Pygora goat
The Pygora goat is a breed of fiber goat that originated from crossing the registered NPGA Pygmy goat and the white AAGBA Angora goat. Pygora goats produce three distinct kinds of fleece. Pygoras are fiber goats along with the Angora Cashmere goat; the Pygora was a purposeful cross, bred by Katharine Jorgensen of Oregon. In 1987, the Pygora Breeders Association was formed in the United States, has since been registering and promoting Pygoras. Today, the registered Pygora goat may not be more than 75% AAGBA-registered Angora goat or 75% NPGA-registered Pygmy goat. First generation Pygmy-Angora crosses are not considered true Pygoras; this may be continued while maintaining the integrity of the breed as long as they have no more than 75% Pygmy or Angora ancestry. Pygoras live for 12 to 14 years, are used for fiber, along with being show and fiber-producing animals; the weight of a healthy Pygora depends on whether it is a female or kid. Most kids are about 5 pounds at birth. Pygora fiber is used by artists for spinning, knitting, weaving and other fiber arts.
It is commonly used in clothing. Pygoras can be milked, producing about one liter per day. Pygora wethers have higher quality fiber than the does and bucks because they do not spend all their energy producing young. Pygora are for producing fiber, but some people show them as a hobby, in fairs, fiber shows, in 4H; some pygora breeders and 4-H clubs show goats at the Oregon Fibre Festival. Angoras can be found there as well. Registered Pygora goats will produce cashmere-like fleece, a mohair-like fleece, or a combination of the two fleeces. Type-A fleece is composed of fibers averaging 6 or more inches in length, it may occur as a single coat, but a silky guard hair is present. The fibers are less than 28 micrometers in diameter. Type-B fleece fibers average between 3 and 6 inches in length with one two, guard hairs; the fibers are less than 24 µm in diameter. Type-C fleece is fine 1 to 3 inches in length and less than 18.5 µm in diameter. Pygoras come in a variety of colors: white, brown, gray or a mix of the colors.
Pygora Breeders Association
Shanxi
Shanxi is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋", after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn period; the name Shanxi means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, Inner Mongolia to the north and is made up of a plateau bounded by mountain ranges; the capital of the province is Taiyuan. During xia dynasty （ existed from 2070 bc-1600 bc), or 2030 bc--1600 bc, the capital city moved one capital situate in nowadays Yuncheng and nowadays Linfen In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi Province, it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of these states had fallen to the state of Qin; the Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou.
During the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, which went on to rule nearly all of northern China; the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, or "east of the river". Empress Wu Zetian, China's only female ruler, was born in Shanxi in 624. During the first part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Shanxi supplied rulers of three of the Five Dynasties, as well as being the only one of the Ten Kingdoms located in northern China. Shanxi was home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, who overthrew the first of the Five Dynasties, Later Liang to establish the second, Later Tang. Another jiedushi of Hedong, Shi Jingtang, overthrew Later Tang to establish the third of the Five Dynasties, Later Jin, yet another jiedushi of Hedong, Liu Zhiyuan, established the fourth of the Five Dynasties after the Khitans destroyed Later Jin, the third.
When the fifth of the Five Dynasties emerged, the jiedushi of Hedong at the time, Liu Chong and established an independent state called Northern Han, one of the Ten Kingdoms, in what is now northern and central Shanxi. Shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance; this territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi. The ceded territory became a major problem for China's defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall; the Zhou, the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties period was founded by Guo Wei, a Han Chinese, who served as the Assistant Military Commissioner at the court of the Later Han, ruled by Shatuo Turks. He founded his dynasty by launching a military coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor, however his newly established dynasty was short lived and was conquered by the Song Dynasty in 960. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty.
The Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 after the Jingkang Incident of the Jin-Song wars. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea and borders as the previous Hedong Commandery that existed during the Tang Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, Shanxi extended north beyond the Great Wall to include parts of Inner Mongolia, including what is now the city of Hohhot, overlapped with the jurisdiction of the Eight Banners and the Guihua Tümed banner in that area. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of China's period of rule over mainland China, the warlord Yan Xishan controlled Shanxi. Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan.
