1.
McNamara Alumni Center
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The McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesotas Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota is one of the more architecturally striking buildings in the Twin Cities. The building, opened in 2000, contains two components, University office space and 10 meeting rooms for University and public use. The University owns the land, but the University of Minnesota Gateway Corporation, consisting of the U of M Foundation and U of M Alumni Association, owns the structure. The building opened in February 2000 and is named for Richard McNamara, architect Antoine Predock was chosen in 1996 to design the structure. KKE Architects of Minneapolis served as the executive architect and general manager. About 75,000 square feet of copper clads the rectangular portion where university offices are located, granite supported by 500 steel beams forms an asymmetrical geode-styled area of the building featuring an interior public Memorial Hall, 85-foot tall. Some 2,200 rose-colored granite blocks weighing up to 1,000 pounds each form the geodes exterior, the structure required 40,000 square feet of granite. With ten versatile rooms, all on the first floor, the center is a popular Minneapolis conference, gala, in 2015 more than 750 meetings and events were held here.7 million expansion. The addition, designed by Predock, included office and event space as well as an expanded restaurant, construction began in 2009 to coincide with the opening of the adjacent TCF Bank Stadium with funding provided by the ownership consortium. McNamara Alumni Center Media related to McNamara Alumni Center at Wikimedia Commons
2.
Minneapolis
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Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2015, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the Midwest, after Chicago. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul. It was once the worlds flour milling capital and a hub for timber, the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Chicago and Seattle, with Minneapolis proper containing Americas fifth-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. As an integral link to the economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city. Noted for its music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. The name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the citys first schoolteacher, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, Dakota Sioux had long been the regions sole residents when French explorers arrived around 1680. For a time relations were based on fur trading, gradually more European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Dakota. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired this territory from France, fort Snelling was built in 1819 by the United States Army, and it attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized present-day Minneapolis as a town in 1856 on the Mississippis west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago. It later joined with the city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes. Due to the hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the citys thirty-four flour mills, a father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from the Hungarians by William de la Barre, pillsbury Company across the river were barely a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to immediately use the new methods. The hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, not until later did consumers discover the value in the bran that Minneapolis
3.
Minnesota
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Minnesota is a state in the midwestern and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U. S. state on May 11,1858, the state has a large number of lakes, and is known by the slogan Land of 10,000 Lakes. Its official motto is LÉtoile du Nord, Minnesota is the 12th largest in area and the 21st most populous of the U. S. Minnesota is known for its progressive political orientation and its high rate of civic participation and voter turnout. Until European settlement, Minnesota was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwe/Anishinaabe, in recent decades, immigration from Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Latin America has broadened its historic demographic and cultural composition. Minnesotas standard of living index is among the highest in the United States, Native Americans demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mnisota. Many places in the state have similar names, such as Minnehaha Falls, Minneiska, Minneota, Minnetonka, Minnetrista, and Minneapolis, a combination of mni and polis, Minnesota is the second northernmost U. S. state. Its isolated Northwest Angle in Lake of the Woods county is the part of the 48 contiguous states lying north of the 49th parallel. The state is part of the U. S. region known as the Upper Midwest and it shares a Lake Superior water border with Michigan and a land and water border with Wisconsin to the east. Iowa is to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota are to the west, with 86,943 square miles, or approximately 2.25 percent of the United States, Minnesota is the 12th-largest state. Minnesota has some of the Earths oldest rocks, gneisses that are about 3.6 billion years old. About 2.7 billion years ago, basaltic lava poured out of cracks in the floor of the primordial ocean, the roots of these volcanic mountains and the action of Precambrian seas formed the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. Following a period of volcanism 1, in more recent times, massive ice sheets at least one kilometer thick ravaged the landscape of the state and sculpted its terrain. The Wisconsin glaciation left 12,000 years ago and these glaciers covered all of Minnesota except the far southeast, an area characterized by steep hills and streams that cut into the bedrock. This area is known as the Driftless Zone for its absence of glacial drift, much of the remainder of the state outside the northeast has 50 feet or more of glacial till left behind as the last glaciers retreated. Gigantic Lake Agassiz formed in the northwest 13,000 years ago and its bed created the fertile Red River valley, and its outflow, glacial River Warren, carved the valley of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi downstream from Fort Snelling. Minnesota is geologically quiet today, it experiences earthquakes infrequently, the states high point is Eagle Mountain at 2,301 feet, which is only 13 miles away from the low of 601 feet at the shore of Lake Superior. Notwithstanding dramatic local differences in elevation, much of the state is a rolling peneplain. Two major drainage divides meet in Minnesotas northeast in rural Hibbing, forming a triple watershed, precipitation can follow the Mississippi River south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saint Lawrence Seaway east to the Atlantic Ocean, or the Hudson Bay watershed to the Arctic Ocean
