Oolite or oölite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers. The name derives from the Ancient Greek word ᾠόν for egg. Oolites consist of ooids of 0.25–2 millimetres' diameter. The term oolith can refer to individual ooids. Ooids are most composed of calcium carbonate, but can be composed of phosphate, chert, dolomite or iron minerals, including hematite. Dolomitic and chert ooids are most the result of the replacement of the original texture in limestone. Oolitic hematite occurs at Red Mountain near Birmingham, along with oolitic limestone, they are formed in warm, shallow agitated marine water intertidal environments, though some are formed in inland lakes. The mechanism of formation starts with a small fragment of sediment acting as a'seed', e.g. a piece of a shell. Strong intertidal currents wash the'seeds' around on the seabed, where they accumulate layers of chemically precipitated calcite from the supersaturated water; the oolites are found in large current bedding structures that resemble sand dunes.

The size of the oolites reflect the time that they were exposed to the water before they were covered with sediment. Oolites are used in the home aquarium industry because their small grain size is ideal for shallow static beds and bottom covering of up to 1" in depth. Known as "oolitic" sand, the sugar-sized round grains of this sand pass through the gills of gobies and other sand-sifting organisms; this unusually smooth sand promotes the growth of bacteria, which are important biofilters in home aquaria. Because of its small grain size, oolitic sand has a lot of surface area, which promotes high bacterial growth; some exemplar oolitic limestone was formed in England during the Jurassic period, forms the Cotswold Hills, the Isle of Portland with its famous Portland Stone, part of the North York Moors. A particular type, Bath Stone, gives the buildings of the World Heritage City of Bath their distinctive appearance. Carboniferous Hunts Bay Oolite lies under much of south Wales; the Atlantic Coastal Ridge of southeastern Florida, the islands of the Lower Florida Keys, much of the Everglades, are underlain by Miami Oolite.

This limestone was formed by deposition when shallow seas covered the area between periods of glaciation. The material consolidated and eroded during exposure above the ocean surface. One of the world's largest freshwater lakebed oolites is the Shoofly Oolit, a section of the Glenns Ferry Formation on southwestern Idaho's Snake River Plain. 10 million years ago, the Plain formed the bed of Lake Idaho. Wave action in the lake washed sediments back and forth in the shallows on the southwestern shore, forming ooids and depositing them on steeper benches near the shore in 2- to 40-foot thicknesses; when the lake drained, the oolite was left behind, along with siltstone, volcanic tuffs and alluvium from adjacent mountain slopes. The other sediments eroded away, while the more resistant oolite weathered into hummocks, small arches and other intriguing natural "sculptures." The Shoofly Oolite lies on public land west of Bruneau, Idaho managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The physical and chemical properties of the Shoofly Oolite are the setting for a suite of rare plants, which the BLM protects through land use management and on-site interpretation.

This type of limestone is found in Indiana in the United States. The town of Oolitic, was founded for the trade of limestone and bears its name. Quarries in Oolitic and Bloomington contributed the materials for such iconic U. S. landmarks as the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Many of the buildings on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington are built with native oolitic limestone material, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, is built of grey oolitic limestone. Oolites appear in the Conococheague limestone, of Cambrian age, in the Great Appalachian Valley in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia. Rogenstein is a term describing a specific type of oolite in which the cementing matter is argillaceous. Geologic time scale – System that relates geological strata to time Geology of Great Britain Pearl – Hard object produced within a living shelled mollusc – formed from concentric layers of calcium carbonate Oolitic aragonite sand Media related to Oolite at Wikimedia Commons Ooids and oolite at Wikibooks

Never Never Never is a 1973 album by Shirley Bassey. It features the hit single title track, a UK top 10 hit, which became one of Bassey's best-known songs; the album became a top 10 hit in the UK and was a moderate hit in the US. Released in May 1973, this album saw a peak in the Shirley Bassey career revival that she was experiencing during the early 1970s; the album's lead single, "Never, Never Never" had been a hit, reaching No. 8 in the UK Charts and remaining in the top 50 for 19 weeks, becoming one of her biggest and most well-known hits. It performed well in the US, becoming her only single to make three different charts: No. 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 8 on the Adult Contemporary Chart, No. 67 on the R&B Chart. Included were covers of contemporary hits such as "Baby I'm-a Want You", "Killing Me Softly with His Song" and "No Regrets" - the latter sharing the title with another song Bassey had recorded and released in the 1960s. Closing track, "Make the World a Little Younger" was released as the album's second and final single.

