Mortar and pestle
Mortar and pestle are implements used since ancient times to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder in the kitchen and pharmacy. The mortar is a bowl made of hard wood, ceramic, or hard stone, such as granite; the pestle is a blunt club-shaped object. The substance to be ground, which may be wet or dry, is placed in the mortar, where the pestle is pressed and rotated onto it until the desired texture is achieved. Scientists have found ancient mortars and pestles that date back to 35000 BC; the English word mortar derives from classical Latin mortarium, among several other usages, "receptacle for pounding" and "product of grinding or pounding". The classical Latin pistillum, meaning "pounder", led to English pestle; the Roman poet Juvenal applied both mortarium and pistillum to articles used in the preparation of drugs, reflecting the early use of the mortar and pestle as a symbol of a pharmacist or apothecary. The antiquity of these tools is well documented in early writing, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus of ~1550 BC and the Old Testament.
Mortars and pestles were traditionally used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients prior to preparing an extemporaneous prescription. The mortar and pestle, with the Rod of Asclepius, the Green Cross, others, is one of the most pervasive symbols of pharmacology, along with the show globe. For pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood; this is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759. Today the act of reducing the particle size is known as trituration. Mortars and pestles are used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested, or in preparation for insufflation. To finely ground drugs, not available in liquid dosage form is used if patients need artificial nutrition such as parenteral nutrition or by nasogastric tube. Mortars are used in cooking to prepare wet or oily ingredients such as guacamole and pesto, as well as grinding spices into powder.
The molcajete, a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztec and Maya, stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to other nuts. Many such depressions can be found in their territories. In Japan large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi. A regular sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called surikogi, respectively. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia, as well as India. In India, it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day to day dishes. With the advent of motorized grinders, use of the mortar and pestle has decreased, it is traditional in various Hindu ceremonies to crush turmeric in these mortars. In Malay, it is known as batu lesung. Large stone mortars, with long wood pestles were used in West Asia to grind meat for a type of meatloaf, or kibbeh, as well as the hummus variety known as masabcha.
In Indonesia and the Netherlands mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and pestle is known as Ulekan or Oelekan. It is used to make fresh sambal, a spicy chili condiment, hence the sambal ulek/oelek denote its process using pestle, it is used to grind peanut and other ingredients to make peanut sauce for gado-gado. Large mortars and pestles are used in developing countries to husk and dehull grain; these are made of wood, operated by one or more persons. Good mortar and pestle-making materials must be hard enough to crush the substance rather than be worn away by it, they can not be too brittle either. The material should be cohesive, so that small bits of the mortar or pestle do not mix in with the ingredients. Smooth and non-porous materials are trap the substances being ground. In food preparation, a rough or absorbent material may cause the strong flavour of a past ingredient to be tasted in food prepared later; the food particles left in the mortar and on the pestle may support the growth of microorganisms.
When dealing with medications, the prepared drugs may interact or mix, contaminating the used ingredients. Rough ceramic mortar and pestle sets can be used to reduce substances to fine powders, but stain and are brittle. Porcelain mortars are sometimes conditioned for use by grinding some sand to give them a rougher surface which helps to reduce the particle size. Glass mortars and pestles are fragile, but suitable for use with liquids. However, they do not grind as finely as the ceramic type. Other materials used include stone marble or agate, bamboo, steel and basalt. Mortar and pestle sets made from the wood of old grape vines have proved reliable for grinding salt and pepper at the dinner table. Uncooked rice is sometimes ground in mortars to clean them; this process must be repeated until the rice comes out white. Some stones, such as molcajete, need to be seasoned first before use. Metal mortars are kept oiled. Since the results obtained with hand grinding are neither reproducible nor reliable, most laboratories work with automatic mortar grinders.
