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Length regulation. Axons vary largely in length from a few micrometers up to meters in some animals. This emphasizes that there must be a cellular length regulation mechanism allowing the neurons both to sense the length of their axons and to control their growth accordingly. It was discovered that motor proteins play ...
Axons are classified in two systems. The first one introduced by Erlanger and Gasser, grouped the fibers into three main groups using the letters A, B, and C. These groups, group A, group B, and group C include both the sensory fibers (afferents) and the motor fibers (efferents). The first group A, was subdivided into ...
Autonomic. The autonomic nervous system has two kinds of peripheral fibers: Clinical significance. In order of degree of severity, injury to a nerve in the peripheral nervous system can be described as neurapraxia, axonotmesis, or neurotmesis. Concussion is considered a mild form of diffuse axonal injury. Axonal injury...
a result of the axonal protein NMNAT2, being prevented from reaching all of the axon. Demyelination of axons causes the multitude of neurological symptoms found in the disease multiple sclerosis. Dysmyelination is the abnormal formation of the myelin sheath. This is implicated in several leukodystrophies, and also in s...
History. German anatomist Otto Friedrich Karl Deiters is generally credited with the discovery of the axon by distinguishing it from the dendrites. Swiss Rüdolf Albert von Kölliker and German Robert Remak were the first to identify and characterize the axon initial segment. Kölliker named the axon in 1896. Louis-Antoin...
Other animals. The axons in invertebrates have been extensively studied. The longfin inshore squid, often used as a model organism has the longest known axon. The giant squid has the largest axon known. Its size ranges from 0.5 (typically) to 1 mm in diameter and is used in the control of its jet propulsion system. The...
Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for ...
The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant since virtually all modern Middle Eastern writing systems can be traced back to it. That is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language after it was adopted as both a "lingua franca" and the official language of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empir...
These include the Assyrians and Babylonians, who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews, but not Samaritans, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the form...
Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised. Its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian. The Aramaic glyph forms of the period are often divided into two main styles, the "lapidary" form, usually inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and a cursiv...
The widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. Aramaic-derived scripts. Since the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet ...
The Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the Roman era, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) alleges that not only the old Nabataean writing was influenced by the "Syrian script" (i.e. Aramaic), but also the old Chaldean script. A cursive Hebrew variant de...
Brahmi script was also possibly derived or inspired by Aramaic. Brahmic family of scripts includes Devanagari. Languages using the alphabet. Today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the modern-Hebrew alphabet, distinguished from the Old Hebrew script. In...
Unlike Classical Syriac, which has a rich literary tradition in Syriac-Aramaic script, Western Neo-Aramaic was solely passed down orally for generations until 2006 and was not utilized in a written form. Therefore, the Language Institute's chairman, George Rizkalla (Rezkallah), undertook the writing of a textbook in We...
American shot An American shot or cowboy shot is a medium-long ("knee") film shot of a group of characters, who are arranged so that all are visible to the camera. It is a translation of a phrase from French film criticism, "." The usual arrangement is for the actors to stand in an irregular line from one side of the s...
Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), or acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis, is a rare autoimmune disease marked by a sudden, widespread attack of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord. As well as causing the brain and spinal cord to become inflamed, ADEM also attacks ...
It affects about 8 per 1,000,000 people per year. Although it occurs in all ages, most reported cases are in children and adolescents, with the average age around 5 to 8 years old. The disease affects males and females almost equally. ADEM shows seasonal variation with higher incidence in winter and spring months which...
When a person has more than one demyelinating episode of ADEM, the disease is then called recurrent disseminated encephalomyelitis or multiphasic disseminated encephalomyelitis (MDEM). Also, a fulminant course in adults has been described. Signs and symptoms. ADEM has an abrupt onset and a monophasic course. Symptoms u...
Causes. Since the discovery of the anti-MOG specificity against multiple sclerosis diagnosis it is considered that ADEM is one of the possible clinical causes of anti-MOG associated encephalomyelitis. There are several theories about how the anti-MOG antibodies appear in the patient's serum: Diagnosis. The term ADEM ha...
Typically, ADEM appears in children following an antigenic challenge and remains monophasic. Nevertheless, ADEM does occur in adults, and can also be clinically multiphasic. Problems for differential diagnosis increase due to the lack of agreement for a definition of multiple sclerosis. If MS were defined only by the s...
Nevertheless, the co-occurrence of perivenous and confluent demyelination in some individuals suggests pathogenic overlap between acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and multiple sclerosis and misclassification even with biopsy or even postmortem ADEM in adults can progress to MS Multiphasic disseminated encephalomyel...
This disease has been occasionally associated with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, malaria, sepsis associated with immune complex deposition, methanol poisoning, and other underlying conditions. Also anecdotal association with MS has been reported Laboratory studies that support diagnosis of AHL are: peripheral...
