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[edit] June 15
The World Without Us is a non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared, written by American journalist Alan Weisman and published by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books. It is a book-length expansion of Weisman's own February 2005 Discover article "Earth Without People". Written largely as a thought experiment, it outlines, for example, how cities and houses would deteriorate, how long man-made artifacts would last, and how remaining lifeforms would evolve. Weisman concludes that residential neighborhoods would become forests within 500 years, and that radioactive waste, bronze statues, plastics, and Mount Rushmore will be among the longest lasting evidence of human presence on Earth. The author of four previous books and numerous articles for magazines, Weisman traveled around the world to interview academics, scientists and other authorities. He used quotes from these interviews to explain the effects of the natural environment and to substantiate predictions. The book has been translated and published in France, Germany, Portugal and Spain. It was successful in the U.S., reaching #6 on the New York Times Best Seller list. It ranked #1 on Time and Entertainment Weekly's top 10 non-fiction books of 2007. The book has received largely positive reviews, specifically for Weisman's journalistic and scientific writing style, but some have questioned the relevance of its subject matter. (more...)
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[edit] April 15
In Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title. It represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relation of God to the Jewish people. The various Jewish names of God represent God as he is known, and represents divine attributes. Awe at the sacredness of the names of God and as manner to show respect and reverence for them, made the scribes of sacred texts pause before copying them. The numerous names of God have been a source of debate amongst biblical scholars. Some have advanced it as proof that the Torah has many authors, while others affirm that the different aspects of God have different names, depending on the role God is playing, the context in which he is referred to and the specific attributes highlighted.
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[edit] March 15
Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who publicly exposed Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. When Israel learned of this, he was abducted by Mossad (although upon release Vanunu claimed it was the CIA) from Italy and tried in secret. Convicted of treason, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison, more than 11 years of which were served in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison on April 21, 2004, and is subject to a broad array of speech and travel restrictions. On November 11, 2004, following multiple alleged violations of those restrictions, he was arrested again after an interview by the media.
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[edit] February 15
The history of Russia is essentially that of its many nationalities, each with a separate history and complex origins, but bound together by the thousand-year-old tradition of Russian statehood. From the late fifteenth century until the early twentieth century, Russia was constituted as an imperial monarchy ruling a tightly centralized, contiguous expanse of territories and peoples. The strains of the World War I led to the collapse of the empire, and eventually gave way to the creation of the Soviet Union. Despite its façade of federalism, the Soviet Union remained essentially an empire, held together by the Communist Party rather than the tsar. Most Russians gave little thought to any distinction between the two before the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, as Communist Party rule was collapsing, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic secured legislation giving Russian laws priority over Soviet laws and declared its independence in late 1991, forming today's Russian Federation.
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[edit] January 15
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America and is the oldest written national constitution still in force. It was completed on September 17, 1787, with its adoption by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and was later ratified by special conventions called for that purpose in each of the then-existing thirteen American states. It took effect in 1788, and has served as a model for a number of other nations' constitutions. It created a more unified government in place of what was then a group of independent states operating under the Articles of Confederation.
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[edit] December 15
In microeconomic theory, the partial equilibrium supply and demand economic model originally developed by Alfred Marshall attempts to describe, explain, and predict the price and quantity of goods sold in competitive markets. It is one of the most fundamental models, widely used as a basic building block in a wide range of more detailed economic models and theories. The theory of supply and demand is important in the functioning of a market economy in that it explains the mechanism by which many resource allocation decisions are made. In general, the theory claims that where goods are traded in a market at a price where consumers demand more goods than firms are prepared to supply, this shortage will tend to increase the price of the goods. Those consumers that are prepared to pay more will bid up the market price. Conversely, prices will tend to fall when the quantity supplied exceeds the quantity demanded. This price/quantity adjustment mechanism causes the market to approach an equilibrium point, a point at which there is no longer any impetus to change.
