1.
Black-crowned night heron
–
The Black-crowned night heron, commonly shortened to just night heron in Eurasia, is a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, except in the coldest regions and Australasia. Adults are approximately 64 cm long and weigh 800 g and they have a black crown and back with the remainder of the body white or grey, red eyes, and short yellow legs. They have pale grey wings and white under parts, two or three long white plumes, erected in greeting and courtship displays, extend from the back of the head. The sexes are similar in appearance although the males are slightly larger, Black-crowned night herons do not fit the typical body form of the heron family. They are relatively stocky with shorter bills, legs, and necks than their more familiar cousins and their resting posture is normally somewhat hunched but when hunting they extend their necks and look more like other wading birds. Immature birds have dull grey-brown plumage on their heads, wings and their underparts are paler and streaked with brown. The young birds have orange eyes and duller yellowish-green legs and they are very noisy birds in their nesting colonies, with calls that are commonly transcribed as quok or woc. The breeding habitat is fresh and salt-water wetlands throughout much of the world, Black-crowned night herons nest in colonies on platforms of sticks in a group of trees, or on the ground in protected locations such as islands or reedbeds. Three to eight eggs are laid and this heron is migratory in the northernmost part of its range, but otherwise resident. The North American population winters in Mexico, the southern United States, Central America, and the West Indies, a colony of the herons has regularly summered at the National Zoo in Washington, D. C. for more than a century. These birds stand still at the edge and wait to ambush prey. They primarily eat small fish, crustaceans, frogs, aquatic insects, small mammals, during the day they rest in trees or bushes. N. n. hoactli is more gregarious outside the season than the nominate race. A thorough study performed by J. Sitko and P. Heneberg in the Czech Republic in 1962–2013 suggested that the central European black-crowned night herons host 8 helminth species, the dominant species consisted of Neogryporhynchus cheilancristrotus, Contracaecum microcephalum and Opistorchis longissimus. The mean number of species recorded per host individual reached 1.41. Nycticorax means night raven and derives from the Ancient Greek nuktos night and korax and it refers to the largely nocturnal feeding habits and croaking crow-like call of this species. Black-crowned night heron on Animal Diversity Web Stiles, F. Gary, Skutch, a Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. Herons and Egrets of the World, ISBN 978-0-679-45122-8. com Field Guide on Flickr Images and information of the black-crowned night heron from Portugal Black-crowned night-heron media
2.
Pileated woodpecker
–
The pileated woodpecker is a large woodpecker native to North America. This crow-sized bird normally inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the forests of Canada. It is the second-largest woodpecker in the United States, after the critically endangered, adults are 40 to 49 cm long, span 66 to 75 cm across the wings, and weigh 250 to 400 g, with an average weight of 300 g. Each wing measures 21.4 to 25.3 cm, the tail measures 14.0 to 17.4 cm, the bill is 4.1 to 6.0 cm and the tarsus measures 3.1 to 3.8 cm. They are mainly black with a red crest, and have a line down the sides of the throat. They show white on the wings in flight, the flight of these birds is strong and direct, but has an undulating quality, similar to the relatively unique flight-style of all woodpeckers. Adult males have a red line from the bill to the throat, the only North American birds of similar plumage and size are the ivory-billed woodpecker of the Southeastern United States and Cuba, and the related imperial woodpecker of Mexico. However, unlike the pileated, both of those species are rare, if not extinct. Most reports of the ivory-billed woodpecker are believed to be reports of the far more common pileated. The call is a loud, far-carrying laugh, sometimes described as a bird call due to its wild. The northern flicker, which is very different-looking and weighs half as much as a pileated, has a similar-sounding call. Its drumming can be loud, often sounding like someone striking a tree with a hammer. The drum sounds like 10 fast and hard taps, rather than the 10 slow, up to four subspecies of pileated woodpeckers have been recognized historically. Generally, pileated woodpeckers follow Bergmanns rule being smaller and more compact in the south, the ranges of the potential four subspecies are described below. Southern pileated woodpecker – the southeastern U. S and this bird favors mature forests and heavily wooded parks. They specifically prefer mesic habitats with large, mature hardwood trees, however, they also inhabit smaller woodlots as long as they have a scattering of tall trees. These birds mainly eat insects, especially ants and wood-boring beetle larvae. They also eat fruits, nuts, and berries, including poison ivy berries, pileated woodpeckers often chip out large and roughly rectangular holes in trees while searching out insects, especially ant galleries
3.