The album followed the single and entered the top 10 in the UK, peaking at No. 10 during a 10-week run, would go on to earn a silver disc. It was a hit in the US, peaking at No. 60 on the Billboard 200, No. 34 on the R&B Chart. Of the album Billboard magazine said the album was "a superb production" made "with care and love and showcasing Shirley's outstanding vocal range, supplemented by a large orchestra". At the time of release, Bassey was in the middle of a national US tour. In an accompanying booklet of the sheet music for the album, the write-up stated; the original release was in stereo on vinyl, cassette. Photography for this album was by Lord Snowdon, it was released in the US with an alternate cover. The album was released in remastered form by BGO Records in a double CD pack, together with her 1975 album Good, Bad but Beautiful in 2005; the US version was released alone on CD in 2006. Side One "Never, Never" 3:13 "Baby I'm-a Want You" 2:44 "Someone Who Cares" 2:53 "The Old Fashioned Way" 3:06 "I Won't Last a Day Without You" 3:31 "Somehow" 2:24Side Two "There's No Such Thing as Love" 3:00 "Killing Me Softly with His Song" 4:40 "Going, Gone" 2:13 "No Regrets" 4:29 "Together" 3:16 "Make The World a Little Younger" 3:34 Shirley Bassey – Vocals John Harris – Musical Director and Conductor Arthur Greenslade - Arranger and Conductor Chris Gunning - Arranger and Conductor John Timperley, Martin Rushent, Roger Cameron - engineers Lord Snowdon - photography Pierre Tubbs - art direction

During the Renaissance, great advances occurred in geography, chemistry, mathematics, manufacturing and engineering. The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. But, at least in its initial period, some see the Renaissance as one of scientific backwardness. Historians like George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have criticized how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that progress was slowed for some amount of time. Humanists favoured human-centered subjects like politics and history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics. Others have focused on the positive influence of the Renaissance, pointing to factors like the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the increased emphasis on the study of language and the correct reading of texts. Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the early phase of the Scientific Revolution, 1450–1630.

More Peter Dear has argued for a two-phase model of early modern science: a Scientific Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, focused on the restoration of the natural knowledge of the ancients. During and after the Renaissance of the 12th century, Europe experienced an intellectual revitalization with regard to the investigation of the natural world. In the 14th century, however, a series of events that would come to be known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was underway; when the Black Death came, it wiped out. It brought a sudden end to the previous period of massive scientific change; the plague killed 25–50% of the people in Europe in the crowded conditions of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century; the 14th century saw the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of ancient texts was accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West Italy.

The invention of the printing press was to have great effect on European society: the facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. But this initial period is seen as one of scientific backwardness. There were no new developments in physics or astronomy, the reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Renaissance philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion. At the same time, Renaissance humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation, not governed by laws or mathematics. Science would only be revived with such figures as Copernicus, Gerolamo Cardano, Francis Bacon, Descartes. Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through obscure processes, it is sometimes described as an early form of chemistry. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a method of creating gold from other substances.

A common belief of alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all other substances formed, that if you could reduce a substance to this original material, you could construct it into another substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two main elements or principles and mercury. Paracelsus was an physician of the Renaissance; the Paracelsians added salt, to make a trinity of alchemical elements. The astronomy of the late Middle Ages was based on the geocentric model described by Claudius Ptolemy in antiquity. Few practicing astronomers or astrologers read Ptolemy's Almagest, translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century. Instead they relied on introductions to the Ptolemaic system such as the De sphaera mundi of Johannes de Sacrobosco and the genre of textbooks known as Theorica planetarum. For the task of predicting planetary motions they turned to the Alfonsine tables, a set of astronomical tables based on the Almagest models but incorporating some modifications the trepidation model attributed to Thabit ibn Qurra.

Contrary to popular belief, astronomers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance did not resort to "epicycles on epicycles" in order to correct the original Ptolemaic models—until one comes to Copernicus himself. Sometime around 1450, mathematician Georg Purbach began a series of lectures on astronomy at the University of Vienna. Regiomontanus, one of his students, collected his notes on the lecture and published them as Theoricae novae planetarum in the 1470s; this "New Theorica" replaced the older theorica as the textbook of advanced astronomy. Purbach began to prepare a summary and commentary on the Almagest, he died after completing only six books and Regiomontanus continued the task, consulting a Greek manuscript brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Bessarion. When it was published in 1496, the Epitome of the Almagest made the highest levels of Ptolemaic astronomy accessible to many European astronomers for the first time; the last major event in Renaissance astronomy is the work of Nicolaus Copernicus.

He was among the first generation of astronomers to be trained with the Theoricae novae and the Epitome. Shortly before 1514 he began to revive Aristarchus's idea, he spent the rest of his life attempting a mathematical proof of heliocent