1.
Oakland Zoo (cheering section)
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The Oakland Zoo is the student cheering section for the University of Pittsburgh mens and womens basketball teams. The Zoo cheers on the Panthers from the tier of the stands at the Petersen Events Center, primarily across from the teams benches. The Pete holds a rowdy crowd of 1,500 students that are typically clad in gold t-shirts. The Oakland Zoo is named after Oakland, the neighborhood in which the university is located, the name Oakland Zoo is used for the basketball cheering sections only, the football cheering section has often used the title, The Panther Pitt. The Oakland Zoo has been noted as being one of the most formidable student cheering sections in college basketball. According to a poll of league players published by Sports Illustrated. Anonymous players in the article were quoted describing the Oakland Zoo with the following descriptions and its like a zoo. and The student section is next to the court, and the fans there say some creative stuff. In 2013, the Petersen Events Center, with mention of the Oakland Zoo, was ranked as the nations second best game atmosphere arena by USA Today. In 2011, Pitt debuted custom Nike Hyper Elite jerseys featuring an aerographic with the Oakland Zoo logo on the back, Pitt described this as the first NCAA basketball jersey to ever showcase their respective student section. In December 2011, ESPNs Eammonn Brennan and Dana ONeil solicited feedback regarding the best student sections in all of NCAA Division I. They later listed their top-5 in a podcast discussion, naming the Oakland Zoo the second best in the nation, behind only Duke, during the 2011-12 season, the Oakland Zoo, in collaboration with universitys student radio station WPTS-FM, created The Oakland Zoo Show. Broadcast live locally on WPTS and streamed over the internet, the show starts 30 minutes before every Pitt mens basketball home game and is cohosted by the entire Oakland Zoo student section. During the broadcast of the game follows, game stoppages also include live check-ins with the Zoo. Elite high school running back prospect LeSean McCoy credited the Zoos warm reception for him during a 2007 visit in helping to cement his decision to sign the University of Pittsburgh, gateway High School linebacker, Shayne Hale, also credited the Zoo with his recruiting. Hale attended a game with high school teammate and friend Cameron Saddler, to the cheers of the Zoo, Hale put on a Zoo shirt and joined the Zoo for a portion of the game. The Oakland Zoo was independently formed by Pitt students in the winter of 2001, the initial idea for the Zoo came from Matt Cohen and Zach Hale during the January 6,2001 basketball game against Syracuse where they determined the Pitt student section was too calm. The name Zoo was meant to represent a bunch of kids in a zoo acting crazy whereas Oakland is the neighborhood of Pittsburgh in which the university resides. Students adopted gold t-shirts and eventually grew to consume the majority of the student section at the home court then inside Fitzgerald Field House
2.
Oakland, California
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Oakland /ˈoʊklənd/ is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. The city was incorporated in 1852, Oaklands territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, and north coastal scrub. Its land served as a resource when its hillside oak and redwood timber were logged to build San Francisco. In the late 1860s, Oakland was selected as the terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many San Francisco citizens moved to Oakland, enlarging the citys population, increasing its housing stock and it continued to grow in the 20th century with its busy port, shipyards, and a thriving automobile manufacturing industry. Oakland is known for its sustainability practices, including a top-ranking for usage of electricity from renewable resources, in addition, due to a steady influx of immigrants during the 20th century, along with thousands of African-American war-industry workers who relocated from the Deep South during the 1940s. Oakland is the most ethnically diverse city in the country. The earliest known inhabitants were the Huchiun Indians, who lived there for thousands of years, the Huchiun belonged to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone. In Oakland, they were concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, in 1772, the area that later became Oakland was claimed, with the rest of California, by Spanish settlers for the King of Spain. In the early 19th century, the Spanish crown granted the East Bay area to Luis María Peralta for his Rancho San Antonio, the grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons, Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente. The portion of the parcel that is now Oakland was called encinal—Spanish for oak grove—due to the oak forest that covered the area. In 1851, three men—Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, and Andrew Moon—began developing what is now downtown Oakland, on May 4,1852, the Town of Oakland incorporated. Two years later, on March 25,1854, Oakland re-incorporated as the City of Oakland, with Horace Carpentier elected the first mayor, the city and its environs quickly grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminal in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, a number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland during the latter half of the 19th century. The first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, at the time of incorporation, Oakland consisted of the territory that lay south of todays major intersection of San Pablo Avenue, Broadway, and Fourteenth Street. The city gradually annexed farmlands and settlements to the east and the north, Oaklands rise to industrial prominence, and its subsequent need for a seaport, led to the digging of a shipping and tidal channel in 1902. This resulted in the town of Alameda being made an island
3.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
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.
