the next symbol is a number, and then there is the symbol for the number. The symbol for "number" is usually given only once; every symbol that follows is treated as a number, until there is a space.

paragraphs: Braille has been extended to an 8 dot code, particularly for use with braille embossers and refreshable braille displays. In 8 dot braille the added dots are added at the bottom of the cell, giving a cell 4 dots high by 2 dots wide. The additional dots are called 7 (for the lower-left dot) and 8 (for the lower-right dot). 8-dot braille has the advantages that capital and lower cases of the letters are directly coded in the cell, a capital letter does not need two cells. All the printable ASCII characters can be represented in a single cell, and all 256 possible combinations of 8 bits are encoded by the Unicode standard. Braille with six dots is frequently stored as braille ASCII.

paragraphs: It is possible to transcribe braille by replacing each letter with the braille code for the letter. This is usually known as "Grade 1 Braille". Grade 1 braille is mostly used by beginners.

paragraphs: The basic problem of Grade 1 braille is that braille "letters" are much larger than printed ones. The standard page is 11"x11" (28 cm by 28 cm) in size and only has room for twenty-five lines of forty characters. This means a book would need to be very thick compared to a standard printed book.

paragraphs: For this reason almost all English braille books use a transcription known as "Grade 2 braille". Grade 2 braille uses contractions, which allows to save space and increase reading speed. Grade 2 braille was developed by linguists (people who study languages), who also looked at customs, styles and practices. Transcribing a text into Grade 2 braille is difficult, and the people doing the transcription need to have a special education.

paragraphs: In English, there are 23 words which are replaced with a single letter. That way, the word "but" is contracted (shortened) to the single letter "b," "can" to "c", "do" to "d", and so on. Even this simple rule has exceptions and special cases, which must be thought of. As an example, only the verb "to do" is replaced by "d", the noun "do" (which stands for a note in music) is a different word, and is written in full.

paragraphs: Sometimes, part of words are contracted, and a character can mean different things in different parts of a word. There are many rules for this process. For example, the character with dots 2-3-5 (the letter "f" lowered in the braille cell) stands for "ff" when used in the middle of a word. At the beginning of a word, this same character stands for the word "to" although the character is written in braille with no space following it. At the end of a word, the same character represents an exclamation point.

paragraphs: The contraction rules cannot be used when it would make a problem with a prefix or suffix on the word. Also, some rules are flexible and may depend on the situation. So when the rules permit the same word to be written in more than one way, preference is given to "the contraction that is closer to the correct pronunciation."

paragraphs: "Grade 3 Braille" is a system that includes many additional contractions. It is almost like a shorthand. It is rarely used for books, but people use it to be able to write and read fast, for themselves. It can be used for taking notes.

paragraphs: Only very few people can use grade 4 braille. It uses many rules to shorten grade 3 even further. It allows a blind person to use shorthand to follow spoken conversation. Very often, systems of seven or eight dots are used.

paragraphs: The current Canadian paper money has raised dots on the bills that shows its value. This helps blind people who might otherwise be cheated. This 'tactile feature' does not use standard braille but, instead, a system developed by working with blind and visually impaired Canadians after they found that not all people who needed it could read braille.

paragraphs: Though braille is thought to be the main way blind people read and write, in Britain (for example) out of the reported 2 million visually impaired population, it is estimated that only around 15-20 thousand people use Braille. Younger people are turning to electronic text on computers instead which can be read aloud by computer programs; a more portable communication method that they can also use with their friends. A debate has started on how to make braille more attractive and for more teachers to be available to teach it.

paragraphs: There are many extensions of Braille for additional letters with diacritics, such as "ç, ô, é".

paragraphs: When braille is adapted to languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, the blocks are generally assigned to the new alphabet according to how it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, not the alphabetic order of the national script. This is the case with Russian (Cyrillic alphabet), Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. In Greek, for example, "gamma" is written as Latin "g", even though it is the third letter of that alphabet (like the Latin "c"). Hebrew "beth", the second letter of the alphabet and cognate with the Latin letter "b", is instead written "v", as it is commonly pronounced. Esperanto letters with circumflexes, "ĉ", "ĝ", "ĥ", "ĵ" and "ŝ", are written as those letters without circumflexes with a filled sixth dot.

