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Applications in biology are not just limited to the medical field,it also applies in other careers too. Many competitive exams demand the basic knowledge of biology.biology questions for rrb exams
Botany
Botany is the study of plants. It is a science. It is a branch of biology, and is also called plant biology. It is sometimes called phytology. Scientists who study botany are called botanists. They study how plants work.
Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium (Dutch: "Koninkrijk België", German: "Königreich Belgien", French: "Royaume de Belgique"), is a federal state in Western Europe. Belgium has an area of . Around 11 million people live in Belgium. It is a founding member of the European Union and is home to its headquarters. Th...
There are three regions in Belgium:
The population is about 60% Dutch-speaking, 39% French-speaking, and 1% German-speaking (the so-called "Deutschbelgier"). To look after all these groups, Belgium has a complicated system of government.
The name 'Belgium' comes from "Gallia Belgica". This was a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul. Before Roman invasion in 100 BC, the "Belgae", a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples, lived there. The Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings. A sl...
Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries.
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. Southern Netherlands were ruled by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs. This made up most of modern Belgium.
After the , the Low Countries were added into the French First Republic. This ended Austrian rule in the area. Adding back the Low Countries formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This happened at the end of the First French Empire in 1815.
The Belgian Revolution was in 1830. Leopold I became king on 1831. This is now celebrated as Belgium's National Day.
The Berlin Conference of 1885 gave control of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II. This was for him personally and not for the country of Belgium. Millions of Congolese people were hurt or killed, mostly to make rubber, and Leopold became very wealthy. In 1908 the Belgian state took control of the colony after ther...
Germany invaded Belgium in 1914. This was part of World War I. The opening months of the war were very bad in Belgium. During the war Belgium took over the of Ruanda-Urundi (modern-day Rwanda and Burundi). After the First World War, the Prussian districts of Eupen and Malmedy were added into Belgium in 1925. The countr...
In 1960 the Belgian Congo stopped being under Belgian rule. Two years later Ruanda-Urundi also became free. Belgium joined NATO as a founding member.
Since 1993, Belgium is a federal state, divided into three regions and three communities.
Regions:
Communities:
It has a system of government known as a constitutional monarchy, meaning that it has a monarch, but that the monarch does not rule the country, and that a government is elected democratically.
Belgium has had its own monarchy since 1831. King Albert II left the throne on July 21, 2013 and the current king is Philippe.
In Belgium, the government is elected. Between mid-2010 and late 2011, after no clear result in the election, Belgium had no official government, until Elio Di Rupo became Prime Minister. Flanders and Wallonia both also have their own regional governments, and there is a notable independence movement in Flanders. Charl...
Belgium is next to France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Its total area is 33,990 square kilometers. The land area alone is 30,528 km². Belgium has three main geographical regions. The coastal plain is in the north-west. The central plateau are part of the Anglo-Belgian Basin. The Ardennes uplands are in the...
The coastal plain is mostly sand dunes and polders. Further inland is a smooth, slowly rising landscape. There are fertile valleys. The hills have many forests. The plateaus of the Ardennes are more rough and rocky. They have caves and small, narrow valleys. Signal de Botrange is the country's highest point at 694 metr...
Belgium is divided into three Regions. Flanders and Wallonia are divided into provinces. The third Region, Brussels is not part of any province.
The Belgian Armed Forces have about 46,000 active troops. In 2009 the yearly defence budget was $6 billion. There are four parts: Belgian Land Component, or the Army; Belgian Air Component, or the Air Force; Belgian Naval Component, or the Navy; Belgian Medical Component.
Adding to science and technology has happened throughout the country's history. cartographer Gerardus Mercator, anatomist Andreas Vesalius, herbalist Rembert Dodoens and mathematician Simon Stevin are among the most influential scientists.
Chemist Ernest Solvay and engineer Zenobe Gramme gave their names to the Solvay process and the Gramme dynamo in the 1860s. Bakelite was formed in 1907–1909 by Leo Baekeland. A major addition to science was also due to a Belgian, Georges Lemaître. He is the one who made the Big Bang theory of the start of the universe ...
Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Belgians: Jules Bordet in 1919, Corneille Heymans in 1938 and Albert Claude together with Christian De Duve in 1974. Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. Two Belgian mathematicians have been awarded the Fields Medal: Pierre Deligne...
In February 2014, Belgium became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia without any age limits.
