Sunday, August 14, 2016

Menopause and humor

What Is Menopause?

 Menopause is a normal condition that all women experience as they age. The term "menopause" can describe any of the changes a woman goes through either just before or after she stops menstruating, marking the end of her reproductive period.

What Causes Menopause?

ovaries. The ovaries also make the hormones estrogen and progesteron, which control menstruation and ovulation. Menopause happens when the ovaries no longer release an egg every month and menstruation stops.

Menopause is considered a normal part of aging when it happens after the age of 40. But some women can go through menopause early, either as a result of surgery,or damage to thovaries. The ovaries also make the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which control menstruation and ovulation. Menopause happens when the ovaries no longer release an egg every month and menstruation stops.
Menopause is considered a normal part of aging when it happens after the age of 40. But some women can go through menopause early, either as a result of surgery, such as hystarectomy, or damage to the ovaries, such as from chemotherapy. Menopause that happens before 40, regardless of the cause, is called premature menopause.

How Does Natural Menopause Happen?

Natural menopause is not brought on by any type of medical or surgical treatment. The process is gradual and has three stages:
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Saturday, July 16, 2016

Statue of liberty

Liberty Enlightening the World

"The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886.  It was designated as a National Monument in 1924.  Employees of the National Park Service have been caring for the colossal copper statue since 1933.

                                                                                         

Design and construction process    

Origin

According to the National Park Service, the idea for the Statue of Liberty was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye the president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a conversation between Édouard René de Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor in mid-1865. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, is supposed to have said: "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations. The National Park Service, in a 2000 report, however, deemed this a legend traced to an 1885 fundraising pamphlet, and that the statue was most likely conceived in 1870. In another essay on their website, the Park Service suggested that Laboulaye was minded to honor the Union victory and its consequences, "With the abolition of slavery and the Union's victory in the Civil War in 1865, Laboulaye's wishes of freedom and democracy were turning into a reality in the United States. In order to honor these achievements, Laboulaye proposed that a gift be built for the United States on behalf of France. Laboulaye hoped that by calling attention to the recent achievements of the United States, the French people would be inspired to call for their own democracy in the face of a repressive monarchy.



Design, style, and symbolism

Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty.In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation.One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen as an embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom and Marianne came to represent France. Columbia had supplanted the earlier figure of an Indian princess, which had come to be regarded as uncivilized and derogatory toward Americans.The other significant female icon in American culture was a representation of Liberty, derived from Libertas, the goddess of freedom widely worshipped in ancient Rome, especially among emancipated slaves. A Liberty figure adorned most American coins of the time,and representations of Liberty appeared in popular and civic art, including Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom (1863) atop the dome of the United States Capitol Building.


Access and attributes

Location and tourism

Tourists aboard a Circle Line ferry arriving at Liberty Island, June 1973
The statue is situated in Upper New York Bay on Liberty Island south of Ellis Island, which together comprise the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Both islands were ceded by New York to the federal government in 1800. As agreed in an 1834 compact between New York and New Jersey that set the state border at the bay's midpoint, the original islands remain New York territory despite their location on the New Jersey side of the state line. Liberty Island is one of the islands that are part of the borough of Manhattan in New York. Land created by reclamation added to the 2.3 acres (0.93 ha) original island at Ellis Island is New Jersey territor.
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Saturday, July 9, 2016

Jellyfish

 Intruduction

 Jellyfish or jellies are the major non-polyp form of individuals of the phylum Cnidaria. They are typified as free-swimming marine animals consisting of a gelatinous umbrella-shaped bell and trailing tentacles. The bell can pulsate for locomotion, while stinging tentacles can be used to capture prey.
Jellyfish are found in every ocean, from the surface to the deep sea. Scyphozoans are exclusively marine, but some hydrozoans live in freshwater. Large, often colorful, jellyfish are common in coastal zones worldwide. Jellyfish have roamed the seas for at least 500 million years, and possibly 700 million years or more, making them the oldest multi-organ animal.



Terminology

The English popular name jellyfish has been in use since 1796.It has traditionally also been applied to other animals sharing a superficial resemblance, for example ctenophores (members from another phylum of common, gelatinous and generally transparent or translucent, free-swimming planktonic carnivores now known as comb jellies) were included as "jellyfishes".Even some scientists include the phylum ctenophora when they are referring to jellyfish. Other scientists prefer to use the more all-encompassing term gelatinous zooplankton, when referring to these, together with other soft-bodied animals in the water column.


