Split (1)

train · 3.15k rows

text stringlengths 24 5.93k
Small Solar System body. A small Solar System body (SSSB) is an object in the Solar System that is neither a planet, a dwarf planet, nor a natural satellite. The term was first defined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as follows: All other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar System Bodies.[1] This encompasses all comets and all minor planets other than those that are dwarf planets. Thus SSSBs are: the comets; the classical asteroids, with the exception of the dwarf planet Ceres; the trojans; and the centaurs and trans-Neptunian objects, with the exception of the dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, Orcus, Sedna, Gonggong and Eris and others that may turn out to be dwarf planets. The current definition was included in the 2006 IAU resolution that defined the term planet, demoting the status of Pluto to that of dwarf planet. In the context, it should be interpreted as, All objects other than planets and dwarf planets orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as Small Solar System Bodies. The definition excludes interstellar objects traveling through the Solar System, such as the interstellar interlopers 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. It is not presently clear whether a lower size bound will be established as part of the definition of small Solar System bodies in the future, or if it will encompass all material down to the level of meteoroids, the smallest macroscopic bodies in orbit around the Sun. (On a microscopic level there are even smaller objects such as interplanetary dust, particles of solar wind and free particles of hydrogen.) Except for the largest, which are in hydrostatic equilibrium, natural satellites (moons) differ from small Solar System bodies not in size, but in their orbits. The orbits of natural satellites are not centered on the Sun, but around other Solar System objects such as planets, dwarf planets, and small Solar System bodies.
Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff (/ˈflæɡ.stæf/ FLAG-staf), known locally as Flag, is a city in and the county seat of Coconino County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the citys population was 76,831. Flagstaff is the principal city of the Flagstaff metropolitan area, which includes all of Coconino County, and has a population of 145,101. Flagstaff lies near the southwestern edge of the Colorado Plateau and within the San Francisco volcanic field, along the western side of the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the continental United States. The city sits at around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) and is next to Mount Elden, just south of the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountain range in the state of Arizona. Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona at 12,637 feet (3,852 m), is about 10 miles (16 km) north of Flagstaff in Kachina Peaks Wilderness. The geology of the area includes exposed rock from the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras, with Moenkopi Formation red sandstone having once been quarried in the city; many of the historic downtown buildings were constructed with it. The Rio de Flag river runs through the city, but only flows in response to rain or snowmelt. Originally settled by the pre-Columbian native Sinagua people, the area of Flagstaff has fertile land from volcanic ash after eruptions in the 11th century. It was first settled as the present-day city in 1876. Local businessmen lobbied for Route 66 to pass through the city, which it did, turning the local industry from lumber to tourism and developing downtown Flagstaff. In 1930, Pluto was discovered from Flagstaff. The city developed further through to the end of the 1960s, with various observatories also used to choose Moon landing sites for the Apollo missions. Through the 1970s and 1980s, downtown fell into disrepair, but was revitalized with a major cultural heritage project in the 1990s. The city remains an important distribution hub for companies such as Nestlé Purina PetCare, and is home to the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Northern Arizona University. Flagstaff has a strong tourism sector, due to its proximity to Grand Canyon National Park, Oak Creek Canyon, the Arizona Snowbowl, Meteor Crater, and Historic Route 66.
Chris Strait. Christopher Alan Strait (born January 14, 1976) is an American comedian and writer. He is best known for being a regular contributor to TruTVs Worlds Dumbest.... Strait was born in Inglewood, California, and grew up in the Ladera Heights section of Los Angeles near Baldwin Hills. He is the older of two sons, and also has a half-sister (from fathers side). Strait is of predominately English and German descent, although he claims to be a European mutt. He graduated from Culver City High School in 1994, and subsequently earned a bachelors degree in history from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1999. Strait then received his masters degree in psychology from Antioch University in 2001. He had intended to be a psychotherapist, but was told by supervisors that his problem-solving style was too aggressive. He began his comedy career while still in graduate school, in the summer of 2000. His Masters Thesis was on the subject of humor. Early influences included Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, and The Smothers Brothers. Later his admiration shifted to the likes of George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, and Louis CK. In addition to his comedy career, Strait has also been employed in real estate, finance, behavioral therapy, and journalism. Strait was previously married from 2004 to 2017. He has a daughter (born 2007), and a son (born 2011). He and his second wife had a son in 2018. They married legally in December 2019, but their official wedding was delayed to June 2021, due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Brian Strait. Brian James Strait (born January 4, 1988) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman who is an unrestricted free agent. He last played for the Binghamton Devils of the American Hockey League (AHL) while under contract to the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League (NHL). He has previously played with the Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Islanders and the Winnipeg Jets in the NHL. As a youth, Strait played in the 2002 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with the Middlesex Islanders minor ice hockey team.[1] Strait played two seasons at the Northfield Mount Hermon School, recording 12 points during his freshman season, and 20 the next year. Beginning in 2004 he joined the U.S. National Development Team in the North American Hockey League. He was the captain of the gold-medal U.S. team at the 2006 IIHF World U18 Championships.[2] After graduating from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School in 2006, Strait attended Boston University, where he began playing for the Boston Terriers mens ice hockey team. In his freshman season, Strait was twice selected as Hockey East rookie of the week. He served as captain of the U.S. team at the 2008 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, where the team finished fourth. That season he also was selected runner-up for the Hockey East Best Defensive Defenseman award.[2] During his junior season at Boston, Strait served as an alternate captain. That season, the Terriers won the Beanpot, Hockey East and the NCAA Division I national championship.[3]
Edward M. Strait. Edward M. Strait (June 23, 1930 – December 20, 2008) was an American labor leader. He was President of the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Local Unions, representing more than 9,300 employees,[1] and head of the Amalgamated Transit Unions bargaining unit during the strike beginning March 2, 1990, and ending in April 1993.[2] As Council President, Strait discussed the terms of all possible negotiations with the 16 local union presidents.[3] Believing the company was motivated by a preconceived desire to bust the union, Strait explained that they negotiated us into a strike. I think this has been planned. The company wants to get rid of the union.[4][5] Initial strike negotiations were stalled by acts of violence.[6] While Greyhound CEO Fred Currey argued that no American worth his salt negotiates with terrorists, Strait responded that managements failure to negotiate amounted to putting the negotiations back into the hands of terrorists.[7] Shortly after Currey declared victory and called the strike irrelevant,[8] Greyhound was forced to declare bankruptcy in June, 1990, which Strait predicted in a debate with Executive Vice President and Chief Negotiator Anthony Lannie on Jim Lehrers NewsHour.[9] After Greyhound declared bankruptcy, Strait was primarily concerned with obtaining seniority rehiring for the striking workers, explaining, They promised these scabs jobs. They just dont want to negotiate seniority. If you have a dollar amount, but no seniority, you dont have a job. Without seniority you dont have anything.[10] Prior to the 1990 strike, Strait was active in the 1983 Greyhound strike as president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1098 in Washington, DC.[11] His initial involvement with Greyhound began when he began driving buses in the 1960s.[12]
Strait. A strait is a water body connecting two seas or water basins. The surface water is, for the most part, at the same elevation on both sides and can flow through the strait in either direction, although the topography generally constricts the flow somewhat. In some straits, there is a dominant directional current. Most commonly, the strait is a narrow channel that lies between two land masses. Straits are loci for sediment accumulation, with sand-sized deposits usually occurring on the two strait exits, forming subaqueous fans or deltas. Some straits are not navigable because, for example, they are too narrow or too shallow, or due to the presence of a reef or archipelago. The terms channel, pass, or passage can be synonymous and used interchangeably with strait, although each is sometimes differentiated with varying senses. In Scotland, firth or Kyle are also sometimes used as synonyms for strait. Many straits are economically important. Straits can be important shipping routes and wars have been fought for control of them. Numerous artificial channels, called canals, have been constructed to connect two oceans or seas over land, such as the Suez Canal. Although rivers and canals often provide passage between two large lakes, and these seem to suit the formal definition of strait, they are not usually referred to as such. Rivers and often canals, generally have a directional flow tied to changes in elevation, whereas straits often are free flowing in either direction or switch direction, maintaining the same elevation. The term strait is typically reserved for much larger, wider features of the marine environment. There are exceptions, with straits being called canals; Pearse Canal, for example. Straits are the converse of isthmuses. That is, while a strait lies between two land masses and connects two large areas of ocean, an isthmus lies between two areas of ocean and connects two large land masses.
Kanbun. Kanbun (漢文 Han writing) is a system for writing Literary Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period until the 20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. As a result, Sino-Japanese vocabulary makes up a large portion of the Japanese lexicon and much classical Chinese literature is accessible to Japanese readers in some resemblance of the original. The Japanese writing system originated through adoption and adaptation of written Chinese. Some of Japans oldest books (e.g. the Nihon Shoki) and dictionaries (e.g. the Tenrei Banshō Meigi and Wamyō Ruijushō) were written in kanbun. Other Japanese literary genres have parallels; the Kaifūsō is the oldest collection of kanshi (漢詩; Chinese poetry). Burton Watsons English translations of kanbun compositions provide an introduction to this literary field.[1][2] Samuel Martin coined the term Sino-Xenic in 1953 to describe Chinese as written in Japan, Korea, and other foreign (hence -xenic) zones on Chinas periphery.[3] Roy Andrew Miller notes that although Japanese kanbun conventions have Sino-Xenic parallels with other traditions for reading Literary Chinese like Korean hanmun and Vietnamese Hán Văn, only kanbun has survived to the present day.[4] He explains how in the Japanese kanbun reading tradition a Chinese text is simultaneously punctuated, analyzed, and translated into classical Japanese. It operates according to a limited canon of Japanese forms and syntactic structures which are treated as existing in a one-to-one alignment with the vocabulary and structures of classical Chinese. At its worst, this system for reading Chinese as if it were Japanese became a kind of lazy schoolboys trot to a classical text; at its best, it has preserved the analysis and interpretation of large body of literary Chinese texts which would otherwise have been completely lost; hence, the kanbun tradition can often be of great value for an understanding of early Chinese literature.
Derrick Strait. Derrick Lee Strait (born August 27, 1980) is an American former professional football player who was a cornerback for three seasons in the National Football League (NFL) during the early 2000s. He played college football for the Oklahoma Sooners, earning unanimous All-American honors in 2003. The New York Jets chose him in the third round of the 2004 NFL draft, and he also played professionally for the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers of the NFL. Strait was born in Austin, Texas. He attended Lanier High School in Austin, playing football for coach and former University of Texas player Wade Johnson. While in high school, Strait was selected to the Texas Top 100 by the Houston Chronicle and a Max Emfinger National Top 500 selection. Strait saw action as a quarterback, defensive back and running back during his senior season, where he rushed for 1,439 yards and 17 touchdowns, recording eight runs of 20 or more yards, including one of 81 yards and also threw three touchdowns. He also had, 118 tackles (52 solos), one quarterback sack, two forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries, 11 pass deflections and two interceptions on defense. He returned one fumble 42 yards for a touchdown. Strait combined for more than 1,500 yards as a junior (790 passing and 712 rushing). He was an All-District standout as well as being selected to the All-CenTex team. Strait received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Oklahoma, and played for coach Bob Stoopss Oklahoma Sooners football team from 2000 to 2003. He was a starter at the cornerback position all four years. Derrick was a two-time All-American, recipient of the 2003 Bronko Nagurski Trophy, and the 2003 Jim Thorpe Award after his senior season. He holds a team record with five fumble recoveries in a single season. He was named to the Sports Illustrated All-Decade Team in 2009. In 2000, Strait was selected as the Big 12 Conference Defensive Newcomer of the Year by the Associated Press, Freshman All-America selection by The Sporting News, a third-team All-Big 12 selection by the Big 12 Coaches. Strait started every game at right cornerback and finished his first season fourth in tackles with 62. He also recorded five tackles for loss, two sacks and 15 pass deflections. He recorded the second most deflections on the team and fourth most for an Oklahoma defensive back in a single season. Strait recorded one of his biggest deflections late in the Oklahoma State game when he broke up a pass in the end zone on fourth and goal, which helped Oklahoma secure the victory. Strait also had another key breakup in the Orange Bowl against Florida State, with he deflected a possible touchdown pass in the fourth quarter, he also had five tackles in the game. Strait had a pair of interceptions, including a third quarter pick against Nebraska which he returned 32 yards for a touchdown, he was also one of five Sooners to return an interception for a touchdown. He recorded a career-high 10 tackles against Texas. He also recorded five tackles, two tackles for loss and one sack a week later at Kansas State. Strait also had seven tackles and an interception in the final home game of the year against Texas Tech.
The Straits. The Straits is an Australian television drama series for ABC1[2] filmed in Cairns, the Torres Strait Islands and other Far North Queensland locations. The series is based on an idea by actor Aaron Faaoso and produced by Penny Chapman and Helen Panckhurst from Matchbox Pictures. It is directed by Peter Andrikidis, Rachel Ward, and Rowan Woods. It is written by Louis Nowra, Blake Ayshford, Nick Parsons, Kristen Dunphy, and Jaime Browne. On 19 October 2012, it was announced that a second series would not be produced.[3] In December 2012, the show began airing exclusively on Hulu.[4] The series follows the Montebello family, whose business involves smuggling drugs into Australia, and guns and exotic wildlife out, making use of ties of blood and loyalty in the Torres Strait Islands. When Harry Montebello, the head of the family, starts to plan his succession, he sparks a vicious family power struggle. While under attack from ambitious bikers and mercurial Papua New Guinea Raskol gangs, the family must hold together through torture, assassination, and imprisonment.[2]
Fujiyama (disambiguation). Fujiyama, better known in English as Mount Fuji, is the highest mountain in Japan. Fujiyama may also refer to:
Ōwakudani. Ōwakudani (大涌谷, lit. Great Boiling Valley) is a volcanic valley with active sulphur vents and hot springs in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It was created around 3,000 years ago, as a result of the explosion of the Hakone volcano.[1] It is a popular tourist site for its scenic views, volcanic activity, and kuro-tamago (黒卵, lit. black egg) — a local variety of hard-boiled eggs that uses the hot springs in their preparation.[2] As a result of them being boiled in the mineral-rich waters of the valley, which contain high levels of sulfur, the egg shells turn black and give off a slightly sulfuric odour; eating one is said to add seven years to your life.[3] Upon seeing the hellish scenery, when Kōbō Daishi visited Owakudani more than a thousand years ago, he offered prayer to Bodhisattva. The Enmei-jizō in Owakudani is said to have its origin in the prayer.[4] Access to Ōwakudani is via a funitel, the Hakone Ropeway (Ōwakudani Station),[5] or a bus line from Odawara Station, Hakone-Yumoto Station, Kowakidani Station / Kojiri, the Izuhakone Bus (Ōwakudani Bus Stop).[6] There is a road to a visitor center just below the Kuro-tamago hot springs site. Most visitors used to hike the roughly 1 km (0.62 mi) trail (which has been closed since 2015 due to increased volcanic activity) or take the Hakone Ropeway to close to where the eggs are boiled to participate in the ritual egg eating. The funitel offers a vast view of Mount Fuji (on clear days) and the sulphur vents just below the visitor center.