paragraphs: More differences are in Chinese braille. In Mandarin Braille, which is based on Zhuyin rather than the Latin Pinyin alphabet, the Latin braille values are used for the first consonants and the simple vowels. There are additional blocks for the tones, diphthongs, and any following vowel + consonant combinations. Cantonese Braille is also based on Latin braille for many of the initial consonants and simple vowels, but the blocks also have different values depending on whether they are in a leading syllable or following syllable position. For instance, the block for Latin "k" represents old-style Cantonese "k" ("g" in Yale and other modern Romanizations) when initial, but "aak" when final, while Latin "j" represents Cantonese initial "j" but final "oei".

paragraphs: However, at least two adaptations of Braille have completely reassigned the Latin sound values of the blocks. These are:

paragraphs: In Japanese Braille, alphabetic signs for a consonant and vowel are combined into a single syllable block; in Korean Braille, the consonants have different leading and following syllable forms. These changes made Braille much more compatible with Japanese kana and Korean hangul, but meant that the Latin sound values could not be kept.

paragraphs: Trained readers of Braille can read about 100 words per minute; trained readers who do not have sight problems can get to around 250 to 300 words per minute.


title: Switch

paragraphs: A switch is something that changes the flow of an electrical circuit. The most common kind of switch is something (for example a railroad switch) which can be taken off of one course and put onto another. The term "switch" usually means electrical power. In applications where more than one switch is needed, (i.e. a telephone service) mechanical switches have been replaced by electronic switches which can be controlled automatically.

paragraphs: The switch is called a "gate" when used in a mathematical form. In logic, arguments are represented as logic gates. The use of electronic "gates" to work as a system of logical gates is the basic idea behind the computer —i.e. a computer is a lot of electronic switches that work as logic gates.

paragraphs: There are many types of switches. Some of these are:

paragraphs: The word 'switch' can also mean to change between two things. For example, on a railway line, sometimes the track can split into two different tracks. If the train is travelling on one line and changes over to the other, it has just done a switch.


title: Francis Bacon

paragraphs: Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban KC, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), was an English philosopher, statesman, and author. He has been described as one of the greatest thinkers ever whose ideas have changed the way people think.

paragraphs: He was born in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the nephew of Queen Elizabeth's advisor, William Cecil. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first job was as a lawyer. He later became a Member of Parliament and in 1586 he took a leading part in having Mary Queen of Scots executed. He became a friend of Robert Deveraux, the Earl of Essex, in 1591, and received many valuable gifts from him. After Essex led a rebellion against the Queen, Bacon was one of the people who led the investigation which led to Essex's execution in 1601.

paragraphs: Bacon was often in trouble for spending too much, and in 1601 he was arrested for debt. When King James became king in 1603, Bacon's position improved. He was knighted in 1603. He was one of the people who argued for the joining of England and Scotland together as one country, which happened after his lifetime, in the 1700s. Bacon married Alice Barnham in 1606, and the next year he was made the Solicitor General. He continued to be given better paying positions including Attorney General, Lord Keeper, and Lord Chancellor.

paragraphs: He was made Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Albans in 1621. Because he did not have children both titles ended when he died.

paragraphs: He used his positions to make more money for himself, and in 1621 the Parliament found that he was corrupt. He was fined £40,000 and removed from all his jobs. King James overturned the fine, but he was kept as a prisoner in the Tower of London for a while.

paragraphs: He became best known as a leading thinker in new ways of looking at the world. His writings started and made famous a way of thinking about science. This way of thinking is now called the "Baconian method". It is based on looking at the world by making experiments. After watching the results the scientist comes up with an idea to explain what has happened. This idea or hypothesis is then further tested by more experiments. This way of thinking about science is called inductive methodology. In Bacon's time these methods were linked with magic including hermeticism and alchemy. Alchemy was the study of fire, earth, water and air. Alchemists tried to make gold from lead.


