China
China the People's Republic of China, is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion. Covering 9,600,000 square kilometers, it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area. Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities, the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since China has expanded, re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin established the first Chinese empire; the succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty and Northern Song completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Horn of Africa. Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution; the Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan. The political status of Taiwan remains disputed. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing with annual growth rates above 6 percent. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $12.24 trillion by 2017. Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity.
China is the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget; the PRC is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as it replaced the ROC in 1971, as well as an active global partner of ASEAN Plus mechanism. China is a leading member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, WTO, APEC, BRICS, the BCIM, the G20. In recent times, scholars have argued that it will soon be a world superpower, rivaling the United States; the word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century. It is not a word used by the Chinese themselves, it has been traced through Portuguese and Persian back to the Sanskrit word Cīna, used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian Chīn, in turn derived from Sanskrit Cīna.
Cīna was first used including the Mahābhārata and the Laws of Manu. In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived from the name of the Qin dynasty. Although this derivation is still given in various sources, it is complicated by the fact that the Sanskrit word appears in pre-Qin literature; the word may have referred to a state such as Yelang. The meaning transferred to China as a whole; the origin of the Sanskrit word is still a matter of debate, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China"; the shorter form is "China" Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó, a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing, it was used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name Zhongguo is translated as "Middle Kingdom" in English.
Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China between 2.24 million and 250,000 years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a Homo erectus who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; the fossilized teeth of Homo sapiens have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800–5400 BCE, Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE; some scholars have suggested. According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE; the dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period; the succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE.
Their oracle bone script
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature had an influence through the separation of Buddhism in Japan. Japanese literature developed into a separate style, although the influence of Chinese literature and Classical Chinese remained until the end of the Edo period. Since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century and Eastern literature have affected each other and continue to do so. Before the introduction of kanji from China, the Japanese had no writing system, it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the beginning of the fifth century, brought by immigrants from the mainland of Korean and Chinese descent. Early Japanese texts first followed the Chinese model, before transitioning to a hybrid of Chinese characters used in Japanese syntactical formats, resulting in sentences that looked like Chinese but were read phonetically as Japanese.
Chinese characters were further adapted, creating what is known as man'yōgana, the earliest form of kana, or Japanese syllabic writing. The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period; these include the Kojiki, a historical record that chronicles ancient Japanese mythology and folk songs. One of the stories they describe is the tale of Urashima Tarō; the Heian period has been referred to as the golden era of literature in Japan. During this era, literature became centered on a cultural elite of nobility and monks; the imperial court patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style. Editing the resulting anthologies of poetry soon became a national pastime; the iroha poem, now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was developed during the early Heian period. Genji Monogatari, written in the early 11th century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu, is considered the pre-eminent novel of Heian fiction.
Other important writings of this period include the Kokin Wakashū, a waka-poetry anthology, Makura no Sōshi. The Pillow Book was written by Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibu's contemporary and rival, as an essay about the life and pastimes of nobles in the Emperor's court. Another notable piece of fictional Japanese literature was Konjaku Monogatarishū, a collection of over a thousand stories in 31 volumes; the volumes cover various tales from India and Japan. The 10th-century Japanese narrative, Taketori Monogatari, can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction; the protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon, sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, is found and raised by a bamboo cutter. She is taken back to her extraterrestrial family in an illustrated depiction of a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer. During the Kamakura period, Japan experienced many civil wars which led to the development of a warrior class, subsequent war tales and related stories.
Work from this period is notable for its more somber tone compared to the works of previous eras, with themes of life and death, simple lifestyles, redemption through killing. A representative work is Heike Monogatari, an epic account of the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the twelfth century. Other important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmei's Hōjōki and Yoshida Kenkō's Tsurezuregusa. Despite a decline in the importance of the imperial court, aristocratic literature remained the center of Japanese culture at the beginning of the Kamakura period. Many literary works were marked by a nostalgia for the Heian period; the Kamakura period saw a renewed vitality of poetry, with a number of anthologies compiled, such as the Shin Kokin Wakashū compiled in the early 1200s. However, there were fewer notable works by female authors during this period, reflecting the lowered status of women; as the importance of the imperial court continued to decline, a major feature of Muromachi literature was the spread of cultural activity through all levels of society.