Shanxi was a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, which impressed the Japanese to say that nowhere in China did people fight so heroically and bravely. Right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist People's Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Yan had incorporated thousands of former Japanese soldiers into his own forces to fight against the communists, these soldiers became part of his failed defense of Taiyuan against the People's Liberation Army in early 1949. Shanxi was conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishan's retreat to Taiwan Island. In September, Shanxi Provincial People's Government was established. For centuries, Shanxi
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany and various other facilities elsewhere. UWA was established in 1911 by an act of the Parliament of Western Australia, began teaching students two years later, it is the sixth-oldest university in Australia, was Western Australia's only university until the establishment of Murdoch University in 1973. Because of its age and reputation, UWA is classed one of the "sandstone universities", an informal designation given to the oldest university in each state; the university belongs to several more formal groupings, including the Group of Eight and the Matariki Network of Universities. In recent years, UWA has been ranked either in the bottom half or just outside the world's top 100 universities, depending on the system used. Alumni of UWA include one Prime Minister of Australia, five Justices of the High Court of Australia, one Governor of the Reserve Bank, various federal cabinet ministers, seven of Western Australia's eight most recent premiers.
In 2018 alumnus mathematician Akshay Venkatesh was a recipient of the Fields Medal. In 2014, the university produced its 100th Rhodes Scholar. Two members of the UWA faculty, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, won Nobel Prizes as a result of research at the university; the university was established in 1911 following the tabling of proposals by a royal commission in September 1910. The original campus, which received its first students in March 1913, was located on Irwin Street in the centre of Perth, consisted of several buildings situated between Hay Street and St Georges Terrace. Irwin Street was known as "Tin Pan Alley" as many buildings featured corrugated iron roofs; these buildings served as the university campus until 1932, when the campus relocated to its present-day site in Crawley. The founding chancellor, Sir John Winthrop Hackett, died in 1916, bequeathed property which, after being managed for ten years, yielded £425,000 to the university, a far larger sum than expected; this allowed the construction of the main buildings.
Many buildings and landmarks within the university bear his name, including Winthrop Hall and Hackett Hall. In addition, his bequest funded many scholarships, because he did not wish eager students to be deterred from studying because they could not afford to do so. During UWA's first decade there was controversy about whether the policy of free education was compatible with high expenditure on professorial chairs and faculties. An "old student" publicised his concern in 1921 that there were 13 faculties serving only 280 students. A remnant of the original buildings survives to this day in the form of the "Irwin Street Building", so called after its former location. In the 1930s it was transported to the new campus and served a number of uses till its 1987 restoration, after which it was moved across campus to James Oval; the building has served as the Senate meeting room and is in use as a cricket pavilion and office of the university archives. The building has been heritage-listed by both the National Trust and the Australian Heritage Council.
The university introduced the Doctorate of Philosophy degree in 1946 and made its first award in October 1950 to Warwick Bottomley for his research of the chemistry of native plants in Western Australia. UWA is one of the largest landowners in Perth as a result of government and private bequests, is expanding its infrastructure. Recent developments include the $22 million University Club, opened in June 2005, the UWA Watersports Complex, opened in August 2005. In addition, in September 2005 UWA opened its $64 million Molecular and Chemical Sciences building as part of a commitment to nurturing and developing high quality research and development. In May 2008, a $31 million Business School building opened. In August 2014 a $9 million new CO2 research facility was completed, providing modern facilities for carbon research; the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, a $62 million research facility on campus, was completed in October 2016. The 65-hectare Crawley campus sits on the Swan River, about five kilometres west of the Perth central business district.
Many of the buildings are coastal limestone and Donnybrook sandstone, including the large and iconic Winthrop Hall with its Romanesque Revival architecture. These buildings are dotted amongst expansive lawns and thickets of trees, such as the Sunken Garden and the Tropical Grove; the beauty of the grounds and rich history of the campus make it a popular spot for weddings. The Arts Faculty building encompasses the New Fortune Theatre; this open-air venue is a replica of the original Elizabethan Fortune Theatre and has hosted regular performances of Shakespeare's plays co-produced by the Graduate Dramatic Society and the University Dramatic Society. The venue is home to a family of peafowl donated to the University by the Perth Zoo in 1975 after a gift by Sir Laurence Brodie-Hall; the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, located in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, contains one of the world's finest collection of Aboriginal art, according to the Collections Australia Network. Its Asian and Melanesian collections are of strong interest.
