title: "Malthusian catastrophe" content: and the Green Revolution greatly increased crop yields, expanding the world's food supply while lowering food prices. In response, the growth rate of the world's population accelerated rapidly, resulting in predictions by Paul R. Ehrlich, Simon Hopkins, and many others of an imminent Malthusian catastrophe. However, populations of most developed countries grew slowly enough to be outpaced by gains in productivity. By the early 21st century, many technologically developed countries had passed through the demographic transition, a complex social development encompassing a drop in total fertility rates in response to various fertility factors, including lower infant mortality, increased urbanization, and


title: "Marxism–Leninism" content: visit to China, which subsequently ended the two-Chinas policy when the U.S. sponsored the PRC to replace the Republic of China (Taiwan) as representative of the Chinese people at the United Nations; the PRC also became member of the Security Council. In the post–Mao period, the Deng Xiaoping government (1982–1987) effected policies of economic liberalisation that resulted in continual economic growth for the PRC. The ideological justification is socialism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese adaption of Russian Marxism–Leninism. In Latin America, Communist revolutions based upon Marxism–Leninism occurred in Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay. In 1959, the


title: "Mikhail Gorbachev" content: leaders of democratic countries, which works to strengthen democratic governance and leadership. Gorbachev was co-chair of Earth Charter International Commission. Gorbachev was a socialist. His friend Mlynář, with whom he studied at university, related that in the early 1950s "Gorbachev, like everyone else at the time, was a Stalinist." Mlynář added that "Unlike most Soviet students, [Gorbachev] did not see Marxist theory as a collection of axioms to be committed to memory." Biographers Doder and Branson related that after Stalin's death, Gorbachev's "ideology would never be doctrinal again", but noted that he remained "a true believer" in the Soviet system.


title: Nicaragua content: the vote. However the Broad Front for Democracy (FAD), having promoted boycotts of the elections, claimed that 70% of voters had abstained (while election officials claimed 65.8% participation). In April 2018, demonstrations opposed a decree increasing taxes and reducing benefits in the country's pension system. Local independent press organizations had documented at least 19 dead and over 100 missing in the ensuing conflict. A reporter from NPR spoke to protestors who explained that while the initial issue was about the pension reform, the uprisings that spread across the country reflected many grievances about the government's time in office, and that


title: "History of Nicaragua" content: by his two sons. Luis Somoza Debayle became President (29 September 1956 to 1 May 1963), and was effectively dictator of the country until his death, but his brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle held great power as head of the National Guard. A graduate of West Point, Anastasio was even closer to the Americans than his father and was said to speak better English than Spanish. The revolutionaries opposing the Somozas were greatly strengthened by the Cuban Revolution. The revolution provided both hope and inspiration to the insurgents, as well as weapons and funding. Operating from Costa Rica they formed the


title: "Neva River" content: Neva River The Neva (, ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria) to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of , it is the fourth largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge (after the Volga, the Danube and the Rhine). The Neva is the only river flowing from Lake Ladoga. It flows through the city of Saint Petersburg, three smaller towns of Shlisselburg, Kirovsk and Otradnoye, and dozens of settlements. The river is navigable throughout and is


title: "Neva River" content: part of the Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea – Baltic Canal. It is a site of numerous major historical events, including the Battle of the Neva in 1240 which gave Alexander Nevsky his name, the founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703, and the Siege of Leningrad by the German army during World War II. There are two versions of the origin of the name Neva, in - poor fen or in – new. Modern names for the distributaries of the river delta were settled only by the end of the 18th century. In the Paleozoic, 300–400 million years ago, the


title: "Neva River" content: entire territory of the modern delta of the Neva River was covered by a sea. Modern relief was formed as a result of glacier activity. Its retreat formed the Littorina Sea, the water level of which was some higher than the present level of the Baltic Sea. Then, the Tosna River was flowing in the modern bed of the Neva, from east to west into the Litorinal Sea. In the north of the Karelian Isthmus, the Littorina Sea united by a wide strait with Lake Ladoga. The Mga River then flowed to the east, into Lake Ladoga, near the modern


title: "Neva River" content: source of the Neva River; the Mga then was separated from the basin of the Tosna. Near the modern Lake Ladoga, land rose faster, and a closed reservoir was formed. Its water level began to rise, eventually flooded the valley of Mga and broke into the valley of the river Tosna. The Ivanovo rapids of the modern Neva were created in the breakthrough area. So about 2000 BC the Neva was created with its tributaries Tosna and Mga. According to some newer data, it happened at 1410–1250 BC making the Neva a rather young river. The valley of Neva is


title: "Neva River" content: formed by glacial and post-glacial sediments and it did not change much over the past 2500 years. The delta of Neva was formed at that time, which is actually pseudodelta, as it was formed not by accumulation of river material but by plunging into the past sediments. The Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga near Shlisselburg, flows through the Neva Lowland and discharges into the Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Finland. It has a length of , and the shortest distance from the source to the mouth is . The river banks are low and steep, on average about


title: "Neva River" content: and at the mouth. There are three sharp turns: the Ivanovskye rapids, at Nevsky Forest Park of the Ust-Slavyanka region (the so-called crooked knee) and near the Smolny Institute, below the mouth of the river Ohta. The river declines in elevation between source and mouth. At one point the river crosses a moraine ridge and forms the Ivanovskye rapids. There, at the beginning of the rapids, is the narrowest part of the river: . The average flow rate in the rapids is about . The average width along the river is . The widest places, at , are in the


title: "Neva River" content: delta, near the gates of the marine trading port, at the end of the Ivanovskye rapids near the confluence of the river Tosna, and near the island Fabrinchny near the source. The average depth is ; the maximum of is reached above the Liteyny Bridge, and the minimum of is in Ivanovskye rapids. In the area of Neva basin, rainfall greatly exceeds evaporation; the latter accounts for only 37.7 percent of the water consumption from Neva and the remaining 62.3 percent is water runoff. Since 1859, the largest volume of was observed in 1924 and the lowest in 1900 at