Alexander Fleming
–
Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy, Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in Time magazines list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his marriage. Fleming went to Loudoun Moor School and Darvel School, and earned a scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London. After working in an office for four years, the twenty-year-old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle. Fleming had been a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force since 1900, in 1908, he gained a BSc degree with Gold Medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Marys until 1914. Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and he and many of his colleagues worked in battlefield hospitals at the Western Front in France. In 1918 he returned to St Marys Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928, in 1951 he was elected the Rector of the University of Edinburgh for a term of three years. During World War I, Fleming witnessed the death of soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics, which were used at the time to treat infected wounds, at St Mary’s Hospital Fleming continued his investigations into antibacterial substances. Testing the nasal secretions from a patient with a heavy cold and this was the first recorded discovery of lysozyme, an enzyme present in many secretions including tears, saliva, skin, hair and nails as well as mucus. Although he was able to obtain larger amounts of lysozyme from egg whites, the enzyme was only effective against small counts of harmless bacteria, by 1927, Fleming had been investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well-known from his work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent August on holiday with his family, before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. Fleming showed the culture to his former assistant Merlin Price. Fleming grew the mould in a culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. He identified the mould as being from the Penicillium genus, and, after months of calling it mould juice
4.
Penicillin
–
Penicillin is a group of antibiotics which include penicillin G, penicillin V, procaine penicillin, and benzathine penicillin. Penicillin antibiotics were among the first medications to be effective against many bacterial infections caused by staphylococci and streptococci, penicillins are still widely used today, though many types of bacteria have developed resistance following extensive use. About 10% of people report that they are allergic to penicillin, however, serious allergies only occur in about 0. 03%. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming, people began using it to treat infections in 1942. There are several enhanced penicillin families which are effective against additional bacteria, these include the penicillins, aminopenicillins. They are derived from Penicillium fungi, the term penicillin is often used generically to refer to benzylpenicillin, procaine benzylpenicillin, benzathine benzylpenicillin, and phenoxymethylpenicillin. Procaine penicillin and benzathine penicillin have the same activity as benzylpenicillin. Phenoxymethylpenicillin is less active against gram-negative bacteria than benzylpenicillin, infrequent adverse effects include fever, vomiting, erythema, dermatitis, angioedema, seizures, and pseudomembranous colitis. About 10% of people report that they are allergic to penicillin, however, serious allergies only occur in about 0. 03%. Penicillin can also induce serum sickness or a serum sickness-like reaction in some individuals, serum sickness is a type III hypersensitivity reaction that occurs one to three weeks after exposure to drugs including penicillin. It is not a drug allergy, because allergies are type I hypersensitivity reactions. Pain and inflammation at the site is also common for parenterally administered benzathine benzylpenicillin, benzylpenicillin. Significantly, there is a reaction to Streptolysin S, a toxin released by certain killed bacteria and associated with Penicillin injection. Allergic reactions to any β-lactam antibiotic may occur in up to 1% of patients receiving that agent, the allergic reaction is a Type I hypersensitivity reaction. Anaphylaxis will occur in approximately 0. 01% of patients and it has previously been accepted that there was up to a 10% cross-sensitivity between penicillin-derivatives, cephalosporins, and carbapenems, due to the sharing of the β-lactam ring. Assessments in 2006 found no risk for cross-allergy for second-generation or later cephalosporins than the first generation. However, as a risk, research shows that all beta lactams have the intrinsic hazard of very serious hazardous reactions in susceptible patients. Only the frequency of these reactions vary, based on the structure, bacteria constantly remodel their peptidoglycan cell walls, simultaneously building and breaking down portions of the cell wall as they grow and divide
5.