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
University of Minnesota
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The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are approximately 3 miles apart, and it is the oldest and largest campus within the University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 51,147 students in 2013–14. The university is the institution of the University of Minnesota system, and is organized into 19 colleges and schools, with sister campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris. Minnesota is one of Americas Public Ivy universities, which refers to top universities in the United States capable of providing a collegiate experience comparable with the Ivy League. Founded in 1851, The University of Minnesota is categorized as an R1 Doctoral University with the highest research activity in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Minnesota faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 25 Nobel Prizes and three Pulitzer Prizes. Notable University of Minnesota alumni include two Vice Presidents of the United States, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, and Bob Dylan, who received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is also a member of the Association of American Universities which is an association of the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. In its 2017 edition, U. S. News & World Report ranked Minnesota 38th in their Best Global University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015 ranks Minnesota 46th in the world. In 2015, Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked the university 11th in the world for mathematics, the University of Minnesota is ranked 14 over-all among the nations top research universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance. The U. S. News & World Reports 2016 rankings placed the program of the University as the 69th-best National University in the United States. Additionally, nineteen of the Universitys graduate-school departments have been ranked in the nations top-twenty by the U. S. National Research Council, in both 2008 and 2012 U. S. News & World Report ranked the College of Pharmacy 2nd in the nation. 2016 U. S. News & Report now rank the College of Pharmacy 2nd in the nation. In 2011, U. S. News & World Report ranked the School of Public Health 8th in the nation, the University of Minnesota ranked 19th in NIH funding in 2008. Minnesota is listed as a Public Ivy in 2001 Greenes Guides The Public Ivies, the university developed Gopher, a precursor to the World Wide Web which used hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet. However, the produced by CERN was favored by the public since it was freely distributed. The University also houses the Charles Babbage Institute, a research, the department has strong roots in early days of supercomputing with Seymour Cray of Cray supercomputers. Notable faculty of the department are Yousef Saad, Vipin Kumar, Jaideep Srivastava, John Riedl, some notable alumni of the department are Ed Chi, Imrich Chlamtac, Leah Culver, Jeff Dean, Mark P. McCahill, Arvind Mithal, and Calvin Mooers. Puffed rice - Alexander P. Anderson led to the discovery of puffed rice, transistorized cardiac pacemaker - Earl Bakken founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957
6.
Seating capacity
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Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats hundreds of thousands of people. The International Fire Code, portions of which have adopted by many jurisdictions, is directed more towards the use of a facility than the construction. It specifies, For areas having fixed seating without dividing arms and it also requires that every public venue submit a detailed site plan to the local fire code official, including details of the means of egress, seating capacity, arrangement of the seating. Once safety considerations have been satisfied, determinations of seating capacity turn on the size of the venue. For sports venues, the decision on maximum seating capacity is determined by several factors, chief among these are the primary sports program and the size of the market area. Seating capacity of venues also plays a role in what media they are able to provide, in contracting to permit performers to use a theatre or other performing space, the seating capacity of the performance facility must be disclosed. Seating capacity may influence the kind of contract to be used, the seating capacity must also be disclosed to the copyright owner in seeking a license for the copyrighted work to be performed in that venue. Venues that may be leased for private functions such as ballrooms and auditoriums generally advertise their seating capacity, seating capacity is also an important consideration in the construction and use of sports venues such as stadiums and arenas. The seating capacity for restaurants is reported as covers, a restaurant that can seat 99 is said to have 99 covers, seating capacity differs from total capacity, which describes the total number of people who can fit in a venue or in a vehicle either sitting or standing. Use of the term public capacity indicates that a venue is allowed to more people than it can actually seat. Again, the total number of people can refer to either the physical space available or limitations set by law
7.