title: Sled dog

paragraphs: Sled dogs, known also as sleigh dogs, sledge dogs or sleddogs are types of dogs that are used to pull a wheel-less vehicle on runners (a sled or sleigh) over snow or ice, by means of harnesses and lines.


title: Overland Expedition

paragraphs: The Overland Expedition, also called the Overland Relief Expedition or Point Barrow-Overland Relief Expedition, was a long trip in 1897–8, by three officers of the United States Coast Guard (then named the "U.S. Revenue Cutter Service"), with the help of two civilians, using sled dogs and reindeer to rescue more than 250 whalers trapped in the Arctic Ocean by ice around their ships.

paragraphs: The rescue was ordered by then-U.S. President William McKinley. McKinley later talked about the rescue in a letter dated January 17, 1899 to the United States Congress, in which he asked Congress to award the officers Congressional Gold Medals, and to pay the civilians for their help:

paragraphs: It will be remembered that in the month of October, 1897, reports were

paragraphs: received here of the probable loss of the whaling fleet in the Arctic

paragraphs: regions, and of the likelihood that nearly 300 men, composing the

paragraphs: officers and crews of the fleet, would perish from hunger unless succor [an old word for help] could reach them early in the spring. ...<br>

paragraphs: The overland expedition was formed, and consisted of First Lieut. David

paragraphs: H. Jarvis, Revenue-Cutter Service, commanding; Second Lieut. Ellsworth

paragraphs: P. Bertholf, Revenue-Cutter Service, and Dr. Samuel J. Call, surgeon of

paragraphs: They were materially aided by Mr. W.T. Lopp, agent of the American Missionary Society at Cape Prince of Wales, and Artisarlook, a native of that region, both of whom, at great personal sacrifice, left their families and accompanied the reindeer herd to Point Barrow.

paragraphs: The overland expedition, after a difficult and hazardous journey of

paragraphs: nearly 2,000 miles through the storms and bitter cold of an Arctic

paragraphs: winter, reached Point Barrow with the herd on the 29th of March, 1898,

paragraphs: three months and twelve days from their landing from the "Bear" at

paragraphs: Cape Vancouver, Alaskan coast of Bering Sea. They arrived none too soon. ... [due to] bad sanitary conditions and want of proper food, the men from the whale ships quartered there were found upon the verge of great suffering, while sickness had broken out among them. ...<br>

paragraphs: I have therefore the honor to submit the following recommendations and

paragraphs: That gold medals of honor of appropriate design, to be approved by

paragraphs: the Secretary of the Treasury, be awarded to Lieutenants Jarvis and

paragraphs: Bertholf and Dr. Call, commemorative of their heroic struggles in aid of

paragraphs: That the sum of $2,500 be appropriated to be disbursed by the

paragraphs: Secretary of the Treasury in bestowing rewards upon W.T. Lopp,

paragraphs: Artisarlook, and native herders, who rendered material aid to the relief


title: Number theory

paragraphs: Number theory is a part of mathematics. It explains what some types of numbers are, what properties they have, and ways that they can be useful.

paragraphs: Important theorems in number theory are:

paragraphs: A well-known application of number theory is encrypted messaging (encryption). Data compression also makes use of the field.


title: Tear gas

paragraphs: Tear gas is the name for a number of chemical compounds. They are not actually gases. They are fine powders or mists of liquid. The chemicals are acidic and cause pain in the eyes. Tear gas may cause temporary blindness for up to 45 minutes. Tear gas is commonly used by police to control crowds. Phenacyl chloride (CN) liquid and CS powder are two of the chemicals that are often found in tear gas. Pepper spray is another chemical compound that acts very similarly and is sometimes used to control crowds.

paragraphs: Tear gas is a chemical weapon, and was used as a weapon in the First World War. The 1925 Geneva Protocol is not specific enough about the use of irritating agents, such as tear gas in war. The Chemical Weapons Convention, of 1992 prohibits the use of tear gas for warfare. The use as a riot control agent is not covered by the treaty.