Grinding time and pressure of the mortar can be adjusted and fixed, saving time and labor. The first automatic Mortar Grinder was invented by F. Kurt
Lilium columbianum
Lilium columbianum is a lily native to western North America. It is known as the Columbia lily or tiger lily. Lilium columbianum occurs in lowland and montane forest openings and meadows from southern British Columbia in Canada south to northern California and east to Montana in the northwestern United States. Occurring below 2,000 m, it blooms in June through early August. There are a few isolated populations at high elevations in the Sierra Nevada as far south as Fresno County. Lilium columbianum grows up to 1.2 metres tall, bears from few to numerous orange flowers with darker spots. The tepals are 3 to 6 cm long and the flowers are scented. Like many true lilies, the leaves are arranged in whorls around the stem of the plant. Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth and most western Washington peoples steamed, boiled or pit-cooked its bulbs. Bitter or peppery-tasting, they were used as a flavoring in soup with meat or fish. From seed, Lilium columbianum requires three to five years to mature. Cultivated bulbs can be divided or bulb scales may be used to generate new plants more quickly.
However, wild plants should be left undisturbed. Media related to Lilium columbianum at Wikimedia Commons
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University is a private research university in Stanford, California. Stanford is known for its academic strength, proximity to Silicon Valley, ranking as one of the world's top universities; the university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr. who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford was a U. S. Senator and former Governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon; the school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would be known as Silicon Valley; the university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.
The university is organized around three traditional schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate and graduate level and four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in Law, Medicine and Business. Stanford's undergraduate program is the most selective in the United States by acceptance rate. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference, it has gained the most for a university. Stanford athletes have won 512 individual championships, Stanford has won the NACDA Directors' Cup for 24 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, Stanford students and alumni have won 270 Olympic medals including 139 gold medals; as of October 2018, 83 Nobel laureates, 27 Turing Award laureates, 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, faculty or staff. In addition, Stanford University is noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups.
Stanford alumni have founded a large number of companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011 equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world. Stanford is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires and 17 astronauts, is one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child; the institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm. Despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I; the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, established in 1962, performs research in particle physics. Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most Cornell University and Harvard University.
Stanford opened being called the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to faculty being former Cornell affiliates including its first president, David Starr Jordan. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to have higher education be accessible and open to women as well as to men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt this radical departure from traditional education, Stanford became an early adopter as well. Most of Stanford University is on one of the largest in the United States, it is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley 37 miles southeast of San Francisco and 20 miles northwest of San Jose. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land is within the city limits of Palo Alto; the campus includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park and Portola Valley.
The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, Sand Hill Road. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail. It lies within area code 650. Stanford operates or intends to operate in various locations outside of its central campus. On the founding grant: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a 1,200-acre natural reserve south of the central campus owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility west of the central campus operated by the university for the Department of Energy, it contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, 2 miles on 426 acres of land. Golf course and a seasonal lake: The university has its own golf course and a seasonal lake, both home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander; as of 2012 Lake Laguni
Portola Valley, California
Portola Valley is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, United States, founded in 1964. It is the wealthiest town in America per the American Community Survey, based on per-capita income for communities larger than 4,000. Home prices are among the highest in the nation. Portola Valley was named for Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá, who led the first party of Europeans to explore the San Francisco Peninsula in 1769; the town was incorporated in 1964. The Native Americans present were Ohlone and the group known as Olpen or Guemelento but these were moved to Mission Dolores and Mission Santa Clara de Asís which claimed the land and peoples; the area's written history dates back to 1833, when a square league of land was given to Domingo Peralta and Máximo Martínez by Governor José Figueroa to form the Rancho Cañada del Corte de Madera. In those days it was used for cattle grazing. By the 1880s Andrew S. Hallidie, a wire rope manufacturer, had built his country home of Eagle Home Farm in what is now Portola Valley.
