A diastase is any one of a group of enzymes that catalyses the breakdown of starch into maltose. Alpha amylase degrades starch to a mixture of the disaccharide maltose. Diastase was the first enzyme discovered, it was extracted from malt solution in 1833 by Anselme Payen and Jean-François Persoz, chemists at a French sugar factory. The name "diastase" comes from the Greek word διάστασις, because when beer mash is heated, the enzyme causes the starch in the barley seed to transform into soluble sugars and hence the husk to separate from the rest of the seed. Today, "diastase" refers to γ-amylase that can break down carbohydrates; the used -ase suffix for naming enzymes was derived from the name diastase. When used as a pharmaceutical drug, diastase has the ATC code A09AA01. Amylases can be extracted from other sources including plants and milk. Urine diastase is useful in diagnosing uncertain abdominal cases, stones in the common bile duct, jaundice and in ruling out post-operative injury to the pancreas.

Diastase is used in conjunction with periodic acid–Schiff stain in histology. For example, glycogen can be dissolved by diastase. Fungi, on the other hand, stains darkly with PAS after treatment by diastase. Takadiastase Whipple disease amylase Payen, A. et J.-F. Persoz "Mémoire sur la diastase, les principaux produits de ses réactions et leurs applications aux arts industriels", Annales de chimie et de physique, 2nd series, 53: 73–92. Diastase at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings Introduction and Uses of Diastase Enzyme

Not to be confused with official language, a language, given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Officialese, bureaucratese, or governmentese is language, it is the "language of officialdom". Officialese is characterized by a preference for long sentences; the history of officialese can be traced to the history of officialdom, as far back as the eldest human civilizations and their surviving official writings. Officialese is meant to impress the listener and increase the authority of the user, making them appear more professional. Ernest Gowers noted that officialese allows the user to remain vague, it can be used to make oneself understood to insiders while being hard to decipher by those unfamiliar with the jargon and subtexts used. Its use is known to put off members of the general public and reduce their interest in the material presented. Officialese has been criticized as making one's speech or prose "stilted and sometimes indecipherable" and as the "cancer of language".

It is thus more pejoratively classified as one of the types of gobbledygook. Its use can result in unintended humorous incidents, has been satirized. Several similar concepts to officialese exist, including genteelism, commercialese and journalese; the existence of officialese has been recognized by a number of organizations, which have made attempts to curtail its use. Bureaucracy Business speak Fedspeak Jargon Legalese Manual of style Humphrey Appleby – a fictional character noted for his extremes in officialese Wooden language J Renkema, On functional and computational LSP analysis: the example of officialese More about Gobbledygook, Rudolf FleschPublic Administration Review Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 240–244, https://www.jstor.org/stable/973061

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell was an English judge and jurist. He served as Judge of the High Court of Admiralty from 1798 to 1828. Scott was born at Heworth, a village about four miles from Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a tradesman engaged in the transport of coal, his younger brother John Scott was made Earl of Eldon. He was educated at Newcastle Royal Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, where he gained a Durham scholarship in 1761. In 1764 he graduated and became first a probationary fellow and as successor to William Jones a tutor of University College; as Camden reader of ancient history he rivalled the reputation of Blackstone. Although he had joined the Middle Temple in 1762, it was not till 1776 that Scott devoted himself to a systematic study of law. Scott graduated as doctor of civil law, after a customary year of silence, commenced practice in the ecclesiastical courts, his professional success was rapid. In 1783 he became registrar of the court of faculties, in 1788 judge of the consistory court and advocate-general, in that year too receiving the honour of knighthood.

In this capacity he heard on appeal two important cases having to do with the abolition of the slave trade. On 22 May 1809 HMS Crocodile took Donna Marianna on the Cape Coast for breach of the Act for the abolition of the slave trade; the Vice admiralty court at Sierra Leone condemned the vessel. Although Donna Marianna was ostensibly a Portuguese vessel, Scott upheld the seizure on the grounds that she was a British vessel and her Portuguese papers were a fraud; the second case involved the French ship Le Lois after it had been seized by the West Africa Squadron for slave trading off the African coast at Cape Mesurado. HMS Queen Charlotte had vindicated the seizure and confiscation of the ship and cargo; however Scott overturned this judgement, saying that the way Le Lois had been stopped and boarded was illegal as "No nation can exercise a right of visitation and search on the common and unappropriated parts of the sea, save only on the belligerent claim." He accepted that this would constitute a serious impediment to the suppression of the slave trade, but argued that this should be remedied through international treaties rather than Naval officers exceeding what they were permitted to do.

He twice contested Oxford University in 1780 without success, but in 1801. He sat for Downton in 1790, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793. Upon the coronation of George IV in 1821 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Stowell, of Stowell Park in the County of Gloucester, taking his title from the name of his estate. After a life of judicial service Lord Stowell retired from the bench – from the consistory court in August 1821, from the high court of admiralty in December 1827. Lord Stowell married twice, his first marriage, in 1781, was to Anna Maria, eldest daughter and heiress of John Bagnall of Erleigh Court, near Reading, in Berkshire, where the two resided. They had one of whom, a daughter, survived him, he married again, in 1813, the dowager Marchioness of Sligo, née Louisa Catharine Howe, younger daughter of the first and last Earl Howe of the 1788 creation, widow of John Browne, 1st Marquess of Sligo. He died on 28 January 1836 at Erleigh Court, aged 90, the barony became extinct.