Topographic prominence. In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop in British English) is the relative height of a mountain or hills summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it but containing no higher summit within it. It is a measure of the independence of a summit. The key col (saddle) around the peak is a unique point on this contour line and the parent peak (if any) is some higher mountain, selected according to various criteria. The prominence of a peak is the least drop in height necessary in order to get from the summit to any higher terrain. This can be calculated for a given peak in the following manner: for every path connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the path; the key col (or highest saddle, or linking col, or link) is defined as the highest of these points, along all connecting paths; the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of its key col. On a given landmass, the highest peaks prominence will be identical to its elevation.[1] An alternative equivalent definition is that the prominence is the height of the peaks summit above the lowest contour line encircling it, but containing no higher summit within it; see Figure 1. The parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua in Argentina at a distance of 17,755 km (11,032 miles), as well as the parent of the South Summit of Mount Everest at a distance of 360 m (1200 feet). The key col may also be close to the subject peak or far from it. The key col for Aconcagua, if sea level is disregarded, is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km (8,485 miles). The key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m (330 feet) distant. A way to visualize prominence is to imagine raising sea level so the parent peak and subject peak are two separate islands. Then lower it until a tiny land bridge forms between the two islands. This land bridge is the key col of the subject peak, and the peaks prominence is its elevation from that key col. One can also refer to it as the tallest possible path between the two peaks, where the key col is the lowest point on that path.
Bob Strait. Bob Strait (born April 12, 1949) is an American stock car racing driver.[1] He was one of the pioneer NASCAR SuperTruck Series drivers. He has sixteen ARCA victories. (key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.) (key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)
Dire Straits. Dire Straits were a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler (lead vocals, lead guitar), David Knopfler (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), John Illsley (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Pick Withers (drums, percussion). The band was active from 1977 to 1988 and again from 1990 to 1995.[2] Their first single, Sultans of Swing, from their 1978 self-titled debut album, reached the top ten in the UK and US charts. It was followed by a series of hit singles including Romeo and Juliet (1981), Private Investigations (1982), Twisting by the Pool (1983), Money for Nothing (1985), and Walk of Life (1985).[3] Their most commercially successful album, Brothers in Arms (1985), has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide; it was the first album to sell a million copies on CD[4][5] and is the eighth-best-selling album in UK history. According to the Guinness Book of British Hit Albums, as of 2005, Dire Straits had spent over 1,100 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, the fifth-most at that time.[6] Dire Straits drew from influences including country, folk, the blues rock of J. J. Cale, and jazz.[7] Their stripped-down sound contrasted with punk rock and demonstrated a roots rock influence that emerged from pub rock. The band experienced several changes in personnel, with Mark Knopfler and Illsley being the only members who remained with the band for its entire history.[8] After their first breakup in 1988, Knopfler told Rolling Stone: A lot of press reports were saying we were the biggest band in the world. Theres not an accent then on the music, theres an accent on popularity. I needed a rest.[9] They regrouped in 1990 and disbanded permanently in June 1995, after which Knopfler launched a solo career full-time. He has declined numerous reunion offers,[10] and confirmed in April 2024 that he would never play as part of the group again.[11] Dire Straits were called the biggest British rock band of the 80s by Classic Rock magazine;[12] their 1985–1986 world tour, which included a performance at Live Aid in July 1985, set a record in Australasia.[13] Their final world tour from 1991 to 1992 sold 7.1 million tickets. The band won four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards (including Best British Group twice) and two MTV Video Music Awards, among various others.[14] They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. Dire Straits have sold between 100 million and 120 million records worldwide, including 51.4 million certified units, making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time.[15][16]
Old Japanese. Old Japanese (上代日本語, Jōdai Nihon-go) is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Japanese was an early member of the Japonic language family. No genetic links to other language families have been proven. Old Japanese was written using manyōgana, which is a writing system that employs Chinese characters as syllabograms or (occasionally) logograms. It featured a few phonemic differences from later forms, such as a simpler syllable structure and distinctions between several pairs of syllables that have been pronounced identically since Early Middle Japanese. The phonetic realization of these distinctions is uncertain. Internal reconstruction points to a pre-Old Japanese phase with fewer consonants and vowels. As is typical of Japonic languages, Old Japanese was primarily an agglutinative language with a subject–object–verb word order, adjectives and adverbs preceding the nouns and verbs they modified and auxiliary verbs and particles appended to the main verb. Unlike in later periods, Old Japanese adjectives could be used uninflected to modify following nouns. Old Japanese verbs had a rich system of tense and aspect suffixes. Old Japanese is usually defined as the language of the Nara period (710–794), when the capital was Heijō-kyō (now Nara).[1][2] That is the period of the earliest connected texts in Japanese, the 112 songs included in the Kojiki (712). The other major literary sources of the period are the 128 songs included in the Nihon Shoki (720) and the Manyōshū (c. 759), a compilation of over 4,500 poems.[3][4] Shorter samples are 25 poems in the Fudoki (720) and the 21 poems of the Bussokuseki-kahi (c. 752). The latter has the virtue of being an original inscription, whereas the oldest surviving manuscripts of all the other texts are the results of centuries of copying, with the attendant risk of scribal errors.[5] Prose texts are more limited but are thought to reflect the syntax of Old Japanese more accurately than verse texts do. The most important are the 27 Norito (liturgies) recorded in the Engishiki (compiled in 927) and the 62 Senmyō (literally announced order, meaning imperial edicts) recorded in the Shoku Nihongi (797).[4][6]
List of unnumbered minor planets. The following is a list of unnumbered minor planets in chronological order of their principal provisional designation. Contrary to their numbered counterparts, unnumbered minor planets have a poorly determined orbit due to insufficient observational data. This also includes lost minor planets which have not been observed for many years, or even decades. As of August 2023[update], the Minor Planet Center (MPC) accounts for 676,755 unnumbered minor planets which represent 52% of the overall minor planet population.[1][a] Unnumbered minor planets can be further divided into 129,103 single-opposition objects with short observation arcs, prone to mismatch and loss, and 547,652 objects that have been observed multiple times during opposition, when astrometric conditions are most favorable.[1] The JPL Small-Body Database gives a running total of 676,786 unnumbered minor planets.[2][a] The tables below contain 151 objects with a principal designation assigned between 1927 and 1994. Additional partial lists cover the period from 1995 to 2004.[a] Unnumbered minor planets detected after 2004 are not listed due to their large number. The orbital uncertainty parameter (U) ranges from low (0) to very high (9). For some single-opposition objects no numeric uncertainty is given (–), with E indicating an estimated, rather than determined orbital eccentricity. Furthermore, a color code is used to indicate a bodys basic dynamical classification, with additional information given in columns class and description and notes (especially for near-Earth objects, Jupiter trojans and distant objects).[1][3][4] If available, mean diameters are taken from the latest NEOWISE publication,[5] or, if not available, estimated based on an objects absolute magnitude and displayed in italics.[6] In the Minor Planet Circular from July 2018, the MPC announced that changes in their data processing pipeline will enable numberings to occur more frequently. It is stated that the new method will clear the backlog of unnumbered minor planets with an already well-established orbit without changing the criteria for numbering. Previously, this was not possible because of the difficulty of determining who was the discoverer.[7] Despite this announcement, however, the total of unnumbered minor planets has since significantly increased rather than decreased. The year of principal provisional designation for most unnumbered minor planets is younger than 2004 (see § Statistics). They are not listed in any of the partial lists due to their large number and frequent changes. New partial lists may be created in the future, as additional observations ultimately lead to new numberings and to fewer unnumbered bodies.
Lists of mountains. Mountains are listed according to various criteria:
List of mountain peaks by prominence. This is a list of mountain peaks ordered by their topographic prominence. The prominence of a peak is the minimum height of climb to the summit on any route from a higher peak, or from sea level if there is no higher peak. The lowest point on that route is the col. For full definitions and explanations of topographic prominence, key col, and parent, see topographic prominence. In particular, the different definitions of the parent of a peak are addressed at length in that article. Height on the other hand simply means elevation of the summit above sea level. Regarding parents, the prominence parent of peak A can be found by dividing the island or region in question into territories, by tracing the runoff from the key col (mountain pass) of every peak that is more prominent than peak A. The parent is the peak whose territory peak A resides in.
Littoral zone. The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore.[1] In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas that are permanently submerged known as the foreshore. However, the geographical meaning of littoral zone extends well beyond the intertidal zone to include all neritic waters within the bounds of continental shelves. The word littoral may be used both as a noun and as an adjective. It derives from the Latin noun litus, litoris, meaning shore. (The doubled t is a late-medieval innovation, and the word is sometimes seen in the more classical-looking spelling litoral.)[2] The term has no single definition. What is regarded as the full extent of the littoral zone, and the way the littoral zone is divided into subregions, varies in different contexts. For lakes, the littoral zone is the nearshore habitat where photosynthetically active radiation penetrates to the lake bottom in sufficient quantities to support photosynthesis.[1] The use of the term also varies from one part of the world to another, and between different disciplines. For example, military commanders speak of the littoral in ways that are quite different from the definition used by marine biologists. The adjacency of water gives a number of distinctive characteristics to littoral regions. The erosive power of water results in particular types of landforms, such as sand dunes, and estuaries. The natural movement of the littoral along the coast is called the littoral drift. Biologically, the ready availability of water enables a greater variety of plant and animal life, and particularly the formation of extensive wetlands. In addition, the additional local humidity due to evaporation usually creates a microclimate supporting unique types of organisms. In oceanography and marine biology, the idea of the littoral zone is extended roughly to the edge of the continental shelf. Starting from the shoreline, the littoral zone begins at the spray region just above the high tide mark. From here, it moves to the intertidal region between the high and low water marks, and then out as far as the edge of the continental shelf. These three subregions are called, in order, the supralittoral zone, the eulittoral zone, and the sublittoral zone.
Marine ecosystem. Marine ecosystems are the largest of Earths aquatic ecosystems and exist in waters that have a high salt content. These systems contrast with freshwater ecosystems, which have a lower salt content. Marine waters cover more than 70% of the surface of the Earth and account for more than 97% of Earths water supply[1][2] and 90% of habitable space on Earth.[3] Seawater has an average salinity of 35 parts per thousand of water. Actual salinity varies among different marine ecosystems.[4] Marine ecosystems can be divided into many zones depending upon water depth and shoreline features. The oceanic zone is the vast open part of the ocean where animals such as whales, sharks, and tuna live. The benthic zone consists of substrates below water where many invertebrates live. The intertidal zone is the area between high and low tides. Other near-shore (neritic) zones can include mudflats, seagrass meadows, mangroves, rocky intertidal systems, salt marshes, coral reefs, kelp forests and lagoons. In the deep water, hydrothermal vents may occur where chemosynthetic sulfur bacteria form the base of the food web. Marine ecosystems are characterized by the biological community of organisms that they are associated with and their physical environment. Classes of organisms found in marine ecosystems include brown algae, dinoflagellates, corals, cephalopods, echinoderms, and sharks. Marine ecosystems are important sources of ecosystem services and food and jobs for significant portions of the global population. Human uses of marine ecosystems and pollution in marine ecosystems are significantly threats to the stability of these ecosystems. Environmental problems concerning marine ecosystems include unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (for example overfishing of certain species), marine pollution, climate change, and building on coastal areas. Moreover, much of the carbon dioxide causing global warming and heat captured by global warming are absorbed by the ocean, ocean chemistry is changing through processes like ocean acidification which in turn threatens marine ecosystems. Because of the opportunities in marine ecosystems for humans and the threats created by humans, the international community has prioritized Life below water as Sustainable Development Goal 14.[5] The goal is to Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.[6] Coral reefs are one of the most well-known marine ecosystems in the world, with the largest being the Great Barrier Reef. These reefs are composed of large coral colonies of a variety of species living together. The corals form multiple symbiotic relationships with the organisms around them.[7]
List of observatory codes. This is a list of observatory codes (IAU codes or MPC codes) published by the Minor Planet Center.[1] For a detailed description, see observations of small Solar System bodies. bla de Vallbona
Intertidal zone. The intertidal zone or foreshore is the area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide; in other words, it is the part of the littoral zone within the tidal range. This area can include several types of habitats with various species of life, such as sea stars, sea urchins, and many species of coral with regional differences in biodiversity. Sometimes it is referred to as the littoral zone or seashore, although those can be defined as a wider region. The intertidal zone also includes steep rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, bogs or wetlands (e.g., vast mudflats). This area can be a narrow strip, such as in Pacific islands that have only a narrow tidal range, or can include many meters of shoreline where shallow beach slopes interact with high tidal excursion. The peritidal zone is similar but somewhat wider, extending from above the highest tide level to below the lowest. Organisms in the intertidal zone are well-adapted to their environment, facing high levels of interspecific competition and the rapidly changing conditions that come with the tides.[1] The intertidal zone is also home to several species from many different phyla (Porifera, Annelida, Coelenterata, Mollusca, Arthropoda, etc.). The water that comes with the tides can vary from brackish waters, fresh with rain, to highly saline and dry salt, with drying between tidal inundations. Wave splash can dislodge residents from the littoral zone. With the intertidal zones high exposure to sunlight, the temperature can range from very hot with full sunshine to near freezing in colder climates. Some microclimates in the littoral zone are moderated by local features and larger plants such as mangroves. Adaptations in the littoral zone allow the utilization of nutrients supplied in high volume on a regular basis from the sea, which is actively moved to the zone by tides. The edges of habitats, in this case the land and sea, are themselves often significant ecosystems, and the littoral zone is a prime example. A typical rocky shore can be divided into a spray zone or splash zone (also known as the supratidal zone), which is above the spring high-tide line and is covered by water only during storms, and an intertidal zone, which lies between the high and low tidal extremes. Along most shores, the intertidal zone can be clearly separated into the following subzones: high tide zone, middle tide zone, and low tide zone. The intertidal zone is one of a number of marine biomes or habitats, including estuaries, the neritic zone, the photic zone, and deep zones. Marine biologists divide the intertidal region into three zones (low, middle, and high), based on the overall average exposure of the zone.[2] The low intertidal zone, which borders on the shallow subtidal zone, is only exposed to air at the lowest of low tides and is primarily marine in character. The mid intertidal zone is regularly exposed and submerged by average tides. The high intertidal zone is only covered by the highest of the high tides, and spends much of its time as terrestrial habitat. The high intertidal zone borders on the splash zone (the region above the highest still-tide level, but which receives wave splash). On shores exposed to heavy wave action, the intertidal zone will be influenced by waves, as the spray from breaking waves will extend the intertidal zone.