He built a 7,341 foot long aerial tramway from his house to the top of Skyline in 1894 though it was removed after his death in 1900. In 1886 the name Portola-Crespi Valley was bestowed on the area from the community of Crystal Springs (now under Crystal Springs Reservoir to the community of Searsville. Portola Valley is located on the San Francisco Peninsula on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains; the town is west of Interstate 280 and the southwest boundary is along Skyline Boulevard which more or less is the ridge of the mountains. The Windy Hill Open Space Preserve is a large part of the town's southwest side and the north side of the town borders Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Woodside borders it to the northwest and Palo Alto to the southeast The unincorporated subdivision of Ladera is adjacent to the northern boundary of the town, it is in a wooded area, with some open fields. The San Andreas Fault bisects the town. Alpine road and Portola road are the two main roads in the town and their intersection forms a small shopping nexus.
Portola Valley can be divided into 7 subdivisions: Central Portola Valley, The Ranch, Corte Madera, Los Trancos/Vista Verde, Woodside Highlands and Blue Oaks. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 9.099 square miles, 99.98% of it land and 0.02% of it water. Ford Field Alpine Hills Tennis and Swimming Club The Village Restaurants and Shops Portola Valley Garage Alpine-Portola Junction Roberts Market Triangle Park Portola Valley Hardware Ron Ramies Auto Repair Portola Cafe Deli Portola Valley Town Center Portola Valley Library, Children's Playground, FieldOur Lady of the Wayside Church was built in 1912 for the local Catholic community and is a California Historic Landmark and on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places. Portola Valley School is a one-room former school house built in 1909 and is on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places, it is now used for town council meetings. The Alpine Inn known as Rossotti's or Zott's, is one of the oldest existing drinking establishments in California, which started around 1852 when Felix Buelna built it as a gambling house.
The first two-network TCP/IP transmission was between a specialized SRI van and ARPANET on August 27, 1976. In early 2018, the inn was acquired by new owners. Villa Lauriston, an estate located at 5050 Alpine Road and encompassing 29 acres, was commissioned by James Graham Fair, the founder of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Portola Valley is known for its expansive trail network both maintained by the town and in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve maintained by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District; the average income per household in Portola Valley is $354,744. The 2010 United States Census reported that Portola Valley had a population of 4,353; the population density was 478.7 people per square mile. The racial makeup of Portola Valley was 3,960 White, 12 African American, 5 Native American, 242 Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 29 from other races, 104 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 175 persons; the Census reported that 4,309 people lived in households, 9 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, 35 were institutionalized.
There were 1,746 households, out of which 518 had children under the age of 18 living in them, 1,149 were opposite-sex married couples living together, 70 had a female householder with no husband present, 35 had a male householder with no wife present. There were 37 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, 21 same-sex married couples or partnerships. 420 households were made up of individuals and 290 had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47. There were 1,254 families; the population was spread out with 1,001 people under the age of 18, 145 people aged 18 to 24, 538 people aged 25 to 44, 1,496 people aged 45 to 64, 1,173 people who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 51.3 years. For every 100 females, there were 98.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.2 males. There were 1,895 housing units at an average density of 208.4 per square mile
Ohlone
The Ohlone, named Costanoan by early Spanish colonists, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages; the Ohlone languages belonged to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family, which itself belongs to the proposed Penutian language phylum. The term "Ohlone" has been used in place of "Costanoan" since the 1970s by some tribal groups and by most ethnographers and writers of popular literature. In pre-colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups, did not view themselves as a distinct group, they lived by hunting and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of these various bands interacted with one another; the Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion. Prior to the Gold Rush, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico.
However, the arrival of Spanish colonizers to the area in 1769 vastly changed tribal life forever. The Spanish constructed Missions along the California coast with the objective of Christianizing the native people and culture. Between the years 1769 and 1834, the number of Indigenous Californians dropped from 300,000 to 250,000. After California entered into the Union in 1850, the state government perpetrated massacres against the Ohlones. Many of the leaders of these massacres were rewarded with positions in state and federal government; these massacres have been described as genocide. Many are now leading a push for cultural and historical recognition of their tribe and what they have gone through and had taken from them; the Ohlone living today belong to one or another of a number of geographically distinct groups, but not all, in their original home territory. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has members from around the San Francisco Bay Area, is composed of descendants of the Ohlones/Costanoans from the San Jose, Santa Clara, San Francisco missions.
The Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, consisting of descendants of intermarried Rumsen Costanoan and Esselen speakers of Mission San Carlos Borromeo, are centered at Monterey. The Amah-Mutsun Tribe are descendants of Mutsun Costanoan speakers of Mission San Juan Bautista, inland from Monterey Bay. Most members of another group of Rumsien language, descendants from Mission San Carlos, the Costanoan Rumsien Carmel Tribe of Pomona/Chino, now live in southern California; these groups, others with smaller memberships are separately petitioning the federal government for tribal recognition. The Ohlone inhabited fixed village locations, moving temporarily to gather seasonal foodstuffs like acorns and berries; the Ohlone people lived in Northern California from the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula down to northern region of Big Sur, from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Diablo Range in the east. Their vast region included the San Francisco Peninsula, Santa Clara Valley, Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey Bay area, as well as present-day Alameda County, Contra Costa County and the Salinas Valley.
Prior to Spanish contact, the Ohlone formed a complex association of 50 different "nations or tribes" with about 50 to 500 members each, with an average of 200. Over 50 distinct Ohlone tribes and villages have been recorded; the Ohlone villages interacted through trade and ceremonial events, as well as some internecine conflict. Cultural arts included basket-weaving skills, seasonal ceremonial dancing events, female tattoos and nose piercings, other ornamentation; the Ohlone subsisted as hunter-gatherers and in some ways harvesters. "A rough husbandry of the land was practiced by annually setting of fires to burn-off the old growth in order to get a better yield of seeds—or so the Ohlone told early explorers in San Mateo County." Their staple diet consisted of crushed acorns, grass seeds, berries, although other vegetation and trapped game and seafood, were important to their diet. These food sources were abundant in earlier times and maintained by careful work, through active management of all the natural resources at hand.
Animals in their mild climate included the grizzly bear, elk and deer. The streams held salmon and stickleback. Birds included plentiful ducks, quail, great horned owls, red-shafted flickers, downy woodpeckers and yellow-billed magpies. Waterfowl were the most important birds in the people's diet, which were captured with nets and decoys; the Chochenyo traditional narratives refer to ducks as food, Juan Crespí observed in his journal that geese were stuffed and dried "to use as decoys in hunting others". Along the ocean shore and bays, there were otters, at one time thousands of sea lions. In fact, there were so many sea lions that according to Crespi it "looked like a pavement" to the incoming Spanish. In general, along the bayshore and valleys, the Ohlone constructed dome-shaped houses of woven or bundled mats of tules, 6 to 20 feet in diameter. In hills where redwood trees were accessible, they built conical houses from redwood bark attached to a frame of wood. Residents of Monterey recall Redwood houses.
One of the main village buildings, the sweat lodge was low into the ground, its walls made of earth and roof of earth and brush. They built boats of tule to navigate on the bays propelled by double-bladed paddles. Men did not
Serpentinite
Serpentinite is a rock composed of one or more serpentine group minerals, the name originating from the similarity of the texture of the rock to that of the skin of a snake. Minerals in this group, which are rich in magnesium and water, light to dark green, greasy looking and slippery feeling, are formed by serpentinization, a hydration and metamorphic transformation of ultramafic rock from the Earth's mantle; the mineral alteration is important at the sea floor at tectonic plate boundaries. Serpentinization is a geological low-temperature metamorphic process involving heat and water in which low-silica mafic and ultramafic rocks are oxidized and hydrolyzed with water into serpentinite. Peridotite, including dunite, at and near the seafloor and in mountain belts is converted to serpentine, brucite and other minerals — some rare, such as awaruite, native iron. In the process large amounts of water are absorbed into the rock increasing the volume, reducing the density and destroying the structure.