title: "Neva River" content: . The average annual discharge is or on average. Because of the uniform water-flow from Lake Ladoga to the Neva over the whole year, there are almost no floods and corresponding water rise in the spring. The Neva freezes throughout from early December to early April. The ice thickness is within Saint Petersburg and in other areas. Ice congestion may form in winter in the upper reaches of the river, this sometimes causes upstream floods. Of the total ice volume of Lake Ladoga, , less than 5 percent enters the Neva. The average summer water temperature is , and the


title: "Neva River" content: swimming season lasts only about 1.5 months. The water is fresh, with medium turbidity; the average salinity is 61.3 mg/L and the calcium bicarbonate content is 7 mg/L. The basin area of Neva is 5,000 km², including the pools of Lake Ladoga and Onega (281,000 km²). The basin contains 26,300 lakes and has a complex hydrological network of more than 48,300 rivers, however only 26 flow directly into Neva. The main tributaries are Mga, Tosna, Izhora, Slavyanka and Murzinka on the left, and Okhta and Chernaya River on the right side of Neva. The hydrological network had been altered by


title: "Neva River" content: the development of St. Petersburg through its entire history. When it was founded in 1703, the area was low and swampy and required construction of canals and ponds for drainage. The earth excavated during their construction was used to raise the city. At the end of the 19th century, the delta of Neva consisted of 48 rivers and canals and 101 islands. The most significant distributaries of the delta are listed in the table. Before construction of the Obvodny Canal, the left tributary of that area was Volkovka River; its part at the confluence is now called Monastyrka River. The


title: "Neva River" content: Ladoga Canal starts at the root of Neva and connects it along the southern coast of Lake Ladoga with Volkhov River. Some canals of the delta were filled over time, so that only 42 islands remained by 1972, all within the city limits of St. Petersburg. The largest islands are Vasilievsky at , Petrogradsky at , Krestovsky at , and Dekabristov at ; others include Zayachy, Yelagin and Kamenny Islands. At the source of the Neva, near Shlisselburg, there are the two small islands of Orekhovy and Fabrichny. Island Glavryba lies up the river, above the town of Otradnoye. There


title: "Neva River" content: is almost no aquatic vegetation in Neva. The river banks mostly consist of sand, podsol, gleysols, peat and boggy peat soils. Several centuries ago, the whole territory of the Neva lowland was covered by pine and spruce mossy forests. They were gradually reduced by the fires and cutting for technical needs. Extensive damage was caused during World War II: in St. Petersburg, the forests were reduced completely, and in the upper reaches down to 40 to 50 percent. Forest were replanted after the war with spruce, pine, cedar, Siberian larch, oak, Norway maple, elm, America, ash, apple tree, mountain ash


title: "Neva River" content: and other species. The shrubs include barberry, lilac, jasmine, hazel, honeysuckle, hawthorn, rose hip, viburnum, juniper, elder, shadbush and many others. Nowadays, the upper regions of the river are dominated by birch and pine-birch grass-shrub forests and in the middle regions there are swampy pine forests. In St. Petersburg, along the Neva, there are many gardens and parks, including the Summer Garden, Field of Mars, Rumyantsev, Smolny, Alexander Gardens, Garden of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and many others. Because of the rapid flow, cold water and lack of quiet pools and aquatic vegetation the diversity of fish species in Neva


title: "Neva River" content: is small. Permanent residents include such undemanding to environment species as perch, ruffe and roaches. Many fish species are transitory, of which commercial value have smelt, vendace and partly salmon. Floods in St. Petersburg are usually caused by the overflow of the delta of Neva and by surging water in the eastern part of Neva Bay. They are registered when the water rises above with respect to a gauge at the Mining Institute. More than 300 floods occurred after the city was founded in 1703. Three of them were catastrophic: on 7 November 1824, when water rose to ; on


title: "Neva River" content: 23 September 1924 when it reached , and 10 September 1777 when it rose to . However, a much larger flood of was described in 1691. Besides flooding as a result of tidal waves, in 1903, 1921 and 1956 floods were caused by the melting of snow. The Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia classifies Neva as a "heavily polluted" river. The main pollutants are copper, zinc, manganese, nitrites and nitrogen. The dirtiest tributaries of the Neva are the Mga, Slavyanka, Ohta and Chernaya. Hundreds of factories pour wastewaters into the Neva within St. Petersburg and petroleum


title: "Neva River" content: is regularly transported along the river. The annual influx of pollutants is 80,000 tonnes, and the heaviest polluters are Power-and-heating Plant 2 (), "Plastpolymer" and "Obukhov State Plant". The biggest polluters in the Leningrad Oblast are the cities of Shlisselburg, Kirovsk and Otradnoye, as well as the Kirov thermal power station. More than 40 oil spills are registered on the river every year. In 2008, the Federal Service of St. Petersburg announced that no beach of Neva is fit for swimming. Cleaning of waste water in St. Petersburg was started in 1979 and by 1997 about 74% of wastewater was


title: "Neva River" content: purified. This number rose to 85% in 2005, to 91.7% by 2008, and is expected to reach 100% by 2011 with the completion of the expansion of the main sewerage plant. Many sites of ancient people, up to nine thousand years old, were found within the territory of the Neva basin. It is believed that around twelve thousand years BC, Finno-Ugric peoples (Votes and Izhorians) moved to this area from the Ural Mountains. In the 8th and 9th centuries AD, the area was inhabited by the East Slavs who were mainly engaged in slash and burn agriculture, hunting and fishing.