Estuary. An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea.[1] Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environments and are an example of an ecotone. Estuaries are subject both to marine influences such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water, and to fluvial influences such as flows of freshwater and sediment. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world.[2] Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea level began to rise about 10,000–12,000 years ago.[3] Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns. They can have many different names, such as bays, harbors, lagoons, inlets, or sounds, although some of these water bodies do not strictly meet the above definition of an estuary and could be fully saline. Many estuaries suffer degeneration from a variety of factors including soil erosion, deforestation, overgrazing, overfishing and the filling of wetlands. Eutrophication may lead to excessive nutrients from nitrogen run off, sewage and animal wastes; pollutants including heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, radionuclides and hydrocarbons from sewage inputs, and diking or damming for flood control or water diversion.[3][4] The word estuary is derived from the Latin word aestuarium meaning tidal inlet of the sea, which in itself is derived from the term aestus, meaning tide. There have been many definitions proposed to describe an estuary. The most widely accepted definition is: a semi-enclosed coastal body of water, which has a free connection with the open sea, and within which seawater is measurably diluted with freshwater derived from land drainage.[1] However, this definition excludes a number of coastal water bodies such as coastal lagoons and brackish seas. A more comprehensive definition of an estuary is a semi-enclosed body of water connected to the sea as far as the tidal limit or the salt intrusion limit and receiving freshwater runoff; however the freshwater inflow may not be perennial, the connection to the sea may be closed for part of the year and tidal influence may be negligible.[3] This broad definition also includes fjords, lagoons, river mouths, and tidal creeks. An estuary is a dynamic ecosystem having a connection to the open sea through which the sea water enters with the rhythm of the tides. The effects of tides on estuaries can show nonlinear effects on the movement of water which can have important impacts on the ecosystem and waterflow. The seawater entering the estuary is diluted by the fresh water flowing from rivers and streams. The pattern of dilution varies between different estuaries and depends on the volume of freshwater, the tidal range, and the extent of evaporation of the water in the estuary.[2]
Peter Westergaard. Peter Talbot Westergaard (28 May 1931[1] – 26 June 2019)[2] was an American composer and music theorist. He was Professor Emeritus of music at Princeton University. Westergaard was born on 28 May 1931[3] in Champaign, Illinois. He pursued undergraduate studies at Harvard University, graduating in 1953, and in 1956 obtained an M.F.A. degree from Princeton University. He studied with Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, Darius Milhaud, Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt and Wolfgang Fortner (Pratt 2001) in Freiburg/Germany.[citation needed] He taught at Columbia University, Amherst College, and Princeton University before retiring in 2001. He continued to be active as a composer, mainly of opera and chamber music. He died in June 2019 at the age of 88.[4] Amongst former pupils of Babbitt, Westergaard stands out for his contributions to serial theory, as well as for his compositions, which are characterized by a delight in symmetry and mirror relationships, together with a concern for the systematic and integrated use of all the parameters of music, producing multileveled, clear, beautiful, and audible patterns (Griffiths 1981, 160–61). Film version of Alice in Wonderland published by Albany records.[full citation needed]
Alice in Wonderland (musical). Alice in Wonderland is a musical by Henry Savile Clarke[1] (book and lyrics) and Walter Slaughter (music), based on Lewis Carrolls books Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871).[2] It debuted at the Prince of Waless Theatre in the West End on 23 December 1886. Aubrey Hopwood (lyrics) and Walter Slaughter (music) wrote additional songs which were first used for the 1900 revival. The piece, billed as A musical dream play in two acts, achieved considerable popularity. At Carrolls request, Slaughter retained the old tunes in the parodies such as Bonny Dundee.[3] There were several amateur productions of Alice after the books publication, and Carroll himself considered dramatizing the story for the professional stage. In 1877 he wrote to Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in an attempt to persuade him to write the songs for a musical production. Sullivan was interested in the idea and proposed that he would compose a score to Carrolls libretto. Carroll hesitated, partly at the high fee Sullivan suggested for his work. Wanting to know what he would get for his money, Carroll suggested that Sullivan first score a song or two. After this the proposed collaboration fizzled out.[4] In August 1886 the dramatist and critic Henry Savile Clarke wrote to Carroll asking to adapt Alice in Wonderland for the stage.[4] Carroll gave permission but with several stipulations:
List of observatory codes. This is a list of observatory codes (IAU codes or MPC codes) published by the Minor Planet Center.[1] For a detailed description, see observations of small Solar System bodies. bla de Vallbona
Alice in Wonderland (opera). Alice in Wonderland is a 2007 operatic adaptation of the novels Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll.[1] It is the first opera of Korean composer Unsuk Chin, who co-wrote the English libretto with the Asian-American playwright David Henry Hwang. It had its world premiere on 30 June 2007.[2] However, the jacket and notice of the DVD of the world premiere indicates that the recording was made on 27 June at the Bavarian State Opera as part of the 2007 Munich Opera Festival.[3] Conducted by Kent Nagano and featuring Sally Matthews in the title role and Dame Gwyneth Jones as the Queen of Hearts, the production was hailed as World Premiere of the Year by the German opera magazine Opernwelt.[4] A DVD was subsequently released by Euroarts. The American Premier took place in 2012 at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis conducted by Michael Christie under the direction of James Robinson featuring Ashley Emerson, Tracy Dahl, Jenni Bank, David Trudgen, Aubrey Allicock, and Julie Makerov. The most notable subsequent production was a co-production with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Barbican Center in London. The LA production was conceived by director Netia Jones and conducted in Los Angeles by Susanna Mälkki and in London by Baldur Brönnimann. The cast featured Rachele Gilmore, Andrew Watts, Marie Arnet, Jenni Bank, Jane Henschel, and Dietrich Henschel. The Opera also exists in a condensed concert version which has been performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, The Bergen Philharmonic in Bergen and Oslo, and the Seoul Philharmonic. This version originated for Soprano and Alto but a Baritone was added for the Seoul version. The concert version has been performed by Sally Matthews(soprano), Rachele Gilmore(soprano), Jenni Bank(mezzo-soprano), and Dietrich Henschel(baritone).
North Africa. North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudans Red Sea coast in the east.[6] The most common definition for the regions boundaries includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The United Nations’ definition includes all these countries as well as Sudan.[7] The African Union defines the region similarly, only differing from the UN in excluding the Sudan and including Mauritania.[8] The Sahel, south of the Sahara Desert, can be considered as the southern boundary of North Africa.[9][10][11] North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and the plazas de soberanía. It can also be considered to include Malta, as well as other Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish regions such as Lampedusa and Lampione, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, which are all either closer to the African continent than Europe or as close to the African continent as Europe. Northwest Africa has been inhabited by Berbers since the beginning of recorded history, while the eastern part of North Africa has been home to the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula swept across the region during the early Muslim conquests. The Arab migrations to the Maghreb began immediately after, which started a long process of Islamization and Arabization that has altered the demographic breakdown of the region and defined the cultural landscape of North Africa ever since.[12] Many but not all Berbers and Ancient Egyptians gradually merged into Arab-Islamic culture, and today, the Arabs constitute the majority of the population in all North African countries.[13] The countries and people of North Africa share a large amount of their genetic, ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity and influence with the Middle East/West Asia, a process that began with the Neolithic Revolution c. 10,000 BC and pre Dynastic Egypt. The countries of North Africa are also a major part of the Arab world. The Islamic and Arab influence in North Africa has remained dominant ever since, with the region being major part of the Muslim world. North Africa is associated with the Middle East in the realm of geopolitics to form the Middle East-North Africa region.[14]
Division (business). A division, sometimes called a business sector or business unit (segment), is one of the parts into which a business, organization or company is divided.[1] Divisions are distinct parts of a business. If these divisions are all part of the same company, then that company is legally responsible for all of the obligations and debts of the divisions.[1][2][3] In the banking industry, an example would be East West Bancorp and its primary subsidiary, East West Bank.[4] Subsidiaries are separate, distinct legal entities for the purposes of taxation, regulation and liability. For this reason, they differ from divisions, which are businesses fully integrated within the main company, and not legally or otherwise distinct from it.[5][6] The Houston Chronicle highlighted that the creation of a division is substantially easier than developing subsidiaries. Because a division is an internal segment of a company, not an entirely separate entity, business owners create and end divisions at their whim. Also, because individuals in each division are employed by the same company, its easier to modify staffing to fit with this setup.[7]
Dogū. Dogu (Japanese: 土偶; IPA: [doɡɯː]; literally earthen figure) are small humanoid and animal figurines made during the later part of the Jōmon period (14,000–400 BC) of prehistoric Japan.[a] Dogū come exclusively from the Jōmon period, and were no longer made by the following Yayoi period. There are various styles of dogū, depending on the exhumation area and time period.[1][3] The National Museum of Japanese History estimates that the total number of dogū is approximately 15,000, while The Japan Times places the figure at approximately 18,000.[1][3] Dogū were made across all of Japan, except Okinawa. Most of the dogū have been found in eastern Japan and it is rare to find one in western Japan. The purpose of the dogū remains unknown and should not be confused with the clay haniwa funerary objects of the Kofun period (250 – 538 C.E.).[4] Everyday ceramic items from the period are called Jōmon pottery. Some scholars theorize the dogū acted as effigies of people, that manifested some kind of sympathetic magic.[5] For example, it may have been believed that illnesses could be transferred into the dogū, which were then destroyed, clearing the illness, or any other misfortune.[6]
Alices Adventures in Wonderland (ballet). Alices Adventures in Wonderland is a ballet in three acts by Christopher Wheeldon with a scenario by Nicholas Wright, based on Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It was commissioned by The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, and the National Ballet of Canada, and had its world premiere on Monday, 28 February 2011. The music by Joby Talbot is the first full-length score (1 hour 40 minutes) for the Royal Ballet in 20 years.[1] It is also the first full-length narrative ballet commissioned by The Royal Ballet since 1995.[2] The work is based on Lewis Carrolls 1865 well-known childrens book Alices Adventures in Wonderland. Wheeldon was attracted by the physicality of the characters and the perfect central role for a ballerina: The Royal Ballet already has a wealth of full-blooded ballets. I wanted to create something lighter and more friendly. He chose Lauren Cuthbertson for the lead role of Alice as someone who could captivate the audience and make them believe in Alice. As for the music, Talbot explained that he wanted to find a new sound, the right timbre for Wonderland. His orchestral score has a large percussion section and four female voices.[3] Karen Kain, the artistic director of National Ballet of Canada contacted the Royal Ballet and proposed a co-production after learning about the ballet.[4] The company had the productions North American premiere in 2011, starring Jillian Vanstone.[5] By 2012, Wheeldon had changed the structure of the ballet so that it consisted of three acts instead of the original two and had inserted an additional pas de deux for Alice and the Knave.[6]
Kofun. Kofun (古墳; from Sino-Japanese ancient burial mound) are megalithic tombs or tumuli in Northeast Asia. Kofun were mainly constructed in the Japanese archipelago between the middle of the 3rd century to the early 7th century AD.[1] The term is the origin of the name of the Kofun period, which indicates the middle 3rd century to early–middle 6th century. Many kofun have distinctive keyhole-shaped mounds (zempō-kōen fun (前方後円墳)). The Mozu-Furuichi kofungun or tumulus clusters were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019, while Ishibutai Kofun is one of a number in Asuka-Fujiwara residing on the Tentative List.[2][3] The kofun tumuli have assumed various shapes throughout history. The most common type of kofun is known as a zenpō-kōen-fun (前方後円墳), which is shaped like a keyhole, having one square end and one circular end, when viewed from above. There are also circular-type (empun [ja] (円墳)), two conjoined rectangles typed (zenpō-kōhō-fun [ja] (前方後方墳)), and square-type (hōfun [ja] (方墳)) kofun. Orientation of kofun is not specified. For example, in the Mozu kofun group, in Sakai, several of the circular parts are facing north, while other face east. However, there is no such formation in the Yanagimoto kofun group. Haniwa, terracotta figures, were arrayed above and in the surroundings to delimit and protect the sacred areas. Kofun range from several metres to over 400 m long. The largest, which has been attributed to Emperor Nintoku, is Daisen Kofun in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture.
Kofun period. The Kofun period (古墳時代, Kofun jidai) is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is the earliest era of recorded history in Japan, but studies depend heavily on archaeology since the chronology of historical sources tends to be distorted. Kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mound dating from this era. It was a period of cultural import. Continuing from the Yayoi period, the Kofun period is characterized by influence from China and the Korean peninsula; archaeologists consider it a shared culture across the southern Korean peninsula, Kyushu and Honshu.[1] On the other hand, the most prosperous keyhole-shaped burial mounds in Japan during this period were approximately 5,000 in Japan from the middle of the 3rd century in the Yayoi period to the 7th century in the Asuka period, and many of them had huge tombs,[2][3] but in the southern Korean peninsula there were only 13 from the 5th century to the 6th century, and the tombs were small. Wall decorations and Japanese-style armor, which are characteristic of older Japanese burial mounds, were excavated from 5th century burial mounds in the southern Korean peninsula. This shows that Japan and the southern Korean peninsula influenced each other.[4][5] According to the Nihon Shoki (720), Buddhism and the Chinese writing system were introduced near the end of the period from Baekje. The Kofun period recorded Japans earliest political centralization, when the Yamato clan rose to power in southwestern Japan, established the Imperial House, and helped control trade routes across the region.[6] Kofun (from Middle Chinese kú 古 ancient + bjun 墳 burial mound)[7][8] are burial mounds built for members of the ruling class from the 3rd to the 7th centuries in Japan,[9] and the Kofun period takes its name from the distinctive earthen mounds. The mounds contained large stone burial chambers, and some are surrounded by moats. Kofun have four basic shapes: round and square are the most common, followed by scallop-shell and keyhole. The keyhole tomb is a distinct style found only in Japan, with a square front and round back. Kofun range in size from several meters to over 400 meters long, and unglazed pottery figures (Haniwa) were often buried under a kofuns circumference.