Microwave oven
–
A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that heats and cooks food by exposing it to microwave radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce energy in a process known as dielectric heating. Percy Spencer is generally credited with inventing the microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the Radarange, it was first sold in 1946, Raytheon later licensed its patents for a home-use microwave oven that was first introduced by Tappan in 1955, but these units were still too large and expensive for general home use. The countertop microwave oven was first introduced in 1967 by the Amana Corporation, Microwave ovens are popular for reheating previously cooked foods and cooking a variety of foods. They are also useful for heating of otherwise slowly prepared cooking items, such as hot butter, fats. Unlike conventional ovens, microwave ovens usually do not directly brown or caramelize food, exceptions occur in rare cases where the oven is used to heat frying-oil and other very oily items, which attain far higher temperatures than that of boiling water. Some modern microwave ovens are part of units with built-in extractor hoods. The exploitation of high-frequency radio waves for heating substances was possible by the development of vacuum tube radio transmitters around 1920. By 1930 the application of waves to heat human tissue had developed into the medical therapy of diathermy. At the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair, Westinghouse demonstrated the cooking of foods between two metal plates attached to a 10 kW,60 MHz shortwave transmitter. The Westinghouse team, led by I. F. Mouromtseff, found that foods like steaks and this patent proposed radio frequency heating, at 10 to 20 megahertz. The invention of the cavity magnetron made possible the production of waves of a small enough wavelength. The magnetron was originally a component in the development of short wavelength radar during World War II. A more high-powered microwave generator that worked at shorter wavelengths was needed, sir Henry Tizard travelled to the U. S. in late September 1940 to offer the magnetron in exchange for their financial and industrial help. An early 6 kW version, built in England by the General Electric Company Research Laboratories, Wembley, contracts were awarded to Raytheon and other companies for mass production of the magnetron. In 1945, the heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was accidentally discovered by Percy Spencer. Employed by Raytheon at the time, he noticed that microwaves from a radar set he was working on started to melt a candy bar he had in his pocket
6.
Post-it note
–
A Post-It note is a small piece of paper with a re-adherable strip of glue on its back, made for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. A unique low-tack pressure-sensitive adhesive allows the notes to be attached, removed. Originally small yellow squares, Post-It Notes and related products are now available in an array of colors, despite this, the name has become genericized for all such products in many countries. In 1968, a scientist at 3M in the United States, instead he accidentally created a low-tack, reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive. For five years, Silver promoted his solution without a problem within 3M both informally and through seminars but failed to gain acceptance. In 1974 a colleague who had attended one of his seminars, Art Fry, Fry then utilized 3Ms officially sanctioned permitted bootlegging policy to develop the idea. The original notes yellow color was chosen by accident, as the lab next-door to the Post-It team had only yellow scrap paper to use, 3M launched the product as Press n Peel in stores in four cities in 1977, but results were disappointing. A year later 3M instead issued free samples directly to consumers in Boise, Idaho, the product was sold as Post-Its in 1979 when the rollout introduction began, and was sold across the United States from April 6,1980. The following year they were launched in Canada and Europe, in 2003, the company came out with Post-It Brand Super Sticky Notes, with a stronger glue that adheres better to vertical and non-smooth surfaces. Until 3Ms patent expired in the 1990s, Post-It type notes were produced only in the plant in Cynthiana. Inventor Alan Amron has made claims to be the inventor of the used on the Post-It note. His 1997 suit against 3M was settled in the light of an invention by a Swiss inventor. As part of the settlement, Amron undertook not to make claims against the company. However, in 2016, he launched a suit against 3M, asserting that 3M were wrongly claiming to be the inventors. At a preliminary hearing, a judge ordered the parties to undergo mediation. Printed with archival inks on paper, the reproductions include stickee sized framed prints and enlargements of the original drawings. In 2012, Turkish artist Ardan Özmenoğlu was selected to have an exhibition at Bertrand Delacroix Gallery in the art district of Chelsea. The exhibition, titled E Pluribus Unum, opened November 15,2012, in 2004, Paola Antonelli, a curator of architecture and design, included Post-It notes in a show entitled Humble Masterpieces
7.