Classical court literature, the focal point of Japanese literature up until this point disappeared. New genres such as renga, or linked verse, Noh theater developed among the common people, setsuwa such as the Nihon Ryoiki were created by Buddhist priests for preaching; the development of roads, along with a growing public interest in travel and pilgrimages, brought rise to the greater popularity of travel literature from the early 13th to 14th centuries. Notable examples of travel diaries include Fuji Tsukushi michi no ki. Literature during this time was written during the peaceful Tokugawa Period. Due in large part to the rise of the working and middle classes in the new capital of Edo, forms of popular drama developed which would evolve into kabuki; the jōruri and kabuki dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon became popular at the end of the 17th century, he is known as Japan's Shakespeare. Many different genres of literature made their début during the Edo Period, helped by a rising literacy rate among the growing population of townspeople, as well as the development of lending libraries.
Ihara Saikaku (16
Korea
Korea is a region in East Asia. Since 1948, it has been divided between two distinct sovereign states: South Korea. Korea consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, several minor islands near the peninsula. Korea is bordered by China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, neighbours Japan to the east by the Korea Strait and the Sea of Japan. During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between the three competing states of Baekje and Silla, together known as the "Three Kingdoms of Korea". In the second half of the 1st millennium and Goguryeo were conquered by Silla, leading to the "Unified Silla" period. Meanwhile, Balhae formed in the north following the collapse of Goguryeo. Unified Silla collapsed into three separate states due to civil war, ushering in the Later Three Kingdoms. Toward the end of the 1st millennium Goryeo, a revival of Goguryeo, defeated the two other states and unified the Korean Peninsula as one single state. Around the same time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince fled south to Goryeo.
Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was a cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234. However, multiple invasions by the Mongol Empire during the 13th century weakened the nation, which agreed to become a vassal state after decades of fighting. Following military resistance under King Gongmin which ended Mongol political influence in Goryeo, severe political strife followed, Goryeo fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon in 1392; the first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace. During this period, the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great in the 15th century and there was increasing influence of Confucianism. During the part of the dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname of the "Hermit Kingdom". By the late 19th century, the country became the object of imperial design by the Empire of Japan. After the First Sino-Japanese War, despite the Korean Empire's effort to modernize, it was annexed by Japan in 1910 and ruled by Imperial Japan until the end of World War II in August 1945.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea in the aftermath of World War II, leaving Korea partitioned along the 38th parallel. The North was under Soviet occupation and the South under U. S. occupation. These circumstances soon became the basis for the division of Korea by the two superpowers, exacerbated by their inability to agree on the terms of Korean independence; the Communist-inspired government in the North received backing from the Soviet Union in opposition to the pro-Western government in the South, leading to Korea's division into two political entities: North Korea, South Korea. Tensions between the two resulted in the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalized peace treaty; this status contributes to the high tensions. Both governments of the two Koreas claim to be the sole legitimate government of the region. "Korea" is the modern spelling of "Corea", a name attested in English as early as 1614.
Korea was transliterated as Cauli in The Travels of Marco Polo, of the Chinese 高麗. This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo, which ruled most of the Korean peninsula during Marco Polo's time. Korea's introduction to the West resulted from trade and contact with merchants from Arabic lands, with some records dating back as far as the 9th century. Goryeo's name was a continuation of Goguryeo the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, known as Goryeo beginning in the 5th century; the original name was a combination of the adjective go with the name of a local Yemaek tribe, whose original name is thought to have been either *Guru or *Gauri. With expanding British and American trade following the opening of Korea in the late 19th century, the spelling "Korea" appeared and grew in popularity; the name Korea is now used in English contexts by both North and South Korea. In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk; the name references Samhan, referring to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula.
Although written in Hanja as 韓, 幹, or 刊, this Han has no relation to the Chinese place names or peoples who used those characters but was a phonetic transcription of a native Korean word that seems to have had the meaning "big" or "great" in reference to leaders. It has been tentatively linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Central Asia. In North Korea, China and Japan, Korea as a whole is referred to as. "Great Joseon" was the name of the kingdom ruled by the Joseon dynasty from 1393 until their declaration of the short-lived Great Korean Empire in 1897. King Taejo had named them for the earlier Kojoseon, who ruled northern Korea from its legendary prehistory until their conquest in 108 BC by China's Han Empire; this go is the Hanja 古 and
Plant
Plants are multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes. By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae, a group that includes the flowering plants and other gymnosperms and their allies, liverworts and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae. Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria, their chloroplasts contain b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is common.
