Monday, May 28, 2007

Cotton

Cotton is a soft fibre that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant , a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, with the Americas, India, and Africa. However, virtually all of the commercial cotton grown today worldwide is grown from varieties of the native American species Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense. The fibre is most often spun into thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile, which is the most widely used natural-fibre cloth in clothing today. The English name derives from the Arabic word al qutun, meaning "cotton fiber".
Cotton fibre, once it has been processed to remove seeds and traces of wax, protein, etc., consists of nearly pure cellulose, a natural polymer. Cotton manufacture is very efficient, in the sense that ten percent or less of the weight is lost in following processing to convert the raw cotton bolls into pure fibre. The cellulose is arranged in a way that gives cotton fibres a high degree of strength, durability, and absorbency. Each fibre is made up of twenty to thirty layers of cellulose coiled in a neat series of natural springs. When the cotton boll is opened, the fibres dry into flat, twisted, ribbon-like shapes and become kinked together and interlocked. This interlocked form is ideal for spinning into a fine yarn.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Diabetic diet

The diet recommended for people who suffer from diabetes mellitus is one that is high in dietary fibre, particularly soluble fibre, but low in fat. Patients may be encouraged to reduce their intake of carbohydrates that have a high glycemic index. However, in cases of hypoglycemia, they are advised to have food or drink that can raise blood glucose quickly, followed by a long-acting carbohydrate (such as rye bread) to prevent risk of further hypoglycaemia.

Recently, Diabetes UK have warned against purchase of products that are specially made for people with diabetes, on the grounds that:

1. They may be expensive,
2. They may contain high levels of fat and
3. They may confer no special benefits to people who suffer from diabetes.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Education System

Schooling occurs when group or a society or an individual sets up a curriculum to educate people, usually the young. Schooling can become systematic. Sometimes education systems can be used to promote doctrine or ethics as well as knowledge, and this can lead to abuse of the system.

Life-long or adult education have become extensive in many countries. However, education is still seen by many as something aimed at children, and adult education is often branded as adult learning or ultimate learning.

Adult education takes on several forms, from formal class-based learning to self-directed learning. Lending libraries provide cheap informal access to books and other self-instructional materials. Many adults have also taken advantage of the rise in computer ownership and internet access to further their casual education.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

MIPS-Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages

MIPS designs are used in a lot of embedded systems such as the Series2 TiVo, Windows CE devices, Cisco routers, and video game consoles similar to the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable handheld system. Until late 2006 they were also used in a lot of SGI's computer products.

Near the beginning MIPS architectures were 32-bit implementations, while later versions were 64-bit implementations. Multiple revisions of the MIPS instruction set exist, including MIPS I, MIPS II, MIPS III, MIPS IV, MIPS V, MIPS32, and MIPS64. The current revisions are MIPS32 (for 32-bit implementations) and MIPS64 for (64-bit implementations). MIPS32 and MIPS64 define a control register set as well as the instruction set. Several "add-on" extensions are also available, including MIPS-3D which is a simple set of floating-point SIMD orders dedicated to common 3D tasks, MDMX which is a more extensive integer SIMD instruction set using the 64-bit floating-point registers, MIPS16e which adds density to the instruction stream to make programs take up less room, and the recent addition of MIPS MT, new multithreading additions to the system similar to Hyper Threading in the Intel's Pentium 4 processors.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Cream

Cream is a dairy product that is composed of the higher-butterfat layer skimmed from the top of milk before homogenization. In un-homogenized milk, over time, the lighter fat rises to the top. In the industrial manufacture of cream this process is accelerated by using centrifuges called "separators". In many countries, cream is sold in several grades depending on total butterfat content. Cream can be dried to a powder for shipment to distant markets.
Cream produced by cows (particularly Jersey cattle) grazing on usual pasture often contains some natural carotenoid pigments derived from the plants they eat; this gives the cream a slight yellow tone, hence the name of the yellowish-white colour cream. Cream from cows fed indoors, on grain or grain-based pellets, is white.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Papaya

The papaya, is the fruit of the tree Carica papaya, in the genus Carica. It is native to the tropics of the Americas, and was cultivated in Mexico several centuries before the flourishment of the Mesoamerican classic cultures. The original name of the fruit in Nahuatl was chichihualtzapotl, that means "wet-nurse fruit", and it was very connected to fertility concepts.
Nowadays, the papaya is also known as fruta bomba, lechosa (Venezuela, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic), mamão, papaw (Sri Lankan English), Papol \ Guslabu (Tree melon) in Sinhalese ), pawpaw or tree melon
It is a small tree, the single stem growing from 5 to 10 m tall, with spirally set leaves confined to the top of the trunk; the lower trunk is noticeably scarred with scars of where leaves and fruit were borne. The leaves are large, 50-70 cm diameter, deeply palmately lobed with 7 lobes. The tree is typically unbranched if unlopped. The flowers are similar in shape to the flowers of the Plumeria but are much smaller and wax like. They appear on the axils of the leaves, maturing into the large 15-45 cm long, 10-30 cm diameter fruit. The fruit is ripe when it feels soft (like a ripe avocado or a bit softer) and its skin has attained an amber to orange hue.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

First stamps

1847 10c, Scott #2Congress finally provided for the issuance of stamps by passing an act on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster-General instantly let a agreement to the New York City firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issues of the US were offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in NYC, with Boston receiving stamps the following year and other cities subsequently. They consisted of an engraved 5-cent red brown stamp depicting Benjamin Franklin, and a 10-cent value in black with George Washington. As for all US stamps until 1857, they were imperforate. Although a number of philatelists have studied these stamps for years, much remains unknown about the facts of the original contract, design process, and the printing of these stamps.

1 cent, 1851, type IIThe post office had become so well-organized by 1851 that Congress was able to condense the common rate to three cents, necessitating a new issue of stamps. Values integrated a 1c profile of Franklin in blue, a 3c profile of Washington in red brown, a 5c portrait of Thomas Jefferson, and portraits of Washington for 10c green and 12c black values. The 1c stamp achieved disrepute, at least among philatelists, because production problems led to considerable plate modifications, and there are no less than seven major varieties, ranging in price from $100 to $200,000, and sharp-eyed collectors occasionally find the rare types going unrecognized.

Civil war
The outbreak of the American Civil War threw the postal system into turmoil. On April 13, 1861 John H. Reagan, postmaster-general of the Confederate States of America, ordered local postmasters to return their US stamps to Washington DC, while in May the Union decided to withdraw and invalidate all existing US stamps, and to issue new stamps. Associate post offices were left without genuine stamps for several months, and while many reverted to the old system of cash payment at the post office, over one hundred post offices across the South came up with their own temporary issues. Many of these are quite rare, with only single examples existing of some types. Ultimately the Confederate government issued its own stamps; see stamps and postal history of the Confederate States.