A paca is a member of the genus Cuniculus of ground-dwelling, herbivorous rodents in South and Central America. It is the only genus in the family Cuniculidae, they are large rodents with dots and stripes on their sides, short ears, visible tails. They are referred to as "gibnuts" or "royal rats"; the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama has studied the possibilities of developing the paca as a viable high-priced food supply for the tropics. Pacas originated in South America and are one of the few mammal species that emigrated to North America after the Great American Interchange 3 million years ago, they were grouped with the agoutis in the family Dasyproctidae, subfamily Agoutinae, but were given full family status because they differ in the number of toes, the shape of the skull, coat patterning. Pacas are 50–77 cm in length, excluding the 13–23 cm short tail, weigh 6–14 kg, are the sixth-largest rodents in the world. Similar to guinea pigs, they have square heads, small ears, sides patterned with spots and stripes, invisible tails.

With large hind limbs, small fore limbs, cone-shaped bodies, pacas are similar in appearance to the deer-like, ungulate chevrotains, like them have four to seven horizontal lines of blotches and stripes along their flanks. They have a heavy and robust appearance, though their legs are long and tiny, their small ears are set high on their heads. They have four toes on their fore feet and five on their hind feet and they have stout nails that resemble small hooves. In young pacas, the skin is covered with horny scales about 2 mm in diameter. There is no difference between sexes, they can live up to 13 years in the wild. Pacas inhabit rainforests, cloud forests, sometimes more open habitats, they prefer to be near water. They dive when can stay submerged up to 15 minutes, they can jump up to 1 m and freeze up to 45 minutes. They move along well-established paths and will create new paths when old ones are disturbed, they are passive in daytime and forage in the morning and afternoon, but can be nocturnal in areas with many predators.

They live in burrows up to 3 m deep with two entrances covered with leaves to hide the burrow and to serve as an early warning system. Burrows are near water, but always above the seasonal flood line. Predators except humans include jaguar, ocelot, jaguarundi, bush dog, boa constrictor, caiman. Pacas have resonating chambers in their cheeks and their growling noise, at about 1 kHz, is loud for their size. Aside from making noises, territories are marked with urine. Population density can reach up to 70 adults per 0.2 km2, pacas constitute some 20% of the biomass of terrestrial mammals. In the wild, pacas eat fruits from understory trees and fallen fruits from taller trees, but may eat leaves, flowers and insects, they play a vital role in seed dispersal, with seasonal adaptations, their home ranges are centered on a group of fruit trees. Pacas do not use their fore-paws to manipulate fruits, instead using their powerful jaw muscles to break open hard-shelled fruits. Unlike agoutis, pacas can store fat, so are less dependent on the caching of seeds.

Competition from agoutis is avoided by a slight variation in activity cycles and food preferences. Like rabbits, pacas are coprophagous and absorb protein and carbohydrates from specially produced moist fecal pellets. Before allowing their young to suckle, mothers lick them to stimulate them to defecate and urinate, lick the resulting product, both to feed herself and to prevent the odour from attracting predators. Gestation lasts between 119 days with about 190 days between births. Pacas are precocial, the young are born with fur and open eyes. Mothers give birth to one young, but she can give birth up to three times per year if conditions allow. More than one birth per year results in lactation periods overlapping pregnancies. Weaning begins after six weeks, but the young start to follow their mothers early and can do so for up to a year. Sexual maturity is reached after 6 -- 12 months, when females weigh males 7.5 kg. Pacas mate in water; as the male approaches the female, she starts to hop enthusiastically, more so if he sprays her with urine.

Pacas have altered the common rodent strategy — safety in numbers — and mind their offspring carefully. At 650–710 g at birth, the young are born in holes too small for both predators and the mother to enter, which are covered with leaves and twigs. To invite the young out of the hole, the mother uses a low rolling vocalization. Suckling lasts for 90 days, after which the young weights 4 kg; the lowland paca is found from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. They live in rainforests near streams, but can be found in a wide variety of habitats, including mangrove swamps, gallery forests near water currents, in public parks, they have been observed up to 2,500 m above sea level. The smaller mountain paca lives in the northern Andes and the Páramo grasslands, with a peak occurrence between 2,000 and 3,000 m above sea level; the mountain paca has darker fur than the lowland paca. Observations indicate mountain pacas are found between 2,800 m above sea level. Lowland paca, Cuniculus paca Mountain paca, Cuniculus taczanowskii Cunicu