title: "Neva River" content: From the 8th to 13th centuries, Neva provided a waterway from Scandinavia to the Byzantine Empire. In the 9th century, the area belonged to Veliky Novgorod. Neva is already mentioned in the Life of Alexander Nevsky (13th century). At that time, Veliky Novgorod was engaged in nearly constant wars with Sweden. A major battle occurred on 15 July 1240 at the confluence of the Izhora and Neva Rivers. The Russian army, led by the 20-year-old Prince Alexander Yaroslavich, aimed to stop the planned Swedish invasion. The Swedish army was defeated; the prince showed personal courage in combat and received the


title: "Neva River" content: honorary name of "Nevsky". As a result of the Russian defeat in the Ingrian War of 1610–17 and the concomitant Treaty of Stolbovo, the area of the Neva River became part of Swedish Ingria. Beginning in 1642, the capital of Ingria was Nyen, a city near the Nyenschantz fortress. Because of financial and religious oppression, much of the Orthodox population left the Neva region, emptying 60 percent of the villages by 1620. The abandoned areas became populated by people from the Karelian Isthmus and Savonia. As a result of the Great Northern War of 1700–21, the valley of Neva River


title: "Neva River" content: became part of Russian Empire. On 16 May 1703, the city of St. Petersburg was founded in the mouth of Neva and became capital of Russia in 1712. Neva became the central part of the city. It was cleaned, intersected with canals and enclosed with embankments. In 1715, construction began of the first wooden embankment between the Admiralty building and the Summer Garden. In the early 1760s works started to cover it in granite and to build bridges across Neva and its canals and tributaries, such as the Hermitage Bridge. From 1727 to 1916, the temporary Isaakievsky pontoon bridge was


title: "Neva River" content: early constructed between the modern Saint Isaac's Square and Vasilievsky Island. A similar, but much longer Trinity pontoon bridge, which spanned , was brought from the Summer Garden to Petrogradsky Island. The first permanent bridge across Neva, Blagoveshchensky Bridge, was opened in 1850, and the second, Liteyny Bridge, came into operation in 1879. In 1858, a "Joint-stock company St. Petersburg water supply" was established, which built the first water supply network in the city. A two-stage water purification station was constructed in 1911. The development of the sewerage system began only in 1920, after the October Revolution, and by 1941,


title: "Neva River" content: the sewerage network was long. Every winter from 1895 to 1910, electric tramways were laid on the ice of the river, connecting the Senate Square, Vasilievsky island, Palace Embankment and other parts of the city. The power was supplied through the rails and a top cable supported by wooden piles frozen into the ice. The service was highly successful and ran without major accidents except for a few failures in the top electrical wires. The trams ran at the speed of and could carry 20 passengers per carriage. The carriages were converted from the used horsecars. About 900,000 passengers were


title: "Neva River" content: transported over a regular season between 20 January and 21 March. The sparking of contacts at the top wires amused spectators in the night. The first concrete bridge across Neva, the Volodarsky Bridge, was built in 1936. During World War II, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944 Leningrad was in the devastating German Siege. On 30 August 1941, the German army captured Mga and came to Neva. On 8 September Germans captured Shlisselburg and cut all land communications and waterways to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). The siege was partly relieved in January 1943, and ended on 27 January


title: "Neva River" content: 1944. A river station was built above the Volodarsky Bridge in 1970 which could accept 10 large ships at a time. Wastewater treatment plants were built in Krasnoselsk in 1978, on the Belyi Island in 1979–83, and in Olgino in 1987–94. The South-West Wastewater Treatment Plant was constructed in 2003–05. Neva has very few shoals and its banks are steep, making the river suited for navigation. Utkino Backwaters were constructed in the late 19th century to park unused ships. Neva is part of the major Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea – Baltic Canal, however it has relatively low transport capacity


title: "Neva River" content: because of its width, depth and bridges. Neva is available for vessels with capacity below 5,000 tonnes. Major transported goods include timber from Arkhangelsk and Vologda; apatite, granite and diabase from Kola Peninsula; cast iron and steel from Cherepovets; coal from Donetsk and Kuznetsk; pyrite from Ural; potassium chloride from Solikamsk; oil from Volga region. There are also many passenger routes to Moscow, Astrakhan, Rostov, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, Valaam and other destinations. Navigation season on the Neva River runs from late April to November. To the west of Shlisselburg, an oil pipeline runs under the river. The pipeline is part


title: "Neva River" content: of the Baltic Pipeline System, which provides oil from Timan-Pechora plate, West Siberia, Ural, Kazakhstan and Primorsk to the Gulf of Finland. The long pipeline lies below the river bottom and delivers about 42 million tonnes of oil a year. Near the Ladozhsky Bridge there is an underwater tunnel to host a gas pipeline Nord Stream. The tunnel has a diameter of and a length of and is laid at a maximum depth of . Neva is the main source of water (96 percent) of St. Petersburg and its suburbs. From 26 June 2009, St. Petersburg started processing the drinking


title: "Neva River" content: water by ultraviolet light, abandoning the use of chlorine for disinfection. Neva also has developed fishery, both commercial and recreational. Leningrad Oblast: St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg, Neva delta Construction of the Novo-Admiralteisky Bridge, a movable drawbridge across the river, has been approved, but will not commence before 2011. Whereas most tourist attractions of Neva are located within St. Petersburg, there are several historical places upstream, in the Leningrad Oblast. They include the fortress Oreshek, which was built in 1323 on the Orekhovy Island at the source of Neva River, south-west of the Petrokrepost Bay, near the city of Shlisselburg. The


title: "Neva River" content: waterfront of Schlisselburg has a monument of Peter I. In the city, there are Blagoveshchensky Cathedral (1764–95) and a still functioning Orthodox church of St. Nicholas, built in 1739. On the river bank stands the Church of the Intercession. Raised in 2007, it is a wooden replica of a historical church which stood on the southern shore of Lake Onega. That church was constructed in 1708 and it burned down in 1963. It is believed to be the forerunner of the famous Kizhi Pogost. Old Ladoga Canal, built in the first half of the 18th century, is a water transport


title: "Neva River" content: route along the shore of Lake Ladoga which is connecting the River Volkhov and Neva. Some of its historical structures are preserved, such as a four-chamber granite sluice (1836) and a bridge (1832). On 21 August 1963 a Soviet twinjet Tu-124 airliner performed an emergency water landing on Neva near the Finland Railway Bridge. The plane took off from Tallinn-Ülemiste Airport (TLL) at 08:55 on 21 August 1963 with 45 passengers and 7 crew on board and was scheduled to land at Moscow-Vnukovo (VKO). After liftoff, the crew noticed that the nose gear undercarriage did not retract, and the ground


