1.
Shanghai
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Shanghai is the most populous city proper in the world, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. As one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the Peoples Republic of China, it is a financial centre and transport hub. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the eastern Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, as a major administrative, shipping and trading city, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and recognition of its favourable port location and economic potential. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade following the British victory over China in the First Opium War, the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1844 Treaty of Whampoa allowed the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The city then flourished as a center of commerce between China and other parts of the world, and became the financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. However, with the Communist Party takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries, and the citys global influence declined. In the 1990s, the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of the city, aiding the return of finance. The two Chinese characters in the name are 上 and 海, together meaning Upon-the-Sea. The earliest occurrence of this dates from the 11th-century Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence. There are disputes as to exactly how the name should be understood, Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪 in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎, a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean. This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today, another alternative name for Shanghai is Shēn or Shēnchéng, from Lord Chunshen, a third-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F. C. Huating was another early name for Shanghai. In AD751, during the dynasty, Huating County was established at modern-day Songjiang. Today, Huating appears as the name of a hotel in the city. The city also has various nicknames in English, including Pearl of the Orient, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Shanghai area belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu. During the Warring States period, Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu and he ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of Shen, two important events helped promote Shanghais development in the Ming dynasty
2.
Military engineering
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Military engineering is loosely defined as the art and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and communications. Military engineers are responsible for logistics behind military tactics. Modern military engineering differs from civil engineering, in the 20th and 21st centuries, military engineering also includes other engineering disciplines such as mechanical and electrical engineering techniques. According to NATO, military engineering is that engineer activity undertaken, regardless of component or service, Military engineering does not encompass the activities undertaken by those engineers who maintain, repair and operate vehicles, vessels, aircraft, weapon systems and equipment. Military engineering is a subject taught in military academies or schools of military engineering. The construction and demolition tasks related to engineering are usually performed by military engineers including soldiers trained as sappers or pioneers. In modern armies, soldiers trained to perform such tasks while well forward in battle, the word engineer was initially used in the context of warfare, dating back to 1325 when engine’er referred to a constructor of military engines. In this context, engine referred to a machine, i. e. A mechanical contraption used in war, in its place, the term military engineering has come to be used. Modern military engineering can be divided into three main tasks or fields, combat engineering, strategic support, and ancillary support, combat engineering is associated with engineering on the battlefield. Combat engineers are responsible for increasing mobility on the front lines of war such as digging trenches, strategic support is associated with providing service in communication zones such as the construction of airfields and the improvement and upgrade of ports, roads and railways communication. Ancillary support includes provision and distribution of maps as well as the disposal of unexploded warheads, Military engineers construct bases, airfields, roads, bridges, ports, and hospitals. During peacetime before modern warfare, military engineers took the role of civil engineers by participating in the construction of civil-works projects, nowadays, military engineers are almost entirely engaged in war logistics and preparedness. Combat engineers clear routes, repair airfields and harbours, bridge rivers all at top speed, the first civilization to have a dedicated force of military engineering specialists were the Romans, whose army contained a dedicated corps of military engineers known as architecti. This group was pre-eminent among its contemporaries, such military engineering feats would have been completely new, and probably bewildering and demoralizing, to the Gallic defenders. The best known of these Roman army engineers due to his writings surviving is Vitruvius, alexander the Great also used engineers in his army. In ancient times, military engineers were responsible for warfare and building field fortifications, temporary camps. The most notable engineers of ancient times were the Romans and Chinese, the Romans were responsible for constructing fortified wooden camps and paved roads for their legions
3.
History of structural engineering
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The history of structural engineering dates back to at least 2700 BC when the step pyramid for Pharaoh Djoser was built by Imhotep, the first engineer in history known by name. Pyramids were the most common major structures built by ancient civilizations because it is a form which is inherently stable. Another notable engineering feat from antiquity still in use today is the water management system. Throughout ancient and medieval history most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans, such as masons and carpenters. No theory of structures existed and understanding of how structures stood up was extremely limited, knowledge was retained by guilds and seldom supplanted by advances. Structures were repetitive, and increases in scale were incremental, the physical sciences underlying structural engineering began to be understood in the Renaissance and have been developing ever since. The recorded history of structural engineering starts with the ancient Egyptians, in the 27th century BC, Imhotep was the first structural engineer known by name and constructed the first known step pyramid in Egypt. In the 26th century BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed in Egypt and it remained the largest man-made structure for millennia and was considered an unsurpassed feat in architecture until the 19th century AD. Archimedess work on this and his work on calculus and geometry, together with Euclidean geometry, underpin much of the mathematics, the ancient Romans made great bounds in structural engineering, pioneering large structures in masonry and concrete, many of which are still standing today. They include aqueducts, thermae, columns, lighthouses, defensive walls and their methods are recorded by Vitruvius in his De Architectura written in 25 BC, a manual of civil and structural engineering with extensive sections on materials and machines used in construction. One reason for their success is their accurate surveying techniques based on the dioptra, groma, in 1638 Galileo published Dialogues Relating to Two New Sciences, outlining the sciences of the strength of materials and the motion of objects. It was the first establishment of an approach to structural engineering, including the first attempts to develop a theory for beams. This is also regarded as the beginning of structural analysis, the mathematical representation and this was followed in 1676 by Robert Hookes first statement of Hookes Law, providing a scientific understanding of elasticity of materials and their behaviour under load. Specifically, he developed the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation with Daniel Bernoulli circa 1750 - the fundamental theory underlying most structural engineering design, in 1717 Jean Bernoulli wrote to Pierre Varignon explaining the principle of virtual work, while in 1726 Daniel Bernoulli wrote of the composition of forces. In 1757 Leonhard Euler went on to derive the Euler buckling formula, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, materials science and structural analysis underwent development at a tremendous pace. Though elasticity was understood in theory well before the 19th century, in 1824, Portland cement was patented by the engineer Joseph Aspdin as a superior cement resembling Portland Stone, British Patent no.5022. Developments in concrete continued with the construction in 1848 of a boat built of ferrocement - the forerunner of modern reinforced concrete - by Joseph-Louis Lambot. He patented his system of reinforcement and concrete in 1855
4.
Leonhard Euler
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He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, Euler was one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 18th century, and is held to be one of the greatest in history. He is also considered to be the most prolific mathematician of all time. His collected works fill 60 to 80 quarto volumes, more than anybody in the field and he spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Eulers influence on mathematics, Read Euler, read Euler, Leonhard Euler was born on 15 April 1707, in Basel, Switzerland to Paul III Euler, a pastor of the Reformed Church, and Marguerite née Brucker, a pastors daughter. He had two sisters, Anna Maria and Maria Magdalena, and a younger brother Johann Heinrich. Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Eulers moved from Basel to the town of Riehen, Paul Euler was a friend of the Bernoulli family, Johann Bernoulli was then regarded as Europes foremost mathematician, and would eventually be the most important influence on young Leonhard. Eulers formal education started in Basel, where he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother. In 1720, aged thirteen, he enrolled at the University of Basel, during that time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, who quickly discovered his new pupils incredible talent for mathematics. In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound with the title De Sono, at that time, he was unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a position at the University of Basel. In 1727, he first entered the Paris Academy Prize Problem competition, Pierre Bouguer, who became known as the father of naval architecture, won and Euler took second place. Euler later won this annual prize twelve times, around this time Johann Bernoullis two sons, Daniel and Nicolaus, were working at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. In November 1726 Euler eagerly accepted the offer, but delayed making the trip to Saint Petersburg while he applied for a physics professorship at the University of Basel. Euler arrived in Saint Petersburg on 17 May 1727 and he was promoted from his junior post in the medical department of the academy to a position in the mathematics department. He lodged with Daniel Bernoulli with whom he worked in close collaboration. Euler mastered Russian and settled life in Saint Petersburg. He also took on a job as a medic in the Russian Navy. The Academy at Saint Petersburg, established by Peter the Great, was intended to improve education in Russia, as a result, it was made especially attractive to foreign scholars like Euler
5.
Buckling
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In science, buckling is a mathematical instability that leads to a failure mode. When a structure is subjected to stress, buckling may occur. Buckling is characterized by a sudden sideways deflection of a structural member and this may occur even though the stresses that develop in the structure are well below those needed to cause failure of the material of which the structure is composed. As an applied load is increased on a member, such as a column, it will become large enough to cause the member to become unstable. Further loading will cause significant and somewhat unpredictable deformations, possibly leading to loss of the members load-carrying capacity. If the deformations that occur after buckling do not cause the collapse of that member. In a mathematical sense, buckling is a bifurcation in the solution to the equations of static equilibrium. At a certain point, under a load, any further load is able to be sustained in one of two states of equilibrium, a purely compressed state or a laterally-deformed state. The ratio of the length of a column to the least radius of gyration of its cross section is called the slenderness ratio. This ratio affords a means of classifying columns and their failure mode, the slenderness ratio is important for design considerations. All the following are approximate values used for convenience, if the load on a column is applied through the center of gravity of its cross section, it is called an axial load. A load at any point in the cross section is known as an eccentric load. However, intermediate-length columns will fail by a combination of direct compressive stress, a short concrete column is one having a ratio of unsupported length to least dimension of the cross section equal to or less than 10. If the ratio is greater than 10, it is considered a long column, timber columns may be classified as short columns if the ratio of the length to least dimension of the cross section is equal to or less than 10. The dividing line between intermediate and long timber columns cannot be readily evaluated, since K depends on the modulus of elasticity and the allowable compressive stress parallel to the grain, it can be seen that this arbitrary limit would vary with the species of the timber. The value of K is given in most structural handbooks, the theory of the behavior of columns was investigated in 1757 by mathematician Leonhard Euler. He derived the formula, the Euler formula, that gives the maximum load that a long, slender. An ideal column is one that is straight, made of a homogeneous material
6.
Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
7.