There is some evidence to suggest that patients may respond to a combination of methylprednisolone and immunoglobulins if they fail to respond to either separately In a study of 16 children with ADEM, 10 recovered completely after high-dose methylprednisolone, one severe case that failed to respond to steroids recovere...
Prognosis. Full recovery is seen in 50 to 70% of cases, ranging to 70 to 90% recovery with some minor residual disability (typically assessed using measures such as mRS or EDSS), average time to recover is one to six months. The mortality rate may be as high as 5–10%. Poorer outcomes are associated with unresponsivenes...
Another study compared nineteen children with a history of ADEM, of which 10 were five years of age or younger at the time (average age 3.8 years old, tested an average of 3.9 years later) and nine were older (mean age 7.7y at time of ADEM, tested an average of 2.2 years later) to nineteen matched controls. Scores on I...
Ataxia Ataxia (from Greek α- [a negative prefix] + -τάξις [order] = "lack of order") is a neurological sign consisting of lack of voluntary coordination of muscle movements that can include gait abnormality, speech changes, and abnormalities in eye movements, that indicates dysfunction of parts of the nervous system th...
People with cerebellar ataxia may initially present with poor balance, which could be demonstrated as an inability to stand on one leg or perform tandem gait. As the condition progresses, walking is characterized by a widened base and high stepping, as well as staggering and lurching from side to side. Turning is also ...
Dysmetria is thought to be caused by a deficit in the control of interaction torques in multijoint motion. Interaction torques are created at an associated joint when the primary joint is moved. For example, if a movement required reaching to touch a target in front of the body, flexion at the shoulder would create a t...
Sensory ataxia presents itself with an unsteady "stomping" gait with heavy heel strikes, as well as a postural instability that is usually worsened when the lack of proprioceptive input cannot be compensated for by visual input, such as in poorly lit environments. Physicians can find evidence of sensory ataxia during p...
Causes. The three types of ataxia have overlapping causes, so can either coexist or occur in isolation. Cerebellar ataxia can have many causes despite normal neuroimaging. Focal lesions. Any type of focal lesion of the central nervous system (such as stroke, brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory [such as sarcoi...
Other examples include various prescription drugs (e.g. most antiepileptic drugs have cerebellar ataxia as a possible adverse effect), Lithium level over 1.5mEq/L, synthetic cannabinoid HU-211 ingestion and various other medical and recreational drugs (e.g. ketamine, PCP or dextromethorphan, all of which are NMDA recep...
Hypothyroidism. Symptoms of neurological dysfunction may be the presenting feature in some patients with hypothyroidism. These include reversible cerebellar ataxia, dementia, peripheral neuropathy, psychosis and coma. Most of the neurological complications improve completely after thyroid hormone replacement therapy. C...
Arnold–Chiari malformation (congenital ataxia). Arnold–Chiari malformation is a malformation of the brain. It consists of a downward displacement of the cerebellar tonsils and the medulla through the foramen magnum, sometimes causing hydrocephalus as a result of obstruction of cerebrospinal fluid outflow. Succinic semi...
Gluten ataxia. Gluten ataxia is an autoimmune disease derived from celiac disease, which is triggered by the ingestion of gluten. Early diagnosis and treatment with a gluten-free diet can improve ataxia and prevent its progression. The effectiveness of the treatment depends on the elapsed time from the onset of the ata...
Cerebellar ataxia associated with anti-GAD antibodies. Antibodies against the enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD: enzyme changing glutamate into GABA) cause cerebellar deficits. The antibodies impair motor learning and cause behavioral deficits. GAD antibodies related ataxia is part of the group called immune-medi...
The movement disorders associated with ataxia can be managed by pharmacological treatments and through physical therapy and occupational therapy to reduce disability. Some drug treatments that have been used to control ataxia include: 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), idebenone, amantadine, physostigmine, L-carnitine or der...
Current research suggests that, if a person is able to walk with or without a mobility aid, physical therapy should include an exercise program addressing five components: static balance, dynamic balance, trunk-limb coordination, stairs, and contracture prevention. Once the physical therapist determines that the indivi...
There are several assessment tools available to therapists and health care professionals working with patients with ataxia. The International Cooperative Ataxia Rating Scale (ICARS) is one of the most widely used and has been proven to have very high reliability and validity. Other tools that assess motor function, bal...
Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace ("née" Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise ...
Lovelace's educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Lovelace described her approach as "poetical science" ...
Biography. Childhood. Lord Byron expected his child to be a "glorious boy" and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. The child was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called "Ada" by Byron himself. On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron's command, Lady Byron left for her parents' home at...