Artificial turf
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Artificial turf is a surface of synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. It is most often used in arenas for sports that were originally or are played on grass. However, it is now being used on lawns and commercial applications as well. The main reason is maintenance—artificial turf stands up to use, such as in sports. Domed, covered, and partially covered stadiums may require artificial turf because of the difficulty of getting enough sunlight to stay healthy. But artificial turf does have its downside, limited life, periodic cleaning requirements, petroleum use, toxic chemicals from infill, artificial turf first gained substantial attention in the 1960s, when it was used in the newly constructed Astrodome. The specific product used was developed by Monsanto and called AstroTurf, AstroTurf remains a registered trademark, but is no longer owned by Monsanto. The first generation systems of the 1960s have been largely replaced by the second generation. That accomplishment led Sports Illustrated to declare Chaney as the man responsible for major league baseball. Artificial turf was first installed in 1964 on a school recreation area in Rhode Island. The material came to prominence in 1966, when AstroTurf was installed in the Astrodome in Houston. The use of AstroTurf and similar surfaces became widespread in the U. S. and Canada in the early 1970s, more than 11,000 artificial turf playing fields have been installed nationally. More than 1,200 were installed in the U. S. in 2013 alone, maintaining a grass playing surface indoors, while technically possible, is prohibitively expensive. Artificial turf was first used in Major League Baseball in the Houston Astrodome in 1966, for most of the 1965 season, the Astros played on green-painted dirt and dead grass. The solution was to install a new type of grass on the field, ChemGrass. Because the supply of AstroTurf was still low, only a limited amount was available for the first home game, there was not enough for the entire outfield, but there was enough to cover the traditional grass portion of the infield. The outfield remained painted dirt until after the All-Star Break, the team was sent on an extended road trip before the break, and on 19 July 1966, the installation of the outfield portion of AstroTurf was completed. The Chicago White Sox became the first team to install artificial turf in a stadium, as they used it in the infield
8.
Minnesota Golden Gophers football
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The Minnesota Golden Gophers football program represents the University of Minnesota in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Founded in 1882, the program is one of the oldest in college football, Minnesota has been a member of the Big Ten Conference since its inception in 1896 as the Western Conference. The Golden Gophers claim seven national championships,1904,1934,1935,1936,1940,1941, since 2009, the Gophers have played all their home games at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In January 2017, the Gophers fired head coach Tracy Claeys, the Minnesota Golden Gophers college football team played its first game on September 29,1882, a 4–0 victory over Hamline University. Eight years later in 1890, the Gophers played host to Wisconsin in a 63–0 victory, with the exception of 1906, the Gophers and Badgers have played each other every year since then. The 124 games played against each other is the most played rivalry in Division I-A college football, students began gathering to play the game recreationally and its popularity grew. Once the sport had taken off, it was only a matter of time before a team was formed to play against other schools, early teams were very loosely organized, not requiring all of the players to be students and not having designated coaches. The players on the team started to recruit faculty members who had played football at schools in the East to help organize the team, some years, they played without a coach. Other years, they played with multiple coaches, in total, from 1882 through 1899, the team played 16 seasons of football and had 15 different coaches. As the years went by, the structure started to become more formal. In 1900, the hiring of Dr. Henry L. Williams, the Gophers enjoyed quite a bit of success in the early 20th century, posting winning records from 1900 to 1919. Head coach Henry L. Williams developed the Minnesota shift, a predecessor to later quick line shifts, also Henry L. Williams led Minnesota to one of the NCAAs longest unbeaten streaks of 35 games, from 1903 to 1905 with 34 wins and 1 tie. In 1932, Bernie Bierman became the Gopher head coach and led the Gophers to their first dynasty, from 1934 to 1936 the Gophers went on a run of winning three