title: "Neva River" content: control diverted the flight to Leningrad (LED) – because of fog at Tallinn. While circling above St. Petersburg at the altitude of at , under unclear circumstances (lack of fuel was one of the factors), both engines stalled. The crew performed emergency landing on the Neva River barely missing some of its bridges and an 1898-built steam tugboat. The tugboat rushed to the plane and towed it to the shore. No casualties were sustained at any stage. The plane captain was first fired from job but then restored and awarded with the Order of the Red Star. Neva River The


title: Norway content: southern part was the land of the Swedes, "Svealand". The adjective "Norwegian", recorded from c. 1600, is derived from the latinisation of the name as "Norwegia"; in the adjective "Norwegian", the Old English spelling '-weg' has survived. After Norway had become Christian, "Noregr" and "Noregi" had become the most common forms, but during the 15th century, the newer forms "Noreg(h)" and "Norg(h)e", found in medieval Icelandic manuscripts, took over and have survived until the modern day. The first inhabitants were the Ahrensburg culture (11th to 10th millennia BC), which was a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the


title: "Natural language processing" content: learn such rules through the analysis of large "corpora" of typical real-world examples (a "corpus" (plural, "corpora") is a set of documents, possibly with human or computer annotations). Many different classes of machine-learning algorithms have been applied to natural-language-processing tasks. These algorithms take as input a large set of "features" that are generated from the input data. Some of the earliest-used algorithms, such as decision trees, produced systems of hard if-then rules similar to the systems of hand-written rules that were then common. Increasingly, however, research has focused on statistical models, which make soft, probabilistic decisions based on attaching real-valued


title: NTSC content: part of the picture from the color portion. In CRT televisions, the NTSC signal is turned into three color signals called Red, Green and Blue, each controlling that color electron gun. TV sets with digital circuitry use sampling techniques to process the signals but the end result is the same. For both analog and digital sets processing an analog NTSC signal, the original three color signals (Red, Green and Blue) are transmitted using three discrete signals (Luminance, I and Q) and then recovered as three separate colors and combined as a color image. When a transmitter broadcasts an NTSC signal,


title: Malt content: Malt Malt is germinated cereal grains that have been dried in a process known as "malting". The grains are made to germinate by soaking in water and are then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air. Malting grains develop the enzymes required for modifying the grain's starches into various types of sugar, including monosaccharide glucose, disaccharide maltose, trisaccharide maltotriose, and higher sugars called maltodextrines. It also develops other enzymes, such as proteases, which break down the proteins in the grain into forms that can be used by yeast. Depending on when the malting process is stopped, one gets


title: Malt content: a preferred starch to enzyme ratio and partly converted starch into fermentable sugars. Malt also contains small amounts of other sugars, such as sucrose and fructose, which are not products of starch modification but were already in the grain. Further conversion to fermentable sugars is achieved during the mashing process. Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milkshakes, malt vinegar, confections such as Maltesers and Whoppers, flavored drinks such as Horlicks, Ovaltine, and Milo, and some baked goods, such as malt loaf, bagels, and rich tea biscuits. Malted grain that has been ground into a coarse meal is


title: Malt content: known as "sweet meal". Various cereals are malted, though barley is the most common. A high-protein form of malted barley is often a label-listed ingredient in blended flours typically used in the manufacture of yeast breads and other baked goods. The term "malt" refers to several products of the process: the grains to which this process has been applied, for example malted barley; the sugar, heavy in maltose, derived from such grains, such as the baker's malt used in various cereals; or a product based on malted milk, similar to a malted milkshake (i.e., "malts"). Malted grains have probably been


title: Malt content: used as an ingredient of beer since ancient times, for example in Egypt (Ancient Egyptian cuisine), Sumer, and China. In Persian countries, a sweet paste made entirely from germinated wheat is called Samanū () in Iran, Samanak (), (); () or Sümölök (), which is prepared for Nowruz (Persian new year celebration) in a large pot (like a kazan). A plate or bowl of Samanu is a traditional component of the Haft sin table symbolising affluence. Traditionally, women take a special party for it during the night, and cook it from late in the evening till the daylight, singing related


title: Malt content: songs. In Tajikistan and Afghanistan they sing: "Samanak dar Jūsh u mā Kafcha zanēm - Dīgarān dar Khwāb u mā Dafcha zanēm". (Meaning: ""Samanak is boiling and we are stirring it, others are asleep and we are playing daf""). In modern times, making samanu can be a family gathering. It originally comes from the Great Persian Empire. Mämmi, or Easter Porridge, is a traditional Finnish Lenten food. Cooked from rye malt and flour, mämmi has a great resemblance (in recipe, color, and taste) to Samanū. Today, this product is available in shops from February until Easter. A (non-representative) survey in


title: Malt content: 2013 showed that almost no one cooks mämmi at home in modern-day Finland. Malting is the process of converting barley or other cereal grains into malt for use in brewing, distilling, or in foods and takes place in a maltings, sometimes called a malthouse, or a malting floor. The cereal is spread out on the malting floor in a layer of depth. The malting process starts with drying the grains to a moisture content below 14% and then storing for around six weeks to overcome seed dormancy. When ready, the grain is immersed or steeped in water two or three


title: Malt content: times for two or three days to allow the grain to absorb moisture and to start to sprout. When the grain has a moisture content of around 46%, it is transferred to the malting or germination floor, where it is constantly turned over for around five days while it is air-dried . The grain at this point is called "green malt". The green malt is then dried and pre-toasted in an oven (or kiln) to the desired color and specification. Malts range in color from very pale through crystal and amber to chocolate or black malts. The sprouted grain is


title: Malt content: then further dried and smoked by spreading it on a perforated wooden floor. Smoke coming from an oasting fireplace (via smoke channels) is then used to heat the wooden floor and the sprouted grains. The temperature is usually around . A typical floor maltings is a long, single-story building with a floor that slopes slightly from one end of the building to the other. Floor maltings began to be phased out in the 1940s in favor of "pneumatic plants". Here, large industrial fans are used to blow air through the germinating grain beds and to pass hot air through the


title: Malt content: malt being kilned. Like floor maltings, these pneumatic plants use batch processes, but of considerably greater size, typically 100 ton batches compared with 20 ton batches for floor malting. , the largest malting operation in the world was Malteurop, which operates in 14 countries. Barley is the most commonly malted grain, in part because of its high content of enzymes, though wheat, rye, oats, rice, and corn are also used. Also very important is the retention of the grain's husk, even after threshing, unlike the bare seeds of threshed wheat or rye. This protects the growing acrospire (developing plant embryo)