Association of Zoos and Aquariums
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The AZA is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland. In October 1924, the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums was formed as an affiliate of the American Institute of Park Executives, in 1966, the AAZPA became a professional branch affiliate of the newly formed National Recreation and Park Association. In January 1994, the shorter name American Zoo and Aquarium Association was adopted, in 1998, there were 134 million visits to North American zoos and aquariums. Ten years later, in 2008, there were 175 million visits to AZA-accredited zoos, the organization is active in institution accreditation, animal care initiatives, education and conservation programs, collaborative research and advocacy in order to achieve this goal. It serves as a body for zoos and aquariums and ensures that accredited facilities meet higher standards of animal care than are required by law. Institutions are evaluated every five years in order to ensure standards are met, the association also facilitates both Species Survival Plans and Population Management Plans, which serve to sustainably manage genetically diverse captive populations of various animal species. In addition, the association sponsors the scientific journal Zoo Biology, the association has established a computerized database called the Annual Report on Conservation and Science. It provides a model for a database to help track research projects worldwide. The database can be searched by key word, name of researcher, topic, country or region, name of institution, conservation program title, name of cooperating institution, type of research, or date. In 2000-2001, member institutions reported that they participated in over 2,230 conservation projects in 94 countries and they published 1,450 books, book chapters, journal articles, conference proceeding papers, posters and theses or dissertations. The publications can be searched using keywords, name of author, type of publication, institution name, or date. Depending on the animals they exhibit, the activities of zoos are regulated by laws including the Endangered Species Act, the Animal Welfare Act, additionally, zoos in North America may choose to pursue accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. They shall further be defined as having as their business the exhibition, conservation and preservation of the earths fauna in an educational. Inspection is performed by three experts and then reviewed by a panel of experts before accreditation is awarded. This accreditation process is repeated every five years. The AZA estimates that there are approximately 2,400 animal exhibits operating under USDA license as of February 2007, list of AZA member zoos and aquariums Official website
6.
AC Transit
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AC Transit is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates Transbay routes across San Francisco Bay to San Francisco and selected areas in San Mateo, AC Transit is constituted as a special district under California law. It is governed by seven elected members and it is not a part of or under the control of Alameda or Contra Costa counties or any local jurisdictions. Buses operate out of three operating divisions, Emeryville, East Oakland, and Hayward, the Operations Control Center is located in Emeryville. The Richmond operating division closed in 2011, the District is the public successor to the privately owned Key System. The Districts bus lines also serve parts of some other East Bay communities, including Milpitas, Pinole, most routes connect with regional train service, primarily BART, in addition to ACE and Amtrak, including the Capitol Corridor. While most AC Transit service consists of lines throughout the East Bay. Most of these run across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge to connect communities as distant as El Sobrante, Bus service is also provided across the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges to the south. AC Transits primary hubs include BART stations, major shopping centers, and points of interest, most routes serve and/or terminate at BART stations, providing convenience for transit users. The hubs include, See also AC Transits page on fares and passes or AC Transits page on bus fares, on July 1,2014, AC Transit introduced a Day Pass, designed for customers taking more than two local buses in a day. The pass is good for unlimited rides on local routes from 3,01 a. m. to 3,00 a. m. Customers can obtain a Day Pass in one of two ways, Using Clipper, Customers keep cash value on their card. Once fares equalling the Day Pass price have been deducted, the Day Pass automatically activates, on subsequent rides, the card is tagged but no additional fare is deducted. On-Board, Customers deposit the amount in the farebox and request a Day Pass from the bus operator. On subsequent rides, the pass is swiped at the farebox, AC Transit fares are structured to promote the use of Clipper. Not only are local bus rides cheaper, but certain interagency transfers and day passes are easier to obtain, monthly passes are only available on Clipper. Local BART-to-bus transfer, $0.25 cash discount to and from BART with paper transfer issued at BART, applied as $0.50 Clipper discount on bus trip away from BART only. To transfer from AC Transit to another bus agency without Clipper, to transfer from another bus agency to AC Transit without Clipper, ask the other bus driver for a transfer. Notes, All fares are in USD,1 Issued upon request when full price is paid
7.