Indus Valley Civilisation
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The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation mainly in the northwestern regions of South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. Along with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early civilisations of the Old World, and of the three, the most widespread, at its peak, the Indus Civilisation may have had a population of over five million. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in handicraft, the Indus cities are noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, and clusters of large non-residential buildings. The discovery of Harappa, and soon afterwards, Mohenjo-Daro, was the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj, excavation of Harappan sites has been ongoing since 1920, with important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999. This Harappan civilisation is called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from the cultures immediately preceding and following it. The early Harappan cultures were preceded by local Neolithic agricultural villages, as of 1999, over 1,056 cities and settlements had been found, of which 96 have been excavated, mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers and their tributaries. Among the settlements were the urban centres of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Ganeriwala in Cholistan. The Harappan language is not directly attested and its affiliation is uncertain since the Indus script is still undeciphered, a relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistans northwestern Frontier Province as well, other IVC colonies can be found in Afghanistan while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far away as Turkmenistan and in Maharashtra. The largest number of colonies are in the Punjab, Sindh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast, for example, Balakot, and on islands, for example, Dholavira. There is evidence of dry river beds overlapping with the Hakra channel in Pakistan, many Indus Valley sites have been discovered along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds. Among them are, Rupar, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan, Harappan Civilisation remains the correct one, according to the common archaeological usage of naming a civilisation after its first findspot. John wrote, I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway and they were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines, called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he found it full of hard well-burnt bricks, and, convinced there was a grand quarry for the ballast I wanted. These bricks now provided ballast along 93 miles of the track running from Karachi to Lahore. In 1872–75, Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal and it was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. J. H. MacKay, and Marshall. By 1931, much of Mohenjo-Daro had been excavated, but excavations continued, such as that led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944. Among other archaeologists who worked on IVC sites before the independence in 1947 were Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein
8.
Mesopotamia
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In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The Sumerians and Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of history to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthian Empire. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD226, eastern part of it fell to the Sassanid Persians, division of Mesopotamia between Roman and Sassanid Empires lasted until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire and Muslim conquest of the Levant from Byzantines. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. The regional toponym Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος middle and ποταμός river and it is used throughout the Greek Septuagint to translate the Hebrew equivalent Naharaim. In the Anabasis, Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria, the Aramaic term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept. The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is made between Northern or Upper Mesopotamia and Southern or Lower Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazira, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad, Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf and includes Kuwait and parts of western Iran. In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation and it is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jazirah, and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date. It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th-century Western encroachments, Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the Armenian Highlands. Both rivers are fed by tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000 square kilometres region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, in the extreme south, the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times, periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and these trends have continued to the present day in Iraq
9.
Nomad
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A nomad is a member of a community of people who live in different locations, moving from one place to another. Among the various ways nomads relate to their environment, one can distinguish the hunter-gatherer, as of 1995, there were an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world. Nomadic hunting and gathering, following seasonally available wild plants and game, is by far the oldest human subsistence method, pastoralists raise herds, driving them, or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover. Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand. For example, many groups in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-nomadic and these nomads sometimes adapt the use of high technology such as solar photovoltaics to reduce their dependence on diesel fuel. These groups are known as peripatetic nomads, a nomad is a person with no settled home, moving from place to place as a way of obtaining food, finding pasture for livestock, or otherwise making a living. The word Nomad comes from a Greek word that one who wanders for pasture. Most nomadic groups follow an annual or seasonal pattern of movements and settlements. Nomadic peoples traditionally travel by animal or canoe or on foot, today, some nomads travel by motor vehicle. Most nomads live in tents or other portable shelters, Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, the Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and to gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life, Pastoral nomads make their living raising livestock, such as camels, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, or yaks. These nomads travel to find more camels, goats, and sheep through the deserts of Arabia, the Fulani and their cattle travel through the grasslands of Niger in western Africa. Some nomadic peoples, especially herders, may move to raid settled communities or avoid enemies. Nomadic craftworkers and merchants travel to find and serve customers and they include the Lohar blacksmiths of India, the Romani traders, and the Irish Travellers. Most nomads travel in groups of families called bands or tribes and these groups are based on kinship and marriage ties or on formal agreements of cooperation. A council of adult males makes most of the decisions, though some tribes have chiefs, in the case of Mongolian nomads, a family moves twice a year. These two movements would generally occur during the summer and winter, the winter location is usually located near mountains in a valley and most families already have their fixed winter locations
10.
Maritime history
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Maritime history is the study of human activity at sea. It covers a broad thematic element of history that often uses a global approach, as an academic subject, it often crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding humankinds various relationships to the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. Nautical history records and interprets past events involving ships, shipping, navigation, historians from many lands have published monographs, popular and scholarly articles, and collections of archival resources. A leading journal is International Journal of Maritime History, a refereed scholarly journal published twice a year by the International Maritime Economic History Association. Based in Canada with an editorial board, it explores the maritime dimensions of economic, social, cultural. For a broad overview, see the four-volume encyclopedia edited by John B, hattendorf, Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History. It contains over 900 articles by 400 scholars and runs 2900 pages, other major reference resources are Spencer Tucker, ed. Naval Warfare, An International Encyclopedia with 1500 articles in 1231, pages, and I. C. B. Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea with 2600 articles in 688 pages, typically, studies of merchant shipping and of defensive navies are seen as separate fields. Inland waterways are included within maritime history, especially inland seas such as the Great Lakes of North America, one approach to maritime history writing has been nicknamed rivet counting because of a focus on the minutiae of the vessel. But revisionist scholars are creating new turns in the study of maritime history and this includes a post-1980s turn towards the study of human users of ships, and post-2000 turn towards seeing sea travel as part of the wider history of transport and mobilities. The earliest representation of a ship under sail appears on a painted disc found in Kuwait dating to the late 5th millennium BC, the Indigenous of the Pacific Northwest are very skilled at crafting wood. Best known for totem poles up to 80 feet tall, they also construct dugout canoes over 60 feet long for everyday use, the earliest seaworthy boats may have been developed as early as 45,000 years ago, according to one hypothesis explaining the habitation of Australia. The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of sail construction and this is governed by the science of aerodynamics. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, some current historians believe Herodotus on this point, even though Herodotus himself was in disbelief that the Phoenicians had accomplished the act. In early modern India and Arabia the lateen-sail ship known as the dhow was used on the waters of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, the astrolabe was the chief tool of Celestial navigation in early maritime history. It was invented in ancient Greece and developed by Islamic astronomers, by at least 1117 AD, the Chinese used a magnetic needle that was submersed in a bowl of water, and would point in the southern cardinal direction. The first use of a needle for seafaring navigation in Europe was written of by Alexander Neckham. Around 1300 AD, the pivot-needle dry-box compass was invented in Europe, its cardinal direction pointed north, there was also the addition of the compass-card in Europe, which was later adopted by the Chinese through contact with Japanese pirates in the 16th century
11.
Egyptian pyramids
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The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt. As of November 2008, sources cite either 118 or 138 as the number of identified Egyptian pyramids, most were built as tombs for the countrys pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis, the earliest among these is the Pyramid of Djoser which was built during the third dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep, the most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Several of the Giza pyramids are counted among the largest structures ever built, the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence. By the time of the Early Dynastic Period, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas, the second historically-documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep is credited with being the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other, the result was the Pyramid of Djoser, which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhoteps achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians, the most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, the Giza pyramid complex, were built. Long after the end of Egypts own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, al-Aziz Uthman tried to destroy the Giza pyramid complex. He gave up after damaging the Pyramid of Menkaure because the task proved too huge, the shape of Egyptian pyramids is thought to represent the primordial mound from which the Egyptians believed the earth was created. Pyramids were often named in ways that referred to solar luminescence. For example, the name of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur The Southern Shining Pyramid. While it is agreed that pyramids were burial monuments, there is continued disagreement on the particular theological principles that might have given rise to them. One suggestion is that they were designed as a type of resurrection machine, the Egyptians believed the dark area of the night sky around which the stars appear to revolve was the physical gateway into the heavens. One of the shafts that extend from the main burial chamber through the entire body of the Great Pyramid points directly towards the center of this part of the sky. This suggests the pyramid may have designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaohs soul directly into the abode of the gods
12.
Qanat
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A Qanāt or karez/kariz is a gently sloping underground channel to transport water from an aquifer or water well to surface for irrigation and drinking. The qanat technology is known to have developed in Iran by the Persian people sometime in the early 1st millennium BC. Qanat is the Arabic word for channel, Qanats in Persian called kārīz, kahan, Kahn, kahriz/kəhriz, khettara, Canal, falaj or foggara/fughara. Alternative terms for qanats in Asia and North Africa are kakuriz, chin-avulz, common variants of qanat in English include kanat, khanat, kunut, kona, konait, ghanat, ghundat. Qanats are constructed as a series of vertical shafts, connected by gently sloping tunnels. Qanats efficiently deliver large amounts of water to the surface without need for pumping. The water drains by gravity, typically from an upland aquifer, Qanats allow water to be transported over long distances in hot dry climates without much water loss to evaporation. The qanat should not be confused with the spring-flow tunnel typical to the area around Jerusalem. Although both are excavated tunnels designed to extract water by gravity flow, there are crucial differences, firstly, the origin of the qanat was a well that was turned into an artificial spring. In contrast, the origin of the tunnel was the development of a natural spring to renew or increase flow following a recession of the water table. Secondly, the shafts essential for the construction of qanats are not essential to spring-flow tunnels and it is very common for a qanat to start below the foothills of mountains, where the water table is closest to the surface. From this source, the tunnel slopes gently downward, slowly converging with the steeper slope of the land surface above. To connect a populated or agricultural area with an aquifer, qanats must often extend for long distances, Qanats are sometimes split into an underground distribution network of smaller canals called kariz. Like qanats, these canals are below ground to avoid contamination and evaporation. In some cases water from a qanat is stored in a reservoir, an ab anbar is an example of a traditional Persian qanat-fed reservoir for drinking water. The qanat system has the advantage of being resistant to disasters such as earthquakes and floods. Furthermore, it is almost insensitive to the levels of precipitation, from a sustainability perspective, qanats are powered only by gravity, and thus have low operation & maintenance costs once built. Qanats transfer freshwater from the plateau to the lower-lying plains with saltier soil
13.