There have been many additions to painting and architecture. Several examples of major architectural places in Belgium belong to UNESCO's World Heritage List. In the 15th century the religious paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden were important. The 16th century had more styles such as Peter Breughel's l...
During the 19th and 20th centuries many original romantic, expressionist and surrealist Belgian painters started. These include James Ensor and other artists in the Les XX group, Constant Permeke, Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. The sculptor Panamarenko is still a remarkable figure in contemporary art. The artist Jan F...
Belgian contributions to architecture were also in the 19th and 20th centuries. Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde were major starters of the Art Nouveau style.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were major violinists, such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Eugène Ysaÿe and Arthur Grumiaux. Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846. The composer César Franck was born in Liège in 1822. Newer music in Belgium is also famous. Jazz musician Toots Thielemans and singer Jacques Brel have mad...
Belgium has several well-known authors, including the poet Emile Verhaeren and novelists Hendrik Conscience, Georges Simenon, Suzanne Lilar and Amélie Nothomb. The poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911. "The Adventures of Tintin" by Hergé is the best known of Franco-Belgian c...
Belgian cinema has brought a number of mainly Flemish novels to life on-screen. Belgian directors include André Delvaux, Stijn Coninx, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Well-known actors include Jan Decleir and Marie Gillain. Successful films include "Man Bites Dog" and "The Alzheimer Affair".
Belgium is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles and french fries. French fries were first made in Belgium. The national dishes are "steak and fries with salad", and "mussels with fries".
Other local fast food dishes include a Mitraillette. Brands of Belgian chocolate and pralines, like Côte d'Or, Guylian, Neuhaus, Leonidas, Corné and Galler are famous. Belgium makes over 1100 varieties of beer. The Trappist beer of the Abbey of Westvleteren has repeatedly been rated the world's best beer. The biggest b...
Since the 1970s, sports clubs are organised separately by each language community. Association football is one of the most popular sports in both parts of Belgium, together with cycling, tennis, swimming and judo. With five victories in the Tour de France and many other cycling records, Belgian Eddy Merckx is said to b...
Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin both were Player of the Year in the Women's Tennis Association. The Spa-Francorchamps motor-racing circuit hosts the Formula One World Championship Belgian Grand Prix. The Belgian driver, Jacky Ickx, won eight Grands Prix and six 24 Hours of Le Mans. Belgium also has a strong reputation ...
Brazil
Brazil (officially called Federative Republic of Brazil; how to say: ) is a country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country. The country has about 209 million people. The capital of Brazil is Brasília. Brazil was named after brazilwood, which is a tree that once grew very well along the Brazilian coas...
The first people to come to Brazil came around 9,000 B.C. That group of indigenous people is often called the South American Indians and probably came from North America. They practiced hunting, foraging, and farming. Over thousands of years, many different indigenous peoples were living there.
Pedro Álvares Cabral was the first European to see Brazil. He saw it in 1500. He was from Portugal and the Portuguese kingdom claimed Brazil. Soon, Portugal colonized Brazil and created colonies all along the coastline. They began to import black slaves from Africa and force them to work. Because of the violence of the...
In the late 1500s and early 1600s, the Dutch and the French tried to take land in Brazil. Dutch, French, and Portuguese started moving inland further than the Treaty of Tordesillas said they could. This caused some fights with the Spaniards (people from Spain) and indigenous peoples in the area.
In 1822, Brazil claimed to be its own country and not a part of Portugal anymore. Soon there was civil war. Meanwhile, the quilombos survived and Brazil was bringing in more slaves than any other country in the Americas, even though many countries were beginning to legally abolish slavery. This led to an increase in sl...
In 1889, there was a military coup, and Pedro II had to leave the country. In 1889, Brazil became a republic. The only people who could vote were people who owned land. There were some uprisings in the 1920s because some people thought the government was unfairly helping coffee growers. Brazil joined the Allies during ...
During the 1960s, the military leader Castelo Branco overthrew the government and created a dictatorship that was supported by the United States. It was very anti-communist and they imprisoned, tortured, or killed many people on the left. Since then, the country has become more democratic, but some people feel that the...
In August 2016, then-president Dilma Rousseff was removed from office because of impeachment.
The official language of Brazil is Portuguese. Brazil is the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese.
Some people in Brazil speak German dialects. That came from German immigrants. 2% of Brazilians speak German as their first language. Yiddish is spoken by the elders of the Jewish community.