Elephant
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Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. Three species are recognised, the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the surviving family of the order Proboscidea, other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mammoths. Male African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and can reach a height of 4 m, all elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk or proboscis, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water, and grasping objects. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects, Elephants large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. Their pillar-like legs can carry their great weight, African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs. Elephants are herbivorous and can be found in different habitats including savannahs, forests, deserts and they prefer to stay near water. They are considered to be keystone species due to their impact on their environments, other animals tend to keep their distance from elephants while predators, such as lions, tigers, hyenas, and wild dogs, usually target only young elephants. Females tend to live in groups, which can consist of one female with her calves or several related females with offspring. The groups are led by a known as the matriarch. Elephants have a society in which multiple family groups come together to socialise. Males leave their family groups when they reach puberty and may live alone or with other males, calves are the centre of attention in their family groups and rely on their mothers for as long as three years. Elephants can live up to 70 years in the wild and they communicate by touch, sight, smell, and sound, elephants use infrasound, and seismic communication over long distances. Elephant intelligence has been compared with that of primates and cetaceans and they appear to have self-awareness and show empathy for dying or dead individuals of their kind. African elephants are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature while the Asian elephant is classed as endangered, one of the biggest threats to elephant populations is the ivory trade, as the animals are poached for their ivory tusks. Other threats to elephants include habitat destruction and conflicts with local people. Elephants are used as working animals in Asia, in the past, they were used in war, today, they are often controversially put on display in zoos, or exploited for entertainment in circuses. Elephants are highly recognisable and have featured in art, folklore, religion, literature
8.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
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Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is one of the most popular green building certification programs used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U. S. LEED also has grown from six volunteers on one committee to 119,924 staff, volunteers, LEED standards have been applied to approximately 83,452 registered and certified LEED projects worldwide, covering around 13.8 billion square feet. Many U. S. federal agencies and states and local governments require or reward LEED certification, however, four states have effectively banned the use of LEED in new public buildings, preferring other industry standards that the USGBC considers too lax. Proposals to modify the LEED standards are offered and publicly reviewed by USGBCs member organizations, GBCI also certifies projects pursuing LEED. LEED has evolved since 1998 to more accurately represent and incorporate emerging green building technologies, the pilot version, LEED New Construction v1.0, led to LEED NCv2.0, LEED NCv2.2 in 2005, and LEED2009 in 2009. LEED v4 was introduced in November,2013, until October 31,2016, new projects may choose between LEED2009 and LEED v4. New projects registering after October 31,2016 must use LEED v4, LEED2009 encompasses ten rating systems for the design, construction and operation of buildings, homes and neighborhoods. Five overarching categories correspond to the available under the LEED professional program. Up to 10 additional points may be earned, four points may be received for Regional Priority Credits. Its owner must share data on the energy and water use for five years after occupancy or date of certification. Each of the categories also have mandatory measures in each category. The weighting process has three steps, A collection of buildings are used to estimate the environmental impacts of any building seeking LEED certification in a designated rating scheme. NIST weightings are used to judge the importance of these impacts in each category. Data regarding actual impacts on environmental and human health are used to assign points to individual categories and measures and this system results in a weighted average for each rating scheme based upon actual impacts and the relative importance of those impacts to human health and environmental quality. The LEED council also appears to have assigned credit and measure weighting based upon the market implications of point allocation, in 2003, the Canada Green Building Council received permission to create LEED Canada-NC v1.0, which was based upon LEED-NC2.0. Many buildings in Canada are LEED certified in part due to their Rainwater harvesting practices, LEED certification is granted by the Green Building Certification Institute, which handles the third-party verification of a projects compliance with the LEED requirements. The certification process for design teams is made up of two applications, one including design credits, and one including construction credits. All of the LEED credits in each rating system are assigned to either the design application or the construction application, the design credits include those that are the purview of the architect and the engineer, and are documented in the official construction drawings
9.
