Sunday, November 25, 2007

Irish pound coin

The Irish pound coin was introduced on June 20, 1990 using the plan of a red deer, by the Irish artist Tom Ryan. The 2000 Millennium was used to issue a memorial coin, the design was based on the "Broighter Boat" in the National Museum of Ireland; the coins design was by Alan Ardiff and Garrett Stokes and were issued on November 29, 1999. The coin featured a milled edge - unique in Irish coinage.

The "Broighter Boat" issue for 2000.The Irish pound coin, which was introduced in 1990, residue the largest Irish coin introduced since decimalisation at 3.11 centimetres diameter and was 10 grams weight. The coin was nearly identical in dimensions to the old penny coin that circulated before 1971, and was quite similar in diameter to, but thinner, than the half-crown coin.

During the early movement of the coin, many payphone and vending machines which had been changed to accept the pound coin also accepted the old penny because of the similar size, the latter coin which was no longer legal gentle and had little value to collectors. As a result losses accrued to vending machine operators due to the substitution of the penny coin and further costs were associated with updating the machines so they would no longer accept the penny.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

British coinage

Obverse and reverse of general coins in current circulation, £2, £1, 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p, 2p and 1pThe British currency was decimalised on February 15, 1971. The basic unit of currency – the Pound was unaffected. Before decimalisation there were 240 (old) pennies in a pound, currently there are 100 new pence. The new coins were noticeable with the wording "New Penny" (singular) or "New Pence" (plural) to distinguish them from the old. The word New was dropped following ten years. The symbol p was also adopted to distinguish the new pennies from the old, which used the symbol d.

The earliest pound coin was introduced in 1983 to replace the Bank of England £1 banknote which was discontinued in 1984 (although the Scottish banks continued producing them for some time afterwards. The last of them, the Royal Bank of Scotland £1 note, remained in production until 2003). A circulating bimetallic £2 coin was also introduced in 1998 (first minted in, and dated, 1997) – there had before been commemorative £2 coins which did not normally circulate. The whole amount of coinage in circulation is roughly three and a quarter billion pounds, of which the £1 and £2 coins account for almost two billion pounds.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

How computers work

A general purpose computer has four main areas: the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU), the control unit, the memory, and the lost one input and output devices (collectively termed I/O). These parts are interconnected by busses,over and over again made of groups of wires.

The control unit, ALU, registers, and basic I/O (and often other hardware closely linked with these) are as a group known as a central processing unit (CPU). Early CPUs were composed a lot of separate components but since the mid-1970s CPUs have typically been constructed on a single integrated circuit called a microprocessor.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Programs in computer

In practical terms, a computer program might include anywhere from a dozen instructions to a lot of millions of instructions for something like a word processor or a web browser. A typical modern computer can carry out billions of instructions every second and nearly never make a mistake over years of operation.

Large computer programs may take groups of computer programmers years to write and the probability of the entire program having been written completely in the manner intended is unlikely. Errors in a computer programs are called bugs. Sometimes bugs are benign and it not affect the usefulness of the program, in some other cases they might cause the program to completely fail (crash), in yet other cases there may be subtle problems. Bugs are generally not the fault of the computer. Since computers merely execute the lot of instructions they are given, bugs are nearly always the result of programmer error or an oversight made in the program's design.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Stored program architecture

The defining feature of latest computers which distinguishes them from all other machines is that they can be programmed. That is to say that a set of instructions (the program) can be given to the computer and it will store them and carry them out at some time in the future.

In most cases, computer instructions are simple: add one number to another, move some data from one place to another, send a message to some external device, etc. These instructions are read from the computer's memory and are useually carried out (executed) in the order they were given. However, there are geneally specialized instructions to tell the computer to jump ahead or backwards to some other place in the program and to carry on executing from there. These are called as "jump" instructions (or branches).

Sunday, October 21, 2007

First Programmable machine computer

In 1837, Charles Babbage was the initialyt to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer that he called "The Analytical Engine". Due to small finance, and an inability to resist tinkering with the design, Babbage never actually built his Analytical Engine.