Wonderland (musical). Wonderland, formerly called Wonderland: Alices New Musical Adventure or Wonderland: A New Alice, is a musical play with a book by Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd, lyrics by Murphy, and music by Frank Wildhorn. The story, a contemporary version of the novels Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll, is set in New York City and focuses on writer Alice Cornwinkle and her 10-year-old daughter Chloe. After various workshops and productions of the musical in Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, the show premiered on Broadway on April 17, 2011, closing a month later, on May 15, 2011. Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy previously collaborated on The Civil War, Waiting For The Moon, The Count of Monte Cristo, and the unproduced musical Havana, and have written songs for Linda Eder. Gregory Boyd has directed productions of Wildhorns Svengali (for which he penned the lyrics), Jekyll & Hyde, and The Civil War (for which he contributed lyrics and dialogue with Murphy). Wonderland is the first production mounted by the Broadway Genesis Project, whose goal is to help create new theatre works specifically for the Tampa Bay market, after which they may be staged in other performing arts centers or move to Broadway.[1] Wildhorn began working on the project in the late 1990s. He initially conceived an Alice similar to the one in the 1951 Disney animated feature and envisioned his then-fiancé, Brandi Burkhardt, in the title role, but as time passed, the two ended their engagement, and the role seemed to be passed to another Wildhorn leading lady Lauren Kennedy. In 2005, Wildhorn announced that the musical would premiere in 2006 in Europe, but this did not occur. The show was workshopped starring Burkhardt in the title role in Tampa, Florida in 2007, with a presentation of four songs (these still appear in the show in some form). The project then focused on the scripts, and TBPAC agreed to make the show its first project.[citation needed]
Arabic. Arabic[c] is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world.[13] The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic,[14] which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ[15] the eloquent Arabic) or simply al-fuṣḥā (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ). Arabic is the third most widespread official language after English and French,[16] one of six official languages of the United Nations,[17] and the liturgical language of Islam.[18] Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media.[18] During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese, Catalan, and Sicilian) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet.[19] The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian, have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian, Turkish, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu),[20] Kashmiri, Kurdish, Bosnian, Kazakh, Bengali, Malay (Indonesian and Malaysian), Maldivian, Pashto, Punjabi, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog, Sindhi, Odia,[21] Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa, Amharic, Tigrinya, Somali, Tamazight, and Swahili. Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to a lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world,[1] making it the fifth most spoken language in the world[22] and the fourth most used language on the Internet in terms of users.[23][24] It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims.[17] In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic the fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese, and French.[25] Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, an abjad script that is written from right to left.
Takamatsu. Takamatsu (高松市, Takamatsu-shi; Japanese: [takaꜜmatsɯ]) is a capital city located in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 November 2022[update], the city had an estimated population of 414,134 in 190,120 households and a population density of 1,100 persons per km2.[1] The total area of the city is 375.41 square kilometres (144.95 sq mi). It is the capital city of the prefecture. Takamatsu is located in central Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. The city is located in the Takamatsu Plain, which is part of the Sanuki Plain, and is occupied by a gentle slope as a whole. The northern part faces the Seto Inland Sea, forming a semicircular urban area centered on Takamatsu Port and Takamatsu New Port (commonly known as Shinminato).The western part of the city consists of an alluvial fan formed by the sedimentation of the Koto River. The eastern part is a flooded plain formed by the Kasuga River and Shinkawa River. In the northeastern part of the island, there is Yashima, a table-shaped plateau protruding into the Seto Inland Sea, which was the site of the Battle of Yashima in the Genpei War, and Cape Takei, the northernmost tip of the main island of Shikoku. Parts of the city are located within the borders of the Setonaikai National Park. The city area also includes a number of small inhabited islands in the Seto Inland Sea. Kagawa Prefecture Tokushima Prefecture Takamatsu has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) with hot, humid summers, and cool winters. Some rain falls throughout the year, but the months from May to September have the heaviest rain.
Tottori Sand Dunes. 35°32′24″N 134°13′39″E / 35.54000°N 134.22750°E / 35.54000; 134.22750 The Tottori Sand Dunes (鳥取砂丘, Tottori sakyū) are sand dunes located outside the city center of Tottori in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. With a length of 9 miles (14 km) and a width of less than 1.5 miles (2.4 km), it is the largest sand dune in Japan. The sand dunes are part of the Sanin Kaigan Geopark, which is part of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.[1] The sand formations were created when sediment deposits carried from the Chūgoku Mountains by the Sendai River were thrown away into the Sea of Japan. Strong winds then shaped the dunes over a span of 100,000 years.[2] The area of the dunes has been steadily decreasing due to a government reforestation program following World War II. Concrete barriers have been built along the coast to prevent the formations from eroding. Authorities have adopted measures to stop the shrinkage of the dunes, partly because they attract a significant amount of tourism to the area.[3] The Tottori Sand Dunes stretch from Iwato in Fukube-cho, Tottori City to Hakuto, Tottori City, on both sides of the Sendai River. However, the Hamasaka Dunes area of 545 hectares on the eastern side of the river is the most famous tourist destination.[4] Lake Tanegaike, formed when the dunes separated it from the sea, lies to the southeast.
Iberian Peninsula. The Iberian Peninsula (IPA: /aɪˈbɪəriən/ eye-BEER-ee-ən),[a] also known as Iberia,[b] is a peninsula in south-western Europe. Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of Peninsular Spain[c] and Continental Portugal, comprising most of the region, as well as the tiny adjuncts of Andorra, Gibraltar, and, pursuant to the traditional definition of the Pyrenees as the peninsulas northeastern boundary, a small part of France.[2] With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi),[3] and a population of roughly 53 million,[1] it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula. The Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the River Ebro (Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin). The association was so well known it was hardly necessary to state. For example, Ibēria was the country this side of the Ibērus in Strabo. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of the peninsula Hiberia because of the Hiberus River.[4] The river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BCE between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian,[5] uses Ibērus. With reference to this border, Polybius[6] states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination. The early range of these natives, which geographers and historians place from the present southern Spain to the present southern France along the Mediterranean coast, is marked by instances of a readable script expressing a yet unknown language, dubbed Iberian. Whether this was the native name or was given to them by the Greeks for their residence near the Ebro remains unknown. Credence in Polybius imposes certain limitations on etymologizing: if the language remains unknown, the meanings of the words, including Iber, must also remain unknown.
Government. A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance, the term government is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations. The main types of modern political systems recognized are democracies, totalitarian regimes, and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with a variety of hybrid regimes.[1][2] Modern classification systems also include monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three.[3][4] Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed governments are common. The main aspect of any philosophy of government is how political power is obtained, with the two main forms being electoral contest and hereditary succession.
Kanagawa Prefecture. Kanagawa Prefecture (神奈川県, Kanagawa-ken; Japanese pronunciation: [ka.naꜜ.ɡa.wa, -ŋa.wa, -na.ɡa.waꜜ.keɴ, -ŋa.waꜜ-][2]) is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu.[3] Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at 3,800 inhabitants per square kilometre (9,800/sq mi). Its geographic area of 2,415 km2 (932 sq mi) makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagawa Prefecture borders Tokyo to the north, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northwest and Shizuoka Prefecture to the west. Yokohama is the capital and largest city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second-largest city in Japan, with other major cities including Kawasaki, Sagamihara, and Fujisawa.[4] Kanagawa Prefecture is located on Japans eastern Pacific coast on Tokyo Bay and Sagami Bay, separated by the Miura Peninsula, across from Chiba Prefecture on the Bōsō Peninsula. Kanagawa Prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with Yokohama and many of its cities being major commercial hubs and southern suburbs of Tokyo. Kanagawa Prefecture was the political and economic center of Japan during the Kamakura period when Kamakura was the de facto capital and largest city of Japan as the seat of the Kamakura shogunate from 1185 to 1333. Kanagawa Prefecture is a popular tourist area in the Tokyo region, with Kamakura and Hakone being two popular side trip destinations. The prefecture has some archaeological sites going back to the Jōmon period (around 400 BCE). About 3,000 years ago, Mount Hakone produced a volcanic explosion which resulted in Lake Ashi on the western area of the prefecture.[citation needed] It is believed[by whom?] that the imperial dynasty ruled this area from the 5th century onwards. In the ancient era, its plains were very sparsely inhabited.[citation needed] In medieval Japan, Kanagawa was part of the provinces of Sagami and Musashi.[5] Kamakura in central Sagami was the capital of Japan during the Kamakura period (1185–1333).
Coral reef. A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate.[1] Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. Coral belongs to the class Anthozoa in the animal phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones and jellyfish. Unlike sea anemones, corals secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons that support and protect the coral. Most reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated water. Coral reefs first appeared 485 million years ago, at the dawn of the Early Ordovician, displacing the microbial and sponge reefs of the Cambrian.[2] Sometimes called rainforests of the sea,[3] shallow coral reefs form some of Earths most diverse ecosystems. They occupy less than 0.1% of the worlds ocean area, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for at least 25% of all marine species,[4][5][6][7] including fish, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, echinoderms, sponges, tunicates and other cnidarians.[8] Coral reefs flourish in ocean waters that provide few nutrients. They are most commonly found at shallow depths in tropical waters, but deep water and cold water coral reefs exist on smaller scales in other areas.[9] Shallow tropical coral reefs have declined by 50% since 1950, partly because they are sensitive to water conditions.[10] They are under threat from excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), rising ocean heat content and acidification, overfishing (e.g., from blast fishing, cyanide fishing, spearfishing on scuba), sunscreen use,[11] and harmful land-use practices, including runoff and seeps (e.g., from injection wells and cesspools).[12][13][14]
List of forms of government. This article lists forms of government and political systems, which are not mutually exclusive, and often have much overlap.[1] According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there are three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with hybrid regimes.[2][3] Another modern classification system includes monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three.[4] Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism.[5][2][6] The ancient Greek philosopher Plato discusses in the Republic five types of regimes: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. [7] The question raised by Plato in the Republic: What kind of state is best? Generational changes informed by new political and cultural beliefs, technological progress, values and morality over millenniums have resulted in considerable shifts in the belief about the origination of political authority, who may participate in matters of state, how people might participate, the determination of what is just, and so forth. Index of Forms of Government.[1] Systems resembling anarchism can be a natural, temporary result of civil war in a country, when an established state has been destroyed and the region is in a transitional period without definitive leadership.[9] It has also been proposed as a historical state of human society, especially before the concentration of power afforded by agriculture.[10] It has been presented as a viable long-term choice by individuals known as anarchists who oppose the state and other forms of coercive hierarchies. These systems are often highly organized, and include institutional or cultural systems to prevent the concentration of power. Anarchism typically advocates for social organization in non-hierarchical, voluntary associations where people voluntarily help each other.[11] There are a variety of forms of anarchy that attempt to discourage the use of coercion, violence, force and authority, while still producing a productive and desirable society.
List of countries by system of government. This is a list of sovereign states by their de jure systems of government, as specified by the incumbent regimes constitutional law. This list does not measure the degree of democracy, political corruption, or state capacity of governments. These are systems in which the head of state is a constitutional monarch; the existence of their office and their ability to exercise their authority is established and restrained by constitutional law. Systems in which a prime minister is the active head of the executive branch of government. In some cases, the prime minister is also the leader of the legislature, while in other cases the executive branch is clearly separated from legislature (although the entire cabinet or individual ministers must step down in the case of a vote of no confidence).[1][2] The head of state is a monarch who normally only exercises their powers with the consent of the government, the people and/or their representatives (except in emergencies, e.g. a constitutional crisis or a political deadlock).[a]
Federation. A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, is constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision, neither by the component states nor the federal political body without constitutional amendment. Sovereign power is formally divided between a central authority and a number of constituent regions so that each region retains some degree of control over its internal affairs.[1] Overriding powers of a central authority theoretically can include the constitutional authority to suspend a constituent states government by invoking gross mismanagement or civil unrest, or to adopt national legislation that overrides or infringes on the constituent states powers by invoking the central governments constitutional authority to ensure peace and good government[citation needed] or to implement obligations contracted under an international treaty. The governmental or constitutional structure found in a federation is considered to be federalist, or to be an example of federalism. It can be considered in comparison with the unitary state. France and Japan, for example, have been unitary for many centuries. The Austrian Empire was a unitary state with crown lands; after the transformation into the Austria-Hungary monarchy, the remaining crown lands of so-called Cisleithania became federated as Länder of the Republic of Austria through the implementation of its constitution. Germany, with its 16 states, or Länder, and Nigeria, with its 36 states and federal capital territory, are examples of federations. Federations are often multi-ethnic and cover a large area of territory (such as Russia, the United States, Canada, India, Brazil, Pakistan or Australia), but neither is necessarily the case (such as Saint Kitts and Nevis or the Federated States of Micronesia).[2] About 40% of the world population lives in a federation.[3]
English language. English is a West Germanic language that emerged in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca.[4][5][6] The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain after the end of Roman rule. English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. It is the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. However, English is only the third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[3] English is either the official language, or one of the official languages, in 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories, making it the most geographically widespread language in the world. In the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, it is the dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law.[7] It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become the de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science, technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet.[8] Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.4 billion speakers worldwide as of 2021[update].[3] Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse, a North Germanic language.[9][10][11] Then, Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects, which are the source of approximately 28 percent of Modern English words, and from Latin, which is the source of an additional 28 percent.[12] While Latin and the Romance languages are thus the source for a majority of its lexicon taken as a whole, English grammar and phonology retain a family resemblance with the Germanic languages, and most of its basic everyday vocabulary remains Germanic in origin. English exists on a dialect continuum with Scots; it is next-most closely related to Low Saxon and Frisian. English is a member of the Indo-European language family, belonging to the West Germanic branch of Germanic languages.[13] Owing to their descent from a shared ancestor language known as Proto-Germanic, English and other Germanic languages – which include Dutch, German, and Swedish[14] – have characteristic features in common, including a division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs, and sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants known as Grimms and Verners laws.[15]
Political polarization. Political polarization (spelled polarisation in British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes.[1][2][3] Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization (differences between the policy positions) and affective polarization (an emotional dislike and distrust of political out-groups).[4] Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarization in the context of political parties and democratic systems of government. In two-party systems, political polarization usually embodies the tension of its binary political ideologies and partisan identities.[1][2][3][5][6][7] However, some political scientists assert that contemporary polarization depends less on policy differences on a left and right scale but increasingly on other divisions such as religious against secular, nationalist against globalist, traditional against modern, or rural against urban.[8] Polarization is associated with the process of politicization.[9] Polarization itself is typically understood as a prominent division or conflict that forms between major groups in a society or political system and that is marked by the clustering and radicalisation of views and beliefs at two distant and antagonistic poles. as defined by the Institute for Integrated Transitions and Ford Foundation.[10] Political scientists typically distinguish between two levels of political polarization: elite and mass. Elite polarization focuses on the polarization of the political elites, like party organizers and elected officials. Mass polarization (or popular polarization) focuses on the polarization of the masses, most often the electorate or general public.[11][12][13][14] Elite polarization refers to polarization between the party-in-government and the party-in-opposition.[2] Polarized political parties are internally cohesive, unified, programmatic, and ideologically distinct; they are typically found in a parliamentary system of democratic governance.[15][11][13][14]
List of capitals in Japan. A prefectural capital is a city where a prefectural government and assembly is located. In Japan, a prefectural capital is officially called todōfukenchō shozaichi (都道府県庁所在地; seat of a prefectural government, singular: 都庁所在地,tochō shozaichi in the [Tōkyō]-to, 道庁所在地, dōchō shozaichi in the [Hokkai]-dō, 府庁所在地, fuchō shozaichi in -fu, 県庁所在地, kenchō shozaichi in -ken), but the term kento (県都; prefectural capital) is also used (dōto (道都; in the -dō, but never futo or toto)). Notes: ¹ As of 1 May 2008[update] In most cases, a city that shares a name with its prefecture is a prefectural capital. However, there are some municipalities that are not capitals. Those in italics are prefectural capitals, or metropolitan areas of them.