Parthenon
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The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power and it was completed in 438 BC although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order and its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and western civilization. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a programme of restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure. The Parthenon itself replaced a temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon. The temple is aligned to the Hyades. While a sacred building dedicated to the patron goddess, the Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, in the final decade of the sixth century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s, on 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the sculptures with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, since 1983, the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece. The Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon, jamauri D. Christopher Pelling asserts that Athena Parthenos may have constituted a discrete cult of Athena, intimately connected with, but not identical to, that of Athena Polias. According to this theory, the name of the Parthenon means the temple of the virgin goddess and it has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the maidens, whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city. Parthénos has also applied to the Virgin Mary, Parthénos Maria. The first instance in which Parthenon definitely refers to the building is found in the writings of the 4th century BC orator Demosthenes. In 5th-century building accounts, the structure is simply called ho naos, because the Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, it has sometimes been referred to as the Temple of Minerva, the Roman name for Athena, particularly during the 19th century
14.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
15.
Appian Way
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The Appian Way was one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy and its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius, Appia longarum. The Appian Way was used as a route for military supplies since its construction for that purpose in 312 B. C. The Appian Way was the first long road built specifically to transport troops outside the region of greater Rome. The few roads outside the city were Etruscan and went mainly to Etruria. By the late Republic, the Romans had expanded over most of Italy and were masters of road construction, Rome had an affinity for the people of Campania, who, like themselves, traced their backgrounds to the Etruscans. The Samnite Wars were instigated by the Samnites when Rome attempted to ally itself with the city of Capua in Campania, the Italic speakers in Latium had long ago been subdued and incorporated into the Roman state. They were responsible for changing Rome from a primarily Etruscan to a primarily Italic state, dense populations of sovereign Samnites remained in the mountains north of Capua, which is just north of the Greek city of Neapolis. Around 343 BC, Rome and Capua attempted to form an alliance, the Samnites reacted with military force. Between Capua and Rome lay the Pontine Marshes, a swamp infested with malaria, a tortuous coastal road wound between Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber and Neapolis. The via Latina followed its ancient and scarcely more accessible path along the foothills of Monti Laziali and Monti Lepini, in the First Samnite War the Romans found they could not support or resupply troops in the field against the Samnites across the marsh. A revolt of the Latin League drained their resources further and they gave up the attempted alliance and settled with Samnium. The Romans were only biding their time while they looked for a solution, the first answer was the colonia, a cultivation of settlers from Rome, who would maintain a permanent base of operations. The Second Samnite War erupted when Rome attempted to place a colony at Cales in 334, the Samnites, now a major power after defeating the Greeks of Tarentum, occupied Neapolis to try to ensure its loyalty. The Neapolitans appealed to Rome, which sent an army and expelled the Samnites from Neapolis, in 312 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus became censor at Rome. He was of the gens Claudia, who were descended from the Sabines taken into the early Roman state. He had been given the name of the ancestor of the gens. He was a populist, i. e. an advocate of the common people, a man of inner perspicacity, in the years of success he was said to have lost his outer vision and thus acquired the name caecus, blind
16.
Roman engineering
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Romans are famous for their advanced engineering accomplishments, although some of their own inventions were improvements on older ideas, concepts and inventions. Technology for bringing running water into cities was developed in the east, the architecture used in Rome was strongly influenced by Greek and Etruscan sources. Roads were common at time, but the Romans improved their design. Moreover, their contributions were described in detail by authors such as Vitruvius, Frontinus and Pliny the Elder, so there is a printed record of their many inventions. 1,000 cubic metres of water were brought into Rome by 14 different aqueducts each day, per capita water usage in ancient Rome matched that of modern-day cities like New York City or modern Rome. Most water was for use, such as baths and sewers. De aquaeductu is the two volume treatise on 1st century aqueducts of Rome, written by Frontinus. The aqueducts could stretch from 10–100 km long, and typically descended from an elevation of 300 m above sea level at the source, Roman engineers used inverted siphons to move water across a valley if they judged it impractical to build a raised aqueduct. The Roman legions were largely responsible for building the aqueducts, maintenance was often done by slaves. The Romans were among the first civilizations to harness the power of water and they built some of the first watermills outside of Greece for grinding flour and spread the technology for constructing watermills throughout the Mediterranean region. It is known that they were capable of building and operating mining equipment such as crushing mills. Large diameter vertical wheels of Roman vintage, for raising water, have been excavated from the Rio Tinto mines in Southwestern Spain, Roman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges ever built. They were built with stone, employing the arch as basic structure, built in 142 BC, the Pons Aemilius, later named Ponte Rotto is the oldest Roman stone bridge in Rome, Italy. They were normally at least 18 meters above the body of water, an example of temporary military bridge construction are the two Caesars Rhine bridges. The Romans built many dams for water collection, such as the Subiaco dams, one of the Subiaco dams was reputedly the highest ever found or inferred. They built 72 dams in Spain, such as those at Mérida, at one site, Montefurado in Galicia, they appear to have built a dam across the river Sil to expose alluvial gold deposits in the bed of the river. The site is near the spectacular Roman gold mine of Las Medulas, tanks for holding water are also common along aqueduct systems, and numerous examples are known from just one site, the gold mines at Dolaucothi in west Wales. Masonry dams were common in North Africa for providing a water supply from the wadis behind many settlements
17.
Great Wall of China
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Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC, these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built 220–206 BC by Qin Shi Huang, since then, the Great Wall has been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced, the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty. The Great Wall stretches from Dandong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, a comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km. This is made up of 6,259 km sections of wall,359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as hills. Another archaeological survey found that the wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km. The collection of fortifications now known as The Great Wall of China has historically had a number of different names in both Chinese and English. The Chinese character 城 is a compound of the place or earth radical 土 and 成. The longer Chinese name Ten-Thousand-Mile Long Wall came from Sima Qians description of it in the Records, though he did not name the walls as such. The AD493 Book of Song quotes the frontier general Tan Daoji referring to the wall of 10,000 miles, closer to the modern name. Since Chinas metrication in 1930, it has been equivalent to 500 metres or 1,600 feet. However, this use of ten-thousand is figurative in a manner to the Greek and English myriad. Because of the association with the First Emperors supposed tyranny. Instead, various terms were used in records, including frontier, rampart, barrier, the outer fortresses. Poetic and informal names for the wall included the Purple Frontier, only during the Qing period did Long Wall become the catch-all term to refer to the many border walls regardless of their location or dynastic origin, equivalent to the English Great Wall. The current English name evolved from accounts of the Chinese wall from early modern European travelers, by the 19th century, The Great Wall of China had become standard in English, French, and German, although other European languages continued to refer to it as the Chinese wall. The Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring, during this time and the subsequent Warring States period, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Yan, and Zhongshan all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, king Zheng of Qin conquered the last of his opponents and unified China as the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Intending to impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, to position the empire against the Xiongnu people from the north, however, he ordered the building of new walls to connect the remaining fortifications along the empires northern frontier
18.
Qin Shi Huang
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Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and was the first emperor of a unified China. He was born Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng, a prince of the state of Qin. He became the King Zheng of Qin when he was thirteen, then Chinas first emperor when he was 38 after the Qin had conquered all of the other Warring States and unified all of China in 221 BC. Rather than maintain the title of king borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers and his self-invented title emperor, as indicated by his use of the word First, would continue to be borne by Chinese rulers for the next two millennia. Qin Shi Huang also worked with his minister Li Si to enact major economic and he is traditionally said to have banned and burned many books and executed scholars, though a closer examination renders the account doubtful. In ancient China however the naming convention differed, and Zhao may be used as the surname, the rulers of Qin had styled themselves kings from the time of King Huiwen in 325 BC. Upon his ascension, Zheng became known as the King of Qin or King Zheng of Qin and this title made him the nominal equal of the rulers of Shang and of Zhou, the last of whose kings had been deposed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 256 BC. Following the surrender of Qi in 221 BC, King Zheng had reunited all of the lands of the former Kingdom of Zhou, rather than maintain his rank as king, however, he created a new title of huángdì for himself. This new title combined two titles—huáng of the mythical Three Sovereigns and the dì of the legendary Five Emperors of Chinese prehistory. King Zheng chose the new name of First Emperor on the understanding that his successors would be successively titled the Second Emperor, Third Emperor. The new title carried religious overtones, for that reason, Sinologists—starting with Peter Boodberg or Edward Schafer—sometimes translate it as thearch and the First Emperor as the First Thearch. The First Emperor intended that his realm would remain intact through the ages but, following its overthrow and replacement by Han after his death, following his elevation as emperor, both Zhengs personal name 政 and possibly its homophone 正 became taboo. The First Emperor also arrogated the first-person Chinese pronoun 朕 for his exclusive use, others were to address him as Your Majesty in person and Your Highness in writing. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, written by Sima Qian during the Han dynasty, the first emperor was the eldest son of the Qin prince Yiren, who later became King Zhuangxiang of Qin. Prince Yiren at that time was residing at the court of Zhao, Prince Yiren had fallen in love at first sight with a concubine of Lü Buwei, a rich merchant from the State of Wey. Lü consented for her to be Yirens wife, who became known as Lady Zhao after the state of Zhao. Lü Buweis machinations later helped Yiren become King Zhuangxiang of Qin in 250 BC, however, the Records of the Grand Historian also claimed that the first emperor was not the actual son of Prince Yiren but that of Lü Buwei. According to translations of the Annals of Lü Buwei, Zhao Ji gave birth to the emperor in the city of Handan in 259 BC
19.