Anatomy


Diagram of the anatomy of a scyphozoan jellyfish
The major surfaces and axes of a scyphozoan jellyfish
Most jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems. The manubrium is a stalk-like structure hanging down from the centre of the underside, often surrounded by oral arms, which connects with the mouth/anus at the base of the bell. This opens into the gastrovascular cavity, where digestion takes place and nutrients are absorbed. It is joined to the radial canals which extend to the margin of the bell, where tentacles are attached.


Nervous system

Jellyfish employ a loose network of nerves, located in the epidermis, which is called a "nerve net". Although traditionally thought not to have a central nervous system, nerve net concentration and ganglion-like structures could be considered to constitute one in most species.A jellyfish detects various stimuli including the touch of other animals via this nerve net, which then transmits impulses both throughout the nerve net and around a circular nerve ring, through the rhopalial lappet, located at the rim of the jellyfish body, to other nerve cells.



Vision

Some jellyfish have ocelli: light-sensitive organs that do not form images but which can detect light and are used to determine up from down, responding to sunlight shining on the water's surface. These are generally pigment spot ocelli, which have some cells (not all) pigmented.
Certain species of jellyfish, such as the box jellyfish, have more advanced vision than their counterparts. The box jellyfish has 24 eyes, two of which are capable of seeing color, and four parallel information processing areas or rhopalia that act in competition,supposedly making it one of the few creatures to have a 360-degree view of its environment.
The eyes are suspended on stalks with heavy crystals on one end, acting like a gyroscope to orient the eyes skyward. They look upward to navigate from roots in mangrove swamps to the open lagoon and back, watching for the mangrove canopy, where they feed.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Hydrangeas

 Intruduction 

With immense flower heads, hydrangeas flaunt an old-fashioned charm that is hard to resist. Colors also beguile with clear blues, vibrant pinks, frosty whites, lavender, and rose—sometimes all blooming on the same plant!
The colors of some hydrangeas—especially mophead and lacecap—can change color based on the soil pH, which affects relative availability of aluminum ions. Acidic soils with a pH of less than 5.5 produce blue flowers; soils with a pH greater than 5.5 product pink flowers. White flowers are not affected by pH.
Unrivaled in the shrub world, these elegant ladies are easy to cultivate, tolerate almost any soil, and produce flowers in mid-summer through fall (when little else may be in bloom). Hydrangeas are excellent for a range of garden sites from group plantings to shrub borders to containers.


Planting

  • Most hydrangeas thrive in rich, porous, somewhat moist soils. Add compost to enrich poor soil.
  • They prefer full sun in the morning, with some afternoon shade; however, many will grow and bloom in partial shade. This is especially true for the bigleaf hydrangeas (see Recommended Varieties below).
  •  Plant in spring or fall.
  • Dig a hole as deep as the root ball and 2 to 3 times as wide.
  • Set the plant in the hole and fill it half full with soil. Water. After water is drained, fill the rest of the hole with soil.
  • Water thoroughly.                                          

Care

  • For the first year or two after planting and during any drought, be sure hydrangeas get plenty of water. Leaves will wilt if the soil is too dry.
  • If your soil is rich, you may not need to fertilize hydrangeas. If your soil is light or sandy, it’s best to feed the plants once a year n late winter or spring.  Too much fertilizer encourages leafy growth at the expense of blooms.
  • In the fall, cover plants to a depth of at least 18 inches with bark mulch, leaves, pine needles, or straw. If at all possible, cover the entire plant, tip included, by making cages out of snow fencing or chicken wire, and loosely filling the cages with leaves. (Do not use maple leaves.)

Other Hydrangeas
  • Oakleaf, panicle, and smooth hydrangeas are treated differently.  They blossom on the current seasons’ wood. They should be pruned in the later winter when the plant is dormant BEFORE bloom. This means if the buds are killed during the winter, they will produce new buds in the spring which will produce blooms. 
  • In general, prune only dead branches, and do not prune to “shape” the bush. 

Harvest/Storage

Try drying hydrangea flowers to create a wreath or other decorations around the house:
  • Harvest the heads when the flowers have matured and developed a papery consistency.
  • Remove leaves from stems, and hang upside down in a warm, dry, dark, airy room.
  • When completely dry (usually a couple of weeks), store in a dry location out of direct sunlight.
  • To enhance flower color, spritz dry flowers with diluted Rit dye.

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Thursday, June 23, 2016

Kodombo flower

Intruduction


 Kadam  is one of the finest and most attractive flowers during the rainy season. This flower is endemic to the South Asia and partly to Southeast Asian region. That's why it doesn't have any known English or common name (though people call this as burflower). That's why it is mostly known as the local name, Kadam. In Bengali we have several other names for this flower which are Nipo, Kodombo, etc.

Scientific name 


Botanical name of flowering plant is Neolamarckia cadamba. The genus name has chosen to honor the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. This plant belongs to the plant family Rubiaceae. It has several synonyms which are Anthocephalus cadamba, Anthocephalus indicus, etc.

