1.
Stipa-Caproni
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The Stipa-Caproni, also generally called the Caproni Stipa, was an experimental Italian aircraft designed in 1932 by Luigi Stipa and built by Caproni. It featured a hollow, barrel-shaped fuselage with the engine and propeller completely enclosed by the fuselage—in essence, although the Regia Aeronautica was not interested in pursuing development of the Stipa-Caproni, its design was an important step in the development of jet propulsion. He also determined the shape of the propeller, the most efficient distance between the leading edge of the tube and the propeller, and the best rate of revolution of the propeller. Finally, he petitioned the Italian Fascist government to produce a prototype aircraft, the government, seeking to showcase Italian technological achievement—particularly in aviation—contracted the Caproni company to construct the aircraft in 1932. The resulting aircraft—a midwing monoplane of wooden construction dubbed the Stipa-Caproni or Caproni Stipa—was strikingly ungainly in appearance. The fuselage was a tube, short and fat, open at both ends to form the tapered duct, with twin open cockpits in tandem mounted in a hump on top of it. The wings were elliptical and passed through the duct and the engine nacelle inside it, the aircraft had low, fixed, spatted main landing gear and a tailwheel, making it look as if it was squatting when on the ground. It was painted in a scheme of the type used on racing aircraft of the day. The Stipa-Caproni first flew on 7 October 1932 with Caproni company test pilot Domenico Antonini at the controls, the Stipa-Caproni proved to be noticeably quieter than conventional aircraft of the time. Unfortunately, the propeller design also induced so much aerodynamic drag that the benefits in engine efficiency were cancelled out. When Caproni had completed testing, the Regia Aeronautica took control of the plane. As the plane did not perform better than conventional aircraft designs. They built it in 1998 and in October 2001 succeeded in making two directional test flights with it with Bryce Wolff at the controls, the replica may never have flown again, and apparently now is on static display in Australia. Kingdom of Italy Regia Aeronautica General characteristics Crew,1 or 2 Length,5.88 m Wingspan,14, Caproni Flying Barrel, Luigi Stipa Claimed His Intubed Propeller Was the Ancestor of the Jet Engine
2.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
3.
Plant
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Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. The term is generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae. This includes the plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts and their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although reproduction is also common. There are about 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, green plants provide most of the worlds molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earths ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankinds basic foodstuffs, Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in variety, they have served as the source of most medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology, Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided, the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus created the basis of the system of scientific classification. Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, however, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a group of organisms or taxon. The evolutionary history of plants is not yet settled. Those which have been called plants are in bold, the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce energy through photosynthesis, most conspicuous among the algae are the seaweeds, multicellular algae that may roughly resemble land plants, but are classified among the brown, red and green algae. Each of these groups also includes various microscopic and single-celled organisms
4.
Flowering plant
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The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 416 families, approx. 13,164 known genera and a total of c.295,383 known species, etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure, in other words, a fruiting plant. The term angiosperm comes from the Greek composite word meaning enclosed seeds, the ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, during the range 245 to 202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya. They diversified extensively during the Lower Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table. These distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants, the amount and complexity of tissue-formation in flowering plants exceeds that of gymnosperms. The vascular bundles of the stem are arranged such that the xylem and phloem form concentric rings, in the dicotyledons, the bundles in the very young stem are arranged in an open ring, separating a central pith from an outer cortex. In each bundle, separating the xylem and phloem, is a layer of meristem or active formative tissue known as cambium, the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They contain no cambium and once formed the stem increases in diameter only in exceptional cases, the characteristic feature of angiosperms is the flower. Flowers show remarkable variation in form and elaboration, and provide the most trustworthy external characteristics for establishing relationships among angiosperm species, the function of the flower is to ensure fertilization of the ovule and development of fruit containing seeds. The floral apparatus may arise terminally on a shoot or from the axil of a leaf, occasionally, as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. There are two kinds of cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which divide to become pollen grains, are the male cells and are borne in the stamens. The female cells called megaspores, which divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule. The flower may consist only of parts, as in willow. Usually, other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls, the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as sepals and petals. The outer series is usually green and leaf-like, and functions to protect the rest of the flower, the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, and is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract insect or bird pollinators, attraction is effected by color, scent, and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower
5.