Africa Institution Sixth Report of the Directors of the African Institution. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Stowell, William Scott, Baron". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell: Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, 1798-1828 by Henry J. Bourguignon - Cambridge 1987: Cambridge University Press; the Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges of the Last and of the Present Century Volume 2 by William Charles Townsend - London 1846: Longman, Brown and Longmans. Modern reprint by Kessinger Publishing ISBN 1-4286-1909-7, pp. 279–365. Quotations related to William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell at Wikiquote Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Lord Stowell Bentwick, Norman. "LORD STOWELL". In Macdonell, John. Great Jurists of the World. London: John Murray. Pp. 517–531. Retrieved 9 March 2019 – via Internet Archive. US website that amplifies his significance in matters of international law

Adenium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae first described as a genus in 1819. It is native to the Arabian Peninsula. Adenium obesum is grown as a houseplant in temperate regions. Numerous hybrids have been developed. Adeniums are appreciated for their colorful flowers, but for their unusual, thick caudices, they can be grown for many years in a pot and are used for bonsai. Because seed-grown plants are not genetically identical to the mother plant, desirable varieties are propagated by grafting. Genetically identical plants can be propagated by cutting. However, cutting-grown plants do not tend to develop a desirable thick caudex as as seed-grown plants; the sap of Adenium boehmianum, A. multiflorum, A. obesum contains toxic cardiac glycosides and is used as arrow poison throughout Africa for hunting large game. The genus Adenium has been held to contain as many as twelve species; these are considered by other authors to be varieties. A late-20th-century classification by Plazier recognizes five species.

SpeciesAdenium arabicum Balf.f. = A. obesum Adenium boehmianum Schinz - Adenium multiflorum Klotzsch. Adenium obesum Roem. & Schult. - widespread from Senegal to Somalia, Arabian Peninsula Adenium oleifolium Stapf - South Africa, Namibia Adenium swazicum Stapf Formerly placed herePachypodium namaquanum Welw. Adenium obesum is known as the desert rose. In the Philippines, due to its resemblance to the related genus Plumeria, the fact that it was introduced to the Philippines from Bangkok, the plant is called as Bangkok kalachuchi. Due to its resemblance to a miniature frangipani tree and its popularity in bonsai, it is sometimes known as Japanese frangipani

The Metropolitan Learning Center is an alternative public school serving K–12 students in Portland, United States. In 1913 Portland voters were asked to consider a school budget that included new construction to modernize Portland schools; the dilapidated "Couch School", an 1883 structure that had closed to contain an outbreak of smallpox, would be torn down, a new Couch School would be built in 1914 at a cost of $177,000. The architect for the new school was Floyd Naramore, newly employed as architect and superintendent for Portland Public Schools. Naramore was responsible for many Portland school designs including Benson Polytechnic High School and Shattuck School. Reflecting modern standards of the day, Tudor Revival was chosen as the style for Couch School. Both the 1883 school and the 1914 school were named for Captain John Heard Couch, an early settler whose land became known as the Couch Addition when Northwest Portland was platted. In 1968, Portland Public Schools began an experimental study environment at Couch School designated the Metropolitan Learning Center.

Starting with 150 students from Couch School and other sites, the center encouraged students to create their own instructional environment—students were free to pursue subjects that interested them rather than following a strict curriculum set by teachers. Moreover, students did not receive grades; the center worked with Portland State College Portland State University, Reed College to offer student teachers a central role in classroom instruction. Couch School and MLC shared Amasa Gilman. According to Gilman, the plan resulted in fewer discipline problems and higher attendance than at the conventional Couch School. Gilman continued as principal of MLC until 1975, when Portland Public Schools transferred him to a new location, his removal sparked protests among MLC students and staff. The distinction between the conventional Couch School and the experimental learning center it was hosting was dropped, the entire school came to be known as the Metropolitan Learning Center. In 2016, 91% of the school's seniors received their high school diploma.

Of 35 students, 33 graduated and 2 dropped out. The student population during the same year was 79.9% White, 9.1% Hispanic, 2.1% Asian, 1.6% African American, 0.2% Native American, 7% mixed race. As of 2017, less than five percent of MLC students are learning English as a second language. According to MLC's 2017–2018 school profile, the school began "as a challenge to the notion that educational rewards must be extrinsic and maintains the belief that personal relationships between staff and students are paramount." Accordingly, MLC does not issue letter grades, instead using a four category rating system to evaluate students. Each category is assigned a grade point average range to show how the ratings can be translated onto a 4.0 scale. Max Records, actor Rebecca Skloot, science writer and author Tanya Barfield, playwright Collegiate Gothic National Register of Historic Places listings in Northwest Portland, Oregon Northwest District Explosion Metropolitan Learning Center Couch Addition Map

The Xenasmataceae are a family of crust fungi in the order Polyporales. The family was circumscribed in 1966 by German mycologist Franz Oberwinkler with Xenasma as the type genus; as of April 2018, Index Fungorum accepts 28 species in the family. Xenasmataceae fungi grow as saprobes on fallen wood and are known from temperate areas. Fruit bodies of Xenasmataceae fungi are crust-like, with a waxy or gelatinous texture; the fungi have a monomitic hyphal system, the hyphae are gelatinous. Spores are translucent, stain with Melzer's reagent