title: Malt content: from damage during malting, which can easily lead to mold growth; it also allows the mash of converted grain to create a filter bed during lautering (see brewing). As all grains sprout, natural enzymes within the grain break down the starch the grain is composed of into simpler sugars which taste sweet and are easier for yeast to use as growth food. Malt with active enzymes is called "diastatic malt". Malt with inactive enzymes is called "nondiastatic malt". The enzymes are deactivated by heating the malt. Malt is often divided into two categories by brewers: base malts and specialty malts;


title: Malt content: base malts have enough diastatic power to convert their own starch and usually that of some amount of starch from unmalted grain, called adjuncts, while specialty malts have little diastatic power, but provide flavor, color, or "body" (viscosity) to the finished beer. Specialty caramel or crystal malts have been subjected to heat treatment to convert their starches to sugars nonenzymatically. Within these categories is a variety of types distinguished largely by the kilning temperature (see mash ingredients). In addition, malts are distinguished by the two major cultivar types of barley used for malting, two-row and six-row. The most common varieties


title: Malt content: of barley used for malting in the United States from 2009–2013 are two-row AC Metcalfe and Conrad and six-row Tradition and Lacey cultivars. Malt extract, also known as extract of malt, is a sweet, treacly substance used as a dietary supplement. It was popular in the first half of the twentieth century as a nutritional enhancer for the children of the British urban working class, whose diet was often deficient in vitamins and minerals. Children were given cod liver oil for the same reason, but it proved so unpalatable that it was combined with extract of malt to produce "Malt


title: Malt content: and Cod-Liver Oil." The 1907 British Pharmaceutical Codex's instructions for making nutritional extract of malt do not include a mashout at the end of extraction, and include the use of lower mash temperatures than is typical with modern beer-brewing practices. The Codex indicates that diastatic activity is to be preserved by the use of temperatures not exceeding . Malt extract is frequently used in the brewing of beer. Its production begins by germinating barley grain in a process known as "malting", immersing barley in water to encourage the grain to sprout, then drying the barley to halt the progress when


title: Malt content: the sprouting begins. The drying step stops the sprouting, but the enzymes remain active due to the low temperatures used in base malt production. In one before-and-after comparison, malting decreased barley's extractable starch content by about 7% on a dry matter basis and turned that portion into various other carbohydrates. In the next step, brewers use a process called mashing to extract the sugars. Brewers warm cracked malt in temperature-modulated water, activating the enzymes, which cleave more of the malt's remaining starch into various sugars, the largest percentage of which is maltose. Modern beer mashing practices typically include high enough


title: Malt content: temperatures at mash-out to deactivate remaining enzymes, thus it is no longer diastatic. The liquid produced from this, wort, is then concentrated by using heat or a vacuum procedure to evaporate water from the mixture. The concentrated wort is called malt extract. Liquid malt extract (LME) is a thick syrup and is used for a variety of purposes, such as baking and brewing. It is also sold in jars as a consumer product. The LME may be further dried to produce dry malt extract (DME), which is crystalline in form similar to common sugar. Brewers have the option of using


title: Malt content: a liquid (LME) or dry (DME) form of it. Each has its pros and cons, so the choice is dependent solely on the individual brewer's preferences. Some brewers choose to work only with LME because they feel it works best for the result they wish to achieve. Also, it requires one fewer processing step, so it is appealing to those favoring the purest form of product available. However, it is very sticky and, therefore, messier to work with and has a shorter shelf life. Some feel the results are just as good with DME. A new encapsulating technology permits the


title: Malt content: production of malt granules. Malt granules are the dried liquid extract from malt used in the brewing or distilling process. Scientists aim to discover what goes on inside barley grains as they become malted to help plant breeders produce better malting barley for food and beverage products. The United States Agricultural Research Service scientists are interested in specialized enzymes called serine-class proteases that digest beta-amylases, which convert carbohydrates into "simple sugars" during the sprouting process. The enzyme also breaks down stored proteins into their amino acid derivatives. The balance of proteins and carbohydrates broken down by the enzyme affect the


title: Malt content: malt’s flavor. Malt Malt is germinated cereal grains that have been dried in a process known as "malting". The grains are made to germinate by soaking in water and are then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air. Malting grains develop the enzymes required for modifying the grain's starches into various types of sugar, including monosaccharide glucose, disaccharide maltose, trisaccharide maltotriose, and higher sugars called maltodextrines. It also develops other enzymes, such as proteases, which break down the proteins in the grain into forms that can be used by yeast. Depending on when the malting process is stopped,


title: Miso content: Miso Typically, "miso" is salty, but its flavor and aroma depend on various factors in the ingredients and fermentation process. Different varieties of miso have been described as salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savory. The origin of the miso of Japan is not completely clear. In the Kamakura period (1192–1333), a common meal was made up of a bowl of rice, some dried fish, a serving of miso, and a fresh vegetable. Until the Muromachi period (1337 to 1573), miso was made without grinding the soybeans, somewhat like "nattō". In the Muromachi era, Buddhist monks discovered that soybeans could be


title: Miso content: ground into a paste, spawning new cooking methods using miso to flavor other foods. In medieval times, the word "temaemiso", meaning home-made miso, appeared. Miso production is a relatively simple process, so home-made versions spread throughout Japan. Miso was used as military provisions during the Sengoku period, and making miso was an important economic activity for "daimyō"s of that era. During the Edo period (1603–1868), miso was also called "hishio" (醤) and "kuki" (豆支) and various types of miso that fit with each local climate and culture emerged throughout Japan. Today, miso is produced industrially in large quantities, and traditional


title: Miso content: home-made miso has become a rarity. In recent years, many new types of miso have appeared. For example, ones with added soup stocks or calcium, or reduced salt for health, among other varieties, are available. The ingredients used to produce miso may include any mix of soybeans, barley, rice, buckwheat, millet, rye, wheat, hemp seed, and cycad, among others. Lately, producers in other countries have also begun selling miso made from chickpeas, corn, azuki beans, amaranth, and quinoa. Fermentation time ranges from as little as five days to several years. The wide variety of Japanese miso is difficult to classify,