Large-scale automated data processing of punched cards was performed for the U.S. Census in 1890 by tabulate machines designed by Herman Hollerith and created by the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, which later became IBM. By the end of the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove useful in the realization of user computers had begun to appear: the punched card, Boolean algebra, the vacuum tube (thermionic valve) and the teleprinter.

During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical representation of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and usually lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.

Monday, October 15, 2007

History of computing

It is difficult to identify any one device as the earliest computer, partly because the term "computer" has been subject to changeable interpretations over time.

Originally, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations (a human computer), often with the aid of a mechanical calculating device. Examples of early perfunctory computing devices included the abacus, the slide rule and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism (which dates from about 150-100 BC). The end of the center Ages saw a re-invigoration of European mathematics and engineering, and Wilhelm Schickard's 1623 device was the first of a number of mechanical calculators constructed by European engineers.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Computer

A computer is a machine which manipulates data according to a list of instructions which makes it an best example of a data processing system.

Computers take many part of physical forms. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred present personal computers. Modern computers are based on comparatively tiny integrated circuits and are millions to billions of times more capable while occupying a little of the space. Today, simple computers may be made small sufficient to fit into a wrist watch and be powered from a watch battery. Personal computers in different forms are icons of the information age and are computer in use today is by remote the embedded computer. Embedded computers are small, simple devices that are often used to manage other devices — for example, they may be found in machines ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and even children's toys.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Stamp hinge

Stamp hinges are tiny, folded, rectangular pieces of paper covered with a mild gum, used to hold postage stamps onto the pages of a stamp album. The short end is moistened and affixed to the stamp; the long end is similarly affixed to the page. The hinge keeps the stamp on the page while still allows it to be lifted to look at the back.

The best stamp hinges are also designed to be "peel able", meaning that the stamp may be detached from the page, and the hinge from the stamp, without any damage to either. Not all makes of hinge have this property, and the backs of many stamps have "hinge remnants", where the hinge has torn gone rather than hire go of the stamp. This is especially common for mint stamps, where the stamps own gum adheres tightly to the hinge. Some old stamps may essentially have multiple hinge remnants layered on top of each other. Conversely, careless removal of a hinge may get away a layer of the stamp's paper, ensuing in a type of stamp thin known as a "hinge thin".

Even with the use of peel able hinges and care taken to minimize the moisture used, the hinge will leave a visible commotion in the gum of an unused stamp. While this was previously a matter of indifference, since about the middle of the 20th century many collectors have come to prefer "unhinged stamps" showing no trace of hinging.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Fashionable watches

At the end of the 20th century, Swiss watch makers were seeing their sales go down as analog clocks were considered unfashionable. They joined forces with designers from many countries to reinvent the Swiss watch. The result was that they could considerably decrease the pieces and production time of an analog watch. In fact it was so cheap that if a watch broke it would be cheaper to fling it away and buy a new one than to repair it. One of these Swiss watch manufacturers in progress a new brand, Swatch, and called graphic designers to revamp a new annual collection.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Ring

A finger ring is a band worn as kind of ornamental jeweler around a finger; it is the most ordinary current meaning of the word ring. Additional types of metal bands worn as ornaments are also called rings, such as arm rings and neck rings.

Rings are worn by both men and women and can be of any superiority. Rings can be made of metal, plastic, wood, bone, glass, gemstone and other equipment. They may be set with a "stone" of some sort, which is often a valuable or semi-precious gemstone such as ruby, sapphire or emerald, but can also be of almost any material.

There are a variety of methods for determining proper ring size. Quantities of the largest rings in the world are made for the winning team of the Super Bowl. The unofficial record for the largest championship ring ever obtainable to a professional sports team belongs to the 2003 World Series champions Florida Marlins, with a weight of over 110 grams and with over 240 stones.