Monocotyledon
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Monocotyledons, commonly referred to as monocots, are flowering plants whose seeds typically contain only one embryonic leaf, or cotyledon. However, molecular research has shown that while the monocots form a monophyletic group or clade. Monocots have almost always recognized as a group, but with various taxonomic ranks. The APG III system of 2009 recognises a clade called monocots, the monocots include about 60,000 species. The largest family in this group by number of species are the orchids, about half as many species belong to the true grasses, which are economically the most important family of monocots. In agriculture the majority of the biomass produced comes from monocots and these include not only major grains, but also forage grasses, sugar cane, and the bamboos. Other economically important monocot crops include various palms, bananas, gingers and their relatives, turmeric and cardamom, asparagus and the onions and garlic family. Additionally most of the bulbs, plants cultivated for their blooms, such as lilies, daffodils, irises, amaryllis, cannas, bluebells. The monocots or monocotyledons have, as the name implies, a single cotyledon, or embryonic leaf, from a diagnostic point of view the number of cotyledons is neither a particularly useful characteristic, nor is it completely reliable. Nevertheless, monocots are sufficiently distinctive that there has rarely been disagreement as to membership of this group, however, morphological features that reliably characterise major clades are rare. Thus monocots are distinguishable from other angiosperms both in terms of their uniformity and diversity, although largely herbaceous, some arboraceous monocots reach great height, length and mass. The latter include agaves, palms, pandans, and bamboos and this creates challenges in water transport that monocots deal with in various ways. Some such as species of Yucca develop anomalous secondary growth, while palm trees, the axis undergoes primary thickening, that progresses from internode to internode, resulting in a typical inverted conical shape of the basal primary axis. The limited conductivity also contributes to limited branching of the stems, despite these limitations a wide variety of adaptive growth forms has resulted from epiphytic orchids and bromeliads to submarine Alismatales and mycotrophic Burmanniaceae and Triuridaceae. Other monocots, particularly Poales have adopted a life form. Leaves The cotyledon, the primordial Angiosperm leaf consists of a proximal leaf base or hypophyll, in moncots the hypophyll tends to be the dominant part in contrast to other angiosperms. Mature monocot leaves are narrow and linear, forming a sheathing around the stem at its base. There is usually only one leaf per node because the leaf base encompasses more than half the circumference, the evolution of this monocot characteristic has been attributed to developmental differences in early zonal differentiation rather than meristem activity
6.
Poales
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The Poales are a large order of flowering plants in the monocotyledons, and includes families of plants such as the grasses, bromeliads, and sedges. Sixteen plant families are recognized by botanists to be part of Poales. The flowers are small, enclosed by bracts, and arranged in inflorescences. The flowers of species are wind pollinated, the seeds usually contain starch. It did not include the Bromeliaceae and Mayaceae, but had the additional families Prioniaceae, Sparganiaceae, the morphology-based Cronquist system did not include an order named Poales, assigning these families to the orders Bromeliales, Cyperales, Hydatellales, Juncales, Restionales and Typhales. The earliest known fossils include pollen and fruits, major lineages within the Poales have been referred to as bromeliad, cyperid, xyrid, graminid, and restiid clades. A phylogenetic analysis resolved most relationships within the order but found support for the monophyly of the cyperid clade. The relationship between Centrolepidaceae and Restoniaceae within the clade remains unclear, the first may actually be embedded in the latter. Within the order, by far the most important family economically is the family of grasses, which includes barley, maize, millet, rice, many Bromeliaceae are used as ornamental plants. Bremer, K. Gondwanan Evolution of the Grass Alliance of Families, judd, W. S. C. S. Campbell, E. A. Kellogg, P. F. Stevens, M. J. Donoghue. Plant Systematics, A Phylogenetic Approach, 2nd edition, linder, H. Peter, Rudall, Paula J. Evolutionary History of the Poales. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, flora of the Southeastern United States,48
7.