The Thing is the eighth album by The Jazz Crusaders recorded in 1965 and released on the Pacific Jazz label. AllMusic rated the album with 3 stars. "The Thing" - 4:40 "Sunset in Mountains" - 5:10 "While the City Sleeps" - 3:35 "White Cobra" - 4:45 "New Time Shuffle" - 4:40 "Para Mi Espoza" - 6:40 "Soul Kosher" - 5:35 Wayne Henderson - trombone Wilton Felder - tenor saxophone Joe Sample - piano Monk Montgomery - electric bass Victor Gaskin - bass Stix Hooper - drums

The Sri Lankan axis deer or Ceylon spotted deer is a subspecies of axis deer that inhabits only Sri Lanka. The name chital is not used in Sri Lanka, its validity is disputed, some maintain that the axis deer is monotypic. Sri Lankan axis deer are active during early morning and again during the evening, but they are observed near waterholes anytime; the Sri Lankan axis deer eats grasses, but it eats fallen fruits and leaves. The Sri Lankan axis deer graze with langur, wild buffalo, sambar deer, they lives in groups of between 10-60 animals, though herds may include up to 100 animals. Axis deer are important, it is prey for sloth bears and jackals. These deer inhabit lowland dry forests and shrub lands; these deer inhabit dry mountain areas. Unlike the mainland axis deer, plentiful, Sri Lankan axis deer populations are considered to be vulnerable. Threats include hunting for deforestation. Axis deer were found in large numbers in the entire dry zone of Sri Lanka, but these numbers have been reduced.

Today several thousands of these deer are found in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan axis deer are found in protected areas in the dry zone, with a small number of herds living outside the protected forest areas. Large herds can be found only in protected areas, they can be seen on the streets of Trincomalee. They wander near the walls of Fort Fredrick

Loló Soldevilla was a Cuban visual artist known for her role in concrete art. Born Dolores Soldevilla Nieto in 1901, Cuba, she was an avid painter, collage artist and draughtsman, she began painting in 1948, in 1949 traveled to Paris as Cuba's cultural attache, something which allowed her to travel extensively throughout Europe and Latin America, influencing her art style and career immensely. In Paris, she was influenced by the European avant-garde, most notably abstraction. In 1956, Soldevilla along with her husband and fellow artist Pedro de Oraá, returned to Cuba and founded Galeria Color-Luz, an artistic space focused on the promotion of abstract art. Oraá and Loló, along with Romanian-born artist Sandu Darie among others, were the pioneers of Concretism or Cuban Abstraction in 1950s Cuba, as well as the founders of the group Los Diez Pintores Concretos or known as Los Diez. Soldevilla graduated from the Falcón Conservatory for singing and the violin, founding the short-lived group La Orchestra de Loló before taking up painting in 1948.

During the 1930s, she was a seminal political activist, enduring detainment for participation in several political rallies, as well as imprisonment in the Prison for Women in Guanabacoa, in 1935 for her positions against the Machado dictatorship. She helped found the Partido Aprista of Cuba, along with Enrique de la Osa and Guillermo de Zéndegui among others and integrated the Executive National Committee for this political organization. In 1949, she traveled to Paris as a cultural attaché for the Cuban Embassy and enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she started to develop works that would on that year, encompass her first two shows. Among her returns to Cuba, Soldevilla traveled extensively during her career, she was influenced by the avant-garde of several countries in Europe and Latin America including Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany and Brazil among others. In 1951, she joined the artist workshop Atelier d’Art Abstrait founded by Deswane and Pillet, with whom she collaborated with for two years.