Horace Walpole
–
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford — also known as Horace Walpole — was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, south-west London and his literary reputation rests on his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto and his Letters, which are of significant social and political interest. He was the son of the first British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, as Horace Walpole was childless, on his death his barony descended to his cousin of the same surname, who was created the new Earl of Orford. Walpole was born in London, the youngest son of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, like his father, he received early education in Bexley, he was also educated at Eton College and Kings College, Cambridge. Walpoles first friends were probably his cousins Francis and Henry Conway, to whom Walpole became strongly attached, at Eton he formed with Charles Lyttelton and George Montagu the Triumvirate, a schoolboy confederacy. More important were another group of friends dubbed the Quadruple Alliance, Walpole, Thomas Gray, Richard West, at Cambridge Walpole came under the influence of Conyers Middleton, an unorthodox theologian. Walpole came to accept the nature of Middletons attitude to some essential Christian doctrines for the rest of his life, including a hatred of superstition. Walpole ceased to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738, according to one biographer his love for his mother was the most powerful emotion of his entire life. the whole of his psychological history was dominated by it. Walpole did not have any relationships with women, he has been called a natural celibate. Walpoles sexual orientation has been the subject of speculation, many contemporaries described him as effeminate. Biographers such as Timothy Mowl explore his possible homosexuality, including a passionate, some previous biographers such as Lewis, Fothergill, and Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, however, have interpreted Walpole as asexual. Upon coming of age he became Comptroller of the Pipe and Clerk of the Estreats which gave him an income of £300 per annum, Walpole decided to go travelling with Thomas Gray and wrote a will whereby he left Gray all his belongings. They left Dover on 29 March and arrived at Calais later that day and they then travelled through Boulogne, Amiens and Saint-Denis, arriving at Paris on 4 April. Here they met many aristocratic Englishmen, in early June they left Paris for Rheims, then in September going to Dijon, Lyons, Dauphiné, Savoy, Aix-les-Bains, Geneva, and then back to Lyons. In October they left for Italy, arriving in Turin in November, then going to Genoa, Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, and in December arriving at Florence. Here he struck up a friendship with Horace Mann, an assistant to the British Minister at the Court of Tuscany and wrote Epistle from Florence to Thomas Ashton, tutor to the Earl of Plymouth, a mixture of Whig history and Middletons teachings. In February 1740 Walpole and Gray left for Rome with the intention of witnessing the papal conclave upon the death of Pope Clement XII, Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities. At social occasions in Rome he saw the Old Pretender James Francis Edward Stuart, Walpole and Gray returned to Florence in July
8.
Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet
–
Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet KB, diplomat, was a long-standing British resident in Florence. Mann was the son of Robert Mann, a successful London merchant. He was brought up at Chelsea, and educated at Eton College and later, briefly, suffering from poor health, he travelled on the continent in the 1730s. In February 1737, he was appointed as secretary to Charles Fane and he then served as British diplomatic representative there to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany for the rest of his life. As Great Britain had no representation at Rome, Manns duties included reporting on the activities of the exiled Stuarts, the Old Pretender. Mann kept a house for British visitors at Palazzo Manetti, Florence. His generosity and kindness was universally acknowledged, although his friendship with the painter Thomas Patch reflected on his reputation. He met Horace Walpole in 1739, and conducted a correspondence with him over forty years. The correspondence was published by Lord Dover in 1833, in recognition of his service he was created a baronet on 3 March 1755. and made a Knight of the Bath on 26 October 1768. In 1775, on the death of his brother, Edward Louisa Mann, he inherited the Linton Park estate which his father had bought at Linton. He died unmarried in Florence on 6 November 1786 and his nephew Horace inherited his baronetcy by special remainder and also acted as Chargé daffaires until the arrival of his replacement. Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet at Find a Grave
9.