Poaceae
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Poaceae or Gramineae is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants known as grasses. Poaceae includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and cultivated lawns, Grasses have stems that are hollow except at the nodes and narrow alternate leaves borne in two ranks. The lower part of each leaf encloses the stem, forming a leaf-sheath, with ca 780 genera and around 12,000 species, Poaceae are the fifth-largest plant family, following the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae. Grasslands such as savannah and prairie grasses are dominant are estimated to constitute 40. 5% of the land area of the Earth, excluding Greenland. Grasses are also an important part of the vegetation in many habitats, including wetlands, forests. Though commonly called grasses, seagrasses, rushes, and sedges fall outside this family, the rushes and sedges are related to the Poaceae, being members of the order Poales, but the seagrasses are members of order Alismatales. The name Poaceae was given by John Hendley Barnhart in 1895, based on the tribe Poeae described in 1814 by Robert Brown, the term is derived from the Ancient Greek πόα. Grasses include some of the most versatile plant life-forms, a cladogram shows subfamilies and approximate species numbers in brackets, Before 2005, fossil findings indicated that grasses evolved around 55 million years ago. Recent findings of grass-like phytoliths in Cretaceous dinosaur coprolites have pushed this back to 66 million years ago. In 2011, revised dating of the origins of the rice tribe Oryzeae suggested a date as early as 107 to 129 Mya, a multituberculate mammal with grass-eating adaptations seems to suggest that grasses were already around at 120 mya. This separation occurred within the short time span of about 4 million years. Grass leaves are always alternate and distichous, and have parallel veins. Each leaf is differentiated into a lower sheath hugging the stem, the leaf blades of many grasses are hardened with silica phytoliths, which discourage grazing animals, some, such as sword grass, are sharp enough to cut human skin. A membranous appendage or fringe of hairs called the ligule lies at the junction between sheath and blade, preventing water or insects from penetrating into the sheath, flowers of Poaceae are characteristically arranged in spikelets, each having one or more florets. The spikelets are further grouped into panicles or spikes, the part of the spikelet that bears the florets is called the rachilla. A spikelet consists of two bracts at the base, called glumes, followed by one or more florets, a floret consists of the flower surrounded by two bracts, one external—the lemma—and one internal—the palea. The flowers are usually hermaphroditic—maize being an important exception—and anemophilous or wind-pollinated, the perianth is reduced to two scales, called lodicules, that expand and contract to spread the lemma and palea, these are generally interpreted to be modified sepals. This complex structure can be seen in the image on the right, the fruit of grasses is a caryopsis, in which the seed coat is fused to the fruit wall
8.
Carl Linnaeus
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Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who formalised the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature. He is known by the father of modern taxonomy. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus, Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his education at Uppsala University. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands and he then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, at the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message, Tell him I know no man on earth. The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Swedish author August Strindberg wrote, Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist. Among other compliments, Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum, The Pliny of the North and he is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology. In botany, the abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species names is L. In older publications, sometimes the abbreviation Linn. is found, Linnæus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus Ingemarsson and Christina Brodersonia and his siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus, and Emerentia Linnæa. One of a line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius, a year after Linnæus birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curates house, even in his early years, Linnæus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus, soon Linnæus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants
9.
Perennial plant
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A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is widely used to distinguish plants with little or no woody growth from trees and shrubs. Tomato vines, for example, live several years in their natural habitat but are grown as annuals in temperate regions because they dont survive the winter. There is also a class of evergreen, or non-herbaceous, perennials, an intermediate class of plants is known as subshrubs, which retain a vestigial woody structure in winter, e. g. Penstemon. The local climate may dictate whether plants are treated as shrubs or perennials, for instance, many varieties of Fuchsia are shrubs in warm regions, but in colder temperate climates may be cut to the ground every year as a result of winter frosts. The symbol for a plant, based on Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, is. Perennial plants can be short-lived or they can be long-lived, as are some plants like trees. They include an assortment of plant groups from ferns and liverworts to the highly diverse flowering plants like orchids. Plants that flower and fruit only once and then die are termed monocarpic or semelparous, however, most perennials are polycarpic, flowering over many seasons in their lifetime. Perennials typically grow structures that allow them to adapt to living one year to the next through a form of vegetative reproduction rather than seeding. These structures include bulbs, tubers, woody crowns, rhizomes plus others and they might have specialized stems or crowns that allow them to survive periods of dormancy over cold or dry seasons during the year. Many perennials have developed specialized features that allow them to extreme climatic. Some have adapted to hot and dry conditions or cold temperatures. Those plants tend to invest a lot of resource into their adaptations and often do not flower, Many perennials produce relatively large seeds, which can have an advantage, with larger seedlings produced after germination that can better compete with other plants. Some annuals produce many seeds per plant in one season, while some perennials are not under the same pressure to produce large numbers of seeds. In warmer and more favorable climates, perennials grow continuously, in seasonal climates, their growth is limited to the growing season. In some species, perennials retain their foliage all year round, other plants are deciduous perennials, for example, in temperate regions a perennial plant may grow and bloom during the warm part of the year, with the foliage dying back in the winter
10.