Soldevilla traveled back and forth from the island exhibiting her works and garnering a group of contemporaries who would soon help her expand the influence of concrete abstraction in Cuba. In 1957, after a stint in Venezuela Soldevilla returned to Cuba with her husband and fellow artist Pedro de Oraá and together founded Galeria Color-Luz, gallery focused on Concrete Abstraction and the Ten Concrete Painters. Although Los Diez and Color-Luz were short-lived, lasting only from 1957-1961, Soldevilla kept painting and collaborated with several magazines and newspapers such as Revolución. From the revolution in 1959 to the early sixties, she became the professor of Fine Arts in the School of Architecture at the University of Havana. In 1964, she founded the group of painters Espacio, became a member of UPEC, a journalist union and the group UNEAC the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. Loló Soldevilla died in 1971. Los Diez Pintores Concretos were..." a group that established the style of ‘Concretism’ or ‘Concrete’ art in 1950s Cuba and fashioned a whole new, unique language of abstraction."

Soldevilla's take on geometric abstraction played an important role in the development of concretismo in Cuba as well as in the international scene. Soldevilla's education in Paris and the bonds she formed between her teachers and fellow contemporaries led to her producing her most important body of work in the years between 1950-1957, her collage work from this period is a study of the geometries of circles, rectangles and colors, creating a rhythm with their variation of size and shape. Diagonals, opposing elements, contrasting colors and organic geometric style set Loló apart from her fellow contemporaries, as did her asymmetric metal kinetic sculptures; the main philosophy of concrete art is that it is an introverted art form, it has no narrative, no basis or reference in the natural world and has no defining qualities except the simple admiration of its colors and shapes. Soldevilla was a principal advocate of this movement. Just as Soldevilla's opening of Galeria Color-Luz incubated Los Diez, its closing in 1961 marked the official dissolution of the group after exhibiting together only three times.

The last decade of her life would be spent in journalistic and literary pursuits, she worked with several magazines and newspapers and wrote a memoir about her life in Paris entitled, Ir, volver a ir: crónicas. An avid writer she wrote novels, plays and a ballet. Although she exhibited little in the 1960s, she remains a seminal, revolutionary figure in the history of Cuban art and the flowering of concretism and concrete art. 2018 3Concrete, Kendall Art Center, Miami, FL 2016 Concrete Cuba, David Zwirner's 20th Street Gallery, New York, NY Diálogos constructivistas en la vanguardia cubana, Galerie Lelong, New York, NY 2015 Concrete Cuba, David Zwirner Gallery, England Soto Voce, Dominique Lévy, England 2006 Loló: an imaginary world, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba Art of Cuba, Traveling Exhibition, Brazil Cuba: Art and Art History, Traveling Exhibition 1970 Casa de la Cultura Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic1966 Op art, Havana Gallery, Cuba Pop art, Havana Gallery, Cuba Moon and me, Havana Gallery, Cuba 1957–1961 A, Feria del Arte Cubano, Cuba Ho

Wild Willy Barrett's Mound of Sound is the fifth solo album by Wild Willy Barrett. The album features contributions from fellow Buckinghamshire guitarist "John Cadman" and "Bad Attitude" a collective made up of Carl Taylor and Stephen Two-Names. All tracks are written by Painter except where stated. Wild Willy Barrett - harmonium, balalaika, slide guitar, eggneck guitar, ukulele (6] Mark Freeman - cardboard box, marching drum, waste bin, Tunisian drum Birgitta Herminegildus van Dongen - vocals John Cadman - lute, bandora

The 2006 European Athletics Indoor Cup was held on 5 March 2006 at the Stade Couvert Régional in Liévin, France. It was the third edition of the indoor track and field meeting for international teams, which featured the six top performing nations from the 2005 European Cup and the top two from the European Cup First League. Great Britain's women's team withdrew due to the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, while the Italian women withdrew as the dates coincided with their indoor national championships; the event was held a week prior to the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Moscow. The competition featured nineteen athletics events ten for nine for women; the 400 metres race were held in a dual final format due to size constraints, with athletes' being assigned final positions through their finishing times. The international team points totals were decided by their athletes' finishing positions, with each representative's performance contributing towards their national overall score; the Russian women won the competition for a third consecutive time, holding a sixteen-point margin over runners-up Poland.

The French men's team repeated as champions, having won in 2004. Germany were the men's second placed team; the competition venue is the annual host of the Meeting Pas de Calais. Key ResultsEuropean Indoor Cup. GBR Athletics/Athletics Weekly. Retrieved on 2011-01-26. European Athletics Indoor Cup Liévin 2006. European Athletics. Retrieved on 2011-01-26. Official website Images from the competition