Growing level


Kadam is a very tall growing single trunk evergreen plant having small to large leafs. Leafs are oppositely arranged with slightly long petiole. A deep texture is found on the leafs (alternately arranged veins). Upper side of the leaf is glossy and the lower side is veined for those textures. Top of the plant is having a shape of umbrella most of the cases (because the villagers use to prune the branches from the lower part of the tree. It is a fast growing plant.

  

Shape

Shape of the Kadam flower  is like a small ball. The color of the ball is yellowish or orange (some reported about red one too, but I didn't see yet). The ball is surrounded by lot of long white frills (can be style or stamen, i don't know). For such lovely orientation the flower looks extraordinarily beautiful. Flowers are having a mild fragrance.Initial flower buds are small ball shaped and having no furry things, and they are green. A Kadam  tree brings flower usually within 4-5 years are planting. Blooming season is usually the rainy season, but these days we can see this in other nearby seasons too.

Fruit of kadam

I have never seen the fruit of Kadam , or you can say I didn't notice this carefully. But most of the cases the flowers use to get fallen from the trees and makes the underneath messy. For this reason my grandfather uses to chop down this tree when they start flowering, and then plant a new baby plant in that place. Such a pity though!

The timber from this plant is not that much handy. It is useful as a raw material for the papers. Also using as a fuel at the burners is handy too. Around our village area this tree grows naturally, but around the city area this is being cherished as an ornamental plant.


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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Desert

Desert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with dessert.


This article is about dry terrain. For arid climate, see Desert climate. For the act of abandoning or withdrawing support, see Desertion. For other uses, see Desert (disambiguation).
Valle de la Luna ("Valley of the Moon") in the Atacama Desert of Chile, the world's driest hot desert
Sand dunes in the Rub' al Khali ("Empty quarter") of Saudi Arabia
A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to the processes of denudation. About one third of the land surface of the world is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions where little precipitation occurs and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts". Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location.               
                                                                                       
                                                                                        

Etymology

English desert and its Romance cognates (including Italian and Portuguese deserto, French désert and Spanish desierto) all come from the ecclesiastical Latin dēsertum (originally "an abandoned place"), a participle of dēserere, "to abandon".The correlation between aridity and sparse population is complex and dynamic, varying by culture, era, and technologies; thus the use of the word desert can cause confusion. In English before the 20th century, desert was often used in the sense of "unpopulated area", without specific reference to aridity; but today the word is most often used in its climate-science sense (an area of low precipitation).Phrases such as "desert island" and "Great American Desert" in previous centuries did not necessarily imply sand or aridity; their focus was the sparse population.

Physical geography

A desert is a region of land that is very dry because it receives low amounts of precipitation (usually in the form of rain but may be snow, mist or fog), often has little coverage by plants, and in which streams dry up unless they are supplied by water from outside the area.Deserts can also be described as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. Deserts generally receive less than 250 mm (10 in) of precipitation each year.Semideserts are regions which receive between 250 and 500 mm (10 and 20 in) and when clad in grass, these are known as steppes.

Classification

Deserts have been defined and classified in a number of ways, generally combining total precipitation, number of days on which this falls, temperature, and humidity, and sometimes additional factors.For example, Phoenix, Arizona, receives less than 250 mm (9.8 in) of precipitation per year, and is immediately recognized as being located in a desert because of its aridity-adapted plants. The North Slope of Alaska's Brooks Range also receives less than 250 mm (9.8 in) of precipitation per year and is often classified as a cold desert.Other regions of the world have cold deserts, including areas of the Himalayasand other high-altitude areas in other parts of the world.Polar deserts cover much of the ice-free areas of the Arctic and Antarctic.A non-technical definition is that deserts are those parts of the Earth's surface that have insufficient vegetation cover to support a human population.



Weathering processes

Exfoliation of weathering rocks in Texas
Deserts usually have a large diurnal and seasonal temperature range, with high daytime temperatures falling sharply at night. The diurnal range may be as much as 20 to 30 °C (36 to 54 °F) and the rock surface experiences even greater temperature differentials.During the day the sky is usually clear and most of the sun's radiation reaches the ground, but as soon as the sun sets, the desert cools quickly by radiating heat into space. In hot deserts, the temperature during daytime can exceed 45 °C (113 °F) in summer and plunge below freezing point at night during winter.


Dust storms and sandstorms

Main article: Dust storm
Dust storm about to engulf a military camp in Iraq, 2005
Sand and dust storms are natural events that occur in arid regions where the land is not protected by a covering of vegetation. Dust storms usually start in desert margins rather than the deserts themselves where the finer materials have already been blown away. As a steady wind begins to blow, fine particles lying on the exposed ground begin to vibrate. At greater wind speeds, some particles are lifted into the air stream.