paragraphs: The use of tear gas is also has problems: Usually, of tear gas are thrown; they can hit and injure people. A case of serious vascular injury from tear gas shells has also been reported from Iran, with high rates of associated nerve injury (44%) and amputation (17%), as well as instances of head injuries in young people. Directly exposing skin to tear gas may lead to chemical burns and allergic reactions of the skin.

paragraphs: In the short term, the medical consequences are usually limited to skin inflammation. delayed complications are also possible: people with respiratory conditions such as asthma are likely to need medical attention and may sometimes require hospitalization or even ventilation support. Skin exposure to CS may cause chemical burns or induce allergic contact dermatitis. When people are hit at close range or are severely exposed, eye injuries involving scarring of the cornea can lead to a permanent loss in visual acuity. Frequent or high levels of exposure carry increased risks of respiratory illness.


title: Kaba Ma Kyei

paragraphs: "Kaba Ma Kyei" (), which means "Until the World Crumbles", is the national anthem (song) of Myanmar. The melody and lyrics were created by Saya Tin, and became the Burmese national anthem in 1947.


title: Yangon

paragraphs: Yangon, also known as Rangoon, is the largest city in Myanmar. It was also the capital city until 2006. The city is by a river called Hlaingthayar, and is close to the sea. Yangon has more than 4 million people living there.

paragraphs: Yangon was founded as Dagon in the 6th century AD by the Mons, who ruled Lower Burma at that time. Dagon was a small fishing village centered about the Shwedagon Pagoda. In 1755, King Alaungpaya conquered Dagon and renamed it "Yangon". The British captured Yangon during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26) but returned it to Burma after the war. The city was destroyed by a fire in 1841.

paragraphs: The British took Yangon and all of Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, and then changed Yangon into the most important city of British Burma. The British constructed a new city on a grid plan on delta land. It was bound to the east by the Pazundaung Creek and to the south and west by the Yangon River. Yangon became the capital of all British Burma after the British had captured Upper Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885. By the 1890s Yangon's increasing population and commerce gave birth to prosperous residential suburbs to the north of Royal Lake (Kandawgyi) and Inya Lake. The British also established hospitals including Rangoon General Hospital and colleges including Rangoon University.

paragraphs: Colonial Yangon, with its spacious parks and lakes and mix of modern buildings and traditional wooden architecture, was known as "the garden city of the East." By the early 20th century, Yangon had public services and infrastructure on par with London.

paragraphs: Before World War II, about 55% of Yangon's population of 500,000 was Indian or South Asian, and only about a third was Bamar (Burman). Karens, the Chinese, the Anglo-Burmese and others made up the rest.

paragraphs: After World War I, Yangon became the center of Burmese independence movement. The leftist Rangoon University students led the way. Three nationwide strikes against the British Empire in 1920, 1936 and 1938 began in Yangon. Yangon was under Japan's occupation (1942–45), and was heavily damaged during World War II. Yangon became the capital of Union of Burma on 4 January 1948 when the country regained independence from the British Empire.


title: Pyinmana

paragraphs: Pyinmana (, ; population: 100,000 (2006 estimate)) is a small town in Mandalay Division of Myanmar. The government in 2005 decided to move the capital city from Yangon to an area two miles (3.2 km) away west of Pyinmana on November 6, 2005, near the town, named Naypyidaw, which means Royal City. Pyinmana is approximately north of Yangon.


title: Kyat

paragraphs: A kyat () is a kind of money used in Myanmar. The symbol for it is K. One kyat is equal to 100 pya. One kyat is almost equal to 1000 US dollars.


title: Burmese language

paragraphs: Burmese (in Burmese "", pronounced /baa-MAA-saa/) is a language spoken in Myanmar. Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language, meaning that is close to Chinese and Tibetan.

paragraphs: Burmese has three tones (high, medium, low: plus two 'stops or abbreviated additional, qualifying 'tones")", no gender {have natural gender e.g. saya (male teacher), sayama(female teacher)}, and no tense. Burmese has many English and Indian words(loan words) though is a very distinct and full language itself with a long history and substantial numbers of proudly articulated dialects.

paragraphs: Here are some examples of words and sentences in Burmese.

paragraphs: I am (name) = "Cha-naw yè nan-bè ga _______"

paragraphs: ("Kya-naw" is replaced with "kya-ma" for females.