Sri Lanka
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Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest, Sri Lankas documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lankas recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, in addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the capital and largest city. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of the two countries in South Asia that are rated among high human development on the Human Development Index. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names, according to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Mahabharata, the island was referred to as Lankā, in Tamil, the island is referred to as Eelam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā or Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni, as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon, it achieved independence as the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. The country is known in Sinhalese as Śrī Laṃkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai, in 1972, its formal name was changed to Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka. Later in 1978 it was changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority. The pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years, the era spans the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, Pahiyangala and it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara. The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravanas airport, early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were probably ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering approximately 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka. According to the Mahāvamsa, a written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600BC and other signs of advanced civilization has also discovered in Sri Lanka
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Jetavanaramaya
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The Jetavanaramaya is a stupa located in the ruins of Jetavana in the sacred world heritage city of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. Mahasena of Anuradhapura initiated the construction of the following the destruction of the mahavihara. His son Maghavanna I completed the construction of the stupa, a part of a sash or belt tied by the Buddha is believed to be the relic that is enshrined here. The structure is no longer the tallest, but it is still the largest, approximately 93.3 million baked bricks were used in its construction, the engineering ingenuity behind the construction of the structure is a significant development in the history of the island. This stupa belongs to the Sagalika sect, the compound covers approximately 5.6 hectares and is estimated to have housed 10,000 Buddhist monks. One side of the stupa is 576 ft long, and the flights of stairs at each of the four sides of it are 28 ft wide, the doorpost to the shrine, which is situated in the courtyard, is 27 ft high. The stupa has a 8.5 m deep foundation, stone inscriptions in the courtyard give the names of people who donated to the building effort. The differences between the Theravadins and Mahayanins escalated to an extent to which a penalty was established to any person providing alms to monks dwelling in the mahavihara. The Mahavamsa quotes Sanghamitta, The dwellers in the Mahavihara do not teach the vinaya, we are those who teach the vinaya, O king. The monks dwelling at the premises moved to Malaya Rata and Ruhuna, the pillaging prompted a rebellion by minister Meghavannabhaya, the minister raised an army from Malaya and set camp by the Duratissaka tank. The dakkinagiri monks were then entrusted with the premises of Jetavana Vihara, as the largest ancient stupa constructed and one of the tallest ancient structures in the world, the structural ingenuity and engineering skills employed for the construction are significant. The foundations of the structure were 8. 5m deep and the size of the structure required bricks which could withstand loads of up to 166 kg. The Mahavamsa describes the foundation laying, where fissures were filled with stones, finely crushed dolomite lime stone, sieved sand and clay provided the bonding material for the bricks. The clay employed was pliable and thus accommodates movement within the structure, one of the sides of the brick was roughened to trap the bonding slurry thus limiting lateral movement. The stupa was covered with lime plaster, the plaster used contained seashells, sugar syrup, egg whites, coconut water, glues, oils, plant resin, sand, clay. The plaster also provided waterproofing for the structure, the Mahavamsa also mentions the use of copper sheets over the foundation and arsenic dissolved in sesame oil to prevent insect and plant intrusions inside the stupa. It is estimated that Jetavanaramaya took 15 years to complete and would have required a workforce of hundreds, including brickyard workers and bricklayers. The Jetavanaramaya was under the monks of the Sagalika sect, the Sagalica sect was closely linked with the Abhyagiri viharaya
21.
Anuradhapura
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Anuradhapura is a major city in Sri Lanka. It is the city of North Central Province, Sri Lanka. Anuradhapura is one of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka, famous for its ruins of an ancient Sri Lankan civilization. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Rajarata, following the kingdoms of Tambapanni. The city, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the center of Theravada Buddhism for many centuries, the city lies 205 km north of the current capital Colombo in Sri Lankas North Central Province, on the banks of the historic Malvathu Oya. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and it is believed that from the fourth century BC until the beginning of the 11th century AD it was the capital of the Sinhalese. During this period it remained one of the most stable and durable centers of political power, the ancient city, considered sacred to the Buddhist world, is today surrounded by monasteries covering an area of over sixteen square miles. Protohistoric Iron Age Although according to records the city was founded in the 5th century BC. Very little evidence was available about the period before the 5th century BC, further excavations in Anuradhapura have uncovered information about the existence of a protohistoric habitation of humans in the citadel. The protohistoric Iron Age, which spans from 900 to 600 BC, marked the appearance of iron technology, pottery, in the time period 700 to 600 BC, the settlement in Anuradhapura had grown over an area of at least 50 hectares. The city was situated of major ports northwest and northeast. It was surrounded by irrigable and fertile land, the city was also buried deep in the jungle providing natural defence from invaders. Lower Early Historic period The Lower Early Historic period, spanning from 500 to 250 BC, is studied on the lines of the chronicles, during this time King Pandukabhaya formally planned the city, with gates, quarters for traders etc. The city at the time would have covered an area of 1 square kilometre makes it one of the largest in the continent at the time. A hermitage was made for many ascetics, eastward of that same cemetery and it is believed that King Pandukabhaya made it his capital in the 4th century BC, and that he also laid out the town and its suburbs according to a well-organized plan. He constructed a reservoir named Abhayavapi and he established shrines for yakkhas such as Kalawela and Cittaraja. He housed the Yaksini-Cetiya in the form of a mare within the royal precincts, the slaves or Candalas were assigned their duties, and a village was set apart for them. They build dwellings for Niganthas, for wandering ascetics and for Ajivakas and Brahmanas, the tradition that King Pandukabhaya made Anuradhapura the capital city of Sri Lanka as early as the 4th century BC had been very important
22.
Roman aqueduct
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The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts in order to bring water from often distant sources into cities and towns, supplying public baths, latrines, fountains and private households. Aqueducts also provided water for mining operations, milling, farms, Aqueducts moved water through gravity alone, along a slight downward gradient within conduits of stone, brick or concrete. Most conduits were buried beneath the ground, and followed the contours of the terrain, obstructing peaks were circumvented or, less often, tunneled through. Where valleys or lowlands intervened, the conduit was carried on bridgework, or its contents fed into high-pressure lead, ceramic or stone pipes, most aqueduct systems included sedimentation tanks, which helped reduce any water-borne debris. Sluices and castella aquae regulated the supply to individual destinations, the run-off water from aqueducts drove urban water-mills, and scoured the drains and sewers. Romes first aqueduct supplied a water fountain sited at the cattle market. By the 3rd century AD, the city had aqueducts, sustaining a population of over a million in a water-extravagant economy. Most Roman aqueducts proved reliable, and durable, some were maintained into the modern era. Methods of aqueduct surveying and construction are noted by Vitruvius in his work De Architectura, the general Frontinus gives more detail in his official report on the problems, uses and abuses of Imperial Romes public water supply. Notable examples of architecture include the supporting piers of the Aqueduct of Segovia. The reliance of ancient communities upon such water resources restricted their potential growth, by the early Imperial era, the citys aqueducts supported a population of over a million, and an extravagant water supply for public amenities had become a fundamental part of Roman life. The run-off of aqueduct water scoured the sewers of cities and towns, Water from aqueducts was also used to supply villas, ornamental urban and suburban gardens, market gardens, farms and agricultural estates, the latter being the core of Romes economy and wealth. Rome had several springs within its perimeter walls but its groundwater was notoriously unpalatable, water from the river Tiber was badly affected by pollution and waterborne diseases. The citys demand for water had probably exceeded its local supplies by 312 BC, when the citys first aqueduct. The Aqua Appia was one of two major projects of the time, the other was a military road between Rome and Capua, the first leg of the so-called Appian Way. Both projects had significant strategic value, as the Third Samnite War had been under way for thirty years by that point. The road allowed rapid troop movements, and by design or fortunate coincidence, most of the Aqua Appia ran within a buried conduit and it was fed by a spring 16. A second aqueduct, the Aqua Anio Vetus, was commissioned some forty years later and its flow was more than twice that of the Aqua Appia, and it entered the city on raised arches, supplying water to higher elevations of the city
23.
Insula (building)
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The term was also used to mean a city block. The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building. Strabo notes that insulae, like domus, had running water, but this kind of housing was sometimes constructed at minimal expense for speculative purposes, resulting in insulae of poor construction. They were built in timber, mud brick, and later primitive concrete, among his many business interests, Marcus Licinius Crassus speculated in real estate and owned numerous insulae in the city. When one collapsed from poor construction, Cicero purportedly stated that Crassus was happy that he could charge higher rents for a new building than the collapsed one. Living quarters were typically smallest in the buildings uppermost floors, with the largest and most expensive apartments being located on the bottom floors. The insulae could be up to six or seven stories high, and despite height restrictions in the Imperial era, often those floors were without heating, running water or lavatories, which meant their occupants had to use Romes extensive system of public restrooms. Despite prohibitions, residents would sometimes dump trash and human excrement out the windows and into the surrounding streets, augustus instituted reforms aimed at increasing the safety of buildings in the city of Rome. According to the 4th-century regionaries, there were about 42, 000–46,000 insulae in the city, data on the number of insulae and to a lesser extent domus are used for classical demography. Photo of Insulae in Ostia Model of another insula in Ostia Insula 9, an excavation of a Pompeii insula Roman apartment building
24.
John Smeaton
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John Smeaton FRS was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer, and often regarded as the father of civil engineering and he was associated with the Lunar Society. Smeaton was born in Austhorpe, Leeds, England, in 1750, his premises were in the Great Turnstile in Holborn. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1753, Smeatons water wheel experiments were conducted on a small scale model with which he tested various configurations over a period of seven years. The resulting increasing efficiency in water power contributed to the Industrial Revolution and this led him into conflict with members of the academic establishment who rejected Leibnizs theory, believing it inconsistent with Sir Isaac Newtons conservation of momentum. Recommended by the Royal Society, Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse and he pioneered the use of hydraulic lime and developed a technique involving dovetailed blocks of granite in the building of the lighthouse. Portland cement led to the re-emergence of concrete as a building material. He also acted as a consultant on the disastrous 63-year-long New Harbour at Rye, the project is now known informally as Smeatons Harbour, but despite the name his involvement was limited and occurred more than 30 years after work on the harbour commenced. Employing his skills as a engineer, he devised a water engine for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1761. In 1782 he built the Chimney Mill at Spital Tongues in Newcastle upon Tyne and he also improved Thomas Newcomens atmospheric engine, erecting one at Chacewater mine, Wheal Busy, in Cornwall in 1775. In 1789 Smeaton applied an idea by Denis Papin, by using a pump to maintain the pressure. This bell, built for the Hexham bridge project, was not intended for underwater work, Smeaton is also credited with explaining the fundamental differences and benefits of overshot versus undershot water wheels. Smeaton experimented with the Newcomen steam engine and made marked improvements around the time James Watt was building his first engines, highly regarded by other engineers, he contributed to the Lunar Society and founded the Society of Civil Engineers in 1771. He coined the term civil engineers to distinguish them from military engineers graduating from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, the Society was a forerunner of the Institution of Civil Engineers, established in 1818, and was renamed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1830. His pupils included canal engineer William Jessop and architect and engineer Benjamin Latrobe and he died after suffering a stroke while walking in the garden of his family home at Austhorpe, and was buried in the parish church at Whitkirk, West Yorkshire. Smeaton is one of six civil engineers depicted in the Stephenson stained glass window, designed by William Wailes, a memorial stone commemorating Smeaton himself was unveiled in the Abbey on 7 November 1994, by Noel Ordman, President of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. John Smeaton Academy, a school in the suburbs of Leeds adjacent to the Pendas Fields estate near Austhorpe, is named after Smeaton
25.
