Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Earthworm

Earthworm is the ordinary name for the larger members of the Oligochaeta (which is either a class or subclass depending on the author) in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were located in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening to the exterior of body posterior to the female pores, even though the male segments are anterior to the female. Cladistic studies have supported placing them instead in the suborder Lumbricina of the arrange Haplotaxida. Folk names for earthworm include "dew-worm", "night crawler" and "angleworm". Earthworms are also called megadriles (or big worms), as divergent to the microdriles, which include the families Tubificidae, Lumbriculidae, and Enchytraeidae, among others. The megadriles are characterized by having a multilayered clitellum (which is much clearer than the single-layered one of the microdriles), a vascular system with true capillaries, and male pores behind the female pores.

There are over 5,500 named classes known worldwide, existing everywhere but Polar and arid climates. They choice in size from two centimeters (less than one inch) to over three meters (almost ten feet) in the Giant Gippsland Earthworm. Amongst the main earthworm species usually found in temperate regions are the reddish colored, deep-burrowing Lumbricus terrestris.

In temperate zone areas, the most usually seen earthworms are lumbricids (Lumbricidae), mostly due to the recent rapid spread of a fairly small number of European species, but there are numerous other families, e.g. Megascolecidae, Octochaetidae, Sparganophilidae, Glossoscolecidae, etc.. These other families are often differing from the lumbricids in behavior, physiology and habitat.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Buzzard

A buzzard is one of some large birds, but there are a number of meanings as detailed below.

In the Old World
Buzzard can mean:

One of several medium-sized, wide-ranging raptors with a robust body and broad wings.
In exacting, those in the genus Buteo. In the Old World, members of this genus are named as "buzzards", but "hawk" is more general in North America.
Specifically, in Europe, the general Buzzard, Buteo, where Buzzard is often used as a synonym.
Any raptor which has the word buzzard as division of its name.

In the New World
Buzzard can mean:

A vulture, mainly the American Black Vulture and Turkey Vulture, or as a general term for vultures and condors.
In parts of the United States where they are considered pest, particularly in rural areas, a derogatory term for certain birds of prey, such as the Chicken hawk (a common colloquial name referring to both the Red-tailed Hawk and the Cooper's Hawk), or the Duck hawk (known elsewhere as the Peregrine Falcon). In the U.S., the term "buzzard" is never used to refer to birds of prey, like hawks, eagles, falcons, and owls, exterior of this context.
Rarely, a derogatory term for any large bird that happens to be a scavenger, such as a raven or albatross (in other words, any large bird that is neither predatory nor flightless).
The Old World and New World uses are approximately antonyms.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

The Black market

The Black market or underground market is the part of economic activity involving illegal dealings, typically the buying and selling of merchandise or services illegally. The goods themselves may be illegal to sell ; the merchandise may be stolen; or the merchandise may be otherwise legal goods sold illicitly to avoid tax payments or licensing requirements, such as cigarettes or unregistered firearms. It is so called because "black economy" or "black market" affairs are conducted outside the law, and so are necessarily conducted "in the dark", out of the sight of the law.

Black markets develop when the state places restrictions on the production or provision of goods and services. These markets prosper, then, when state restrictions are heavy, such as during a period of prohibition, price controls and/or rationing. However, black markets are currently present in any known economy.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Venous blood

In the circulatory system, venous blood or peripheral blood is blood returning to the heart. With one exception this blood is deoxygenated and high in carbon dioxide, having released oxygen and absorbed CO2 in the tissues. It is also typically warmer than arterial blood, has a lower pH, has lower concentrations of glucose and other nutrients, and has higher concentrations of urea and other waste products.

Venous blood can be obtained by venesection or phlebotomy, or in small quantities by fingerprick. Most medical laboratory tests are conducted on venous blood, with the exception of arterial blood gases.Venous blood is often depicted as blue in color in medical diagrams, and veins sometimes look blue when seen through the skin. However, venous blood is actually a dark red color, while arterial blood is bright red.
The appearance of veins as dark blue is a wavelength phenomenon of light, having to do with the reflection of blue light away from the outside of venous tissue if the vein is 0.02in deep or more. This is due to the difference in color between deoxyhemoglobin and oxyhemoglobin; the red color ultimately originates from the iron atom in heme. If blood is drawn for a medical test, the dark red color can be seen; however, if it is exposed to oxygen in the air, it will turn bright red like arterial blood.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Marriage

A marriage is a relationship between or among individuals, usually recognized by civil authority and/or bound by the religious beliefs of the participants. The fact that marriage often has the dual nature of a binding legal contract plus a moral promise, can make it difficult to characterize.In one form or another, marriage is found in virtually every society. The very oldest records that refer to it speak of it as an established custom. Despite attempts by anthropologists to trace its origin , evidence is lacking.