Established in 1976 by Ronald and Catherine Berndt, it is planned to be incorporated in a purpose-built permanent structure, the Aboriginal Cultures Museum, designed and is awaiting funding. The Cultural Precinct of the University is located in the Northern part of the Crawley campus. University Theatres
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region in the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir that extends from the Siachen Glacier in the Karakoram range to the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir and its culture and history are related to that of Tibet. Ladakh is renowned for culture; the region included the Baltistan valleys, the entire upper Indus Valley, the remote Zanskar and Spiti to the south, much of Ngari including the Rudok region and Guge in the east, Aksai Chin in the northeast, the Nubra Valley to the north over Khardong La in the Ladakh Range. Contemporary Ladakh borders Tibet to the east, the Lahaul and Spiti regions to the south, the Vale of Kashmir and Baltiyul regions to the west, the southwest corner of Xinjiang across the Karakoram Pass in the far north. Aksai Chin is one of the disputed border areas between India, it is administered by China as part of Hotan County but is claimed by India as a part of the Ladakh region of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In 1962, China and India fought a brief war over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, but in 1993 and 1996 the two countries signed agreements to respect the Line of Actual Control. In the past Ladakh gained importance from its strategic location at the crossroads of important trade routes, but since the Chinese authorities closed the borders with Tibet and Central Asia in the 1960s, international trade has dwindled except for tourism. Since 1974, the Government of India has encouraged tourism in Ladakh. Since Ladakh is a part of strategically important Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian military maintains a strong presence in the region; the largest town in Ladakh is Leh, followed by Kargil. The government of Jammu and Kashmir created a separate administrative division from Kashmir division with headquarters on rotational basis 6month in kargil and 6month in leh Tibetan Buddhists and Hindus collectively represent the majority of the population while a plurality of Ladakhis are Muslims. Other religious groups include Sikhs etc.
Some activists from Leh have in recent times called for Ladakh to be constituted as a union territory because of perceived unfair treatment by Kashmir and Ladakh's cultural differences with predominantly Muslim Kashmir while people of Kargil oppose UT status for Ladakh. The Tibetan name La-dvags means "land of high passes". Ladakh is its pronunciation in several Tibetan districts, a transliteration of the Persian spelling. Rock carvings found in many parts of Ladakh indicate that the area has been inhabited from Neolithic times. Ladakh's earliest inhabitants consisted of a mixed Indo-Aryan population of Mons and Dards, who find mention in the works of Herodotus, Megasthenes, Pliny and the geographical lists of the Puranas. Around the 1st century, Ladakh was a part of the Kushan Empire. Buddhism spread into western Ladakh from Kashmir in the 2nd century when much of eastern Ladakh and western Tibet was still practicing the Bon religion; the 7th century Buddhist traveler Xuanzang describes the region in his accounts.
According to Rolf Alfred Stein, author of Tibetan Civilization, the area of Zhangzhung was not a part of Tibet and was a distinctly foreign territory to the Tibetans. According to Stein, "... Further west, The Tibetans encountered a distinctly foreign nation—Shangshung, with its capital at Khyunglung. Mt. Kailāśa and Lake Manasarovar formed part of this country, whose language has come down to us through early documents. Though still unidentified, it seems to be Indo-European.... Geographically the country was open to India, both through Nepal and by way of Kashmir and Ladakh. Kailāśa is a holy place for the Indians. No one knows how long they have done so, but the cult may well go back to the times when Shangshung was still independent of Tibet. How far Zhangzhung stretched to the north and west is a mystery... We have had an occasion to remark that Shangshung, embracing Kailāśa sacred Mount of the Hindus, may once have had a religion borrowed from Hinduism; the situation may have lasted for quite a long time.