Hermaphrodite
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In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes. Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes, in these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the female or male. For example, the majority of tunicates, pulmonate snails, opisthobranch snails. Hermaphroditism is also found in fish species and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates. Historically, the term hermaphrodite has also used to describe ambiguous genitalia and gonadal mosaicism in individuals of gonochoristic species. A rough estimate of the number of animal species is 65,000. Since the estimated number of animal species is 8.6 million. Arthropods are the phylum with the largest number of species, most hermaphroditic species exhibit some degree of self-fertilization. The distribution of self-fertilization rates among animals is similar to that of plants, suggesting that similar processes are operating to direct the evolution of selfing in animals and plants. The term derives from the Latin, hermaphroditus, from Ancient Greek, ἑρμαφρόδιτος hermaphroditos, which derives from Hermaphroditus, the word hermaphrodite entered the English lexicon as early as the late fourteenth century. Sequential hermaphrodites occur in species in which the individual is born as one sex and this contrasts simultaneous hermaphrodites, in which an individual may possess fully functional male and female gonads. Sequential hermaphroditism is common in fish and some jellyfish, many gastropods, while some sequential hermaphrodites can change sex multiple times, most can only change sex once. Generally one anemone contains a harem, consisting of a female, a smaller reproductive male. If the female is removed, the male will change sex. It has been shown that fishing pressure can change when the switch from male to female occurs, the populations are generally changing sex at a smaller size, due to natural selection. Protogyny, Where the organism is born as a female, and then changes sex to a male. Example, wrasses also have an uncommon life history strategy, which is termed diandry. In these species, two male morphs exists, an initial phase male and a terminal phase male, initial phase males do not look like males and spawn in groups with other females. Terminal phase males are territorial and have a distinctively bright coloration, individuals are born as males or females, but if they are born males, they are not born as terminal phase males
11.
Esparto
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Esparto, halfah grass, or esparto grass, is a fiber produced from two species of perennial grasses of north Africa and southern Europe. It is used for crafts, such as cords, basketry, stipa tenacissima and Lygeum spartum are the species used to produce esparto. Stipa tenacissima produces the better and stronger esparto and it is endemic to the Western Mediterranean. The Spanish name for the plant is atocha, a pre-Roman word, Esparto or σπάρτο in Greek may refer to any woven products of sedge or broom, including cords and ropes. This species grows forming a steppic landscape - esparto grasslands - which covers parts of Spain. Esparto leaves have been used for millennia, the oldest baskets of esparto, dating back 7.000 years, were found in a cave in southern Spain. This collection is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, there are many esparto remains in archaeological settlements from as long ago as the Neolithic period, including rugs, ropes, clothes, etc. Iberians used esparto rugs as floor coverings, for Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans, esparto was the best raw material for boat ropes. For centuries, esparto grasslands have been managed by local populations in order to boost the harvest, in southern Spain there is an Esparto culture, a deep knowledge about the many uses of this fiber forms part of the traditions of these communities. After the Spanish Civil War, esparto was declared a national fiber, the opening of markets to other fibers and plastics eventually led to the decline of the esparto industry. Esparto leaves are harvested with a stick, usually of wood or iron. The stick is used to pull up a handful of leaves at a time, the esparto is not normally used immediately after harvesting. Instead, the leaves are left to dry in the sun until they turn yellowish and this is the raw esparto, which is used for different basketry techniques. An alternative is to soak the leaves in water for about a month, before drying and this material is known as crushed esparto, which is stronger and easier to weave. The main techniques are, Plaited esparto, people weave a long strip of raw esparto or crushed esparto, the artifact is made by sewing this strip in different ways. Every kind of plait has a different name, examples include the pleita and the recincho, but there is a rich Spanish vocabulary for the techniques and artifacts of the esparto craft. In many cases, different terms are used in different regions, mainly, this vocabulary belongs to the Castilian and Catalan dialect of Valencia. All techniques involve working with an odd number of strands, from 5 to 31 or more, coiled esparto, just sewing in spiral a bunch of esparto leaves, every turn over the former one