Lovelace did not have a close relationship with her mother. She was often left in the care of her maternal grandmother Judith, Hon. Lady Milbanke, who doted on her. However, because of societal attitudes of the time—which favoured the husband in any separation, with the welfare of any child acting as mitigation—Lady By...
Ada Byron had an affair with a tutor in early 1833. She tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor's relatives recognised her and contacted her mother. Lady Byron and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal. Lovelace never met her younger half-sister, Allegra, the daughter of Lo...
On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three homes: Ockham Park, Surrey; a Scottish estate on Loch Torridon in Ross-shire; and a house in London. They spent their honeymoon at Ashley Combe near Porlock Weir, Somerset, which had been built as a hunting lodge in 1799 and was imp...
In 1841, Lovelace and Medora Leigh (the daughter of Lord Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh) were told by Ada's mother that Ada's father was also Medora's father. On 27 February 1841, Ada wrote to her mother: "I am not in the least "astonished". In fact, you merely "confirm" what I have for "years and years" felt scarce...
Education. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Byron was one of the reasons that Ada was taught mathematics from an early ...
I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies...
Work. Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism. After her work with Babbage, Lovelace continued to work on other projects. In 1844, she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for...
Lovelace first met Charles Babbage in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville. Later that month, Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his difference engine. She became fascinated with the machine and used her relationship with Somerville to visit Babbage as often as she could. Babbage was im...
The notes are around three times longer than the article itself and include (in "Note G"), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine, which might have run correctly had it ever been built (only Babbage's Difference Engine has been built, completed in London...
Lovelace and Babbage had a minor falling out when the papers were published, when he tried to leave his own statement (criticising the government's treatment of his Engine) as an unsigned preface, which could have been mistakenly interpreted as a joint declaration. When Taylor's "Scientific Memoirs" ruled that the stat...
First published computer program. In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer and the future Prime Minister of Italy, transcribed Babbage's lecture into French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the "Bibl...
In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B. V. Bowden's "Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines". The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a co...
According to the historian of computing and Babbage specialist Doron Swade: Ada saw something that Babbage in some sense failed to see. In Babbage's world his engines were bound by number...What Lovelace saw...was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbe...
and the logical structure of the Analytical Engine, on which the article she was reviewing dwelt. She noted that different specialists might be required in each area. The [1834 article] chiefly treats it under its mechanical aspect, entering but slightly into the mathematical principles of which that engine is the repr...
Controversy over contribution. Though Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer, some biographers, computer scientists and historians of computing suggest otherwise. Allan G. Bromley, in the 1990 article "Difference and Analytical Engines": Bruce Collier wrote that Lovelace "made a considerable con...
Doron Swade has said that Ada only published the first computer program instead of actually writing it, but agrees that she was the only person to see the potential of the analytical engine as a machine capable of expressing entities other than quantities. In his book, "Idea Makers", Stephen Wolfram defends Lovelace's ...
In 1981, the Association for Women in Computing inaugurated its Ada Lovelace Award. , the British Computer Society (BCS) has awarded the Lovelace Medal, and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students. BCSWomen sponsors the Lovelace Colloquium, an annual conference for women undergraduates. Ada College i...
In 2012, a Google Doodle and blog post honoured her on her birthday. In 2013, Ada Developers Academy was founded and named after her. Its mission is to diversify tech by providing women and gender-diverse people the skills, experience, and community support to become professional software developers to change the face ...
In March 2022, a statue of Ada Lovelace was installed at the site of the former Ergon House in the City of Westminster, London, honoring its scientific history. The redevelopment was part of a complex with Imperial Chemical House. The statue was sculpted by Etienne and Mary Millner and based on the portrait by Margaret...
In popular culture. Novels and plays. Lovelace is portrayed in Romulus Linney's 1977 play "Childe Byron". In Tom Stoppard's 1993 play "Arcadia", the precocious teenage genius Thomasina Coverly—a character "apparently based" on Ada Lovelace (the play also involves Lord Byron)—comes to understand chaos theory, and theori...
Film and television. In the 1997 film "Conceiving Ada", a computer scientist obsessed with Ada finds a way of communicating with her in the past by means of "undying information waves". Lovelace, identified as Ada Augusta Byron, is portrayed by Lily Lesser in the second series of "The Frankenstein Chronicles" aired on ...
Publications. Publication history. Six copies of the 1843 first edition of "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" with Ada Lovelace's "Notes" have been located. Three are held at Harvard University, one at the University of Oklahoma, and one at the United States Air Force Academy. On 20 July 2018, the sixth copy was sold at...
August Derleth August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. He was the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the cosmic horror genre and helped found Arkham House, a publishing company which did much ...
Life. The son of William Julius Derleth and Rose Louise Volk, Derleth grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. He was interested most in reading, and he made three trips to the library a week. He would save his money to buy bo...