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Friday, June 17, 2016

Lighthouse

History of lighthouses

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia     
Tower of Hercules, a Roman lighthouse at La Coruña modelled on the Pharos.
 
The history of lighthouses refers to the development of the use of towers, buildings, or other types of structure, as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways.


Premodern era

Before the development of clearly defined ports mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since raising the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse. In antiquity, the lighthouse functioned more as an entrance marker to ports than as a warning signal for reefs and promontories, unlike many modern lighthouses.
                                                                                   

Greek-Roman period

Graphic reconstruction of the Pharos according to a 2006 study.
Written descriptions and drawings of the Pharos of Alexandria provide information about lighthouses, but the tower itself collapsed during an earthquake many centuries after its construction in the 3rd century BC by the Greeks. The intact Tower of Hercules at La Coruña and the ruins of the Dover lighthouse in England give insight into construction; other evidence about lighthouses exists in depictions on coins and mosaics, of which many represent the lighthouse at Ostia. Coins from Alexandria, Ostia, and Laodicea in Syria also exist.
                                                                                      

Europe


Engraving of the Cordouan tower completed in 1611
During the middle age times, Roman lighthouses fell into disuse, but some remained functional, such as the Farum Brigantium, now known as the Tower of Hercules, in A Coruña, Spain, and others in the Mediterranean Sea such as the Meloria Tower at Genoa. As navigation improved, lighthouses gradually expanded into Western and Northern Europe.[1] One of the oldest working lighthouses in Europe is Hook Lighthouse located at Hook Head in County Wexford, Ireland. It was built during the medieval period, in a sturdy –circular design.


  

Modern lighthouses

Construction

The modern era of lighthouses began at the turn of the 18th century, as lighthouse construction boomed in lockstep with burgeoning levels of transatlantic commerce. Advances in structural engineering and new and efficient lighting equipment allowed for the creation of larger and more powerful lighthouses, including ones exposed to the sea. The function of lighthouses shifted toward the provision of a visible warning against shipping hazards, such as rocks or reefs.
                                                                                   

Further development

Bell Rock Lighthouse constructed on a dangerous rock submerged at most states of the tide
Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson was a seminal figure in the development of lighthouse design and construction in the first half of the 19th century. In 1797, he was appointed engineer to the newly formed Northern Lighthouse Board, the Lighthouse Authority for Scotland and the Isle of Man. His greatest achievement was the construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse in 1810, one of the most impressive feats of engineering of the age. This structure was based upon the design of the earlier Eddystone Lighthouse by John Smeaton, but with several improved features, such as the incorporation of rotating lights, alternating between red and white.


Lighting improvements                 

Argand lamp with circular wick and glass chimney. (Illustration from Les Merveilles de la science [1867-1869] by Louis Figuier).
The source of illumination had generally been wood pyres or burning coal but this was expensive, some lighthouses consuming 400 tons of coal a year. Candles or oil lamps backed by concave mirrors were used, often in large banks. The French conducted a series of tests between 1783 and 1788 with varying results. Smeaton's Eddystone lighthouse used 24 candles until 1810.


Optics

Diagram depicting how a spherical Fresnel lens collimates light.
With the development of the steady illumination of the Argand lamp, the application of optical lenses to increase and focus the light intensity became a practical possibility. William Hutchinson developed the first practical optical system in 1763, known as a catoptric system. He constructed paraboloidal reflectors by attaching small pieces of reflective material to a cast that had been moulded into an approximate paraboloid. This rudimentary system effectively collimated the emitted light into a concentrated beam, thereby greatly increasing the light's visibility. His system was installed in the newly built Leasowe Lighthouse, and was later copied elsewhere.[31] The ability to focus the light led to the first revolving lighthouse beams, where the light would appear to the mariners as a series of intermittent flashes. It also became possible to transmit complex signals using the light flashes.

   

  1. References


  2. Crompton, Samuel, W; Rhein, Michael, J. The Ultimate Book of Lighthouses. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 2002. ISBN 1-59223-102-0

  4. Beaver, Patrick (1971). A History of Lighthouses. London: Peter Davies Ltd. p. 17. ISBN 0-432-01290-7.

  6. Stevenson, D. Alan (1959). The world's lighthouses before 1820. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 32–33.

  8. Russ, Rowlett (2005). "Lighthouses of France: Aquitaine". Retrieved Jul 15, 2015.

    10. Bathurst, Bella (2000). The lighthouse Stevensons. New York: Perennial. p. 135. ISBN 0-06-093226-0.






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