Bianca Cappello
–
Bianca Cappello was an Italian noblewoman who was the mistress, and afterward the second wife, of Francesco I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Her husband officially made her his consort and she was born in Venice, in 1548, the daughter of Bartolomeo Cappello and Pellegrina Morosini, a member of one of the richest and noblest Venetian families, and was noted for her great beauty. At the age of fifteen she fell in love with Pietro Bonaventuri, a young Florentine clerk in the firm of Salviati, and on 28 November 1563 escaped with him to Florence, in 1564 she had a daughter named Virginia, or, according to other sources, Pellegrina. The Venetian government made every effort to have Bianca arrested and brought back but the Grand Duke Cosimo I intervened in her favour, although already married to Joanna of Austria, Francesco seduced Bianca and gave her jewels, money and other presents. Bonaventuri, Biancas husband, was given employment and consoled himself with other ladies until, in 1572. It is possible that Bianca and Francesco were involved, on the death of Cosimo in 1574 Francesco succeeded to the grand duchy, he now installed Bianca in a palace close to his own and outraged his wife by flaunting his mistress before her. At this point, Francesco had no son to inherit the duchy, a child by Bianca, though illegitimate, would be a potential heir. In 1576 she duly gave birth to Don Antonio de Medici, in 1578 Joanna died, a few months later Francesco secretly married Bianca, and on 10 June 1579, the marriage was publicly announced, and Antonio acknowledged as the Dukes son. Two days later, on the 12 June, Bianca was crowned the Grand Duchess of Tuscany at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Biancas position, however, was still not secure. The heir remained the young Grand Prince Philip, her own son by Francesco, though acknowledged, remained illegitimate, in 1582, however, Grand Prince Philip died. Francesco immediately began working on securing the succession for his son, Antonio, having him legitimated and declared heir apparent. In October 1587, at the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano, Francesco and Bianca died on 19 and 20 October, possibly poisoned, or as some historians believe, from malarial fever. As Bianca wasnt a member of the Medici family, Cardinal Ferdinand didnt allow her body to be buried in the Medici family tombs. Instead, Bianca was buried in a grave under the church of St. Lorenzo. The biography of Bianca Cappello was used by Thomas Middleton for his tragedy Women Beware Women. James Chater, Bianca Cappello and Music, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, vol. i, 569–79 Samuele Romanin, Lezioni di storia Veneta, thurston, H. T. Colby, F. M. eds. article name needed
10.
Giorgio Vasari
–
Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
11.
The Three Princes of Serendip
–
The Three Princes of Serendip is the English version of the story Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have heard the story from one Christophero Armeno, the story first came to English via a French translation, and now exists in several out-of-print translations. Serendip is the Perso-Arabic name for Sri Lanka, in ancient times there existed in the country of Serendippo, in the Far East, a great and powerful king by the name of Giaffer. He had three sons who were dear to him. The father searches out the best possible tutors, when the tutors are pleased with the excellent progress that the three princes make in the arts and sciences, they report it to the king. He, however, still doubts their training, and summoning each in turn, each politely declines, affirming the fathers superior wisdom and fitness to rule. The king is pleased, but fearing that his sons education may have been too sheltered and privileged, feigns anger at them for refusing the throne, no sooner do the three princes arrive abroad than they trace clues to identify precisely a camel they have never seen. They conclude that the camel is lame, blind in one eye, missing a tooth, carrying a pregnant woman, when they later encounter the merchant who has lost the camel, they report their observations to him. He accuses them of stealing the camel and takes them to the Emperor Beramo, Beramo asks how they are able to give such an accurate description of the camel if they have never seen it. It is clear from the replies that they have used small clues to infer cleverly the nature of the camel. Grass had been eaten from the side of the road where it was less green, because there were lumps of chewed grass on the road that were the size of a camel’s tooth, they inferred they had fallen through the gap left by a missing tooth. The tracks showed the prints of three feet, the fourth being dragged, indicating that the animal was lame. That butter was carried on one side of the camel and honey on the other was evident because ants had been attracted to melted butter on one side of the road and flies to spilled honey on the other. Because some urine was nearby, I wet my fingers and as a reaction to its odour I felt a sort of carnal concupiscence, at this moment, a traveller enters the scene to say that he has just found a missing camel wandering in the desert. Beramo spares the lives of the three princes, lavishes rich rewards on them, and appoints them to be his advisors. The three princes have many adventures, where they continue to display their sagacity, stories-within-stories are told. The fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip is based upon the life of Persian King Bahram V, with the exception of the well-known camel story, English translations are very hard to come by. He then turned back, and. after complimenting the two slaves for their shrewdness, he at once gave them their liberty. ”T. H. Edgar Allan Poe in his turn was inspired by Zadig when he created C
12.