Eddystone Lighthouse
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The Eddystone Lighthouse is on the dangerous Eddystone Rocks,9 statute miles south of Rame Head, England, United Kingdom. While Rame Head is in Cornwall, the rocks are in Devon, the current structure is the fourth to be built on the site. The first and second were destroyed by storm and fire, the third, also known as Smeatons Tower, is the best known because of its influence on lighthouse design and its importance in the development of concrete for building. Its upper portions have been re-erected in Plymouth as a monument, the first lighthouse, completed in 1699, was the worlds first open ocean lighthouse although the Cordouan lighthouse preceded it as the first offshore lighthouse. The Eddystone Rocks are an extensive reef approximately 12 miles SSW of Plymouth Sound, one of the most important naval harbours of England, and midway between Lizard Point, Cornwall and Start Point. Given the difficulty of gaining a foothold on the rocks particularly in the predominant swell it was a time before anyone attempted to place any warning on them. The first lighthouse on Eddystone Rocks was a wooden structure built by Henry Winstanley. The lighthouse was also the first recorded instance of an offshore lighthouse, construction started in 1696 and the light was lit on 14 November 1698. This gives rise to the claims that there have been five lighthouses on Eddystone Rock, winstanleys tower lasted until the Great Storm of 1703 erased almost all trace on 27 November. Winstanley was on the lighthouse, completing additions to the structure, no trace was found of him, or of the other five men in the lighthouse. The cost of construction and five years maintenance totalled £7,814 7s. 6d, during which time dues totalling £4,721 19s. 3d had been collected at one penny per ton from passing vessels. Following the destruction of the first lighthouse, Captain John Lovett acquired the lease of the rock and he commissioned John Rudyard to design the new lighthouse, built as a conical wooden structure around a core of brick and concrete. A temporary light was first shone from it in 1708 and the work was completed in 1709 and this proved more durable, surviving nearly fifty years. On the night of 2 December 1755, the top of the lantern caught fire, the three keepers threw water upwards from a bucket but were driven onto the rock and were rescued by boat as the tower burnt down. Keeper Henry Hall, who was 94 at the time, died from ingesting molten lead from the lantern roof. A report on this case was submitted to the Royal Society by the physician Dr. Edward Spry, the third lighthouse marked a major step forward in the design of such structures. Recommended by the Royal Society, civil engineer John Smeaton modelled the shape on an oak tree and he pioneered hydraulic lime, a concrete that cured under water, and developed a technique of securing the granite blocks using dovetail joints and marble dowels. Construction started in 1756 at Millbay and the light was first lit on 16 October 1759, Smeatons lighthouse was 59 feet high and had a diameter at the base of 26 feet and at the top of 17 feet
26.
Thomas Telford
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Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE was a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours. Telford was born on 9 August 1757 at Glendinning, a hill farm 3 miles east of Eskdalemuir Kirk, in the parish of Westerkirk, in Eskdale. His father John Telford, a shepherd, died soon after Thomas was born, Thomas was raised in poverty by his mother Janet Jackson. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a stonemason and he worked for a time in Edinburgh and in 1782 he moved to London where, after meeting architects Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers, he was involved in building additions to Somerset House there. Two years later he found work at Portsmouth dockyard and — although still largely self-taught — was extending his talents to the specification, design, in 1787, through his wealthy patron William Pulteney, he became Surveyor of Public Works in Shropshire. Civil engineering was a still in its infancy, so Telford was set on establishing himself as an architect. His projects included renovation of Shrewsbury Castle, the towns prison, as the Shropshire county surveyor, Telford was also responsible for bridges. The bridge at Buildwas was Telfords first iron bridge and he was influenced by Abraham Darbys bridge at Ironbridge, and observed that it was grossly over-designed for its function, and many of the component parts were poorly cast. By contrast, his bridge was 30 ft wider in span and half the weight and he was one of the first engineers to test his materials thoroughly before construction. As his engineering prowess grew, Telford was to return to this material repeatedly, in 1795 the bridge at Bewdley in Worcestershire was swept away in the winter floods and Telford was responsible for the design of its replacement. The same winter floods saw the bridge at Tenbury also swept away and this bridge across the River Teme was the joint responsibility of both Worcestershire and Shropshire and the bridge has a bend where the two counties meet. Telford was responsible for the repair to the end of the bridge. Extending for over 1,000 feet with an altitude of 126 feet above the valley floor, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct consists of nineteen arches, each with a forty-five foot span. Being a pioneer in the use of cast-iron for large scaled structures, Telford had to invent new techniques, such as using boiling sugar, eminent canal engineer William Jessop oversaw the project, but he left the detailed execution of the project in Telfords hands. The aqueduct was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009, the same period also saw Telford involved in the design and construction of the Shrewsbury Canal. When the original engineer, Josiah Clowes, died in 1795, the aqueduct is no longer in use, but is preserved as a distinctive piece of canal engineering. The Ellesmere Canal was completed in 1805 and alongside his canal responsibilities and these included water supply works for Liverpool, improvements to Londons docklands and the rebuilding of London Bridge
27.
Norwich University
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Norwich University – The Military College of Vermont is a private university located in Northfield, Vermont. It is the oldest private college in the United States. The university was founded in 1819 at Norwich, Vermont, as the American Literary, Scientific and it is the oldest of six senior military colleges, and is recognized by the United States Department of Defense as the Birthplace of ROTC. The university was founded in 1819 at Norwich, Vermont by Captain Alden Partridge, military educator, Partridge believed in the American System of Education, a traditional liberal arts curriculum with instruction in civil engineering and military science. After leaving West Point because of disapproval of his system, he returned to his native state of Vermont to create the American Literary, Scientific. He believed that a militia was an urgent necessity and developed the American system around that idea. His academy became the inspiration for a number of military colleges throughout the nation, including The Citadel, today, Norwich offers substantial online distance graduate programs and is similar in many regards to The Citadel in mission, online offerings, student body composition, and size. Partridge was the father of ROTC and the Citizen-Soldier concept. All entering freshman entering the Corps of Cadets are called Rooks, the institution of Rookdom consists of two three-month processes that mold civilians into Norwich Cadets, Rook Basic Training and Basic Leadership Training. Culmination of Rook Basic Training marks the halfway point toward Recognition and occurs before Thanksgiving break, Recognition into the Corps of Cadets typically occurs around the twenty-third week. Partridges educational beliefs were considered radical at the time, and this led to his views with the federal government while he was the superintendent of West Point. Upon creation of his own school, he immediately incorporated classes of agriculture and modern languages in addition to the sciences, liberal arts, Partridge founded six other military institutions during his quest to reform the fledgling United States military. In 1825 the academy moved to Middletown, Connecticut, to provide naval training to the schools growing corps of cadets. Beginning in 1826, the offered the first program of courses in civil engineering in the US. In 1829, the state of Connecticut declined to grant Captain Partridge a charter, in 1834 Vermont granted a charter and recognized the institution as Norwich University. During the 1856 academic year, the first chapter of the Theta Chi Fraternity was founded by cadets Frederick Norton Freeman and Arthur Chase. With the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Norwich cadets served as instructors of the state throughout the Northeast. Norwich turned out hundreds of officers and soldiers who served with the armies in the American Civil War
28.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a private research university and space-grant institution located in Troy, New York, with two additional campuses in Hartford and Groton, Connecticut. Numerous American colleges or departments of applied sciences were modeled after Rensselaer, built on a hillside, RPIs 265-acre campus overlooks the city of Troy and the Hudson River and is a blend of traditional and modern architecture. The institute operates a business incubator and the 1, 250-acre Rensselaer Technology Park. Today, Rensselaer is organized into six main schools which contain 37 departments, with emphasis on science and it is well recognized for its degree programs in engineering, computing, business and management, information technology, the sciences, design, and liberal arts. Rensselaer is ranked 39th among all colleges and universities in the U. S. News & World Report rankings. Stephen van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5,1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the schools first senior professor and appointed the first board of trustees, the school opened on Monday, January 3,1825 at the Old Bank Place, a building at the north end of Troy. Tuition was around $40 per semester, the fact that the school attracted students from as far as Ohio and Pennsylvania is attributed to the reputation of Eaton. Fourteen months of successful trial led to the incorporation of the school on March 21,1826 by the state of New York, in its early years, the Rensselaer School strongly resembled a graduate school more than it did a college, drawing graduates from many older institutions. Under Eaton, the Rensselaer School, renamed the Rensselaer Institute in 1832, was a small, the first civil engineering degrees in the United States were granted by the school in 1835, and many of the best remembered civil engineers of that time graduated from the school. Important visiting scholars included Joseph Henry, who had studied under Amos Eaton, and Thomas Davenport. In 1847 alumnus Benjamin Franklin Greene became the new senior professor, earlier he had done a thorough study of European technical schools to see how Rensselaer could be improved. In 1850 he reorganized the school into a polytechnic institute with six technical schools. In 1861 the name was changed to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a severe conflagration of May 10,1862, known as The Great Fire, destroyed more than 507 buildings in Troy and gutted 75 acres in the heart of the city. The Infant School building that housed the Institute at the time was destroyed in this fire, columbia University proposed that Rensselaer leave Troy altogether and merge with its New York City campus. Ultimately, the proposal was rejected and the left the crowded downtown for the hillside. Classes were temporarily held at the Vail House and in the Troy University building until 1864, one of the first Latino student organizations in the United States was founded at RPI in 1890. The Club Hispano Americano was established by the international Latin American students that attended the institute at this time, in 1904 the Institute was for the fourth time devastated by fire, when its main building was completely destroyed
29.