Other people in Brazil speak their ancestors' languages like Italian, Japanese, Polish, Ukrainian, French, Russian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Dutch and Korean. Spanish or "Portunhol", a mix of Portuguese and Castilian (Spanish) is spoken at some of the borders. Indigenous languages as Guarani and Aymará are the first langua...
Brazil has the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest. It makes up 40% of the country's land area. Brazil also has other types of land, including a type of savanna called "cerrado", and a dry plant region named "caatinga".
The most important cities are Brasília (the capital), Belém, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Paulo (the biggest city) and Vitória. Other cities are at List of largest cities in Brazil.
Brazil is divided into 26 states plus the Federal District in five regions (north, south, northeast, southeast and centre-west):
The country is the fifth largest in the world by area. It is known for its many rainforests and jungles. It is next to every country in South America except Chile and Ecuador.
The name Brazil comes from a tree named brazilwood.
Brazil is the largest country in South America and fifth largest in the world. Its people are called Brazilians or Brasileiros (In Portuguese). The people include citizens of Portuguese or other European descent who mainly live in the South and Southeast, Africans, Native Americans, Arabs, Gypsies and people of Mixed a...
Chemistry
Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with chemical elements and compounds, and how they work together and change.
Before 1600, people studied substances to figure out how to do things such as turn lead into gold, but no one managed to do that. This was called alchemy. After 1600, using the scientific method alchemists became chemists. Chemists separated the air into many parts and isolated the noble gases from it. They also proces...
Since the 1920s, the increased understanding of physics has changed chemists' theories about chemical reactions. With smaller and faster computers, chemists have built better tools for analyzing substances. These tools have been sent to study chemicals on Mars. Police also use those tools to study evidence from crime s...
There are several types of chemistry. Analytical chemistry looks at which chemicals are in things. For example, looking at how much arsenic is in food. Organic chemistry looks at things that have carbon in them. For example, making acetylene. Inorganic chemistry looks at things that do not have carbon in them. One exam...
A large area of chemistry is polymer chemistry. This looks at plastics. One example is making nylon. Because plastics are made of carbon, polymer chemistry is part of organic chemistry. Another area is biochemistry. This looks at the chemistry of living things. An example would be seeing how arsenic poisons people. Bio...
The basic unit of an element is called an atom. An atom is the smallest building block that you can cut an element into without the element breaking down (turning into a lighter element, for example through nuclear fission or radioactive decay). A chemical compound is a substance made up of two or more elements. In a c...
One very important concept in chemistry is that different atoms interact with one another in very specific proportions. For example, two hydrogen atoms interacting with one oxygen atom lead to the water molecule, HO. This relationship is known as the "Law of constant proportions" and leads to the idea of "stoichiometry...
Because atoms of different elements react with one another in very specific proportions but atoms of different elements have different weights, chemists often describe the amount of different elements and compounds in terms of the number of "moles". A "mole" of any element contains the same number of atoms: 602,214,150...
Moles can be used to see how many molecules are in chemical compounds, too. Copper(II) chloride is an example. CuCl is its chemical formula. There is one copper atom (63.55) and two chlorine atoms (35.45 · 2 = 70.90). Add all the molar masses of the elements together to get the molar mass of the chemical compound (63.5...
Acids and bases are common chemicals. Acids release H ions when in water, and bases release OH ions when in water. Acids can react with bases. The H ion is taken from the acid by the base. This makes water, HO. A salt is also made when an acid and a base react together. An example would be reacting hydrochloric acid (H...
Chemistry is very useful in everyday life and makes up the foundation of many branches of science. Most objects are made by chemists (people who do chemistry). Chemists are constantly working to find new and useful substances. Chemists make new drugs and materials like paints that we use every day.
Many chemicals are harmless, but there are some chemicals that are dangerous. For example, mercury(II) chloride is very toxic. Chromates can cause cancer. Tin(II) chloride pollutes water easily. Hydrochloric acid can cause bad burns. Some chemicals like hydrogen can explode or catch fire. To stay safe, chemists experim...
Compound
Computer science
Computer science is the study of manipulating, managing, transforming and encoding information.
There are many different areas in computer science. Some areas consider problems in an abstract manner, while some need special machines, called computers.
A person who works with computers will often need mathematics, science, and logic in order to design and work with computers.
This is so people can find new and easier ways to do things, and the way to approach problems with this information.