Downtown Oakland
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Downtown Oakland hosts the only celebration of its kind in the nation in memory of the black cowboys who helped settle the American West. The annual parade typically begins on an early October weekend at DeFremery Park in West Oakland en route to Frank H. Ogawa Plaza where judging booths are set up, after an awards ceremony, the parade returns to DeFremery Park, for a celebration. Downtown includes a portion of the oldest part of the city, the Oakland Museum is located on Oak Street near the southeastern edge of Downtown. Laney College, with more than 12,000 students, is located on Fallon Street near the Lake Merritt BART station, other educational institutions include Lincoln University, a small business school catering mainly to international students, and a downtown office of Cal State East Bay. Oaksterdam University, a college which prepares students for medical cannabis work, is located on 15th Street in an area referred to as Oaksterdam. The original campus of UC Berkeley was located between Franklin, Harrison, 12th and 14th streets, and the University of California system is headquartered in Downtown. Lincoln Elementary School, one of the few public schools in the downtown of a major US city, is on the edge of downtown. The Oakland School for the Arts, a school, is building a new facility surrounding the Fox Oakland Theatre in Oaklands Uptown Oakland. City Hall Plaza is a city park and a plaza which includes what was once the terminus of San Pablo Avenue where it met Broadway at 14th Street. Motor vehicle traffic has also excluded from where former city streets, Washington street. Today the area features a retail mall with pedestrian streets laid out to replicate the original street grid. Several routes operated by AC Transit pass by or end at Downtown Oakland and these include, Local Routes 1 - International Blvd. 51A - Rockridge BART via Broadway-Downtown-Fruitvale BART via Santa Clara Ave. 72/72M - San Pablo Ave. / MacDonald Ave. 72R - San Pablo Ave, Rapid 88 - Market Street Transbay Route NL - MacArthur Blvd. Limited All-Nighter Routes 800 - Transbay 801 - International Blvd. /Mission Blvd,802 - San Pablo Ave.805 - MacArthur Blvd. These stations host local service, Rapid service, Transbay Express, a Translink Add Value Machine is located at AC Transit Headquarters on Franklin Street. The transformation of the 1 line into a full scale bus rapid transit corridor is years into the planning process. Three underground BART stations are located in Downtown, 12th Street/Oakland City Center, the Downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt/Uptown District Associations are community benefit districts that were formed in February 2009. The associations meet and function jointly, in June 2013, the districts were recognized by the International Downtown Association and named the IDA’s June Downtown of the Month
10.
Joseph R. Knowland
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Joseph Russell Knowland was an American politician and newspaper publisher. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from California and was owner, editor and he was the father of United States Senator William F. Knowland. Knowland was born in Alameda, California to Joseph Knowland and Hannah Bailey Russell and he had two sisters, Sadie and Lucille, and one brother, Hollis, who died in infancy. JR, as he was known to his friends, attended Alameda Park Street Primary School, Hopkins Academy, a school in Oakland. During this time Knowland also spent summers working at the Oakland Enquirer and he entered with the class of 1895, the California Wesleyan College at San Jose. The school was later renamed College of the Pacific of Stockton, from an early age he had an interest in journalism and history. His father being from New York and his mother from Maine and he wrote stories for the Alameda Argus and Oakland Enquirer on California history and Republican politics. At 18, Knowland joined the Native Sons of the Golden West and he organized the California Historical Landmarks League and was its chairman from 1902 to 1906. He was chairman of the Landmarks Committee of the Native Sons of the Golden West from 1902 to 1962 and he became engaged in his fathers wholesale lumber and shipping business. Knowland was sent by his father in 1888 to Oregon to rebuild the Gardiner Mill and he went to Jackson, Amador County, serving as an envoy of his father. Joseph R. Knowland managed the Kennedy Mining and Milling Company, in the fall of 1891, he left the Sierra to help his ailing father in Alameda. In 1893, he was appointed to a committee to create a panorama of Alameda County for the California Midwinter Exposition of 1894, Knowland joined the Alameda Good Government Club in early 1895. He was appointed, in 1896, to the Alameda Library Board of Trustees and he was sought by the Alameda County Central Committee of the Republican Party to run for the State Assembly in 1898. Asked later in life why he entered politics, Knowland would reply and he was a member of the State Assembly from 1899 to 1903. Knowland chaired the Assembly committee to investigate the conditions of the Chinese slave women in San Francisco, President Theodore Roosevelt had appointed Metcalf to be Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Knowland was reelected to the Fifty-ninth and to the four succeeding Congresses and his 3rd Congressional District included Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties. The U. S. Armys Benicia Arsenal and the U. S. Naval Shipyard at Mare Island were located in his district, Knowland had a keen interest in the military, most especially the U. S. Navy. He worked in Congress for capital ships to be built on the West Coast and he was an advocate for a two-ocean battleship fleet
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