Cornell University
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Cornell University is an American private Ivy League and land-grant doctoral university located in Ithaca, New York. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornells motto, the university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar. Cornell is one of three private land grant universities in the nation and the one in New York. Of its seven colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges through the State University of New York system, including its agricultural. Of Cornells graduate schools, only the college is state-supported. As a land grant college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension program in every county of New York. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but is larger when the Cornell Botanic Gardens are considered. Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission has not been restricted by religion or race, the student body consists of more than 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and more than 120 countries. Cornell University was founded on April 27,1865, the New York State Senate authorized the university as the land grant institution. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, New York, as a site, fellow senator and experienced educator Andrew Dickson White agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the first two buildings and traveled to attract students and faculty, the university was inaugurated on October 7,1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day. Cornell developed as an innovative institution, applying its research to its own campus as well as to outreach efforts. For example, in 1883 it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity from a dynamo to light the grounds. Cornell has had active alumni since its earliest classes and it was one of the first universities to include alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees. Today the university has more than 4,000 courses, since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and it has partnerships with institutions in India, Singapore, and the Peoples Republic of China. Former president Jeffrey S. Lehman described the university, with its international profile. On March 9,2004, Cornell and Stanford University laid the cornerstone for a new Bridging the Rift Center to be built, Cornells main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake
30.
Nora Stanton Barney
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Nora Stanton Blatch Barney was an English-born American civil engineer, architect, and suffragist. She was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and she was born Nora Stanton Blatch in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England in 1883 to William Blatch and Harriot Eaton Stanton, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She studied Latin and mathematics at the Horace Mann School in New York, beginning in 1897, the family moved to the United States in 1902. Nora attended Cornell University, graduating in 1905 with a degree in civil engineering, in the same year, she was accepted as a junior member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and began work for the New York City Board of Water Supply. Following the examples set by her mother and grandmother, Nora also became active in the womens suffrage movement. In 2015, she was advanced to ASCE Fellow status. In 1908, she married the inventor Lee de Forest, and helped to some of the companies he had founded to promote his invention. The couple spent their honeymoon in Europe marketing radio equipment developed by de Forest, however, the couple separated only a year later, due largely to de Forests insistence that Nora quit her profession and become a conventional housewife. Shortly afterward, in June 1909, Nora gave birth to their daughter, in 1909, she began working as an engineer for the Radley Steel Construction Company. She divorced de Forest in 1911, in 1919, Nora married Morgan Barney, a marine architect. Their daughter, Rhoda Barney Jenkins, born July 12,1920, in New York, was an architect, Nora continued to work for equal rights for women and world peace, and in 1944 authored World Peace Through a Peoples Parliament. Nora worked as a developer and political activist until her death in Greenwich. Hijiya, James A. Lee de Forest and the Fatherhood of Radio
31.
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
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The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Signals, RMA Woolwich was commonly known as The Shop because its first building was a converted workshop of the Woolwich Arsenal. Education in the Academy focused at first on mathematics and the principles of gunnery. French was also taught, for a small fee, in the 1760s the Military Academy acquired its Royal title. At the same time the institution was split, younger cadets entered the Lower Academy, if they performed well in examinations they were allowed to proceed to the Upper Academy, where they learned military skills and sciences. The possibility of moving the Royal Military Academy out of the Warren was mooted as early as 1783, Wyatts Academy was built of yellow brick in the Tudor Gothic style. It consisted of a central block flanked by a pair of accommodation blocks, the central block contained classrooms, a library and offices, the accommodation blocks housed officers in the three-storey central sections and cadets in the two-storey wings. Behind the central block Wyatt placed a large dining hall flanked by spacious quadrangles having service buildings around the sides,128 cadets moved to the new Academy, these comprised the four senior years. Of the younger cadets, sixty were kept at the Warren, practical teaching continued to be given in the working context of the Arsenal. In 1810, military cadets of the East India Company, who had previously educated at the Academy, were moved to a new college at Addiscombe. In this way the Academy took on something of the ethos of an English public school and these contained new classrooms, with accommodation provided in similar new blocks behind. Sports facilities were added along with gun batteries for training. In 1873 Wyatts central block had to be rebuilt following a devastating fire. Arguments in favour of a merger gained momentum in the 1920s when the specialist, in 1936 it was decided that the merger should take place, but the Second World War intervened and in 1939 both institutions closed as their cadets were called up for active service. Thereafter, the old Academy site became part of Woolwich Garrison, the central block was taken over by the Royal Artillery Institution and housed a museum, archives and offices. The chapel became the Garrison Church, durkan Group bought the Woolwich site by public tender in 2006 and redevelopment started in 2008. The Woolwich buildings, several of which are grade II listed, are now being converted and extended into 334 houses and apartments, in 2017 the scaffolding around the main facade has been removed and refurbishment is nearing completion. Since 2013 the RMA cricket field, one of the oldest in the UK, is being used again by the 3rd and 4th team of Blackheath Cricket Club
32.
University of Westminster
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The University of Westminster is a public university in London, United Kingdom. Its antecedent institution, the Royal Polytechnic Institution, was founded in 1838 and was the first polytechnic institution in the UK, Westminster was awarded university status in 1992 meaning it could award its own degrees. Its headquarters and original campus are in Regent Street in the City of Westminster area of central London, with campuses in Fitzrovia, Marylebone. It operates the Westminster International University in Tashkent in Uzbekistan, westminsters academic activities are organised into seven faculties and schools, within which there are around 45 departments. Westminster had an income of £170.4 million in 2012/13, of which £4.5 million was from research grants and contracts. Westminster is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Association of MBAs, EFMD, the European University Association and Universities UK. ”Sir George Cayley, the father of aeronautical engineering, was the first chairman and the Polytechnic formally received a Royal charter in August 1839. Prince Albert visited the institution in 1840, when he descended in the diving bell, the first public photographic portrait studio in Europe opened on the roof of the Polytechnic in March 1841. In 1848, a theatre was added to the building, purpose-built to accommodate the growing audiences for the Polytechnic’s optical shows, ‘Professor’ John Henry Pepper joined the Polytechnic in the 1840s. Probably best known today for his illusion ‘Pepper’s Ghost’, his contribution to education deserves recognition, expansion gradually gave way to financial difficulty, reflecting a long-standing tension between education and the need to run a successful business. A fatal accident on the premises in 1859 caused the first institution to be wound up, various regeneration schemes were considered, but in 1879 a fire damaged the roof, precipitating the final crisis. In September 1881, the Royal Polytechnic Institution closed making a transition to new ownership, philanthropist Quintin Hogg acquired the lease to the building in December 1881 for £15,000. Hogg had already established a Ragged School and Boys Home in the Covent Garden area of London to provide an education for some of London’s poorest children. In 1873, he established the Youths’ Christian Institute and Reading Rooms to provide educational, sporting, the Institute moved to Long Acre in 1878 and was renamed the Young Men’s Christian Institute. Following Hogg’s purchase of 309 Regent Street, the YMCI moved into the new premises, about 6,000 members and students – three times the anticipated number – attended during the first 1882/3 session. The institute gradually adopted the name the Polytechnic Young Men’s Christian Institute, or simply, the building housed classrooms, a swimming bath, gymnasium, and a refreshment room. Activities included Parliamentary debating, a Reading Circle, music and drama societies, by 1888 membership was 4,200, in addition to 7,300 students, and over 200 classes were held weekly as well as concerts, lectures, and an annual industrial exhibition. Membership was open to those aged between 16 and 25, a Young Womens Branch, housed in separate premises in Langham Place, was also established. In the early 1880s the Institute attracted much attention from the technical education lobby
33.
Putney
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Putney is a district in south-west London, England in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is centred 5.1 miles south-west of Charing Cross, the area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. And thus we take leave of Putney, one of the pleasantest of the London suburbs, Putney is an ancient parish which covered 9.11 square kilometres and was until 1889 in the Hundred of Brixton in the county of Surrey. Its area has reduced by the loss of Roehampton to the south-west. In 1855 the parish was included in the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works and was grouped into the Wandsworth District, in 1889 the area was removed from Surrey and became part of the County of London. The Wandsworth District became the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in 1900, since 1965 Putney has formed part of the London Borough of Wandsworth in Greater London. The benefice of the remains a perpetual curacy whose patron is the Dean. It has a small chantry chapel removed from the east end of the south aisle, a charitable almshouse for 12 men and women, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was erected by Sir Abraham Dawes, who provided it with an endowment. Putney was also birthplace of Thomas Cromwell, made Earl of Essex by Henry VIII and of Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died at a house on Putney Heath. At that time Putney took on Londons premier role in civil engineering, Putney had a second place of worship, for Independents and Roehampton was in the process of achieving separate parish status. The proprietors of the bridge distributed £31 per annum to watermen, and watermens widows and children, Putney in 1887 covered 9 square kilometres. Putney appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Putelei and it was noted that it did not fall into the category of local jurisdictions known as a manor, but obtained 20 shillings from the ferry or market toll at Putney belonging to the manor of Mortlake. One famous crossing at Putney was that of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 upon his disgrace in falling out of favour with Henry VIII and on ceasing to be the holder of the Great Seal of England. As he was riding up Putney Hill he was overtaken by one of the royal chamberlains who presented him with a ring as a token of the continuance of his majestys favour. The first permanent bridge between Fulham and Putney was completed in 1729, and was the bridge to be built across the Thames in London. The ferry boat was on the side, however and the waterman. Walpole vowed that a bridge would replace the ferry, the Prince of Wales apparently was often inconvenienced by the ferry when returning from hunting in Richmond park and asked Walpole to use his influence by supporting the bridge. The bridge was a structure and lasted for 150 years
34.