straight National Championships, the last Division I team to accomplish this feat. During the run, Minnesota went unbeaten in 28 straight games,21 of which were consecutive victories, the school record for consecutive victories is 24, which spanned 3 seasons from 1903 to 1905. The Gophers also won two national championships in 1940 and 1941. Those two seasons comprised most of an 18-game winning streak that stretched from 1939 to 1942, after some mediocre seasons throughout the remainder of the 1940s and 1950s, the Gophers rose back to prominence in 1960 with their seventh national championship. That national championship followed a 1-8 record in 1958 and 2-7 record in 1959, Minnesota played in bowl games the two following years as well, in 1961 and 1962. The Gophers earned their first berth in the Rose Bowl by winning the 1960 Big Ten title, the following year, Minnesota returned to Pasadena despite a second-place finish in the conference
9.
National Collegiate Athletic Association
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The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a non-profit association which regulates athletes of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations, and individuals. It also organizes the programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2014, the NCAA generated almost a billion dollars in revenue. 80 to 90% of this revenue was due to the Division I Mens Basketball Tournament and this revenue is then distributed back into various organizations and institutions across the United States. In August 1973, the current three-division setup of Division I, Division II, under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer scholarships to athletes for playing a sport. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships, generally, larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. Division I football was divided into I-A and I-AA in 1978. Subsequently, the term Division I-AAA was briefly added to delineate Division I schools which do not field a football program at all, in 2006, Divisions I-A and I-AA were respectively renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision. Inter-collegiate sports began in the US in 1852 when crews from Harvard University, as other sports emerged, notably football and basketball, many of these same concepts and standards were adopted. Football, in particular, began to emerge as a marquee sport, the IAAUS was officially established on March 31,1906, and took its present name, the NCAA, in 1910. For several years, the NCAA was a group and rules-making body, but in 1921, the first NCAA national championship was conducted. Gradually, more rules committees were formed and more championships were created, a series of crises brought the NCAA to a crossroads after World War II. The Sanity Code – adopted to establish guidelines for recruiting and financial aid – failed to curb abuses, postseason football games were multiplying with little control, and member schools were increasingly concerned about how the new medium of television would affect football attendance. The complexity of problems and the growth in membership and championships demonstrated the need for full-time professional leadership. Walter Byers, previously an executive assistant, was named executive director in 1951. Byers wasted no time placing his stamp on the Association, as college athletics grew, the scope of the nations athletics programs diverged, forcing the NCAA to create a structure that recognized varying levels of emphasis. In 1973, the Associations membership was divided into three legislative and competitive divisions – I, II, and III, five years later in 1978, Division I members voted to create subdivisions I-A and I-AA in football. Until the 1980s, the association did not offer womens athletics, instead, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, with nearly 1000 member schools, governed womens collegiate sports in the United States
10.
West North Central States
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The West North Central States form one of the nine geographic divisions within the United States that are officially recognized by the U. S. Census Bureau. The Mississippi River marks the bulk of the boundary between two divisions. Another name popularly applied to the division is the Agricultural Heartland, since the early 1990s, the West North Central division has consistently had the lowest unemployment rate in the United States, and has also been noted for its plentiful supply of affordable housing. As of 2010, the West North Central States had a population of 20,505,437. This number is a 6. 6% increase from 19,237,739 in 2000, the West North Central region covers 507,913 square miles of land, and has an average population density of 40.37 people per square mile