paragraphs: What is your name? = "Ka-mya na mei be' lo khal le' " (OR) na mei be' lo khal le' (You can omit "Ka-mya=You")

paragraphs: Are you from Burma? = "Nae ba-ma pyi ga la da la?"


title: Danielle Steel

paragraphs: Danielle Fernande Schuelein-Steel (born August 14, 1947 in New York City) is an American writer. Steel was an only child. Her parents divorced when she was young. She was looked after by relatives and family employees in Paris and New York City. She was a lonely child and read a lot of books and poetry.


title: Coat of arms

paragraphs: A coat of arms is a unique design painted on a shield. These designs may be inherited, meaning that they pass from a father to his children. In the Middle Ages, these designs were shown on real shields, but today they are usually only drawn or painted on the paper that makes them legal which is called a grant of arms. The grant of arms is usually allowed only when it is given by the government of a country or its agent. In England, this is called the College of Arms and in Scotland is called the Lord Lyon.

paragraphs: Coats of arms are normally issued for real people but nowadays lots of countries and businesses also have coats of arms. Each symbol on the coat of arms will represent something that has an important meaning to that person, country or company.


title: Spear

paragraphs: A spear is a weapon used in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is meant to primarily stab. Some spears can also slash. Some kinds of lightweightspears were also meant to be thrown.

paragraphs: A lance is a special spear used from horseback. Knights often used it during medieval times. A pike is a very big spear for infantry to fight horsemen.


title: Hat

paragraphs: A hat is a type of covering for the head, and there are many types of hats.

paragraphs: Hats are different in different parts of the world. Some hats are worn by women, other hats by men, others by both; infants and children may also wear hats, and some hats are not worn by anyone at all. These hats are just used for decoration. People who make hats for men are called hatters, and those who make hats for women are called milliners. The kinds of hats (or caps, which are like hats) worn by different groups within various societies in different countries are very numerous.

paragraphs: Some types of hats or caps are worn as a sign of highly specialised social roles. For example, bishops can wear mitres and some lawyers wear wigs. In some societies, hats are of great political significance, such as the white hat of English Radicals, the Cap of Liberty of the Jacobins of France; and the two political parties in Sweden, the Hats (noblemen) and Caps (common people).


title: Postage stamp

paragraphs: Postage stamps are pieces of paper, with glue or adhesive on the back. They are put on the corner of an envelope to pay the fee for having the postal service take the envelope to where it is being sent. There are a lot of different postage stamps in the world. They have existed since the nineteenth century. Most countries have their own stamps. People collect them in books called stamp albums. Sometimes people collect stamps from only one country, or there is something else that links the stamps. Perhaps, the stamps all have errors in the printing like in the "Inverted Jenny" picture with the aeroplane printed upside down.

paragraphs: Maps on stamps is a common topic on stamp collecting. Almost every country has featured maps on stamps. There are also topic maps including demographic and cross topic ones (showing explorer routes over maps).

paragraphs: People on stamps is one more common topic in stamp collecting. For instance, many famous people are featured on stamps in the United States.


title: Czechoslovakia

paragraphs: Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a country in Europe. It split off from Austria-Hungary in 1918 and split apart in 1993.

paragraphs: In mid-1938 Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia and split off Slovakia. After World War II the USSR annexed a part of eastern Czechoslovakia so that they could have a border with Hungary. The USSR also annexed parts of Poland and Romania. All four of these countries were in the USSR's sphere of influence. The USSR thought that this meant they could make sure the countries did what they wanted. In 1968 the USSR thought that the government of Alexander Dubcek was moving away from communism and leaving the Warsaw Pact, and invaded Czechoslovakia.

paragraphs: In 1989 Czechoslovakia peacefully removed the Communist dictatorship in the "Velvet Revolution".

paragraphs: On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both countries separated in peace.


title: William Randolph Hearst

paragraphs: William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863–August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper magnate, born in San Francisco, California.