title: Miso content: but is commonly done by grain type, color, taste, and background. Many regions have their own specific variation on the miso standard. For example, the soybeans used in Sendai miso are much more coarsely mashed than in normal soy miso. Miso made with rice such as "shinshu" and "shiro" are called "kome" miso. The taste, aroma, texture, and appearance of miso all vary by region and season. Other important variables that contribute to the flavor of a particular miso include temperature, duration of fermentation, salt content, variety of "kōji", and fermenting vessel. The most common flavor categories of miso are:


title: Miso content: Although white and red ("shiromiso" and "akamiso") are the most common types of misos available, different varieties may be preferred in particular regions of Japan. In the eastern Kantō region that includes Tokyo, the darker brownish "akamiso" is popular while in the western Kansai region encompassing Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, the lighter "shiromiso" is preferred. A more nuanced breakdown of the flavors is: Miso's unique properties and flavour profile can be attributed to the compounds produced through the fermentation process. Miso, depending on the variety, consists of a starter culture called koji, soybeans, and usually a grain (either rice, barley,


title: Miso content: or rye). The miso goes through a two step process; first creating the koji, and second the koji is combined with the other components and the mixture is left to be enzymatically digested, fermented and aged. Koji is produced by introducing the mould, "Aspergillus oryzae" onto steamed white rice. This mould culture comes from dried "A. oryzae" spores called "tane-koji" or "starter koji" and is isolated from plant matter (usually rice) and cultivated. In the past, the natural presence of "A. oryzae" spores was relied upon to create koji, but because of the difficulty of producing the culture, tane-koji is


title: Miso content: added almost exclusively in both industrial and traditional production of miso. Tane-koji is produced much in the same way as koji, but also has a small portion of wood ash added to the mixture which gives important nutrients to the fungus as well as promotes sporulation. "A. oryzae" is an aerobic fungus and is the most active fermenting agents in koji as it produces amylolytic, and proteolytic enzymes which are essential to creating the final miso product. Amyloytic enzymes such as amylase aid in the breakdown of starch in the grains to sugar and dextrin, while proteolytic enzymes such as


title: Miso content: protease catalyze the breakdown of proteins into smaller peptides or amino acids. These both aid in the enzymatic digestion of the mixture of rice and soybeans. Depending on the strain of "A. oryzae", enzymatic composition varies thereby changing the characteristics of the final miso product. For example, the strain used to create the sweeter white miso would likely produce a higher content of amylolytic enzymes, while comparatively a soybean miso might have a higher content of proteolytic enzyme. To create optimal conditions for enzymatic production and the growth of "A. oryzae", the koji's environment must be carefully regulated. Temperature, humidity


title: Miso content: and oxygen content, are all important factors in not only maximizing mould growth and enzyme production, but to prevent other harmful bacteria from producing. Once the koji has reached a desirable flavour profile it is usually mixed with salt to prevent further fermentation. Although other strains of fungi have been used to produce koji, "A. oryzae" is the most desirable because of a number of properties, including the fact that it does not produce aflatoxin. Miso typically comes as a paste in a sealed container requiring refrigeration after opening. Natural miso is a living food containing many beneficial microorganisms such


title: Miso content: as "Tetragenococcus halophilus" which can be killed by overcooking. For this reason, the miso should be added to soups or other foods being prepared just before they are removed from the heat. Using miso without any cooking may be even better. Outside Japan, a popular practice is to only add miso to foods that have cooled to preserve "kōjikin" cultures in miso. Nonetheless, miso and soy foods play a large role in the Japanese diet, and many cooked miso dishes are popular. Miso is a part of many Japanese-style meals. It most commonly appears as the main ingredient of miso


title: Miso content: soup, which is eaten daily by much of the Japanese population. The pairing of plain rice and miso soup is considered a fundamental unit of Japanese cuisine. This pairing is the basis of a traditional Japanese breakfast. Miso is used in many other types of soup and soup-like dishes, including some kinds of" ramen, udon, nabe", and" imoni". Generally, such dishes have the title "miso" prefixed to their name (for example, "miso-udon"), and have a heavier, earthier flavor and aroma compared to other Japanese soups that are not miso-based. Many traditional confections use a sweet, thick miso glaze, such as


title: Miso content: "mochidango". Miso-glazed treats are strongly associated with Japanese festivals, although they are available year-round at supermarkets. The consistency of miso glaze ranges from thick and taffy-like to thin and drippy. Soy miso is used to make a type of pickle called "misozuke". These pickles are typically made from cucumber, daikon, Nappa cabbage, or eggplant, and are sweeter and less salty than the standard Japanese salt pickle. Other foods with miso as an ingredient include: Claims that miso is high in vitamin B have been contradicted in some studies. Some experts suggest that miso is a source of "Lactobacillus acidophilus". Miso


title: Miso content: is relatively high in salt which can contribute to increased blood pressure in the small percentage of the population with sodium-sensitive prehypertension or hypertension. Miso Typically, "miso" is salty, but its flavor and aroma depend on various factors in the ingredients and fermentation process. Different varieties of miso have been described as salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savory. The origin of the miso of Japan is not completely clear. In the Kamakura period (1192–1333), a common meal was made up of a bowl of rice, some dried fish, a serving of miso, and a fresh vegetable. Until the Muromachi period


title: "Noble Eightfold Path" content: Right speech ("samyag-vāc" / "sammā-vācā") in most Buddhist texts is presented as four abstentions, such as in the Pali Canon thus: Instead of the usual "abstention and refraining from wrong" terminology, a few texts such as the Samaññaphala Sutta and Kevata Sutta in "Digha Nikaya" explain this virtue in an active sense, after stating it in the form of an abstention. For example, Samaññaphala Sutta states that a part of a monk's virtue is that "he abstains from false speech. He speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world." Similarly, the virtue of


title: "North Pole" content: a team of Afanasy Makovnev, Vladimir Obikhod, Alexey Shkrabkin, Andrey Vankov, Sergey Isayev and Nikolay Kozlov on two custom-built 6 x 6 low-pressure-tire ATVs — Yemelya-3 and Yemelya-4,— started from Golomyanny Island (the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago) to the North Pole across drifting ice of the Arctic Ocean. The vehicles reached the Pole on 6 April and then continued to the Canadian coast. The coast was reached on 30 April 2013 (83°08N, 075°59W Ward Hant Island), and on 5 May 2013 the expedition finished in Resolute Bay, NU. The way between the Russian borderland (Machtovyi Island of the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago,