In Western societies, marriage has traditionally been understood as a monogamous union, while in other parts of the world polygamy has been a common form of marriage. Usually this has taken the form of polygyny but a very few societies have permitted polyandry . Precise definitions vary historically and between and within cultures: modern understanding emphasizes the legitimacy of sexual relations in marriage, yet the universal and unique attribute of marriage is the creation of affinal ties . Traditionally, societies encourage one to marry "out" far enough to strengthen the ties, but "close" enough so that the in-laws are "one of us" or "our kind".

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Gerbera

Gerbera L., is a genus of ornamental plants from the sunflower family. It was named in honour of the German naturalist Traugott Gerber, a friend of Carolus Linnaeus. It has approximately 30 species in the wild; extend to South America, Africa, Madagascar, and tropical Asia. The first scientific description of a Gerbera was made by J.D. Hooker in Curtis Botanical Magazine in 1889 when he described Gerbera jamesonii, a South African species also known as Transvaal daisy or Barberton Daisy.

Gerbera species bear a large capitulum’s with striking, 2-lipped ray florets in yellow, orange, white, pink or red colors. The capitulum’s, which has the look of a single flower, is actually composed of hundreds of individual flowers. The morphology of the flowers varies depending on their position in the capitula. Gerbera is very popular and widely used as a decorative garden plant or as cut flowers. The domesticated cultivars are mostly a result of a cross between Gerbera jamesonii and another South African species Gerbera viridifolia.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Routing table

Routing tables are used in computer networks to direct forwarding by matching destination addresses to the network paths used to reach them. The construction of routing tables is the primary goal of routing protocols.In the simplest model, hop-by-hop routing, each routing table lists, for all reachable destinations, the address of the next device along the path to that destination; the next hop. Assuming that the routing tables are consistent, the simple algorithm of relaying packets to their destination's next hop thus suffices to deliver data anywhere in a network. In practice, hop-by-hop routing is being increasingly abandoned in favor of layered architectures such as MPLS, where a single routing table entry can effectively select the next several hops, resulting in reduced table lookups and improved performance.

The need to record routes to large numbers of devices using limited storage space represents a major challenge in routing table construction. Perhaps the fundamental assumptions of routing is that similar addresses are located near each other in the network, allowing groups of destination addresses to be matched by single routing table entries. The exact nature of how this grouping is done has changed over time and still represents an active area of networking research. In the Internet, the currently dominant address grouping technology is a bitwise prefix matching scheme called Classless Inter-Domain Routing.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Bacillus

Bacillus is a genus of rod-shaped, Gram-positive bacteria and a member of the division Firmicutes. Bacillus species are either obligate or facultative aerobes, and test positive for the enzyme catalase.Ubiquitous in nature, Bacillus includes both free-living and pathogenic species. Under stressful environmental conditions, the cells produce oval endospores that can stay dormant for extended periods. These characteristics originally defined the genus, but not all such species are closely related, and many have been moved to other genera.

An easy way to isolate Bacillus is by placing non-sterile soil in a test tube with water, shaking, placing in melted mannitol salts agar, and incubating at room temperature for at least a day. Colonies are usually large, spreading and irregularly-shaped. Under the microscope, the Bacillus appear as rods, and a substantial portion usually contain an oval endospore at one end, making it bulge.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are pronouns that refer to objects of a sentence, usually,people or animals. They are often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns.In English, it is usual to use personal pronouns when the context is already understood, or could easily be understood by reading the sentences that follow. For example, one does not normally use the word "he" to refer to somebody if the person reading or hearing the sentence does not know to whom you are referring.

In addition, personal pronouns must correspond to the correct gender and number of people or objects being described. Using the word "it" in English to refer to a person, for example, is usually considered extremely derogatory. It is generally not accepted to use a singular version of a pronoun for a plural noun, and vice versa.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Using agent

When they first begin looking for a home, many buyers ask "can't we do this on our own? Do we really need to use a Real Estate Agent?" The answer is yes, you can do it on your own. There is no law that prevents you, as an individual, from buying property without professional Real Estate assistance. You can search for homes, arrange showings, and even negotiate on your own (although, in some localities, the actual contract for purchase will need to be drawn up by an Attorney). The real question may be "do we want to do it on our own?"There is a misconception among many first time home buyers that by using a Real Estate Agent, they will be subject to paying a commission. In virtually all situations, this is not the case. The commission for the sale of a home is paid for by the seller, not the buyer. If you went to your local appliance store and bought a new refrigerator, you wouldn't expect to pay a commission to the salesperson. The same applies when you buy a house--it is the seller of the item (in this case a house) that is responsible for paying to have it sold.