There are about 320 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants. Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earth's ecosystems on land. Plants that produce grain and vegetables form humankind's basic foods, have been domesticated for millennia. Plants have many cultural and other uses, as ornaments, building materials, writing material and, in great variety, they have been the source of medicines and psychoactive drugs; the scientific study of plants is known as a branch of biology. All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups and animals; this classification may date from Aristotle, who made the distincton between plants, which do not move, animals, which are mobile to catch their food. Much when Linnaeus created the basis of the modern system of scientific classification, these two groups became the kingdoms Vegetabilia and Animalia. Since it has become clear that the plant kingdom as defined included several unrelated groups, the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms.
However, these organisms are still considered plants in popular contexts. The term "plant" implies the possession of the following traits multicellularity, possession of cell walls containing cellulose and the ability to carry out photosynthesis with primary chloroplasts; when the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxon, it refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are: Another way of looking at the relationships between the different groups that have been called "plants" is through a cladogram, which shows their evolutionary relationships; these are not yet settled, but one accepted relationship between the three groups described above is shown below. Those which have been called "plants" are in bold; the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce food by photosynthesis and thus have traditionally been included in the plant kingdom.
The seaweeds range from large multicellular algae to single-celled organisms and are classified into three groups, the green algae, red algae and brown algae. There is good evidence that the brown algae evolved independently from the others, from non-photosynthetic ancestors that formed endosymbiotic relationships with red algae rather than from cyanobacteria, they are no longer classified as plants as defined here; the Viridiplantae, the green plants – green algae and land plants – form a clade, a group consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor. With a few exceptions, the green plants have the following features in common, they undergo closed mitosis without centrioles, have mitochondria with flat cristae. The chloroplasts of green plants are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they originated directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Two additional groups, the Rhodophyta and Glaucophyta have primary chloroplasts that appear to be derived directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, although they differ from Viridiplantae in the pigments which are used in photosynthesis and so are different in colour.
These groups differ from green plants in that the storage polysaccharide is floridean starch and is stored in the cytoplasm rather than in the plastids. They appear to have had a common origin with Viridiplantae and the three groups form the clade Archaeplastida, whose name implies that their chloroplasts were derived from a single ancient endosymbiotic event; this is the broadest modern definition of the term'plant'. In contrast, most other algae not only have different pigments but have chloroplasts with three or four surrounding membranes, they are not close relatives of the Archaeplastida having acquired chloroplasts separately from ingested or symbiotic green and red algae. They are thus not included in the broadest modern definition of the plant kingdom, although they were in the past; the green plants or Viridiplantae were traditionally divided into the green algae (including
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Natural Resources Conservation Service known as the Soil Conservation Service, is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that provides technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners and managers. Its name was changed in 1994 during the presidency of Bill Clinton to reflect its broader mission, it is a small agency comprising about 12,000 employees. Its mission is to improve and conserve natural resources on private lands through a cooperative partnership with state and local agencies. While its primary focus has been agricultural lands, it has made many technical contributions to soil surveying and water quality improvement. One example is the Conservation Effects Assessment Project, set up to quantify the benefits of agricultural conservation efforts promoted and supported by programs in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. NRCS is the leading agency in this project; the agency was founded through the efforts of Hugh Hammond Bennett, a soil conservation pioneer who worked for the Department of Agriculture from 1903 to 1952.
Bennett's motivation was based on his knowledge of the detrimental effects of soil erosion and the impacts on U. S lands. On September 13, 1933, the Soil Erosion Service was formed in the Department of the Interior, with Bennett as chief; the service was transferred to the Department of Agriculture on March 23, 1935, was shortly thereafter combined with other USDA units to form the Soil Conservation Service by the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1935. The Soil Conservation Service was in charge of 500 Civilian Conservation Corps camps between 1933 and 1942; the primary purpose of these camps was erosion control. Hugh Bennett continued as chief, a position he held until his retirement in 1952. On October 20, 1994, the agency was renamed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service as part of the Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994. NRCS offers financial assistance to farmers and ranchers; the financial assistance is authorized by the Farm Bill, a law, renewed every five years.