Sri Lanka
–
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest, Sri Lankas documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lankas recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, in addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the capital and largest city. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of the two countries in South Asia that are rated among high human development on the Human Development Index. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names, according to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Mahabharata, the island was referred to as Lankā, in Tamil, the island is referred to as Eelam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā or Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni, as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon, it achieved independence as the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. The country is known in Sinhalese as Śrī Laṃkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai, in 1972, its formal name was changed to Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka. Later in 1978 it was changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority. The pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years, the era spans the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, Pahiyangala and it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara. The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravanas airport, early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were probably ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering approximately 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka. According to the Mahāvamsa, a written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600BC and other signs of advanced civilization has also discovered in Sri Lanka
13.
Sociology
–
Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder. Many sociologists aim to research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare. Subject matter ranges from the level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems. The traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, the range of social scientific methods has also expanded. Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-twentieth century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches towards the analysis of society. There is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields, Sociology is distinguished from various general social studies courses, which bear little relation to sociological theory or to social-science research-methodology. The US National Science Foundation classifies sociology as a STEM field, Sociological reasoning pre-dates the foundation of the discipline. Social analysis has origins in the stock of Western knowledge and philosophy. The origin of the survey, i. e, there is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arab writings. The word sociology is derived from both Latin and Greek origins, the Latin word, socius, companion, the suffix -logy, the study of from Greek -λογία from λόγος, lógos, word, knowledge. It was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript, Sociology was later defined independently by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, in 1838. Comte used this term to describe a new way of looking at society, Comte had earlier used the term social physics, but that had subsequently been appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the understanding of the social realm. Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, Comte gave a powerful impetus to the development of sociology, an impetus which bore fruit in the later decades of the nineteenth century. To say this is not to claim that French sociologists such as Durkheim were devoted disciples of the high priest of positivism. To be sure, beginnings can be traced back well beyond Montesquieu, for example, Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a science of society nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin, Marx may be regarded as the father of modern sociology
14.
Barney Glaser
–
Barney G. Glaser is an American sociologist and one of the founders of the grounded theory methodology. Glaser was born in San Francisco, California and lives in nearby Mill Valley and he received his BA degree at Stanford in 1952. He pursued academic studies at the University of Paris where he studied contemporary literature and he also studied literature at University of Freiburg for two years during off-hours from his military service. At Columbia he was a student of Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, the dissertation was published in the book Organizational Scientists, Their Professional Careers. Post-doc Glaser started a collaboration with Anselm Strauss at the University of California. Together they wrote Awareness of Dying based on a study of dying in Californian hospitals, as a response to the many methodological questions on the dying study the first grounded theory methodology appeared in 1967 co-authored with Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory. In 1970 Glaser started the publishing company Sociology Press specializing in grounded theory methodologies, the second grounded theory methodology was written by Glaser in 1978. Thereafter, Glaser has published several readers of grounded theory and four more methodologies and he has traveled throughout the world giving workshops and seminars to many researchers. In 1998 Glaser received a doctorate from Stockholm University. In 1999 Glaser founded the web based organization Grounded Theory Institute. He owned Cascade Acceptance Corporation, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2009, in July 2010, the bankruptcy trustee declared that the company had been insolvent for at least two years, and the case was converted from a reorganization to a liquidation. The Grounded Theory Institute The Grounded Theory Review Sociology Press Grounded Theory Online