In fact, about 950, the Hindu King of Kabul had a statue of Viṣṇu, of the Kashmiri type, which he claimed had been given him by the king of the Bhota who, in turn had obtained it from Kailāśa." A chronicle of Ladakh compiled in the 17th century called the La dvags royal rabs, meaning the Royal Chronicle of the Kings of Ladakh recorded that this boundary was traditional and well-known. The first part of the Chronicle was written in the years 1610–1640 and the second half towards the end of the 17th century; the work has been translated into English by A. H. Francke and published in 1926 in Calcutta titled the Antiquities of Indian Tibet. In volume 2, the Ladakhi Chronicle describes the partition by King Skyid-lde-ngima-gon of his kingdom between his three sons, the chronicle described the extent of territory secured by that son; the following quotation is from page 94 of this book: He gave to each of his sons a separate kingdom, viz. to the eldest Dpal-gyi-gon, Maryul of Mngah-ris, the inhabitants using black bows.
From a perusal of the aforesaid work, It is evident. After the family partition, Rudok continued to be part
Australian Cashmere goat
The Australian Cashmere goat is a breed of Cashmere domestic goats originating in Australia. Whilst retaining the fertility and hardiness of the bush goat, the Australian Cashmere is quite different in appearance and temperament. In midwinter, it has an excellent overall coverage of dense cashmere. Goats were liberated on the islands off the coast of Australia by Dutch and Portuguese navigators long before the British settlement of Australia; the introduced goats came from a great variety of backgrounds and they acclimatised to the Australian environment. Most pre-1830 prints of early Australia show the animals on the hills in the background as goats; some early efforts were made to develop a goat fleece industry in Australia. William Riley, in 1832 imported "Angora-Cachemire" animals to his property, New South Wales. In that year, he delivered a paper to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of New South Wales in an effort to encourage the development of a Cashmere/Angora fleece industry in Australia.
A further 150 years were needed for Australian graziers to develop some of his concepts. An advertisement appeared in 1832 in the Western Australia publication "Colonial Paper" for young half-bred Cashmere bucks offered for sale at three pounds each by W. Tanner of Caversham; the gold rush period brought the demise of the infant goat industry. Prior to the gold rush, flocks of grazing animals and sheep were controlled by shepherds. Most abandoned their charges in favour of making their fortune on the gold fields; the landowners had to make some attempt at fencing their runs. Rudimentary fences could be erected to control sheep, which on large runs without fences would keep to the open plains; the goats were not controlled by fences and sought the rougher country as their browsing environment, thus forming the large herds of wild goats that became well established in much of inland Australia. The spread of settlement pushed these herds back into the semiarid, sparsely settled areas of the country.
Other introductions occurred in Australia in the 1800s. Wilson records that Dr. Chalmers imported 49 Cashmere goats through Melbourne in 1863 from Chinese Tartery. At this time, Wilson was running his own flock of Cashmere goats at Longerenong in Western Victoria; these were descendants of two females imported from India. Through the intervening years, history records many references to goats in Australia. In 1879, herds of goats roaming the streets of Sydney created such a nuisance that police action was required to get them away. Goat racing in which goats were driven by youths in light gigs became popular at the end of the century in Queensland; the famous opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba, was so taken with the spectacle at Rockhampton, that she arranged for the running of the Melba Derby. Cashmere was rediscovered on Australian goats in 1972 when two Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation researchers, Dr. Ian Smith and Mr. Wal Clarke, identified cashmere on some feral goats under inspection at the property of the Australian Mohair Company at Brewarrina.
For a number of years, the CSIRO maintained a small research herd of selected animals at their Prospect laboratory until budget restraints forced their dispersal. Some important early histological work was carried out during this period. By the late 1970s, a number of breeders were toying with the concept of developing and breeding an Australian Cashmere goat. Much of this early breeding was hampered by a lack of knowledge of the problems involved and by lack of a fibre market. Interest and morale were given a major boost when in August 1980 Dawson International Limited PLC, Scotland the world's largest cashmere processors, purchased a property at Adelong, N. S. W. with the view to setting up a demonstration farm to encourage Australian cashmere production. The chairman of Dawson International Limited, Sir Alan Smith, saw the world cashmere supply situation tightening. Although cashmere represented only a small percentage of the volume of fibre handled by the company, it accounted for 50% of the turnover and was a major contributor to company profitability.
Breed Standard Gilroy, Clinton. The Art of Weaving, by Hand and by Power: With an Introductory Account of Its Rise and Progress... New York: George D. Baldwin. Pp. 270–271. Simmonds, A. J.. Australian Goat Notes. Albury Australia: Thompson Printing Pty. Ltd. ISBN 0-9590950-2-0
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