University of Glasgow
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The University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotlands four ancient universities. Along with the University of Edinburgh, the University was part of the Scottish Enlightenment during the 18th century and it is currently a member of Universitas 21, the international network of research universities, and the Russell Group. Glasgow University served all of students by preparing them for professions, the law, medicine, civil service, teaching. It also trained smaller but growing numbers for careers in science, originally located in the citys High Street, since 1870 the main University campus has been located at Gilmorehill in the West End of the city. Additionally, a number of university buildings are located elsewhere, such as the Veterinary School in Bearsden, and it is the second-oldest university in Scotland after St Andrews and the fourth-oldest in the English-speaking world. The universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen were ecclesiastical foundations, as one of the Ancient Universities of the United Kingdom, Glasgow University is one of only eight institutions to award undergraduate masters degrees in certain disciplines. The University has been without its original Bull since the mid-sixteenth century, in 1560, during the political unrest accompanying the Scottish Reformation, the then chancellor, Archbishop James Beaton, a supporter of the Marian cause, fled to France. He took with him, for safe-keeping, many of the archives and valuables of the Cathedral and the University, including the Mace, although the Mace was sent back in 1590, the archives were not. If they had not been lost by time, they certainly went astray during the French Revolution when the Scots College was under threat. Its records and valuables were moved for safe-keeping out of the city of Paris, the Bull remains the authority by which the University awards degrees. Teaching at the University began in the chapterhouse of Glasgow Cathedral, subsequently moving to nearby Rottenrow, the University was given 13 acres of land belonging to the Black Friars on High Street by Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1563. The Lion and Unicorn Staircase was also transferred from the old site and is now attached to the Main Building. To continue this work in his will he founded Andersons College, in 1973, Delphine Parrott became its first woman professor, as Gardiner Professor of Immunology. In October 2014, the university court voted for the University to become the first academic institution in Europe to divest from the fuel industry. The University is currently spread over a number of different campuses, the main one is the Gilmorehill campus, in Hillhead. The University has also established joint departments with the Glasgow School of Art, the Universitys initial accommodation including Glasgow University Library was part of the complex of religious buildings in the precincts of Glasgow Cathedral. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Hamilton Building was replaced with a very grand two-court building with a decorated west front facing the High Street, called the Nova Erectio, over the following centuries, the Universitys size and scope continued to expand. In 1757 it built the Macfarlane Observatory and later Scotlands first public museum and it was a centre of the Scottish Enlightenment and subsequently of the Industrial Revolution, and its expansion in the High Street was constrained
35.
Chichen Itza
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Chichen Itza was a large pre-Columbian city built by the Maya people of the Terminal Classic period. The archaeological site is located in Tinúm Municipality, Yucatán State, Chichen Itza was a major focal point in the Northern Maya Lowlands from the Late Classic through the Terminal Classic and into the early portion of the Postclassic period. The site exhibits a multitude of styles, reminiscent of styles seen in central Mexico and of the Puuc. Chichen Itza was one of the largest Maya cities and it was likely to have one of the mythical great cities, or Tollans. The city may have had the most diverse population in the Maya world, the ruins of Chichen Itza are federal property, and the sites stewardship is maintained by Mexicos Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. The land under the monuments had been privately owned until 29 March 2010, Chichen Itza is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico, an estimated 1.4 million tourists visit the ruins every year. The Maya name Chichen Itza means At the mouth of the well of the Itza and this derives from chi, meaning mouth or edge, and chen or cheen, meaning well. Itzá is the name of an group that gained political. One possible translation for Itza is enchanter of the water, from its, sorcerer, the name is spelled Chichén Itzá in Spanish, and the accents are sometimes maintained in other languages to show that both parts of the name are stressed on their final syllable. Other references prefer the Maya orthography, Chichen Itza and this form preserves the phonemic distinction between ch and ch, since the base word cheen begins with a postalveolar ejective affricate consonant. The word Itza has a high tone on the a followed by a glottal stop, evidence in the Chilam Balam books indicates another, earlier name for this city prior to the arrival of the Itza hegemony in northern Yucatán. While most sources agree the first word means seven, there is debate as to the correct translation of the rest. This earlier name is difficult to define because of the absence of a standard of orthography. This name, dating to the Late Classic Period, is recorded both in the book of Chilam Balam de Chumayel and in texts in the ruins. Chichen Itza is located in the portion of Yucatán state in Mexico. The northern Yucatán Peninsula is arid, and the rivers in the interior all run underground, there are two large, natural sink holes, called cenotes, that could have provided plentiful water year round at Chichen, making it attractive for settlement. Of the two cenotes, the Cenote Sagrado or Sacred Cenote, is the most famous, according to post-Conquest sources, pre-Columbian Maya sacrificed objects and human beings into the cenote as a form of worship to the Maya rain god Chaac. Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the Cenote Sagrado from 1904 to 1910, a study of human remains taken from the Cenote Sagrado found that they had wounds consistent with human sacrifice
36.
Maya peoples
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The Maya people are a group of Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. They inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, the pre-Columbian Maya population was approximately eight million. There were a seven million Maya living in this area at the start of the 21st century. Guatemala, southern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, El Salvador, one of the largest groups of modern Maya can be found in Mexicos Yucatán State and the neighboring states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and in Belize. These peoples commonly identify themselves simply as Maya with no further ethnic subdivision and they speak the language which anthropologists term Yucatec Maya, but is identified by speakers and Yucatecos simply as Maya. Among Maya speakers, Spanish is commonly spoken as a second or first language, linguists refer to the Maya language as Yucatec or Yucatec Maya to distinguish it from other Mayan languages. This norm has often been misinterpreted to mean that the people are also called Yucatec Maya, that refers only to the language. Maya is one language in the Mayan language family, thus, to refer to Maya as Mayans would be similar to referring to Spanish people as Romantics because they speak a language belonging to the Romance language family. Confusion of the term Maya/Mayan as an ethnic label occurs because Maya women who use traditional dress identify by the ethnic term mestiza, the Yucatáns indigenous population was first exposed to Europeans after a party of Spanish shipwreck survivors came ashore in 1511. One of the sailors, Gonzalo Guerrero, is reported to have taken up with a woman and started a family. Later Spanish expeditions to the region were led by Córdoba in 1517, Grijalva in 1518, from 1528 to 1540, several attempts by Francisco Montejo to conquer the Yucatán failed. His son, Francisco de Montejo the Younger, fared almost as badly when he first took over, while holding out at Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza was conquered by 1570, in 1542, the western Yucatán Peninsula also surrendered to him. Historically, the population in the half of the peninsula was less affected by. In the 21st century in the Yucatán Peninsula, between 750,000 and 1,200,000 people speak Mayan, however, three times more than that are of Maya origins, hold ancient Maya surnames, and do not speak Mayan languages as their first language. Matthew Restall, in his book The Maya Conquistador, mentions a series of letters sent to the King of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. The noble Maya families at that time signed documents to the Spanish Royal Family, surnames mentioned in letters are Pech, Camal, Xiu, Ucan, Canul, Cocom. A large 19th-century revolt by the native Maya people of Yucatán, for a period the Maya state of Chan Santa Cruz was recognized as an independent nation by the British Empire, particularly in terms of trading with British Honduras
37.
Channel (geography)
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In physical geography, a channel is a type of landform consisting of the outline of a path of relatively shallow and narrow body of fluid, most commonly the confine of a river, river delta or strait. The word is cognate to canal, and sometimes shows in this form, most examples of this are fjords in the Pacific Northwest, a notable exception is the Casiquiare canal. All likely share borrowing from Spanish, Portuguese or French, channels can be either natural or human-made. A channel is typically outlined in terms of its bed and banks, Channel initiation refers to the site on a mountain slope where water begins to flow between identifiable banks. This site is referred to as the head and it marks an important boundary between hillslope processes and fluvial processes. The channel head is the most upslope part of a network and is defined by flowing water between defined identifiable banks. A channel head forms as overland flow and/or subsurface flow accumulate to a point where shear stress can overcome resistance of the ground surface. Channel heads are associated with colluvium, hollows and landslides. Overland flow is a factor in channel initiation where saturation overland flow deepens to increase shear stress. Overland flows converge in topographical depressions where channel initiation begins, soil composition, vegetation, precipitation, and topography dictate the amount and rate of overland flow. The composition of a soil determines how quickly saturation occurs and cohesive strength retards the entrainment of material from overland flows, vegetation slows infiltration rates during precipitation events and plant roots anchor soil on hillslopes. Subsurface flow destabilizes soil and resurfaces on hillslopes where channel heads are often formed and this often results in abrupt channel heads and landslides. Natural channels are formed by fluvial process and are found across the Earth and these are mostly formed by flowing water from the hydrological cycle, though can also be formed by other fluids such as flowing lava. Channels also describe the course through a reef, sand bar, bay. One example is the Columbia River, a located in the US states of Washington and Oregon. A stream channel is the confine of a stream consisting of a bed. Stream channels exist in a variety of geometries, Stream channel development is controlled by both water and sediment movement. There is a difference between low gradient streams and high gradient streams, a wide variety of stream channel types can be distinguished
38.
Funnels
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A funnel is a pipe with a wide mouth and a narrow stem. It is used to channel liquid or fine-grained substances into containers with a small opening, without a funnel, spillage may occur. Funnels are usually made of steel, aluminium, glass. The material used in its construction should be enough to withstand the weight of the substance being transferred. For this reason, stainless steel or glass are useful in transferring diesel, sometimes disposable paper funnels are used in cases where it would be difficult to adequately clean the funnel afterwards. Dropper funnels, also called dropping funnels or tap funnels, have a tap to allow the release of a liquid. A flat funnel, made of polypropylene, utilizes living hinges, the term funnel may refer to the chimney or smokestack on a steam locomotive and commonly refers to the same on a ship. The term funnel is also applied to other seemingly strange objects like a pipe or a kitchen bin. There are many different kinds of funnels that have adapted for specialized applications in the laboratory. Filter funnels, thistle funnels, and dropping funnels have stopcocks which allow the fluids to be added to a flask slowly, for solids, a powder funnel with a wide and short stem is more appropriate as it does not clog easily. When used with paper, filter funnels, Büchner and Hirsch funnels can be used to remove fine particles from a liquid in a process called filtration. For more demanding applications, the paper in the latter two may be replaced with a sintered glass frit. Separatory funnels are used in liquid-liquid extractions, the Tullgren funnel is used to collect arthropods from plant litter or similar material. Glass is the material of choice for laboratory applications due to its inertness compared with metals or plastics, however, plastic funnels made of nonreactive polyethylene are used for transferring aqueous solutions. Plastic is most often used for powder funnels that do not come into contact with solvent in normal use, to channel liquid or fine-grained substances into containers with a small opening. Used for pouring liquids or powders through an opening and hold the filter paper in filtration. The inverted funnel is a symbol of madness and it appears in many Medieval depictions of the mad, for example, in Hieronymus Boschs Ship of Fools and Allegory of Gluttony and Lust. The Cebuano word for inverted funnel is embodo, such devices are used as timers
39.
