Group items tagged

COUNTRY POPULATION (smallest) (February, 2006 numbers) Vatican City 920

COUNTRY POPULATION (largest) (February, 2006 numbers) China 1,306,313,800

OCEANS OF THE WORLD (by size) Pacific (155,557,000 sq km)

"worst decline in the history of the CD."

Physical album sales have plunged about 27% so far in the fourth quarter

Digital tracks sales are up

The bat is more closely related to primates.

Bats are fantastic fliers. They are able to truly fly. Bats are the only mammals able to have powered flight.

A bat's body is made for flight. The neck is short, the chest is large and the stomach is narrow. In order to fly a body must have a wide, thin surface. It also needs the power to push through the air.

As coaches, we expect our players to work in the off-season and make improvements. But what about us as coaches... what are we doing in the off-season to help our team and to improve ourselves as coaches?

Maintain balance in your personal life. Right after the season is over, step back and forget about it for a couple weeks. Take time for your family and friends, relax, enjoy life and your time away from the gym.

We already discussed re-evaluating your system, plays, players, etc. Make the necessary adjustments, if any, that you think will help next season. Think about your goals for the upcoming season. Now is the time to create a master practice plan, if you find that helpful.

There are two kinds of crocodile in Australia.

They live in the hot north of Australia.

Crocodile scales have become thick skin

The order of these genes on the sex chromosomes of cats more closely resembles that of humans than of any other mammal studied so far, the team reports in a recent issue of Genome Research. Genes on X chromosomes of cats and people are lined up in the same way.

Cat ownership helps children to learn responsibility and develop a greater capacity for empathy at an early age. In addition, pets provide unconditional love and acceptance, which can help children through difficult times.

Cats also offer protection against certain physical conditions. If adopted before or shortly after a child is born, owning a cat reduces the risk of developing animal allergies, asthma, and possibly other illnesses as well. One study found that children living with pets were 13-18% less likely to miss school due to illness than children without pets. Researchers who measured the salivary immunologobulin levels of young pet owners found that their immune function was less likely to be in the sub-normal range than that of non-pet-owners. Additionally, cats can provide particular therapeutic benefits for children with conditions such as autism, especially those who suffer from motor coordination problems.

and cat owners tend to have lower triglycerides, which reduces their risk of developing and dying from cardiovascular disease.

Cats love to chase (and sometimes kill) mice. That's a given, and something that most people do not find too alarming. In fact, people in many countries still utilize "barn cats" to dispatch unwanted rodents - a win-win situation for all parties (except the rodents). The cats have plenty of food available, and the farmer is assured of grain bins undisturbed by hungry mice.

A year after Apple Computer Inc. launched its iTunes Music Service, the online music industry is selling songs by the millions

Customers at three of the leading online services – iTunes, Musicmatch Inc.’s Musicmatch Downloads and RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody – buy about 10 times as many singles as they do albums. Offline, people buy 50 times more CDs than singles.

music lovers buying a few 99-cent singles instead of $15 CDs.

n the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Ieyasu defeated the Hideyori loyalists and other Western rivals

Every daimyo was also required to spend every second year in Edo.

On the other hand, he enforced the suppression and persecution of Christianity from 1614 on.

The L.A. Times reports that the side effects of hormonal therapy, which involves such drugs as leuprolide (Lupron, Viadur, Eligard), goserelin (Zoladex) and triptorelin (Trelstar), includes a 10 percent to 50 percent increase in the risk of fractures, diabetes, heart disease and sudden cardiac death; a 500 percent increase in hot flashes; and a 267 percent increase in impotence. It also has adverse effects on fats and cholesterol and causes enlargement of the breasts. Wait. It gets worse. The 10-year death rate from prostate cancer was 17.4 percent in those receiving no therapy, compared with 19.9 percent in those receiving hormonal therapy.

grindle All the research I have done indicates that preadjuvant hormone therapy does no good and in fact can cause harm.

A disease in which malignant (cancer) cells are found in the tissues of the pancreas. Also called exocrine cancer.

Scientists made an alarming discovery in the 1980s: The average surface temperature on Earth is slowly increasing. This trend is known as global warming. It is believed to be caused by an increase in the amounts of certain gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse Effect To understand global warming, it helps to first understand something called the greenhouse effect. A greenhouse is a glass house in which plants grow. The glass lets light in and at the same time keeps heat from getting out. This trapped heat keeps the plants warm even when it is cold outside. Likewise, Earth's atmosphere traps energy from the sun. Carbon dioxide and other gases—called greenhouse gases—in the air do this trapping. Without these gases too much heat would go back into space, and living things could not survive. However, as more greenhouse gases get into the air, they also trap more heat. This leads to global warming.