While computers can do some things easily (like simple math, or sorting out a list of names from A-to-Z), computers cannot answer questions when there is not enough information, or when there is no real answer. Also, computers may take too much time to finish long tasks. For example, it may take too long to find the sh...
Algorithms are a specific set of instructions or steps on how to complete a task. For example, a computer scientist wants to sort playing cards. There are many ways to sort them - by suits (diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades) or by numbers (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace). By deciding on a set ...
A simple but slow algorithm is: pick up two cards and check whether they are sorted correctly. If they are not, reverse them. Then do it again with another two, and repeat them all until they are all sorted. This "bubble sort" method will work, but it will take a very long time.
A better algorithm is: find the first card with the smallest suit and smallest number (2 of diamonds), and place it at the start. After this, look for the second card, and so on. This algorithm is much faster, and does not need much space. This algorithm is a "selection sort".
Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm in 1843, for a computer that was never finished. Computers began during World War II. Computer science separated from the other sciences during the 1960s and 1970s. Now, computer science has its own methods, and has its own technical terms. It is related to electrical eng...
Computer science looks at the theoretical parts of computers. Computer engineering looks at the physical parts of computers (hardware). Software engineering looks at the use of computer programs and how to make them.
Computer
A computer is a machine that uses electronics to input, process, and then output data. Input of data means to read information from a keyboard, a storage device like a hard drive, or a sensor. The computer processes or changes the data by following the instructions in software programs. A program is a list the steps fo...
The processor of a computer is made from integrated circuits (chips) that contains many transistors. Most computers are digital, which means that they represent information by using binary digits, or bits. Computers come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the brand and model and purpose. They range from small ...
The two important parts of a computer are: It responds to a specific instruction set in a well-defined manner and it can execute a stored list of instructions called a program. There are four main actions in a computer: inputting, storing, outputting and processing.
Modern computers can do billions of calculations in a second. Being able to calculate many times per second allows modern computers to multi-task, which means they can do many different tasks at the same time. Computers do many different jobs where automation is useful. Some examples are controlling traffic lights, veh...
Computers can be designed to do almost anything with information. Computers are used to control large and small machines which in the past were controlled by humans. Most people have used a personal computer in their home or at work. They are used for things such as calculation, listening to music, reading an article, ...
Modern computers are electronic computer hardware. They do mathematical arithmetic very quickly but computers do not really "think". They only follow the instructions in their software programs. The software uses the hardware when the user gives it instructions, and gives useful outputs.
Computers are controlled with user interfaces. Input devices which include keyboards, computer mice, buttons, and touch screens, etc.
Computer programs are designed or written by computer programmers. A few programmers write programs in the computer's own language called machine code. Most programs are written using a programming language like C, C++, Java. These programming languages are more like the language with which one talks and writes every d...
Most people have a problem with math. To show this, try doing 584 x 3,220 in your mind. It is hard to remember all the steps! People made tools to help them remember where they were in a math problem. The other problem people have is that they have to do the same problem over and over and over again. A cashier had to m...
The abacus, the slide rule, the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 BC) are examples of automated calculation machines.
People do not want a machine that would do the same thing over and over again. For example, a music box is a machine that plays the same music over and over again. Some people wanted to be able to tell their machine to do different things. For example, they wanted to tell the music box to play different music every tim...
One of the first examples of this was built by Hero of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD). He built a mechanical theater which performed a play lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes and drums. These ropes and drums were the language of the machine- they told what the machine did and when. Some people a...
Some people disagree on which early computer is programmable. Many say the "castle clock", an astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari in 1206, is the first known programmable analog computer. The length of day and night could be adjusted every day in order to account for the changing lengths of day and night throughou...
Others say the first computer was made by Charles Babbage. Ada Lovelace is considered to be the first programmer.
At the end of the Middle Ages, people started thinking math and engineering were more important. In 1623, Wilhelm Schickard made a mechanical calculator. Other Europeans made more calculators after him. They were not modern computers because they could only add, subtract, and multiply- you could not change what they di...
In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard used punched paper cards to tell his textile loom what kind of pattern to weave. He could use punch cards to tell the loom what to do, and he could change the punch cards, which means he could program the loom to weave the pattern he wanted. This means the loom was programmable. At the en...
Charles Babbage wanted to make a similar machine that could calculate. He called it "The Analytical Engine". Because Babbage did not have enough money and always changed his design when he had a better idea, he never built his Analytical Engine.