Rings can be worn on any finger, still on toe fingers. In Western society, the traditional "ring finger" for the wearing of an engagement or wedding ring is the fourth finger of the left hand with the thumb counting as finger number one. The signet ring, a ring designate nobility, is normally worn on the little (fifth) finger of the right or left hand, depending on nationality.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Economic and social history


Dutch economic strategy for the colony throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be clear along three overlapping periods: the Cultivation System, the Liberal Period, and the Ethical Period. Throughout these periods, and until Indonesian independence, the utilization of Indonesia's wealth contributes to the industrialization of the Netherlands. Large expanses of Java, for example, became plantations cultivated by Javanese peasants, together by Chinese intermediaries, and sold on overseas markets by European merchants. Before World War II, the majority of the world's supply of quinine and pepper, over a third of its rubber, a quarter of its coconut products and a fifth of is tea, sugar, coffee, and oil. Indonesia complete the Netherlands was one of the world's most important colonial powers.

Despite increasing returns from the Dutch system of land tax, Dutch finances had been severely exaggerated by the cost of the Java and Padre Wars. The Dutch loss of Belgium in 1830 brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy, and a concerted Dutch utilization of Indonesian resources commenced. In 1830, a new governor general, Johannes van den Bosch, was selected to make the Dutch East Indies to pay their way. An agricultural plan of government-controlled forced cultivation was introduced to Java. Known as the Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel); much of Java became a Dutch plantation, making it a profitable, self-sufficient colony and saving the Netherlands from bankruptcy. The Cultivation System, however, brought much economic hardship to Javanese peasants, who suffer famine and epidemics in the 1840s.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Health care

Health care, or healthcare, is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the defense of mental and physical well being through the services available by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions. According to the World Health Organization, health care embrace all the goods and services measured to promote health, as well as preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether going to be individuals or to populations. The organized provision of such services may make up a health care system. This can include an exact governmental organization such as, in the UK, the National Health Service or cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care. Before the term "health care" become popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the behavior and prevention of illness and disease.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Carrot

The carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white, or pink in color, with a crunchy texture when fresh. The suitable for eating part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a cultivated form of the wild carrot Daucus carota, national to Europe and southwestern Asia. It has been bred for its very much inflamed and more palatable, less woody-textured edible taproot, but is still the similar species.

It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer, while building up the fat taproot, which stores big amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The peak stem grows to about 1 m tall, with an umbel of white flowers.

Carrots can be eaten raw, whole, chopped, grate, or added to salads for color or texture. They are also often chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as fine baby foods and choose pet foods. A well recognized dish is carrots julienne. Grated carrots are used in carrot cakes, as healthy as carrot puddings, an old English dish thought to have originated in the early 1800s.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Harrington jacket

A Harrington jacket is a type of tiny, lightweight jacket, made of cotton, polyester, wool or suede — generally with a tartan or check-patterned lining.

The initial Harrington-style jackets were made by British clothing company, Baracuta, in the 1930s; the company is still making the same model, the G9. This style of jacket got the nickname Harrington because it was worn by the personality Rodney Harrington (played by Ryan O'Neal) in the 1960s television program Peyton Place; John Simmons, who opened 'The Ivy Shop', Richmond, London, claims to have coined this explanation.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Diesel

Diesel engine cars have long been admired in Europe with the first models being introduced in the 1930s by Mercedes Benz and Citroen. The major benefit of Diesels is a 50% fuel burn competence compared with 27% in the best gasoline engines. A down side of the diesel is the presence in the wear out gases of fine soot particulates and manufacturers are now preliminary to fit filters to remove these. Many diesel motorized cars can also run with little or no modifications on 100% biodiesel.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Early Stages of a pregnant woman and her health

Pregnancy is not an easy job for a woman. Starting from conception to birth, a woman's body carries out the most miraculous process of fertilization, implantation and the maturity and growth of her baby (or babies). Her body is her baby's dwelling place for the next nine months (or around 40 weeks) and the occurrences of pregnancy turn into a journey of many new physical feelings. Whether it is first, second, third (or more) pregnancy, her body will respond in a different way to each individual pregnancy. So health of a pregnant woman is very important to be taken care of.