Cenote
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A cenote is a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Especially associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings, the term derives from a word used by the low-land Yucatec Maya — tsonot — to refer to any location with accessible groundwater. Cenotes are common forms in low latitude regions, particularly on islands, coastlines. Cenotes are surface connections to water bodies. There are over 6000 different cenotes in the Yucatan Pensinsula in Mexico alone, the term cenote has also been used to describe similar karst features in other countries such as Cuba and Australia, in addition to the more generic term of sinkholes. Cenote water is very clear, as the water comes from rain water filtering slowly through the ground. The groundwater flow rate within a cenote may be very slow, in many cases, cenotes are areas where sections of cave roof have collapsed revealing an underlying cave system, and the water flow rates may be much faster, up to 10 kilometers per day. Cenotes around the world attract cave divers who have documented extensive flooded cave systems through them, Cenotes are formed by dissolution of rock and the resulting subsurface void, which may or may not be linked to an active cave system, and the subsequent structural collapse. Rock that falls into the water below is removed by further dissolution. The rate of collapse increases during periods when the table is below the ceiling of the void. Cenotes may be fully collapsed creating a water pool, or partially collapsed with some portion of a rock overhanging above the water. The stereotypical cenotes often resemble small circular ponds, measuring some tens of meters in diameter with sheer drops at the edges, most cenotes, however, require some degree of stooping or crawling to access the water. In the north and northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula contains a vast coastal aquifer system, which is typically density-stratified. The infiltrating meteoric water floats on top of higher-density saline water intruding from the coastal margins, the whole aquifer is therefore an anchialine system. Where a cenote, or the cave to which it is an opening, provides deep enough access into the aquifer. The density interface between the fresh and saline waters is a halocline, which means a change in salt concentration over a small change in depth. Mixing of the fresh and saline water results in a swirling effect caused by refraction between the different densities of fresh and saline waters. In 1936, a simple morphometry-based classification system for cenotes was presented, although cenotes are found widely throughout much of the Yucatán Peninsula, a higher-density circular alignment of cenotes overlies the measured rim of the Chicxulub Crater
40.
Aqueduct (bridge)
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Bridges for conveying water, called aqueducts or water bridges are constructed to convey watercourses across gaps such as valleys or ravines. The term aqueduct may also be used to refer to the entire watercourse, large navigable aqueducts are used as transport links for boats or ships. Aqueducts must span a crossing at the level as the watercourses on each end. The word is derived from the Latin aqua and ducere, a modern version of an aqueduct is a pipeline bridge. Although particularly associated with the Romans, aqueducts were likely first used by the Minoans around 2000 BCE, the Minoans had developed what was then an extremely advanced irrigation system, including several aqueducts. In the seventh century BCE, the Assyrians built an 80 km long limestone aqueduct, roman aqueducts set a standard of engineering that was not surpassed for more than a thousand years. Navigable aqueducts, also called water bridges, are water-filled bridges to allow vessels on a waterway to cross ravines or valleys, during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, navigable aqueducts were constructed as part of the boom in canal-building. A notable revolving aqueduct has been made on the Bridgewater Canal and this allowed vessels to cross at high and low levels while conserving water.3 km long and featuring 74 arches Aqueduct of Zacatecas, Zacatecas. F
41.
Pont du Gard
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The Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman aqueduct that crosses the Gardon River near the town of Vers-Pont-du-Gard in southern France. The Pont du Gard is the highest of all elevated Roman aqueducts and it was added to UNESCOs list of World Heritage Sites in 1985 because of its historical importance. The aqueduct bridge is part of the Nîmes aqueduct, a 50-kilometre system built in the first century AD to carry water from a spring at Uzès to the Roman colony of Nemausus. Because of the terrain between the two points, the mostly underground aqueduct followed a long, winding route that called for a bridge across the gorge of the Gardon River. The bridge has three tiers of arches, stands 48.8 m high, and descends a mere 2, the aqueduct formerly carried an estimated 200,000 m3 of water a day to the fountains, baths and homes of the citizens of Nîmes. After the Roman Empire collapsed and the fell into disuse. It attracted increasing attention starting in the 18th century, and became an important tourist destination, today it is one of Frances most popular tourist attractions, and has attracted the attention of a succession of literary and artistic visitors. The location of Nemausus was somewhat inconvenient when it came to providing a water supply, the only real alternative was to look to the north and in particular to the area around Ucetia, where there are natural springs. The Nîmes aqueduct was built to water from the springs of the Fontaine dEure near Uzès to the castellum divisorum in Nemausus. From there, it was distributed to fountains, baths and private homes around the city, the straight-line distance between the two is only about 20 km but the aqueduct takes a winding route measuring around 50 km. This was necessary to circumvent the southernmost foothills of the Massif Central and they are difficult to cross, as they are covered in dense vegetation and garrigue and indented by deep valleys. It was impractical for the Romans to attempt to tunnel through the hills, a roughly V-shaped course around the eastern end of the Garrigues de Nîmes was therefore the only practical way of transporting the water from the spring to the city. The aqueducts average gradient is only 1 in 3,000 and it varies widely along its course, but is as little as 1 in 20,000 in some sections. The Pont du Gard itself descends 2.5 cm in 456 m, the average gradient between the start and end of the aqueduct is far shallower than was usual for Roman aqueducts – only about a tenth of the average gradient of some of the aqueducts in Rome. This height limit governed the profile and gradients of the entire aqueduct, the gradient profile before the Pont du Gard is relatively steep, descending at 0.67 metres per kilometre, but thereafter it descends by only 6 metres over the remaining 25 kilometres. It is estimated that the aqueduct supplied the city with around 200,000 cubic metres of water a day that took nearly 27 hours to flow from the source to the city. The water arrived in the castellum divisorum at Nîmes – an open, shallow and it would have been surrounded by a balustrade within some sort of enclosure, probably under some kind of small but elaborate pavilion. When it was excavated, traces of a roof, Corinthian columns
42.
Physics
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Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
43.
Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
44.
Soil
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
45.
Hydrology
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Hydrology is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is a hydrologist, working within the fields of earth or environmental science, physical geography, geology or civil, Hydrology subdivides into surface water hydrology, groundwater hydrology, and marine hydrology. Domains of hydrology include hydrometeorology, surface hydrology, hydrogeology, drainage-basin management and water quality, oceanography and meteorology are not included because water is only one of many important aspects within those fields. Hydrological research can inform environmental engineering, policy and planning, the term hydrology comes from Greek, ὕδωρ, hýdōr, water, and λόγος, lógos, study. Chemical hydrology is the study of the characteristics of water. Ecohydrology is the study of interactions between organisms and the hydrologic cycle, hydrogeology is the study of the presence and movement of groundwater. Hydroinformatics is the adaptation of technology to hydrology and water resources applications. Hydrometeorology is the study of the transfer of water and energy between land and water surfaces and the lower atmosphere. Isotope hydrology is the study of the signatures of water. Surface hydrology is the study of processes that operate at or near Earths surface. Drainage basin management covers water-storage, in the form of reservoirs, water quality includes the chemistry of water in rivers and lakes, both of pollutants and natural solutes. Determining the water balance of a region, mitigating and predicting flood, landslide and drought risk. Real-time flood forecasting and flood warning, designing irrigation schemes and managing agricultural productivity. Part of the module in catastrophe modeling. Designing dams for water supply or hydroelectric power generation, designing sewers and urban drainage system. Analyzing the impacts of antecedent moisture on sanitary sewer systems, predicting geomorphologic changes, such as erosion or sedimentation. Assessing the impacts of natural and anthropogenic environmental change on water resources, assessing contaminant transport risk and establishing environmental policy guidelines. Hydrology has been a subject of investigation and engineering for millennia, for example, about 4000 BC the Nile was dammed to improve agricultural productivity of previously barren lands
46.
Environmental science
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Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical, biological and information sciences to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science emerged from the fields of history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems, related areas of study include environmental studies and environmental engineering. Environmental studies incorporates more of the sciences for understanding human relationships, perceptions. Environmental engineering focuses on design and technology for improving environmental quality in every aspect, Environmental issues almost always include an interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Environmental scientists bring a systems approach to the analysis of environmental problems, key elements of an effective environmental scientist include the ability to relate space, and time relationships as well as quantitative analysis. Ecology could be considered a subset of science, which also could involve purely chemical or public health issues ecologists would be unlikely to study. In practice, there is overlap between the work of ecologists and other environmental scientists. Includes instruction in biology, chemistry, physics, geosciences, climatology, statistics, atmospheric sciences focus on the Earths atmosphere, with an emphasis upon its interrelation to other systems. Ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment, for example, an interdisciplinary analysis of an ecological system which is being impacted by one or more stressors might include several related environmental science fields. Environmental chemistry is the study of chemical alterations in the environment, principal areas of study include soil contamination and water pollution. The topics of analysis include chemical degradation in the environment, multi-phase transport of chemicals, as an example study, consider the case of a leaking solvent tank which has entered the habitat soil of an endangered species of amphibian. As a method to resolve or understand the extent of contamination and subsurface transport of solvent. Geosciences include environmental geology, environmental science, volcanic phenomena. In some classification systems this can also include hydrology, including oceanography, as an example study of soils erosion, calculations would be made of surface runoff by soil scientists. Fluvial geomorphologists would assist in examining sediment transport in overland flow, physicists would contribute by assessing the changes in light transmission in the receiving waters. Biologists would analyze subsequent impacts to aquatic flora and fauna from increases in water turbidity, in the U. S. the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 set forth requirements for analysis of major projects in terms of specific environmental criteria. Numerous state laws have echoed these mandates, applying the principles to local-scale actions, the upshot has been an explosion of documentation and study of environmental consequences before the fact of development actions