Tottori (city). Tottori (鳥取市, Tottori-shi; Japanese pronunciation: [tot.to.ɾʲi, tot.to.ɾʲiꜜ.ɕi][2]) is the capital and the largest city of Tottori Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan. As of 30 November 2022[update], the city had an estimated population of 183,383 in 81,732 households and a population density of 240 persons per km2.[3] The total area of the city is 765.31 square kilometres (295.49 sq mi). Most of the city is within the Sanin Kaigan Geopark.[4] The city of Tottori is located in the east of the prefecture at the foot of the Chūgoku Mountains at the mouth of the Sendai River. While it is about 300 km by road to Hiroshima city, which is the regional hub of the Chūgoku region, it is only 180 km from Kobe, 190 km from Osaka, and 220 km from Kyoto. Within Japan the city is best known for the Tottori Sand Dunes which are a popular tourist attraction, drawing visitors from outside the prefecture. The sand dunes are also important as a centre for research into arid agriculture, hosting Tottori Universitys Arid Land Research Center. Hyōgo Prefecture Okayama Prefecture
Sanin region. The Sanin Region (山陰地方, Sanin Chihō) is an area in the southwest of Honshū, the main island of Japan. It consists of the northern part of the Chūgoku region, facing the Sea of Japan.[1] Specifically, it is the two prefectures of Shimane and Tottori. The name Sanin in the Japanese language is formed from two kanji characters. The first, 山, mountain, and the second, 陰 represents the yin of yin and yang. The name means the northern, shady side of the mountains in contrast to the yang southern, sunny Sanyō region to the south. The Sanin region has numerous Paleolithic and Jōmon period (14,000 – 300 BC) remains, but its Yayoi period (300 BC – 250 AD) remains are the largest in Japan. The Mukibanda Yayoi remains in the low foothills of Mount Daisen[2] in the cities of Daisen and Yonago, Tottori Prefecture are the largest in Japan.[3] The site is still only partially excavated, but indicates that the Sanin was a regional center of power in the period. The mythology of the Shinto religion is largely based in the Izumo area of the region,[4] and the Izumo-taisha, or Izumo Grand Shrine in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, is one of the most ancient and important Shinto shrines in Japan.[5] The eastern part of Shimane Prefecture also had cultural and economic connections to the Asian mainland from an early period.[4] The Sanin region corresponds to Sanindō (山陰道), one of the gokishichidō, or five provinces and seven circuits established in the Asuka period (538–710) under the Ritsuryō legal system.[6] Sanindō refers not only to the ancient geographic region, but also the main road through the region that connected it to the capital in Kyoto.[7] The Sanin encompassed the pre-Meiji provincial areas of Tanba, Tango, Tajima, Inaba, Hōki, Izumo, Iwami and Oki.[8][9] While the Sanindō route was used for military logistics in numerous conflicts after the Asuka period, it more importantly served as a route for the transport of good to and from the region. The route reached its highest period of importance in the Edo period (1603–1867) when the Tokugawa shogunate formalized its route and shukuba post stations. The daimyō regional rulers used the Sanindō for their sankin-kōtai mandatory journeys to Edo (modern Tokyo).
Tottori (city). Tottori (鳥取市, Tottori-shi; Japanese pronunciation: [tot.to.ɾʲi, tot.to.ɾʲiꜜ.ɕi][2]) is the capital and the largest city of Tottori Prefecture in the Chūgoku region of Japan. As of 30 November 2022[update], the city had an estimated population of 183,383 in 81,732 households and a population density of 240 persons per km2.[3] The total area of the city is 765.31 square kilometres (295.49 sq mi). Most of the city is within the Sanin Kaigan Geopark.[4] The city of Tottori is located in the east of the prefecture at the foot of the Chūgoku Mountains at the mouth of the Sendai River. While it is about 300 km by road to Hiroshima city, which is the regional hub of the Chūgoku region, it is only 180 km from Kobe, 190 km from Osaka, and 220 km from Kyoto. Within Japan the city is best known for the Tottori Sand Dunes which are a popular tourist attraction, drawing visitors from outside the prefecture. The sand dunes are also important as a centre for research into arid agriculture, hosting Tottori Universitys Arid Land Research Center. Hyōgo Prefecture Okayama Prefecture
Lists of time zones. International: Country-specific:
Takamatsu. Takamatsu (高松市, Takamatsu-shi; Japanese: [takaꜜmatsɯ]) is a capital city located in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 November 2022[update], the city had an estimated population of 414,134 in 190,120 households and a population density of 1,100 persons per km2.[1] The total area of the city is 375.41 square kilometres (144.95 sq mi). It is the capital city of the prefecture. Takamatsu is located in central Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. The city is located in the Takamatsu Plain, which is part of the Sanuki Plain, and is occupied by a gentle slope as a whole. The northern part faces the Seto Inland Sea, forming a semicircular urban area centered on Takamatsu Port and Takamatsu New Port (commonly known as Shinminato).The western part of the city consists of an alluvial fan formed by the sedimentation of the Koto River. The eastern part is a flooded plain formed by the Kasuga River and Shinkawa River. In the northeastern part of the island, there is Yashima, a table-shaped plateau protruding into the Seto Inland Sea, which was the site of the Battle of Yashima in the Genpei War, and Cape Takei, the northernmost tip of the main island of Shikoku. Parts of the city are located within the borders of the Setonaikai National Park. The city area also includes a number of small inhabited islands in the Seto Inland Sea. Kagawa Prefecture Tokushima Prefecture Takamatsu has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) with hot, humid summers, and cool winters. Some rain falls throughout the year, but the months from May to September have the heaviest rain.
Standard time. Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. The term is also used to contrast with daylight saving time, a period of the year when clocks are shifted ahead one hour, supposedly to make better use of daily sunlight from spring to fall. Applied globally in the 20th century, the geographical regions became time zones. The standard time in each time zone has come to be defined as an offset from Universal Time. A further offset is applied for part of the year in regions with daylight saving time. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the region, often near the centre of the region. Historically, standard time was established during the 19th century to aid weather forecasting and train travel. The adoption of standard time, because of the inseparable correspondence between longitude and time, solidified the concept of halving the globe into the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, with one Prime Meridian replacing the various prime meridians that had previously been used. During the 19th century, scheduled steamships and trains required time standardisation in the industrialized world. A standardised time system was first used by British railways on 1 December 1847, when they switched from local mean time, which varied from place to place, to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). It was also given the name railway time, reflecting the important role the railway companies played in bringing it about. The vast majority of Great Britains public clocks were standardised to GMT by 1855.
Time zone (disambiguation). A time zone is a region of the Earth that has adopted the same standard time. Time zone can also refer to:
List of time zones by country. This is a list representing time zones by country. Countries are ranked by total number of time zones on their territory. Time zones of a country include that of dependent territories (except Antarctic claims). France, including its overseas territories, has the most time zones with 12 (13 including its claim in Antarctica and all other counties). Many countries have daylight saving time, one added hour during the local summer, but this list does not include that information. The UTC offset in the list is not valid in practice during daylight saving time. [6]
Illustrator. An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, which is the reason illustrations are often found in childrens books.[1] Illustration is the art of making images that work with something and add to it without needing direct attention and without distracting from what they illustrate. The other thing is the focus of the attention, and the illustrations role is to add personality and character without competing with that other thing.[2] Illustrations have been used in advertisements, architectural rendering, greeting cards, posters, books, graphic novels, storyboards, business, technical communications, magazines, shirts, video games, tutorials,[3] and newspapers. A cartoon illustration can add humour to certain stories or essays.[4] Use reference images to create scenes and characters. This can be as simple as looking at an image to inspire your artwork or creating character sketches and detailed scenes from different angles to create the basis of a picture book world. Some traditional illustration techniques include watercolor, pen and ink, airbrush art, oil painting, pastels, wood engraving, and linoleum cuts. John Held, Jr. was an illustrator who worked in a variety of styles and media, including linoleum cuts, pen and ink drawings, magazine cover paintings, cartoons, comic strips, and set design, while also creating fine art with his animal sculptures and watercolor, many established illustrators attended an art school or college of some sort and were trained in different painting and drawing techniques.
Sir. Sir is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French Sieur (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in (English) French only as part of Monsieur, with the equivalent My Lord in English.[citation needed] Traditionally, as governed by law and custom, Sir is used for men who are knights and belong to certain orders of chivalry, as well as later applied to baronets and other offices. As the female equivalent for knighthood is damehood, the suo jure female equivalent term is typically Dame. The wife of a knight or baronet tends to be addressed as Lady, although a few exceptions and interchanges of these uses exist. Additionally, since the late modern period, Sir has been used as a respectful way to address a man of superior social status or military rank. Equivalent terms of address for women are Madam (shortened to Maam), in addition to social honorifics such as Mrs, Ms, or Miss. Sir derives from the honorific title sire; sire developed alongside the word seigneur, also used to refer to a feudal lord. Both derived from the Vulgar Latin senior, sire comes from the nominative case declension senior and seigneur, the accusative case declension seniōrem.[1]
Democracy. Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dêmos people and krátos rule)[1] is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state.[2][3][4] Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive or maximalist definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections.[5][6][4] In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of the people and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries. Features of democracy oftentimes include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights. The notion of democracy has evolved considerably over time. Throughout history, one can find evidence of direct democracy, in which communities make decisions through popular assembly. Today, the dominant form of democracy is representative democracy, where citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but a constitution and supreme court limit the majority and protect the minority—usually through securing the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, such as freedom of speech or freedom of association.[7][8] The term appeared in the 5th century BC in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean rule of the people, in contrast to aristocracy (ἀριστοκρατία, aristokratía), meaning rule of an elite.[9] In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship was initially restricted to an elite class, which was later extended to all adult citizens. In most modern democracies, this was achieved through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
IUCN protected area categories. IUCN protected area categories, or IUCN protected area management categories, are categories used to classify protected areas in a system developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).[1][2] The enlisting of such areas is part of a strategy being used toward the conservation of the worlds natural environment and biodiversity. The IUCN has developed the protected area management categories system to define, record and classify the wide variety of specific aims and concerns when categorising protected areas and their objectives. Further supplementary guidelines have been developed specific to marine protected areas (MPAs).[3] This categorisation method is recognised on a global scale by national governments and international bodies such as the United Nations and the Convention on Biological Diversity.[4] A strict nature reserve (IUCN Category Ia) is an area which is protected from all but light human use in order to protect its biodiversity and also possibly its geological/geomorphical features.[5] These areas are often home to dense native ecosystems where all human disturbance except scientific study, environmental monitoring and education is prohibited. Because these areas are so strictly protected, they provide ideal pristine environments that enable measurement of external human influence by means of comparison with other areas. In some cases, strict nature reserves are of spiritual significance for surrounding communities and are also protected for this reason. The people engaged in the practice of their faith within the region have the right to continue to do so, providing it aligns with the areas conservation and management objectives.
Jabberwocky. Jabberwocky is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named the Jabberwock. It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alices adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world. In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of Jabberwocky. She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.[1] Jabberwocky is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English.[2][3] Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as galumphing and chortle. A decade before the publication of Alices Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll wrote the first stanza to what would become Jabberwocky while in Croft-on-Tees, where his parents resided. It was printed in 1855 in Mischmasch, a periodical he wrote and illustrated for the amusement of his family. The piece, titled Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, reads:
Swimming. Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, such as saltwater or freshwater environments, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Swimmers achieve locomotion by coordinating limb and body movements to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that results in directional motion. Newborns can instinctively hold their breath underwater and exhibit rudimentary swimming movements as part of a survival reflex. Swimming requires endurance, skill and efficient techniques to maximize speed and minimize energy consumption.[1] Swimming is a popular activity and competitive sport where certain techniques are deployed to move through water. It offers numerous health benefits, such as strengthened cardiovascular health, muscle strength, and increased flexibility. It is suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels. Swimming is consistently among the top public recreational activities,[2][3][4][5] and in some countries, swimming lessons are a compulsory part of the educational curriculum.[6] As a formalized sport, swimming is featured in various local, national, and international competitions, including every modern Summer Olympics. Swimming involves repeated motions known as strokes to propel the body forward. While the front crawl, also known as freestyle, is widely regarded as the fastest of the four main strokes, other strokes are practiced for special purposes, such as training. Swimming comes with many risks, mainly because of the aquatic environment where it takes place. For instance, swimmers may find themselves incapacitated by panic and exhaustion, both potential causes of death by drowning. Other dangers may arise from exposure to infection or hostile aquatic fauna. To minimize such eventualities, most facilities employ a lifeguard to keep alert for any signs of distress.
Political cartoon. A political cartoon, also known as an editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artists opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine artistic skill, hyperbole and satire in order to either question authority or draw attention to corruption, political violence and other social ills.[2][3] Developed in England in the latter part of the 18th century, the political cartoon was pioneered by James Gillray,[4] although his and others in the flourishing English industry were sold as individual prints in print shops. Founded in 1841, the British periodical Punch appropriated the term cartoon to refer to its political cartoons, which led to the terms widespread use. The pictorial satire has been credited as the precursor to the political cartoons in England: John J. Richetti, in The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660–1780, states that English graphic satire really begins with Hogarths Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme.[7][8] William Hogarths pictures combined social criticism with sequential artistic scenes. A frequent target of his satire was the corruption of early 18th century British politics. An early satirical work was an Emblematical Print on the South Sea Scheme (c. 1721), about the disastrous stock market crash of 1720 known as the South Sea Bubble, in which many English people lost a great deal of money.[9] His art often had a strong moralizing element to it, such as in his masterpiece of 1732–33, A Rakes Progress, engraved in 1734. It consisted of eight pictures that depicted the reckless life of Tom Rakewell, the son of a rich merchant, who spends all of his money on luxurious living, services from sex workers, and gambling—the characters life ultimately ends in Bethlem Royal Hospital.[10]
Tokyo Bay. Tokyo Bay (東京湾, Tōkyō-wan) is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan spanning the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture, on the southern coast of the island of Honshu. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. The Tokyo Bay region is the most populous and the largest industrialized area in Japan.[1][2][3][4][5] In ancient times, the Japanese knew Tokyo Bay as the uchi-umi (内海) , which means inner sea. By the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1600) the area had become known as Edo Bay (江戸湾, Edo-wan) after the city of Edo. The bay took its present name in modern times, after the Imperial court moved to Edo and renamed the city Tokyo in 1868.[6] Tokyo Bay juts prominently into the Kantō Plain.[4] It is surrounded by the Bōsō Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture to the east and the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture to the west.[1][2] The shore of Tokyo Bay consists of a diluvial plateau and is subject to rapid marine erosion. Sediments on the shore of the bay make for a smooth, continuous shoreline.[5] In a narrow sense, Tokyo Bay is the area north of the straight line from Cape Kannon on the west of Miura Peninsula to Cape Futtsu on the east Bōsō Peninsula. This area covers about 922 km2 (356 sq mi) in 2012, reclamation projects continue to slowly shrink the bay.[4][5] In a broader sense, Tokyo Bay includes the Uraga Channel. By this definition the bay opens from an area north of the straight line from Cape Tsurugisaki on the east of Miura Peninsula to Cape Sunosaki on the west of the Boso Peninsula. This area covers about 1,100 km2 (420 sq mi). The area of Tokyo Bay combined with the Uraga Channel covers 1,500 km2 (580 sq mi).[3][4][5]
List of industrial regions. An industrial region or industrial area is a geographical region with extremely dense industry. It is usually heavily urbanized. Industrial region Thracia is an industrial zone made up of several municipalities within the area of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Daresbury. Daresbury is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 246.[1] The name means Deors fortification, derived from an Old English personal name and the word burh (a fortified place).[2] The population was recorded over time at 134 in the census of 1801, 157 in 1851, 153 in 1901, 235 in 1951 and reaching 216 by 2001.[3] Opened in 1850 on the Birkenhead Railway, the area was served by Daresbury railway station in the nearby village of Moore. The station closed to passengers in 1952 and to goods in 1965, although the line through the station site remains in use.[4]
Surfing. Surfing is a surface water sport in which an individual, a surfer (or two in tandem surfing), uses a board to ride on the forward section, or face, of a moving wave of water, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore. Waves suitable for surfing are primarily found on ocean shores, but can also be found as standing waves in the open ocean, in lakes, in rivers in the form of a tidal bore, or wave pools. Surfing includes all forms of wave-riding using a board, regardless of the stance. There are several types of boards. The Moche of Peru would often surf on reed craft, while the native peoples of the Pacific surfed waves on alaia, paipo, and other such watercraft. Ancient cultures often surfed on their belly and knees, while modern-day surfing is most often stand-up surfing, in which a surfer rides a wave while standing on a surfboard. Another prominent form of surfing is body boarding, where a surfer rides the wave on a bodyboard, either lying on their belly, drop knee (one foot and one knee on the board), or sometimes even standing up on a body board. Other types of surfing include knee boarding, surf matting (riding inflatable mats) and using foils. Body surfing, in which the wave is caught and ridden using the surfers own body rather than a board, is very common and is considered by some surfers to be the purest form of surfing. The closest form of body surfing using a board is a handboard which normally has one strap over it to fit on one hand. Surfers who body board, body surf, or handboard feel more drag as they move through the water than stand up surfers do. This holds body surfers into a more turbulent part of the wave (often completely submerged by whitewater). In contrast, surfers who instead ride a hydrofoil feel substantially less drag and may ride unbroken waves in the open ocean. Three major subdivisions within stand-up surfing are stand-up paddling, long boarding and short boarding with several major differences including the board design and length, the riding style and the kind of wave that is ridden.