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: Nieuwe Waterweg The Nieuwe Waterweg ("New Waterway") is a ship canal in the Netherlands from het Scheur (a branch of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta) west of the town of Maassluis to the North Sea at Hook of Holland: the Maasmond, where the Nieuwe Waterweg connects to the Maasgeul. It is the artificial mouth of the river Rhine. The Nieuwe Waterweg, which opened in 1872 and has a length of approximately , was constructed to keep the city and port of Rotterdam accessible to seafaring vessels as the natural Meuse-Rhine branches silted up. The Waterway is a busy shipping route since it


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: is the primary access to one of the busiest ports in the world, the Port of Rotterdam. At the entrance to the sea, a flood protection system called Maeslantkering has been installed (completed in 1997). There are no bridges or tunnels across the Nieuwe Waterweg. By the middle of the 19th century, Rotterdam was already one of the largest port cities in the world, mainly because of transshipment of goods from Germany to Great Britain. The increase in shipping traffic created a capacity problem: there were too many branches in the river delta, making the port difficult to reach. In


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: 1863, a law was passed that allowed for the provision of a new canal for large ocean-going ships from Rotterdam to the North Sea. Hydraulic engineer Pieter Caland was commissioned to design a canal cutting through the "Hook of Holland” and to extend the Mouth of Rhine to the sea. The designs for this were already done back in 1731 by Nicolaas Samuelsz Cruquius but the implementation could no longer be postponed to prevent the decline of the harbour of Rotterdam. Construction began on 31 October 1863. The first phase consisted of the expropriation of farm lands from Rozenburg to


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: Hoek van Holland. During the second phase two dikes were built parallel to each other, which took 2 years. Caland proposed to extend the dikes 2 km into the sea to disrupt the coastal sea currents and decrease silt deposits in the shipping lane. Upon the completion of the dikes, the third phase began by the digging of the actual waterway. This began on 31 October 1866 and was completed three years later. The large amounts of removed soil were in turn used to reinforce other dams and dikes. The last phase consisted of the removal of the dam separating


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: the new waterway from the sea and river. In 1872, the Nieuwe Waterweg was completed and Rotterdam was easily accessible. Because of the currents and erosion, the shipping lane has been widened somewhat. Yet because of the draft of today's supertankers, it needs to be dredged constantly. In 1997, the last part of the Delta Works, the Maeslantkering, was put in operation near the mouth of the Nieuwe Waterweg. This storm surge barrier protects Rotterdam against north westerly Beaufort Force 10 to 12 storms. The Nieuwe Waterweg gives the Port of Rotterdam its deep-water access to the North Sea. From


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: Hook of Holland it stretches for approximately where the waterway continues as the Nieuwe Maas. The very first Nieuwe Waterweg—a breach through the dunes at Hook of Holland—was only long, but in around 1877 the channel was made much larger and wider and the current Nieuwe Waterweg was created. Currently the width of the channel is between and it is dredged to a depth of below Amsterdam Ordnance Datum. It is this channel, together with the dredged channels in the North Sea, Maasgeul and Eurogeul, that allows ships like the MS "Berge Stahl" and MV "Vale Rio de Janeiro" (both


title: "Nieuwe Waterweg" content: with a draught of 23 meters) to enter Europoort. The Dutch government agency Rijkswaterstaat is responsible for maintaining the channel. The point where the Nieuwe Waterweg enters into the North Sea, between Hook of Holland on the north bank and the Maasvlakte to the south, is called the Maasmond. It is marked with two navigation light-towers called the Paddestoelen ("mushrooms"). The Nieuwe Waterweg connects, in the North Sea, to the Maasgeul. This dredged channel in the North Sea is being widened to to facilitate the largest container vessels for the new Maasvlakte 2 that opened in 2013. Nieuwe Waterweg The


title: "Neutron star" content: star could have a radius of 10.7, 11.1, 12.1 or 15.1 kilometers (for EOS FPS, UU, APR or L respectively). Current understanding of the structure of neutron stars is defined by existing mathematical models, but it might be possible to infer some details through studies of neutron-star oscillations. Asteroseismology, a study applied to ordinary stars, can reveal the inner structure of neutron stars by analyzing observed spectra of stellar oscillations. Current models indicate that matter at the surface of a neutron star is composed of ordinary atomic nuclei crushed into a solid lattice with a sea of electrons flowing through


title: "Transport in North Korea" content: a fleet of 19 passenger and cargo aircraft, all of which are Soviet or more modern Russian types. As of 2013, the CIA estimates that North Korea has 82 usable airports, 39 of which have permanent-surface runways. It was reported that North Korean air traffic controllers had been cut off from the international global satellite communications network in 2017 because North Korea had not made the required payments. Traffic controllers at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport had to use conventional telephone lines to inform their counterparts at Incheon International airport that the flight by a North Korean delegates to the 2018


title: "Politics of Namibia" content: should have a mixed economy, and foreign investment should be encouraged. The constitution is noted for being one of the first to incorporate protection of the environment into its text. Namibia is a democratic but one party dominant state with the South-West Africa People's Organisation in power. Opposition parties are allowed, but are widely considered to have no real chance of gaining power. While the ethnic-based, three-tier, South African-imposed governing authorities have been dissolved, the current government pledged for the sake of national reconciliation to retain civil servants employed during the colonial period. The government is still organising itself on


title: "Namibian Defence Force" content: at least in part because of the departure of most white South African and SWATF officers. But the Government's intentions seem clear in that it decided to split the four MOD directorates evenly, appointing two white and two black (ex PLAN) directors. In all this, BMATT Namibia has played a role remarkably similar to that of BMATT Zimbabwe. In August 1999, a separatist Lozi faction in the Caprivi Strip launched a coup attempt (see Caprivi conflict) which was summarily put down by the Namibian Defence Force. The army has conducted security operations along the northern border with Angola. In the