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[edit] November 15
Linus Pauling was an American physical chemist. Widely considered as the most influential chemist of the 20th century and one of the most important scientists of all time, Pauling was one of the first quantum chemists, and in 1954 was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work describing the nature of chemical bonds. Pauling received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaign against above-ground nuclear testing, becoming one of only two people to receive the Nobel Prize in more than one field, the other being Marie Curie.
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[edit] October 15
The Humpback Whale is a mammal which belongs to the baleen whale suborder. It is a large whale: an adult usually ranges between 12–16 m long and weighs approximately 36 tonnes. It is well known for its breaching (leaping out of the water) and its complex whale song. Humpback Whales live in oceans and seas around the world, and are regularly sought out by whale-watchers. Humpback Whales are easy to identify. It has a stocky body with an obvious hump and black upperparts. The head and lower jaw are covered with knobs called tubercles, which are actually hair follicles that are characteristic of the species. The tail flukes, which are lifted high in the dive sequence, have wavy rear edges.
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[edit] September 15
DNA repair is a constantly operating process in the cell essential to survival because it protects the genome from damage. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors (such as UV rays) can cause DNA damage, resulting in as much as 500,000 individual molecular lesions per cell per day. These lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule, and can dramatically alter the cell's way of reading the information encoded in its genes. Consequently, the DNA repair process must be constantly operating, to rapidly correct any damage in the DNA structure.
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[edit] September 6
The Warsaw Uprising was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944 as a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2. An estimated 85% of the city was destroyed during the urban guerrilla war and after the end of hostilities. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army was approaching Warsaw. Although the Soviet army was within a few hundred metres of the city from September 16 onward, the link between the uprising and the advancing army was never made. This failure and the reasons behind it have been a matter of controversy ever since.
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[edit] August 15
Peer review is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. Publishers and funding agencies use peer review to select and to screen submissions. The process also assists authors in meeting the standards of their discipline. Publications and awards that have not undergone peer review are liable to be regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields.
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[edit] July 15
A paradox is an apparently true statement that seems to lead to a logical self-contradiction, or to a situation that contradicts common intuition. The identification of a paradox based on seemingly simple and reasonable concepts has often led to significant advances in science, philosophy and mathematics. In moral philosophy, paradox plays a particularly central role in debates on ethics, particularly in the form of ethical dilemmas. Common themes in paradoxes include direct and indirect self-reference, infinity, circular definitions, and confusion of levels of reasoning.
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[edit] June 15
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. Due to the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships. The German defeat in World War I halted the business temporarily, but under the guidance of Hugo Eckener, the successor of the deceased count, civilian Zeppelins experienced a renaissance in the 1920s. They reached their zenith in the 1930s, when the airships LZ127 "Graf Zeppelin" and LZ129 "Hindenburg" profitably operated regular transatlantic passenger flights. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 triggered the fall of the "giants of the air", though other factors, including political issues, contributed to the demise.
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[edit] May 15
The Montreal Canadiens are a National Hockey League team based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. With the possible exception of baseball's New York Yankees, no North American sports team has had as storied and as successful a history as the Montreal Canadiens. They have won 24 Stanley Cups, far more than any other team. Before there was an NHL, there were Montreal Canadiens. They became a charter member of the league's forerunner, the National Hockey Association, in 1909.
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[edit] April 15
Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. Labour markets function through the interaction of workers and employers. Labour economics looks at the suppliers of labour services (workers), the demanders of labour services (employers), and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income. It is an important subject because unemployment is a problem that affects the public most directly and severely. Full employment (or reduced unemployment) is a goal of many governments.
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[edit] March 15
A villain is a bad person, especially in fiction. Villains are the fictional characters, or perhaps fictionalized characters, in drama and melodrama who work to thwart the plans of the hero. As such, villains are an almost inevitable plot device, and more than the heroes, the villains are the crucial elements upon which plots turn. In the era before sound in motion pictures villains had to appear very "visually" sinister, and thus many villain stereotypes were born.
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