The density changes from 3.3 to 2.7 g/cm3 with a concurrent volume increase on the order of 30-40%. The reaction is exothermic and rock temperatures can be raised by about 260 °C, providing an energy source for formation of non-volcanic hydrothermal vents; the magnetite-forming chemical reactions produce hydrogen gas under anaerobic conditions prevailing deep in the mantle, far from the Earth's atmosphere. Carbonates and sulfates are subsequently reduced by hydrogen sulfide; the hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide provide energy sources for deep sea chemotroph microorganisms. Serpentinite is formed from olivine via several reactions. Olivine is a solid solution between the magnesium-endmember forsterite and the iron-endmember fayalite. Serpentinite reaction 1a and 1b, exchange silica between forsterite and fayalite to form serpentine group minerals and magnetite; these are exothermic reactions. Reaction 1c describes the hydration of olivine with water only to yield serpentine and Mg2. Serpentine is stable at high pH in the presence of brucite like calcium silicate hydrate, phases formed along with portlandite in hardened Portland cement paste after the hydration of belite, the artificial calcium equivalent of forsterite.
Analogy of reaction 1c with belite hydration in ordinary Portland cement: After reaction, the poorly soluble reaction products can be transported in solution out of the serpentinized zone by diffusion or advection. A similar suite of reactions involves pyroxene-group minerals, though less and with complication of the additional end-products due to the wider compositions of pyroxene and pyroxene-olivine mixes. Talc and magnesian chlorite are possible products, together with the serpentine minerals antigorite and chrysotile; the final mineralogy depends both on rock and fluid compositions and pressure. Antigorite forms in reactions at temperatures that can exceed 600 °C during metamorphism, it is the serpentine group mineral stable at the highest temperatures. Lizardite and chrysotile can form at low temperatures near the Earth's surface. Fluids involved in serpentinite formation are reactive and may transport calcium and other elements into surrounding rocks. In the presence of carbon dioxide, serpentinitization may form either magnesite or generate methane.
It is thought that some hydrocarbon gases may be produced by serpentinite reactions within the oceanic crust. Or, in balanced form: Reaction 2a is favored if the serpentinite is Mg-poor or if there isn't enough carbon dioxide to promote talc formation. Reaction 2b is favored in magnesian compositions and low partial pressure of carbon dioxide; the degree to which a mass of ultramafic rock undergoes serpentinisation depends on the starting rock composition and on whether or not fluids transport calcium and other elements away during the process. If an olivine composition contains sufficient fayalite olivine plus water can metamorphose to serpentine and magnetite in a closed system. In most ultramafic rocks formed in the Earth's mantle, the olivine is about 90% forsterite endmember, for that olivine to react to serpentine, magnesium must be transported out of the reacting volume. Serpentinitization of a mass of peridotite destroys all previous textural evidence because the serpentine minerals are weak and behave in a ductile fashion.
However, some masses of serpentinite are less deformed, as evidenced by the apparent preservation of textures inherited from the peridotite, the serpentinites may have behaved in a rigid fashion. Serpentine is the product of the reaction between fayalite's ferrous ions. Considering three formula units of fayalite for the purpose of stoichiometry and reaction mass balance, four ferrous ions will undergo oxidation by water protons while the two remaining will stay unoxidised. Neglecting the orthosilicate anions not involved in the redox process, it is possible to schematically write the two half-redox reactions as follows: The process is of interest because it generates hydrogen gas; the two unoxidised ferrous ions still available in the three formula units of fayalite combine with the four ferric cations and oxide anions to form two formula units of magnetite. Considering the required rearrangement of the orthosilicate anions into
Avena fatua
Avena fatua is a species of grass in the oat genus. It is known as the common wild oat; this oat is native to Eurasia but it has been introduced to most of the other temperate regions of the world. It is considered a noxious weed in others. Avena fatua is a typical oat in appearance, a green grass with hollow, erect stems 1 to 4 feet tall bearing nodding panicles of spikelets; the long dark green leaves are up to a centimeter rough due to small hairs. The seedlings are hairy; this and other wild oats can become troublesome in prairie agriculture when it invades and lowers the quality of a field crop, or competes for resources with the crop plants. It takes few wild oat plants to cause a significant reduction in the yield of a wheat or cultivated oat field though the seeds are a type of oat. Jepson Manual Treatment Calphotos Photo gallery, University of California