Urayasu. Urayasu (浦安市, Urayasu-shi) is a city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 November 2020[update], the city had an estimated population of 170,533 in 81,136 households and a population density of 9,900 inhabitants per square kilometre (26,000/sq mi).[1] The total area of the city is 17.30 square kilometres (6.68 sq mi). Urayasu is best known as the home of Tokyo Disney Resort, which opened in April 1983,[2] and the headquarters of The Oriental Land Company.[3] The area around Urayasu was tenryō territory within Shimōsa Province controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate during the Edo period. Urayasu served as an important fishing village for the Edo capitol.[2] Until the industrialization of the city it was a major center of production of nori, an edible seaweed, hamaguri, and asari clams.[4] All three are important elements of the traditional Japanese diet. Urayasu is located in the northwestern part of Chiba Prefecture, about 20 kilometers from the prefectural capital at Chiba and within 10 to 20 kilometers from the center of Tokyo. It consists of a low-lying natural levee, a delta and a reclaimed land on the left bank of the mouth of the Edo River. The river runs along the western side of the city and separates it from the Edogawa ward of Tokyo.[4] There are two parts to Urayasu: the original fishing village on natural levee on both banks of the Sakai River, which is a tributary of the Edo River, and the newer reclaimed land portion which occupies about three-quarters of the city area, created since the 1960s. The new landfill area is called Shin-Urayasu (New-Urayasu), and has an American inspired layout, with a grid-like map of wide streets, large sidewalks, palm trees and parks. The buildings are tall, modern apartments, some having views on Tokyo Bay. Urayasu is one of the most sought after areas in the metropolitan area for young families to live. Urayasu has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Urayasu is 15.6 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1435 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 27.0 °C, and lowest in January, at around 6.2 °C.[9] Chiba Prefecture
Childrens literature. Childrens literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern childrens literature is classified by the intended age of the reader, ranging from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction for those nearing maturity. Childrens literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, which have only been identified as childrens literature since the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, which adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early childrens literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic childrens tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Childrens literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke.[2] The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the Golden Age of Childrens Literature because many classic childrens books were published then. There is no single or widely used definition of childrens literature.[3]: 15–17 It can be broadly defined as the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials or more specifically defined as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama intended for and used by children and young people.[4][5]: xvii One writer on childrens literature defines it as all books written for children, excluding works such as comic books, joke books, cartoon books, and non-fiction works that are not intended to be read from front to back, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials.[6] However, others would argue that childrens comics should also be included: Childrens Literature studies has traditionally treated comics fitfully and superficially despite the importance of comics as a global phenomenon associated with children.[7] The International Companion Encyclopedia of Childrens Literature notes that the boundaries of genre... are not fixed but blurred.[3]: 4 Sometimes, no agreement can be reached about whether a given work is best categorized as literature for adults or children. Some works defy easy categorization. J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter series was written and marketed for children, but it is also popular among adults. The series extreme popularity led The New York Times to create a separate bestseller list for childrens books.[8] Despite the widespread association of childrens literature with picture books, spoken narratives existed before printing, and the root of many childrens tales go back to ancient storytellers.[9]: 30 Seth Lerer, in the opening of Childrens Literature: A Readers History from Aesop to Harry Potter, says, This book presents a history of what children have heard and read.... The history I write of is a history of reception.[10]: 2
Futtsu. Futtsu (富津市, Futtsu-shi) is a city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 November 2020[update], the city had an estimated population of 42,476 in 18,115 households and a population density of 210 persons per km2.[1] The total area of the city is 205.53 square kilometres (79.36 sq mi). Futtsu is located in the southern part of Chiba prefecture, about 40 kilometers from the prefectural capital at Chiba and 40 to 50 kilometers from the center of Tokyo. It is on the southwest coast of Bōsō Peninsula, facing the Uraga Channel at the southern end of Tokyo Bay. Cape Futtsu protrudes into Tokyo Bay, and the coastal areas are part of the Minami Bōsō Quasi-National Park. Although considered to be within the Kantō Plain, inland areas of the city are hilly. Chiba Prefecture Futtsu has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Futtsu is 15.7 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1695 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 26.5 °C, and lowest in January, at around 6.0 °C.[2] Per Japanese census data,[3] the population of Futtsu has declined in recent decades.
Bōsō Peninsula. The Bōsō Peninsula (房総半島, Bōsō-hantō) is a peninsula that encompasses the entirety of Chiba Prefecture on Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It is part of the Greater Tokyo Area. It forms the eastern edge of Tokyo Bay, separating it from the Pacific Ocean. The peninsula covers approximately 5,034 square kilometres (1,944 sq mi).[1][2] The Bōsō Peninsula is defined by the Pacific Ocean to its east and south, Tokyo Bay to the west, and the Edo and Tone rivers to the north.[1] The Bōsō Hill Range forms the backbone of the south of the peninsula, and much of the area is hilly.[3] Mount Atago in Minamibōsō and Kamogawa is the highest point on the peninsula with an altitude of 408.2 m (1,339 ft).[4] From south to north the Bōsō Hill Range gives way to the Shimōsa Plateau, which covers much of the area of northern Chiba Prefecture, and ends in the lower areas around the Tone River.[1] The northern and western parts of the Bōsō Peninsula are highly urbanized. The Shimōsa Plateau and the coastal lowlands and interior river valleys are chiefly used for rice cultivation. The western coast of the peninsula is home to the Keiyō Industrial Zone, which ranges from Urayasu on the border of Tokyo in the northwest of the peninsula to Futtsu to the south.[2] The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line, a bridge-tunnel across Tokyo Bay, connects Kisarazu with the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture. The northeast of the peninsula is home to Suigo-Tsukuba Quasi-National Park, which spans across both Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures, and much of the remainder of the eastern coast of the peninsula is designated as Minami Bōsō Quasi-National Park.[2] The peninsula gets its name and kanji from the former provinces that were located there: Awa (安房), Kazusa (上総) and Shimōsa (下総). The Japan Meteorological Agency refers to the west and east coasts of the peninsula as Uchibō (内房) and Sotobō (外房) respectively. 35°20′19″N 140°08′50″E / 35.33861°N 140.14722°E / 35.33861; 140.14722
Mount Cemetery. Mount Cemetery, also known as Guildford Cemetery, is a cemetery in Guildford, Surrey, England. It is the location of Bookers Tower. Guildford Cemetery is surrounded by low-density houses with gardens and a covered reservoir beyond the east corner, immediately south of the successive residential streets of the Guildford Park and Farnham Road neighbourhoods west of Guildford, on the Guildown or Mount section of the western North Downs here forming the widest section of the Hogs Back. Guildford Cemetery has in part views overlooking the town centre. Plots have been laid out to the maximum number its civic authority owner permits under rules set out in the 2000s. Burials are permitted in plots reserved or within an existing family grave to the deceased subject to a maximum of four related burials per plot.[1] The cemetery contains the war graves of 33 Commonwealth service personnel, 14 from the First World War and 19 from the Second World War.[2]
Greater Tokyo Area. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan (including Tokyo Metropolis and the prefectures of Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tochigi) as well as the prefecture of Yamanashi of the neighboring Chūbu region. In Japanese, it is referred to by various terms, one of the most common being Capital Region (首都圏, Shuto-ken). As of 2016, the United Nations estimates the total population at 38,140,000.[3][needs update] It covers an area of approximately 13,500 km2 (5,200 mi2),[4] giving it a population density of 2,642 people/km2. It is the second-largest single metropolitan area in the world in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at 8,547 km2 (3,300 mi2), behind only the New York City metropolitan area at 11,642 km2 (4,495 mi2).[5] With over US$2 trillion in GDP, Tokyo remains the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world, also behind New York. There are various definitions of the Greater Tokyo Area, each of which tries to incorporate different aspects. Some definitions are clearly defined by law or government regulation, some are based coarsely on administrative areas, while others are for research purposes such as commuting patterns or distance from Central Tokyo. Each definition has a different population figure, granularity, methodology, and spatial association. Notes and sources: All figures issued by Japan Statistics Bureau,[10][11] except for Metro Employment Area, a study by Center for Spatial Information Service, the University of Tokyo. Abbreviations: CF for National Census Final Data (every 5 years by JSB), CR for Civil Registry (compiled by local governments, monthly as per legal requirement), CP for Census Preliminary.
Capital city. A capital city, or just capital, is the municipality holding primary status in a country, state, province, department, or other subnational division, usually as its seat of the government. A capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the governments offices and meeting places; the status as capital is often designated by its law or constitution. In some jurisdictions, including several countries, different branches of government are in different settlements, sometimes meaning multiple official capitals. In some cases, a distinction is made between the official (constitutional) capital and the seat of government, which is in another place. English-language media often use the name of the capital metonymically to refer to the government sitting there. Thus, London-Washington relations is widely understood to mean diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the United States.[1] The word capital derives from the Latin word caput (genitive capitis), meaning head, later borrowed from Medieval Latin capitālis (of the head).[2] The Latin phrase Roma Caput Mundi (lit. Rome head of the world) was already used by the poet Ovid in the 1st century BC.[3] It originates out of a classical European understanding of the known world: Europe, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. The phrase is related to the enduring power of the city first as the capital of the Republic and the Empire, and later as the centre of the Catholic Church.[4][5][6] In several English-speaking states, the terms county town and county seat are also used in lower administrative divisions. In some unitary states, subnational capitals may be known as administrative centres. The capital is often the largest city of its constituent, though not always.