Returning to Sauk City in the summer of 1931, Derleth worked in a local canning factory and collaborated with childhood friend Mark Schorer (later Chairman of the University of California, Berkeley English Department). They rented a cabin, writing Gothic and other horror stories and selling them to "Weird Tales" magazi...
With longtime friend Donald Wandrei, Derleth founded Arkham House in 1939. Its initial objective was to publish the works of H. P. Lovecraft, with whom Derleth had corresponded since his teenage years. At the same time, he began teaching a course in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1941, ...
He was married April 6, 1953, to Sandra Evelyn Winters. They divorced six years later. Derleth retained custody of the couple's two children, April Rose Derleth and Walden William Derleth. April earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. She became majority stockholder...
Career. Derleth wrote more than 150 short stories and more than 100 books during his lifetime. The "Sac Prairie Saga". Derleth wrote an expansive series of novels, short stories, journals, poems, and other works about Sac Prairie. Derleth intended this series to comprise up to 50 novels telling the projected life-story...
Jim Stephens, editor of "An August Derleth Reader", (1992), argues: "what Derleth accomplished...was to gather a Wisconsin mythos which gave respect to the ancient fundament of our contemporary life." The author inaugurated the "Sac Prairie Saga" with four novellas comprising "Place of Hawks", published by Loring &...
In the same year, "Evening in Spring" was published by Charles Scribners & Sons. This work Derleth considered among his finest. What "The Milwaukee Journal" called "this beautiful little love story", is an autobiographical novel of first love beset by small-town religious bigotry. The work received critical praise:...
A lighter side to the "Sac Prairie Saga" is a series of quasi-autobiographical short stories known as the "Gus Elker Stories", amusing tales of country life that Peter Ruber, Derleth's last editor, said were "...models of construction and...fused with some of the most memorable characters in American literature." Most ...
A close literary relative of the "Sac Prairie Saga" was Derleth's "Wisconsin Saga", which comprises several historical novels. Detective fiction and "Solar Pons". Detective fiction represented another substantial body of Derleth's work. Most notable among this work was a series of 70 stories in affectionate pastiche of...
Despite close similarities to Doyle's creation, Pons lived in the post-World War I era, in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Though Derleth never wrote a Pons novel to equal "The Hound of the Baskervilles", editor Peter Ruber wrote that "Derleth" produced more than a few Solar Pons stories almost as good as Sir Arthu...
In 1946, Conan Doyle's two sons made some attempts to force Derleth to cease publishing the Solar Pons series, but the efforts were unsuccessful, and were eventually withdrawn. Derleth's mystery and detective fiction also included a series of works set in Sac Prairie and featuring Judge Peck as the central character. Y...
Arkham House and the "Cthulhu Mythos". Derleth was a correspondent and friend of H. P. Lovecraft – when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe depicted in the series of stories shared by Lovecr...
Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in "Weird Tales" and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator". This practice has raised objection...
Derleth "was" more optimistic than Lovecraft in his conception of the Mythos, but we are dealing with a difference more of degree than kind. There are indeed tales wherein Derleth's protagonists get off scot-free (like "The Shadow in the Attic", "Witches' Hollow", or "The Shuttered Room"), but often the hero is doomed ...
Important as was Derleth's work to rescue H.P. Lovecraft from literary obscurity at the time of Lovecraft's death, Derleth also built a body of horror and spectral fiction of his own; still frequently anthologized. The best of this work, recently reprinted in four volumes of short stories – most of which were originall...
Additionally, Derleth wrote a number of volumes of poetry. Three of his collections – "Rind of Earth" (1942), "Selected Poems" (1944), and "The Edge of Night" (1945) – were published by the Decker Press, which also printed the work of other Midwestern poets such as Edgar Lee Masters. Derleth was also the author of seve...
Alps The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. The Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste o...
Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man ("Ötzi"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991. By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a her...
Etymology and toponymy. The English word "Alps" comes from the Latin "Alpes". The Latin word "Alpes" could possibly come from the adjective "albus" ("white"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to "alphita", the "white flour"; "alphos", a dull white leprosy; and finally the Pro...
In modern languages the term "alp", "alm", "albe" or "alpe" refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks. An "alp" refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where hu...
To the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allgäu, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear. The Alps are fou...
The highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at , and Piz Bernina, at . The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at , and Ortler, at , respectively. A series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the...
Passes. The Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students, and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as "passes", and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones. Merchant traffic was supported by ...
The Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napoléon and more recently the German Gebirgsjägers during World War II. In the...
On 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of . It is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route. From 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetab...
The first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the s...
Under extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the oro...
According to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in th...
The core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Briançonn...
Minerals. The Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crys...
Glaciers. In the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals—a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuchâtel home which he bel...
Alpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be hom...
Although the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevatio...
The Rhône is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from t...
Scientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipita...
The severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the ...