paragraphs: William Randolph was the only child of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a former school teacher from Missouri and George Hearst, a successful miner who became a multi-millionaire, and later U.S. Senator from California. William Randolph Hearst was a member of the United States House of Representatives for New York between 1903 and 1907, as a member of the Independence Party.

paragraphs: Hearst was a media tycoon. He started a newspaper empire, now the Hearst corporation. He has become known for sensationalist stories. Those stories were often false, or only very loosely based on true events.

paragraphs: The film Citizen Kane by Orson Welles tells the story about William Randolph Hearst.


title: Joseph Pulitzer

paragraphs: Joseph "Joe" Pulitzer (April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was an American publisher of Jewish descent. Most people link the word Pulitzer to the Pulitzer Prizes. These prizes were established by his will, after his death. He is also known (along with William Randolph Hearst) for starting yellow journalism as a way to sell more papers by printing sensationalism in the articles.

paragraphs: Joseph Pulitzer was born in Makó, in present-day Hungary. Originally, he wanted to do a military career, but was turned down by the Austrian army. They said his health was bad and that he did not see very well. He went to live in the United States in 1864 to serve the Union in the American Civil War. After the war he settled in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1868 he began working there for a German-language daily newspaper, the "Westliche Post". He joined the Republican Party and was elected to the Missouri State Assembly in 1869. In 1872, Pulitzer bought the "Post" for $3,000. Then, in 1878, he bought the "St. Louis Dispatch" for $2,700 and merged the two papers, which became the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch", which remains St. Louis' daily newspaper. It was at the Post-Dispatch that Pulitzer developed his role as a champion of the common man with exposés and a hard-hitting populist approach.

paragraphs: By 1883, Pulitzer had made a lot of money. In that year, he bought the "New York World". That newspaper had been losing $40,000 a year. He paid $346,000 to Jay Gould, the owner. Pulitzer changed its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. In 1885, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but resigned after a few months' service. He did not like politics. In 1887, he recruited the famous investigative journalist Nellie Bly. In 1895 the "World" introduced the popular Yellow Kid comic by Richard F. Outcault. This was the first newspaper comic printed with color. Under Pulitzer's leadership, circulation grew from 15,000 to 600,000, making "The New York World" the largest newspaper in the nation.

paragraphs: The editor of the rival "New York Sun" attacked Pulitzer in print. He called him "The Jew who gave up his religion". This was in 1890. This was intended to turn away Pulitzer's Jewish readership. Pulitzer's already failing health deteriorated rapidly, and he left the newsroom. He continued to actively manage the paper from his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine and his New York mansion.

paragraphs: In 1895, William Randolph Hearst purchased the rival "New York Journal", which led to a circulation war. This competition with Hearst, particularly the coverage before and during the Spanish-American War, linked Pulitzer's name with "yellow journalism".

paragraphs: After the "World" exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909, Pulitzer was indicted for libeling Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. The courts dismissed the indictments, in a victory for freedom of the press.

paragraphs: In 1892, Pulitzer offered Columbia University's president, Seth Low, money to set up the world's first school of journalism. The university initially turned down the money, evidently unimpressed by Pulitzer's unscrupulous character. In 1902, Columbia's new president Nicholas Murray Butler was more receptive to the plan for a school and prizes, but it would not be until after Pulitzer's death that this dream would be fulfilled. Pulitzer left the university $2 million in his will, which led to the creation in 1912 of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, but by then the first school of journalism had been created at the University of Missouri. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism remains one of the most prestigious in the world.

paragraphs: Joseph Pulitzer died aboard his yacht in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in 1911. He is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. In 1917, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, in accordance with Pulitzer's wishes.

paragraphs: In 1989, Pulitzer was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.


title: Horace Greeley

paragraphs: Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor, reformer and politician. His "New York Tribune" was the most influential newspaper of the period 1840-1870. Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties.

paragraphs: He is best known for his socially colored journalism. He wanted to convince people of his ideas. He thought that the role of a journalist must be to convince people with sound arguments. He did not like the sensationalist approach of Joseph Pulitzer and others.

paragraphs: Greeley ran for President in 1872, but died before the election results came. Whether or not if he died he would have lost to Ulysses S. Grant.