Stroke order. Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are logograms constructed with strokes. Over the millennia a set of generally agreed rules have been developed by custom. Minor variations exist between countries, but the basic principles remain the same, namely that writing characters should be economical, with the fewest hand movements to write the most strokes possible. This promotes writing speed, accuracy, and readability. This idea is particularly important since as learners progress, characters often get more complex. Since stroke order also aids learning and memorization, students are often taught about it from a very early age in schools and encouraged to follow them. The Eight Principles of Yong uses the single character 永 (eternity) to teach eight of the most basic strokes in regular script. In ancient China, the Oracle bone script carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons showed no indication of stroke order. The characters show huge variations from piece to piece, sometimes even within one piece. During the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made, the characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone (to be carved in a workshop later). Although the brush-written stroke order is not discernible after carving, there exists some evidence that it was not entirely idiosyncratic: a few of the characters, often marginal administrative notations recording the provenance of the shells or bones, were not later re-carved, and the stroke order of these characters tends to resemble traditional and modern stroke order.[1] For those characters (the vast majority) which were later engraved into the hard surface using a knife, perhaps by a separate individual, there is evidence (from incompletely engraved pieces) that in at least some cases all the strokes running one way were carved, then the piece was turned, and strokes running another way were then carved.[1]
Cheshire. Cheshire (/ˈtʃɛʃər, -ɪər/ CHESH-ər, -⁠eer)[3] is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shropshire to the south; to the west it is bordered by the Welsh counties of Flintshire and Wrexham, and has a short coastline on the Dee Estuary. The largest settlement is Warrington. The county has an area of 905 square miles (2,344 km2) and had a population of 1,095,500 at the 2021 census.[a] The areas around the River Mersey in the north of the county are the most densely populated, with Warrington, Runcorn, Widnes, and Ellesmere Port located on the river. The city of Chester lies in the west of the county, Crewe in the south, and Macclesfield in the east. For local government purposes Cheshire comprises four unitary authority areas: Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Halton, and Warrington. The county historically included all of the Wirral Peninsula and parts of southern Greater Manchester and northern Derbyshire, but excluded Widnes and Warrington. The landscape of the county is dominated by the Cheshire Plain, an area of relatively flat land divided by the Mid-Cheshire Ridge. To the west, Cheshire contains the south of the Wirral Peninsula, and to the east the landscape rises to the Pennines, where the county contains part of the Peak District. The River Mersey runs through the north of Cheshire before broadening into its wide estuary; the River Dee forms part of the countys border with Wales, then fully enters England and flows through Chester before re-entering Wales upstream of its estuary. Red Triassic sandstone forms the bedrock of much of the county, and was used in the construction of many of its buildings. Cheshires name was originally derived from an early name for Chester, and was first recorded as Legeceasterscir in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,[8] meaning the shire of the city of legions.[9] Although the name first appears in 980, it is thought that the county was created by Edward the Elder around 920.[9] In the Domesday Book, Cheshire was recorded as having the name Cestrescir (Chestershire), derived from the name for Chester at the time.[8] Through the next few centuries a series of changes that occurred in the English language, which have included simplifications and elision, has resulted in the name Cheshire.[10]
Transcription into Japanese. In contemporary Japanese writing, foreign-language loanwords and foreign names are normally written in the katakana script, which is one component of the Japanese writing system. As far as possible, sounds in the source language are matched to the nearest sounds in the Japanese language, and the result is transcribed using standard katakana characters, each of which represents one syllable (strictly mora). For example, America is written アメリカ (A-me-ri-ka). To accommodate various foreign-language sounds not present in Japanese, a system of extended katakana has also developed to augment standard katakana. A much less common form of transcription, Ateji, uses kanji characters for their phonetic values. Since Japanese has few closed syllables, syllable-final consonants in the source language are often represented using the -u (or sometimes -o or -i) kanas with implicitly silent vowels – though this vowel often is pronounced in Japanese – or the syllable coda is not represented at all. For example, the name Jim is written ジム (Ji-mu). A similar principle applies to consonant clusters; for example spring would be transcribed as スプリング (su-pu-ri-n-gu), and scratch would be transcribed as スクラッチ (su-ku-ra-tchi). Japanese has only five native vowel sounds, each a pure vowel (monophthong) with a long and short form, and some degree of approximation is necessary when representing vowels from, for example, English. Diphthongs are represented by vowel sequences, as in ブラウン Bu-ra-u-n Brown, ナイス na-i-su nice, ディア di-a dear/deer, レア re-a rare. etc. The English spelling <ore> (phonologically /ɔː/ (RP) or /ɔːr/ (GA)) is usually diphthongized as o-a in Japanese (e.g. コア ko-a core), possibly because it is also pronounced as a diphthong (/oə/) in some accents of English. English /eɪ/ is transcribed to either e-e (エース e-e-su ace) or e-i (スペイン Su-pe-i-n Spain); similarly, /əʊ/ is transcribed to either o-o (ショー sho-o show) or o-u (シャドウ sha-do-u shadow). Long vowels are generally written with ー to indicate lengthening, as in コーラ kōra (cola), rather than writing a distinct vowel ×コウラ *koura. There are two irregularities of note here. Firstly, lengthening of the final vowel may be ambiguous, and vary over time or between users. For example, in present Japan, computer is generally represented as コンピューター konpyūtā (long final), but in some cases, such as the computer industry, following Japanese Industrial Standards, it is represented as コンピュータ konpyūta (short final).[1] Secondly, in modern Chinese loanwords, notably food names, in careful transcription diphthongs are represented by separate vowels, even if in Japanese they would appear to be a long vowel; this is particularly common with òu, especially in 豆 dòu (soy) bean, usually rendered as トウ. Further, long vowels in the Japanese transcription need not reflect Chinese pronunciation. For example, the dish 東坡肉 Dongpo pork, in pinyin dōngpōròu (dōng·pō·ròu), is represented in Japanese as ドンポーロウ donpōrou, or more commonly トンポーロウ tonpōrou. Note that in Chinese pinyin ō represents a high tone, while in Japanese ō represents a long vowel, and /d/ is pronounced differently (Chinese /d/ is similar to Japanese or English /t/). This distinction is not always followed, and varies by term: the spelling トンポーロー tonpōrō is also common; and in terms such as 回鍋肉 twice cooked pork, the spelling ホイコーロー is more common, despite representing diphthongs.
Surrey. Surrey (/ˈsʌri/)[5] is a ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the west. The largest settlement is Woking. The county has an area of 1,663 km2 (642 square miles) and a population of 1,214,540. Much of the north of the county forms part of the Greater London Built-up Area, which includes the suburbs within the M25 motorway as well as Woking (103,900), Guildford (77,057), and Leatherhead (32,522). The west of the county contains part of built-up area which includes Camberley, Farnham, and Frimley and which extends into Hampshire and Berkshire. The south of the county is rural, and its largest settlements are Horley (22,693) and Godalming (22,689). For local government purposes Surrey is a non-metropolitan county with eleven districts. The county historically included much of south-west Greater London but excluded what is now the borough of Spelthorne, which was part of Middlesex. It is one of the home counties. The defining geographical feature of the county is the North Downs, a chalk escarpment which runs from the south-west to north-east and divides the densely populated north from the more rural south; it is pierced by the rivers Wey and Mole, both tributaries of the Thames. The north of the county is a lowland, part of the Thames basin. The south-east is part of the Weald, and the south-west contains the Surrey Hills and Thursley, Hankley and Frensham Commons, an extensive area of heath. The county has the densest woodland cover in England, at 22.4 per cent. Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs, running east–west. The ridge is pierced by the rivers Wey and Mole, tributaries of the Thames, which formed the northern border of the county before modern redrawing of county boundaries, which has left part of its north bank within the county.[6] To the north of the Downs the land is mostly flat, forming part of the basin of the Thames.[6] The geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers.
Cape (geography). In geography, a cape is a headland, peninsula or promontory extending into a body of water, usually a sea.[1] A cape usually represents a marked change in trend of the coastline,[2] often making them important landmarks in sea navigation. This also makes them prone to natural forms of erosion, mainly tidal actions, resulting in a relatively short geological lifespan. Capes can be formed by glaciers, volcanoes, and changes in sea level.[2] Erosion plays a large role in each of these methods of formation.[3] Coastal erosion by waves and currents can create capes by wearing away softer rock and leaving behind harder rock formations. Movements of the Earths crust can uplift land, forming capes. For example, the Cape of Good Hope was formed by tectonic forces. Volcanic eruptions can create capes by depositing lava that solidifies into new landforms. Cape Verde, (also known as Cabo Verde) is an example of a volcanic cape.[4] Glaciers can carve out capes by eroding the landscape as they advance and retreat. Cape Cod in the United States was formed by glacial activity during the last Ice Age.[3] Capes (and other headlands) are conspicuous visual landmarks along a coast, and sailors have relied on them for navigation since antiquity.[5][6] The Greeks and Romans considered some to be sacred capes and erected temples to the sea god nearby. Greek peripli describe capes and other headlands a sailor will encounter along a route. The Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, for instance, illustrates a clockwise journey around Sicily using three capes that define its triangular shape: Cape Peloro in the northeast, Cape Pachynus in the southeast, and Cape Lilybaeum in the west.[5] Sicily itself was referred to as Trinacria (or Three Capes) in antiquity.[7]
Law. Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,[1] with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate.[2][3][4] It has been variously described as a science[5][6] and as the art of justice.[7][8][9] State-enforced laws can be made by a legislature, resulting in statutes; by the executive through decrees and regulations; or by judges decisions, which form precedent in common law jurisdictions. An autocrat may exercise those functions within their realm. The creation of laws themselves may be influenced by a constitution, written or tacit, and the rights encoded therein. The law shapes politics, economics, history and society in various ways and also serves as a mediator of relations between people. Legal systems vary between jurisdictions, with their differences analysed in comparative law. In civil law jurisdictions, a legislature or other central body codifies and consolidates the law. In common law systems, judges may make binding case law through precedent,[10] although on occasion this may be overturned by a higher court or the legislature.[11] Religious law is in use in some religious communities and states, and has historically influenced secular law.[12][13][14][15][16] The scope of law can be divided into two domains: public law concerns government and society, including constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal law; while private law deals with legal disputes between parties in areas such as contracts, property, torts, delicts and commercial law.[17] This distinction is stronger in civil law countries, particularly those with a separate system of administrative courts;[18][19] by contrast, the public-private law divide is less pronounced in common law jurisdictions.[20][21] Law provides a source of scholarly inquiry into legal history,[22] philosophy,[23] economic analysis[24] and sociology.[25] Law also raises important and complex issues concerning equality, fairness, and justice.[26][27]
London. London[c] is the capital and largest city[d] of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of 9,841,000 in 2025.[3] Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 15.1 million.[5] London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years.[8] Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries.[e][9] The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of the national government and parliament. London grew rapidly in the 19th century, becoming the worlds largest city at the time. Since the 19th century[10] the name London has referred to the metropolis around the City of London, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire,[11] which since 1965 has largely comprised the administrative area of Greater London, governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority.[f][12] As one of the worlds major global cities,[13][14] London exerts a strong influence on world art, entertainment, fashion, commerce, finance, education, healthcare, media, science, technology, tourism, transport and communications.[15][16] London is Europe’s most economically powerful city, and is one of the worlds major financial centres.[17] London hosts Europes largest concentration of higher education institutions,[18] comprising over 50 universities and colleges and enrolling more than 500,000 students as at 2023.[19] It is home to several of the worlds leading academic institutions: Imperial College London, internationally recognised for its excellence in natural and applied sciences, and University College London (UCL), a comprehensive research-intensive university, consistently rank among the top ten globally.[20][21] Other notable institutions include Kings College London (KCL), highly regarded in law, humanities, and health sciences; the London School of Economics (LSE), globally prominent in social sciences and economics; and specialised institutions such as the Royal College of Art (RCA), Royal Academy of Music (RAM), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and London Business School (LBS).[22] It is the most-visited city in Europe and has the worlds busiest city airport system.[23] The London Underground is the worlds oldest rapid transit system.[24] Londons diverse cultures encompass over 300 languages.[25] The 2025 population of Greater London of just over 9.8 million made it Europes third-most populous city, accounting for 13.1 per cent of the United Kingdoms population and 15.5 per cent of Englands population.[3][26] The Greater London Built-up Area is the fourth-most populous in Europe, with about 9.8 million inhabitants as of 2011.[4][27] The London metropolitan area is the third-most-populous in Europe, with about 15 million inhabitants as of 2025, making London a megacity.[g][28][29] Four World Heritage Sites are located in London: Kew Gardens; the Tower of London; the site featuring the Palace of Westminster, the Church of St Margaret, and Westminster Abbey; and the historic settlement in Greenwich where the Royal Observatory defines the prime meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time.[30] Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge and Trafalgar Square. The city has the most museums, art galleries, libraries and cultural venues in the UK, including the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, the British Library and numerous West End theatres.[31] Important sporting events held in London include the FA Cup Final, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and the London Marathon. It became the first city to host three Summer Olympic Games upon hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics.[32]
Chōshi. Chōshi (Japanese: 銚子市, romanized: Chōshi-shi, pronounced [tɕoːɕi]) is a city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 December 2020[update], the city had an estimated population of 59,174 in 27,160 households and a population density of 700 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,800/sq mi).[1] The total area of the city is 84.19 km2 (32.5 sq mi). Chōshi is located in the northeastern part of Chiba prefecture, about 65 kilometers from the prefectural capital at Chiba and 90 to 100 kilometers from central Tokyo. Cape Inubō, within the city, is the easternmost point in the Kantō region. Chōshi is noted for its dramatic sea coast on the Pacific Ocean.[2] The Tone River runs through the northern part of the city. Takagami Atagoyama (elevation 73.6 meters) is the highest peak. Chiba Prefecture Ibaraki Prefecture Chōshi has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Chōshi is 15.8 °C (60.4 °F). The average annual rainfall is 1,712.4 mm (67.42 in) with October as the wettest month. The temperature is highest on average in August, at around 25.5 °C (77.9 °F), and lowest in January, at around 6.6 °C (43.9 °F).[3]
Jōyō kanji. The jōyō kanji (常用漢字; Japanese pronunciation: [dʑoːjoːkaꜜɲdʑi] ⓘ, lit. regular-use kanji) are those kanji listed on the Jōyō kanji hyō (常用漢字表; literally regular-use kanji list), officially announced by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The current list of 2,136 characters was issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the tōyō kanji, which was the initial list of secondary school-level kanji standardized after World War II. The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Due to the requirement that official government documents make use of only jōyō kanji and their readings, several rare characters are also included due to their use in the Constitution of Japan, which was being written at the same time the original 1,850-character tōyō kanji list was compiled. The 2,136 kanji in the jōyō kanji consist of: In 1981, the jōyō kanji replaced the tōyō kanji as the standardized list of common kanji. The differences between the two consisted of 95 additional characters, and the simplification of 燈 as 灯. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology instructed teachers to start teaching the new characters in fiscal 2012, so that junior high school students would be able to read them and high school students would be able to write them. High schools and universities started using the characters in their entrance exams in the 2015 academic year.[6]
Guildford. Guildford (/ˈɡɪlfərd/ ⓘ)[2] is a town in west Surrey, England, around 27 mi (43 km) south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town had a population of about 77,000;[1] it is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around 145,673 inhabitants in 2022.[3] The name Guildford is thought to derive from a crossing of the River Wey, a tributary of the River Thames that flows through the town centre. The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is from the Mesolithic and Guildford is mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great from c. 880. The exact location of the main Anglo-Saxon settlement is unclear and the current site of the modern town centre may not have been occupied until the early 11th century. Following the Norman Conquest, a motte-and-bailey castle was constructed; which was developed into a royal residence by Henry III. During the late Middle Ages, Guildford prospered as a result of the wool trade and the town was granted a charter of incorporation by Henry VII in 1488. The River Wey Navigation between Guildford and the Thames was opened in 1653, facilitating the transport of produce, building materials and manufactured items to new markets in London. The arrival of the railways in the 1840s attracted further investment and the town began to grow with the construction of its first new suburb at Charlotteville in the 1860s. The town became the centre of a new Anglican diocese in 1927 and the foundation stone of the cathedral was laid in 1936. Guildford became a university town in September 1966, when the University of Surrey was established by Royal Charter. Guildford is surrounded on three sides by the Surrey Hills National Landscape, which severely limits its potential for expansion to the east, west and south. Recent development has been focused to the north of the town in the direction of Woking. Guildford now officially forms the southwestern tip of the Greater London Built-up Area, as defined by the Office for National Statistics.
Japanese writing system. The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.[1][2][3] Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as Japanese kanji (和製漢字, wasei kanji), also known as [our] countrys kanji (国字, kokuji). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 jōyō kanji as of 2010.[4] The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese. In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each mora) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words. Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer visually obvious.