The 2014 Farm Bill consolidated 23 programs into 15. NRCS offers these services to private land owners, conservation districts and other types of organizations. NRCS collects and shares information on the nation's soil, water and plants; the Conservation Title of the Farm Bill provides the funding to agricultural producers, a conservation plan must be included. All of these programs are voluntary; the main programs include: The purpose of EQIP is to provide assistance to landowners to help them improve their soil and related natural resources, including grazing lands and wildlife habitat. Conservation Stewardship Program CSP is targeted to a producers who maintain a higher level of environmental stewardship. Regional Conservation Partnership Program RCPP consolidated four programs from the prior 2008 Farm Bill, it aims at more watershed scale projects, rather than individual farms and ranches. Agricultural Conservation Easement Program ACEP was another consolidation effort of the 2014 Farm Bill, which includes the former Grasslands Reserve Program and Ranch Lands Protection Program, Wetlands Reserve Program.
ACEP includes technical and financial help to maintain or improve land for agriculture or environmental benefits. Landowners volunteer to protect forests in 30 or 10 year contracts; this program hands assisting funds to participants. The objectives of HFRP are to: Promote the recovery of endangered and threatened species under the Endangered Species Act Improve plant and animal biodiversity Enhance carbon sequestration Serves 10 states in the Midwest United States in helping to reduce Nitrate levels in soil due to runoff from fertilized farmland; the project began in 2010 and focused on the Mississippi Basin area. The main goal of the project is to implement better methods of managing water drainage from agricultural uses, in place of letting the water drain as it had done in the past. In October 2011, The National "Managing Water, Harvesting Results" Summit was held to promote the drainage techniques used in hopes of people adopting them nationwide. Includes water supply forecasts and the Surface Water Supply Index for Alaska and other Western states.
NRCS agents collect data from snowpack and mountain sites to predict spring runoff and summer streamflow amounts. These predictions are used in decision making for agriculture, wildlife management and development, several other areas; these predictions are available within the first 5 days of each month from January to June. Is a blanket program which involves conservation efforts on soil and water conservation, as well as management of agricultural wastes and general longterm sustainability. NRCS and related agencies work with landowners, communities, or developers to protect the environment. Serve to guide people to comply with acts such as the Highly Erodible Land and Conservation Compliance Provisions acts; the CTA can cover projects by state and federal governments. Is a program to assist gulf bordering states improve water quality and use sustainable methods of farming and other industry; the program will deliver up to 50 million dollars over 2011-2013 to apply these sustainable methods, as well as wildlife habitat management systems that do not hinder agricultural productivity, prevent future over use of water resources to protect native endangered spe
Akebia quinata
Akebia quinata known as chocolate vine, five-leaf chocolate vine, or five-leaf akebia, is a shrub, native to Japan and Korea, invasive in the eastern United States from Georgia to Michigan to Massachusetts. Akebia quinata has compound leaves with five leaflets; the flowers are chocolate-scented, with three or four sepals. The fruits are sausage-shaped pods; the gelatinous placentation contains seeds surrounded with white pulp. In China, A. quinata is referred to as 木通 – mù tōng or mu tung – meaning "woody thoroughgoing". It is occasionally known as 通草 – tōng cǎo or tung tsao – meaning "thoroughgoing grass"; the fruit contains a sweet soft pulp resembling a white dragonfruit, eaten in Japan as a seasonal delicacy. The rind, with a slight bitter taste, is used as vegetable, e.g. stuffed with ground meat and deep-fried. The vines are traditionally used for basket-weaving; the stem contains 30% potassium salts thus causing a diuretic action. ‘Akebia’ comes from the Japanese vernacular name, ‘akebi’.‘Quinata’ means ‘divided into five’, is a reference to its lobed leaves.
Kampo herb list https://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/subject.html?sub=10090 Akebia quinata Dcne. Akebia quinata Decne. Medicinal Plant Images Database
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