Throughout the first 12 weeks of pregnancy called the '1st trimester’, a woman's body adjust to present a fostering and protective environment for her baby to grow and develop. Seldom, the early signs of pregnancy can make a woman feel puzzled. This may be for the reason that many of the physical signs of in the early hours of pregnancy such as enlarged tender breasts, sensitivity of tiredness, overstuffed and perhaps experiencing spasms and/or pelvic uneasiness can be considered as normal pre-menstrual signs. In all these stages the health of the woman declines because she is not only feeding herself, also her little developing fetus.

They may also sense disgusted or sick, due to morning sickness. It is not unusual to feel unsure about what is 'normal' during the early stages of pregnancy development, and unfamiliar signs or sensations may trigger concerns about the health, of her and baby. It’s been proved by the Gynecologists that every woman's body will react in a different way to being pregnant. Many women find their early pregnancy symptoms very difficult to cope with, both at work and generally.

Due to continuous vomiting and nourishing the fetus the pregnant woman may be exhausted very easily. She has to constantly keep her energetic by maintaining a healthy diet schedule as prescribed by the physicians. She can have more fresh green vegetables and fruit juices to make her feel fresh and energetic. It’s always significant to make sure that she avoids drinking and smoking because whatever she has will be directly absorbed by the baby. Once the fetus starts developing she has to get primed for all the obstacles she has to experience throughout pregnancy. Many psychologists predict that a healthy pregnancy is not only from taking care of the nutrition for the pregnant women, more than that she has to be taken care from all the hassles in her family. It’s the duty of a loving husband to caress her comfortably and keep her happy always throughout the gestation period. This will not only make the woman feel happy and hopeful it will directly lead to the good development of the fetus.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

DVD

DVD ("Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is an admired optical disc storage space media format that can be used for data storage, like movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs be similar to Compact Discs in that they have the precise appearance (i.e. diameter: 120 mm or 4.72 in, occasionally 80 mm or 3.15 in.) and both are optical storage media so similar that a DVD reader or writer can usually read CDs, but DVDs are encoded in a dissimilar format of much greater density, allowing a data storage capability 8 times greater (single-layer, single-sided).

All read-only DVD discs, regardless of type, are DVD-ROM discs. This includes replicated (factory pressed), recorded (burned), video, audio, and data DVDs. A DVD with properly formatted and structured video content is a DVD-Video disc. Everything else, (including other types of DVD discs with video content) is known as a DVD-Data disc. Consumers use the term "DVD-ROM" to refer to pressed data discs only, but that is wrong usage; moreover, the term DVD is also applied basically in describing newer video disc formats, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Red blood cell


Red cell is redirecting here, For the US military word, see Red Cell.
Red blood cells are the most ordinary type of blood cell and the vertebrate body's principal means of deliver oxygen from the lungs or gills to body tissues via the blood.

Human red blood cells Red blood cells are also known as RBCs or erythrocytes from Greek erythros for "red" and kytos for "hollow", with cyte nowadays translated as "cell". A schistocyte is a red blood cell undergoes fragmentation, or a fragmented fraction of a red blood cell.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Multiple fruit


A multiple fruit is one fashioned from a cluster of flowers called an inflorescence. Each flower produces a fruit, but these grown-up into a single mass Examples are the pineapple, edible fig, mulberry, osage-orange, and breadfruit.

In the photograph on the right, stages of flowering and fruit development in the noni or Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia) can be experiential on a single branch. First an inflorescence of white flowers called a cranium is produced. After fertilization, each flower develops into a drupe, and as the drupes make bigger, they become connate (merge) into a multiple fleshy fruit called a syncarpet.

There are also many dry multiple fruits, e.g.

Tuliptree, multiple of samaras.
Sweet gum, multiple of capsules.
Sycamore and teasel, multiple of achenes.
Magnolia, multiple of follicles.