Video game developer. A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games.[1][2] A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks[3] to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support.[4] Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.[5] A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles, or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Artss EA Canada, Square Enixs studios, Activisions Radical Entertainment, Nintendo EPD and Sonys Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog). However, since publishing is still their primary activity they are generally described as publishers rather than developers. Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry, a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo), have a specific division name (such as Sonys Polyphony Digital) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by the console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog).[6] Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time.[7] However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on a games profits.[7] Current examples of first-party studios include Nintendo EPD for Nintendo, PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming. Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for a first-party company.[8] As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers.[7] These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like the MSX, they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendos consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games.[9][10]
Japanese archipelago. The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, Hepburn: Nippon/Nihon Rettō; Japanese pronunciation: [ɲip.pon/ɲi.hon ɾeꜜt.toː][1]) is an archipelago of 14,125 islands that form the country of Japan.[2] It extends over 3,000 km (1,900 mi)[3] from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East China and Philippine seas in the southwest along the Pacific coast of the Eurasian continent, and consists of three island arcs from north to south: the Northeastern Japan Arc, the Southwestern Japan Arc, and the Ryukyu Island Arc. The Daitō Islands, the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc, and the Kuril Islands neighbor the archipelago. Japan is the largest island country in East Asia and the fourth-largest island country in the world with 377,975.24 km2 (145,937.06 sq mi).[4][5] It has an exclusive economic zone of 4,470,000 km2 (1,730,000 sq mi).[6] The term Mainland Japan is used to distinguish the large islands of the Japanese archipelago from the remote, smaller islands; it refers to the main islands of Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku.[7] From 1943 until the end of the Pacific War, Karafuto Prefecture (south Sakhalin) was designated part of the mainland. Geographically speaking the term mainland is somewhat inaccurate, as this refers to an expanse of territory that is attached to a continental landmass. The term home islands was used at the end of World War II to define the area where Japanese sovereignty and constitutional rule of its emperor would be restricted.[citation needed] The term is also commonly used today to distinguish the archipelago from Japans colonies and other territories.[8] The archipelago consists of 14,125 islands[2] (here defined as land more than 100 m in circumference), of which 430 are inhabited.[9] The five main islands, from north to south, are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa.[7] Honshu is the largest and is referred to as the Japanese mainland.[10]
Video game publisher. A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer (the publisher calls this external development) and sometimes by paying an internal staff of developers called a studio.[1] The large video game publishers also distribute the games they publish, while some smaller publishers instead hire distribution companies (or larger video game publishers) to distribute the games they publish. Other functions usually performed by the publisher include deciding on and paying for any licenses that are used by the game; paying for localization; layout, printing, and possibly the writing of the user manual; and the creation of graphic design elements such as the box design. Some large publishers with vertical structure also own publishing subsidiaries (labels). Large publishers also attempt to boost efficiency across all internal and external development teams by providing services such as sound design and code packages for commonly needed functionality. Because the publisher often finances development, they usually try to manage development risk along with a staff of producers or project managers to monitor the developers progress, critique ongoing development, and assist as necessary. Most video games created by an external video game developer are paid for with periodic advances on royalties. These advances are paid when the developer reaches certain stages of development, called milestones. Video game publishing is associated with high risk:
Game Freak. Game Freak Inc.[a] is a Japanese video game developer, best known as the primary developer and co-owners of the Pokémon series of role-playing video games. Predating the video game company, Game Freak was a self-published video game magazine created by Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori in the 1980s. The first issue was published in 1983 by Tajiri.[3] Sugimori would join the magazine at a later date as an illustrator after finding the magazine in a shop and liking it.[4] Tajiri also used Game Freak as his pen name when he wrote as a freelance writer to publications such as Family Computer Magazine and Famicom Tsūshin.[5][6] On April 26, 1989, Tajiri, Sugimori and Junichi Masuda started a video game development company with the same name.[7][8] One of Game Freaks first games was the Nintendo Entertainment System action and puzzle game Quinty, which was released in North America as Mendel Palace. Its most popular series, Pokémon—the romanized portmanteau of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター, Poketto Monsutā)[9]—is published and distributed respectively by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo worldwide. In October 2015, Game Freak acquired Koa Games, a mobile development company.[10] The company was subsequently merged into Game Freak on December 1, 2015.[11]
Honshu. Honshu (Japanese: 本州, Hepburn: Honshū; pronounced [hoꜜɰ̃.ɕɯː] ⓘ; lit. main island), historically known as Akitsushima (秋津島; lit. dragonfly island),[3][4][5] is the largest of Japans four main islands.[6][7] It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian island of Java.[8][9][10] Honshu had a population of 104 million as of 2017[update], constituting 81.3% of the entire population of Japan,[11] and mostly concentrated in the coastal areas and plains. Approximately 30% of the total population resides in the Greater Tokyo Area on the Kantō Plain. As the historical center of Japanese cultural and political power,[12] the island includes several past Japanese capitals, including Kyōto, Nara, and Kamakura. Much of the islands southern shore forms part of the Taiheiyō Belt, a megalopolis that spans several of the Japanese islands.[12] Honshu also contains Japans highest mountain, Mount Fuji, and its largest lake, Lake Biwa.[13] Most of Japans industry is located in a belt running along Honshus southern coast, from Tokyo to Nagoya, Kyōto, Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima.[12][14] The island is linked to the other three major Japanese islands by a number of bridges and tunnels. The island primarily shares two climates, with Northern Honshu having four seasons with largely varying temperatures while the south experiences long, hot summers and cool to mild winters.[15] The name of the island, Honshū (本州), stems from Middle Chinese. It directly translates to main province or home land in English.[16][17][18]
Yen (disambiguation). The Japanese yen is the unit of currency in Japan (since 1871). Yen or YEN may also refer to:
List of kanji radicals by stroke count. Kanji radicals are graphemes, or graphical parts, that are used in organizing Japanese kanji in dictionaries. They are derived from the 214 Chinese Kangxi radicals. The following table shows the 214 Kangxi radicals, which are derived from 47,035 characters. The frequency list is derived from the 47,035 characters in the Chinese language. The Jōyō frequency is from the set of 2,136 Jōyō kanji.[1]
Creative director. A creative director is a person who makes high-level creative decisions; oversees the creation of creative assets such as advertisements, products, events, or logos; and directs and translates the creative people who produce the end results.[1] Creative director positions are often found within the music, film, video game, fashion, marketing, or entertainment industries, but may be found in other creative organizations such as web development and software development firms as well. A creative director is a vital role in all of the arts and entertainment industries and can be seen as another element in any product development process. The creative director may also assume the roles of an art director, copywriter, or lead designer. The responsibilities of a creative director include leading the communication design, interactive design, and concept forward in any work assigned. For example, this responsibility is often seen in industries related to advertisement. The creative director is known to guide a team of employees with skills and experience related to graphic design, fine arts, motion graphics, and other creative industry fields. Some example works can include visual layout, brainstorming, and copywriting. In the advertising industry, a creative director is determined to develop various marketing schemes and strategies for a company or client that they are hired by. Assuming one is hired by a company that is fairly well known and established, there would be some type of creative department or management that the director would work with. The creative director would also serve as the project manager that works directly with employers, and in most circumstances, they would be responsible for designing concepts for advertisements and other promotional needs for their clients. Some examples of their duties involve copywriting and laying out chronological advertisement plans which explain the ongoing process of a project. It is important for an advertisement creative director to meet their goals at specific deadline with maximum efficiency as possible. To do so, they must be able to guide the creative department effectively from start to finish. Educational requirements of this position involve a blending of skills in business and journalism. To even be considered as a creative director, one would need to have years of experience in advertising (as little as five to as many as ten years).[2] Advertising creative directors are usually promoted from copywriting or art directing positions. Familiarity with film-making techniques is also common. Creative directors rise to become executive creative directors or chief creative officers, a position with executive responsibility for the entire creative department, and some progress to chairman of a firm. Creative directors usually possess a communication design, fine arts or animation degree. Copywriters may have degrees in journalism, language arts, or media innovation, or may develop more emphasis on advertising copywriting while pursuing a communication design degree.
10,000 yen note. The ¥10,000 note (Japanese: 1万円紙幣, Hepburn: Ichiman-En Shihei) is a yen banknote circulated in Japan. It is the highest denomination of banknote currently issued by the Bank of Japan. Apart from the commemorative 100,000 yen coin, it is the highest denomination of the Japanese yen. It was first introduced in Japan in 1958 to the third series of banknote releases, Series C. The latest release is Series F, with printing of this series commencing in 2024. The note was introduced on 1 December 1958. The brown-green note includes Prince Shōtoku on the front and a pillar painting of Hōō (鳳凰, Fenghuang), in the Hall of the Phoenix, Byōdō-in, Kyoto on the back. The note was released on 12 September 1984. The brown note has Fukuzawa Yukichi, a Meiji era philosopher and the founder of Keio University, on the front[1] and a pair of green pheasants on the back.[2]
Bi-metallic coin. Bi-metallic coins are coins consisting of two (bi-) metals or alloys, generally arranged with an outer ring around a contrasting center.[1] The bi-metal form is typically used to protect against counterfeiting.[2] Common circulating examples include the European €1 and €2, United Kingdom £1 and £2, Canadian $2, South Africa R5, Egyptian £1, Turkish 1 lira and 50 kurus, Indian ₹10 and ₹20, Indonesian Rp1,000, Polish 2 and 5 zł, Czech 50 Kč, Hungarian 100 and 200 Ft, Bulgarian 1 and 2 lv., Hong Kong $10, Argentine $1 and $2, Brazilian R$1, Chilean $100 and $500, Colombian $500 and $1000, Peruvian S/2 and S/5, Albanian 100 Lekë, Thai 10 baht and all Mexican coins of $1 or higher denomination. For a more complete list, see List of bi-metallic coins. Bi-metallic coins and medals have been issued for a long time. The Roman Empire issued special-occasion, large medallions with a center of bronze or copper and an outer ring of orichalcum, starting with the reign of Hadrian. Meanwhile, circulating bi-metallic coins are known from the 17th century.[3][4] English farthings from 1684 through 1693 were made of tin with a central plug of copper for value. The silver-center cent pattern produced by the United States in 1792 is another example.[3] In the 1830s and 1840s, British medalist Joseph Moore produced large numbers of bi-metallic penny model and less common halfpenny model tokens, as a proposal to replace the relatively large penny and halfpenny coins.[5][6] Though not legal tender, Moores tokens were circulated widely and accepted at face value by many merchants. Despite their popularity, the Royal Mint rejected the proposal, and did not reduce the size of the penny and halfpenny until decimalization.[7] The first modern circulating bi-metallic coin was the Italian 500 lire, first issued in 1982.[8]
Nintendo. 34°58′11″N 135°45′22.3″E / 34.96972°N 135.756194°E / 34.96972; 135.756194 Nintendo Co., Ltd.[c] is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company to produce handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business and becoming a public company, Nintendo began producing toys in the 1960s, and later video games. Nintendo developed its first arcade games in the 1970s, and distributed its first system, the Color TV-Game in 1977. The company became internationally dominant in the 1980s after the arcade release of Donkey Kong (1981) and the Nintendo Entertainment System, which launched outside of Japan alongside Super Mario Bros. in 1985. Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry, including the Game Boy (1989), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1991), the Nintendo DS (2004), the Wii (2006), and the Nintendo Switch (2017). It has created or published numerous major franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon. The companys mascot, Mario, is among the most famous fictional characters, and Nintendos other characters—including Luigi, Donkey Kong, Samus, Link, Kirby, and Pikachu—have attained international recognition. Several films and a theme park area based on the companys franchises have been created. Nintendos game consoles have sold over 860 million units worldwide as of May 2025, for which more than 5.9 billion individual games have been sold. The company has numerous subsidiaries in Japan and worldwide, in addition to second-party developers including HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Game Freak. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.
Fantasy Fiction. Fantasy Fiction was an American fantasy magazine that published two issues in 1950. The first issue was dated May 1950, with a planned quarterly schedule; the second was retitled Fantasy Stories and appeared in November 1950. The fiction was mixture of reprints, mostly of 1930s fiction that had originally appeared in Argosy, and new material. Science fiction historian Mike Ashley comments that while the reprints were good quality, the new stories were obviously written in response to an editorial policy of sensationalism and are of no significance. The reprints were given lurid new titles: for example, Irvin S. Cobbs Fishhead was retitled Blood-Brother of the Swamp Cats. Readers were asked to send in accounts of fantastical experiences, and to help find a haunted house. The cover of both issues was a photograph, rather an artwork; the photographer was Bill Stone, whose work had been on the cover of the first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.[1] Fantasy Fiction was published by Magabook, Inc, a Chicago publisher with editorial offices in New York. The issues were dated May and November 1950; both were digest, 128 pages, and priced at 25 cents. The editor was Curtis Mitchell.[1]
Fantasy (disambiguation). Fantasy is a genre of fiction. Fantasy, Fantasie, or Fantasies may also refer to:
Ikkō Narahara. Ikkō Narahara[n 1] (奈良原一高, Narahara Ikkō; November 3, 1931 – January 19, 2020)[1][2] was a Japanese photographer. His work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Born in Fukuoka, Narahara studied law at Chuo University (graduating in 1954) and, influenced by statues of Buddha at Nara, art history at the graduate school of Waseda University, from which he received an MA in 1959. He had his first solo exhibition, Ningen no tochi (Human land), at the Matsushima Gallery (Ginza) in 1956. In this Narahara showed Kurokamimura, a village on Sakurajima. The exhibition brought instant renown. In his second exhibition, Domains, at the Fuji Photo Salon in 1958, he showed a Trappist monastery in Tobetsu (Hokkaidō), and a womens prison in Wakayama. In the meantime, Narahara had shown his works in the first (1957) of three exhibitions titled The Eyes of Ten; exhibited in all three, and went on to co-found the short-lived Vivo collective.[1] From 1962 to 1965 he stayed in Paris, and after a time in Tokyo, from 1970 to 1974 in New York City. During this time he took part in a class by the American photographer Diane Arbus. He recorded Arbus speech during these classes. These recordings would become an interesting document of the artists statements about her own work shortly before she committed suicide.[3] Naraharas work often depicted isolated communities and extreme conditions. He made much use of wide-angle lenses, even hemispherical-coverage (circular) fisheye lenses.
Gannet. Moris Gannets are seabirds comprising the genus Morus in the family Sulidae, closely related to boobies. They are known as solan or solan goose in Scotland. A common misconception is that the Scottish name is guga but this is the Gaelic name referring to the chicks only. Gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads, black-tipped wings and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to two metres (6+1⁄2 feet). The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia, and New Zealand. Gannet is derived from Old English ganot meaning strong or masculine, ultimately from the same Old Germanic root as gander.[1]
The Fairy Aurora. The Fairy Aurora (in Romanian: Zâna Zorilor, lit. Fairy of Dawn) is a fairy tale written by Ioan Slavici and published in June 1872.[1] Mihai Eminescu urged him to write his first story, which was read at Junimea in two sessions and was published in the magazine Convorbiri Literare.[2] It appeared in English as The Fairy Aurora in the Roumanian Fairy Tales with 18 Romanian stories published in 1885 by Henry Holt and Company in New York City.[3] The ruler of a vast empire has one eye that laughs and one eye that cries, and the reason is only known to him. His three sons, Florea, Costan, and Petru each ask him about it on different occasions. Only the youngest, Petru, obtains the answer: the emperor cries because he thinks that after he dies his son will not be able to protect their realm from enemies and that only the water from the fountain of the Fairy of the Dawn will be able to make both his eyes laugh again. Florea and Costan depart on the quest first, but after escaping a vicious dragon on the bridge, never return home. Petru tries his luck but is less successful than his brothers. His old nurse, back at the palace, advises him to take the emperors trusty old horse to cross the bridge. The horse is magical and can reach different speeds. With this fabulous steed, Prince Petru kills the dragon, crosses the bridge, and arrives in a desert. His fathers horse asks what speeds they should traverse: like the wind, the drought the desire, or a curse? Petru agrees they should apply different speeds so as to not tire out and to cross the desert as fast as possible. And so they do.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.