More has been published about the extinction of dinosaurs at the K-T boundary than any other group of organisms. Excluding a few controversial claims, it is agreed that all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct at the K-T boundary. The dinosaur fossil record has been interpreted to show both a decline in diversity and no decline in diversity during the last few million years of the Cretaceous, and it may be that the quality of the dinosaur fossil record is simply not good enough to permit researchers to distinguish between the choices.[54] Since there is no evidence that late Maastrichtian nonavian dinosaurs could burrow, swim or dive, they were unable to shelter themselves from the worst parts of any environmental stress that occurred at the K-T boundary. It is possible that small dinosaurs (other than birds) did survive, but they would have been deprived of food as both herbivorous dinosaurs would have found plant material scarce, and carnivores would have quickly found prey to be in short supply.[35] The growing consensus about the endothermy of dinosaurs (see dinosaur physiology) helps to understand their full extinction in contrast with their close relatives, the crocodilians. Cold-blooded crocodiles have very limited needs of food (they can survive several months without eating) while warm-blooded animals of similar size need much more food in order to sustain their faster metabolism. Thus, under the circumstancies of food chain disruption above mentioned, non-avian dinosaurs died [55] while some crocodiles survived. In this context, the survival of other endothermic animals, such as some birds and mammals, could be due, among other

Loosely speaking, behaviorism is an attitude. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine

claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms

Methodological behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology

As a celebration steeped in American history, you might expect it to be a day of remembering our forebears and displaying patriotism. However, in modern times, consideration of the first Thanksgiving is generally relegated to schoolchildren. Although that first celebration was a landmark moment in the history of America, beyond giving thanks for freedom and safety, you won't typically find the flag waving of the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. Instead, the holiday remains centered on family, friends, and food. Some see the holiday as a last bastion of non-commercialization. Beyond a few centerpieces and themed party supplies, Thanksgiving doesn't receive the same marketing push as Valentine's Day, Halloween, or especially Christmas. It feels more pure in this regard. However, the time and money required to create a traditional Thanksgiving spread doesn't make the day completely free of pressure. As a national holiday, Thanksgiving means a day free from school and work for most. Even television seems to conspire to bring families closer together, with spectacles such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, big football games, and themed marathons on numerous cable channels inviting everyone to gather 'round. Although giving thanks for the many blessings of life is easily interpreted as a religious sentiment, there is no particular creed or belief system associated with the holiday. A community might host an ecumenical service in honor of the holiday. Families often say a prayer over the food before beginning dinner. Churches sponsor holiday dinners as outreach to the poor and lonely. However, all of these actions are founded on the basic, secular premise of giving thanks. From preschoolers making handprint turkeys to adults remembering the most important people and moments in their lives, it is easy to answer, "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?" Like the Pilgrims did on that long-ago day, we all gather to give thanks for the many bounties life offers.

t is a basic notion that during the 1600's, accurately in the year 1621, the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians got together and shared a fantastic fall harvest feast to celebrate the bounty from the rich earth. Today this celebratory feast is acknowledged to be one of the first Thanksgiving festivities in the early days of the colonies. While that long ago feast is supposed by a lot of people to be the first Thanksgiving celebration, it was, in fact, part of a long existing custom of celebrating the seasonal harvest and giving thanks for a good bounty of crops that would last through the long hard winter. Many Native American tribes of what would be named America, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Shawnee, Huron, Creek, Blackfoot and so many others would hold huge harvest festivals, consisting in ceremonial dances, races, games and other cheerful celebrations of gratefulness hundreds of years before the European peoples arrived. If you are like me, you are surely wondering the kind of meals served at the harvest feast. Historians, as usual, are not one hundred percent sure regarding it; however they are sure that pilgrims weren't eating pumpkin pies nor building castle towers with mashed potatoes. However, it is easy to think that the list of meat available during this period of time should surely include venison as well as several types wild poultry such as duck, goose as well as wild turkey. While there are hundreds of manuscripts describing such feast, the most detailed description of this celebration of late harvest date of 1621 and was written by a man called Edward Winslow. It is from his manuscript called "A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth" that historians have gleaned the greatest part of information about this first Thanksgiving celebration:

Although the first Thanksgiving dinners were not concentrated on the turkey; today's usual meal primarily focuses around this animal. During the 17th century, vegetables were not as important as of today, so the meal of this period of time included a lot of different meats. The many types of vegetables we take for granted today were not available to the colonists. Freezing methods did not exist; which means that the vegetable consumption was based on seasonal harvests. Because the colonists and Wampanoag tribe had no refrigeration in the 1600s, they dried a lot of their foods to preserve them. They would dry corn, wild boar hams, fish, venison, and many wild herbs.

Beijing Olympics

China's environmental

Choked Waters

One of the keys to getting the most out of your training program is to work outside of your comfort zone.

I can't argue that you're doing something to stay in shape and work on your game. But you're not really pushing yourself, and you shouldn't really expect those types of workouts to pay huge dividends.

Change your approach. Push yourself harder than you normally do, and you'll start to see results. Instead of shooting 30 or 40 random, lazy jump shots, create a plan for yourself. Shoot from 4 or 5 spots on the floor until you've made 30 or 40 shots from each spot (or some number that you set as a goal for yourself). Get in the triple-threat position, head-fake, take a quick dribble to one side or the other, get good lift on your shot (really getting off the ground), and concentrate on your follow-through. Push yourself to move quicker than you normally do, and to jump higher than you normally do.

Back in October 2007 Costa Rican artist Guillermo 'Habacuc' Vargas "paid some children to chase and catch a stray dog, after which he chained up the poor animal in a gallery, telling the viewing public not to feed or water it". Allegedly bowls of water and food were placed near the dog but alas, both items were just out of the its reach. On the wall above the dog the phrase "Eres Lo Que Lees" (translates as "You Are What You Read") was written in dog biscuits. The outcome of the exhibition was that "the dog slowly starved to death and eventually died in the gallery in view of everyone".