title: "Noam Chomsky" content: to aid the cause of the working classes and lambasting France as "a highly parochial and remarkably illiterate culture". Chomsky continued to publish prolifically in linguistics, producing "Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar" (1972), an enlarged edition of "Language and Mind" (1972), and "Reflections on Language" (1975). In 1974 he became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky's publications expanded and clarified his earlier work, addressing his critics and updating his grammatical theory. His public talks often generated considerable controversy, particularly when he criticized actions of the Israeli government and military, and his


title: Netball content: Netball Netball is a ball sport played by two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s. By 1960, international playing rules had been standardised for the game, and the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball (later renamed the International Netball Federation (INF)) was formed. As of 2011, the INF comprises more than 60 national teams organized into five global regions. Games are played on a rectangular court with raised goal rings at each end. Each team attempts to score goals by passing a ball down the court and


title: Netball content: shooting it through its goal ring. Players are assigned specific positions, which define their roles within the team and restrict their movement to certain areas of the court. During general play, a player with the ball can hold on to it for only three seconds before shooting for a goal or passing to another player. The winning team is the one that scores the most goals. Netball games are 60 minutes long. Variations have been developed to increase the game's pace and appeal to a wider audience. Netball is most popular in Commonwealth nations, specifically in schools, and is predominantly


title: Netball content: played by women. According to the INF, netball is played by more than 20 million people in more than 80 countries. Major domestic leagues in the sport include the Netball Superleague in Great Britain, Suncorp Super Netball in Australia and the ANZ Premiership in New Zealand. Four major competitions take place internationally: the quadrennial World Netball Championships, the Commonwealth Games, and the yearly Quad Series and Fast5 Series. In 1995, netball became an International Olympic Committee recognised sport, but it has not been played at the Olympics. Netball emerged from early versions of basketball and evolved into its own sport


title: Netball content: as the number of women participating in sports increased. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in the United States. The game was initially played indoors between two teams of nine players, using an association football that was thrown into closed-end peach baskets. Naismith's game spread quickly across the United States and variations of the rules soon emerged. Physical education instructor Senda Berenson developed modified rules for women in 1892; these eventually gave rise to women's basketball. Around this time separate intercollegiate rules were developed for men and women. The various basketball rules converged into a universal set in


title: Netball content: the United States. Martina Bergman-Österberg introduced a version of basketball in 1893 to her female students at the Physical Training College in Hampstead, London. The rules of the game were modified at the college over several years: the game moved outdoors and was played on grass; the baskets were replaced by rings that had nets; and in 1897 and 1899, rules from women's basketball in the United States were incorporated. Madame Österberg's new sport acquired the name "net ball". The first codified rules of netball were published in 1901 by the Ling Association, later the Physical Education Association of the


title: Netball content: United Kingdom. From England, netball spread to other countries in the British Empire. Variations of the rules and even names for the sport arose in different areas: "women's (outdoor) basketball" arrived in Australia around 1900 and in New Zealand from 1906, while "netball" was being played in Jamaican schools by 1909. From the start, it was considered socially appropriate for women to play netball; netball's restricted movement appealed to contemporary notions of women's participation in sports, and the sport was distinct from potential rival male sports. Netball became a popular women's sport in countries where it was introduced and spread


title: Netball content: rapidly through school systems. School leagues and domestic competitions emerged during the first half of the 20th century, and in 1924 the first national governing body was established in New Zealand. International competition was initially hampered by a lack of funds and varying rules in different countries. Australia hosted New Zealand in the first international game of netball in Melbourne on 20 August 1938; Australia won 40–11. Efforts began in 1957 to standardise netball rules globally: by 1960 international playing rules had been standardised, and the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball, later the International Netball Federation (INF), was


title: Netball content: formed to administer the sport worldwide. Representatives from England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the West Indies were part of a 1960 meeting in Sri Lanka that standardised the rules for the game. The game spread to other African countries in the 1970s. South Africa was prohibited from competing internationally from 1969 to 1994 due to apartheid. In the United States, Netball's popularity also increased during the 1970s, particularly in the New York area, and the United States of America Netball Association was created in 1992. The game also became popular in the Pacific Island nations of the Cook


title: Netball content: Islands, Fiji and Samoa during the 1970s. Netball Singapore was created in 1962, and the Malaysian Netball Association was created in 1978. In Australia, the term "women's basketball" was used to refer to both netball and basketball. During the 1950s and 1960s, a movement arose to change the Australian name of the game from "women's basketball" to "netball" in order to avoid confusion between the two sports. The Australian Basketball Union offered to pay the costs involved to alter the name, but the netball organisation rejected the change. In 1970, the Council of the All Australia Netball Association officially changed


title: Netball content: the name to "netball" in Australia. In 1963, the first international tournament was held in Eastbourne, England. Originally called the World Tournament, it later became known as the World Netball Championships. Following the first tournament, one of the organisers, Miss R. Harris, declared, The World Netball Championships have been held every four years since, most recently in 2015. The World Youth Netball Championships started in Canberra in 1988, and have been held roughly every four years since. In 1995, the International Olympic Committee designated netball as an Olympic recognised sport. Three years later it debuted at the 1998 Commonwealth Games


title: Netball content: in Kuala Lumpur. Other international competitions also emerged in the late 20th century, including the Nations Cup and the Asian Netball Championship. As of 2006, the IFNA recognises only women's netball. Men's netball teams exist in some areas but attract less attention from sponsors and spectators. Men's netball started to become popular in Australia during the 1980s, and the first men's championship was held in 1985. In 2004, New Zealand and Fiji sent teams to compete in the Australian Mixed and Men's National Championships. By 2006, mixed netball teams in Australia had as many male participants as rugby union. Other


title: Netball content: countries with men's national teams include Canada, Fiji, Jamaica, Kenya, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Unlike women's netball at elite and national levels, men's and mixed gender teams are largely self-funded. An all-transgender netball team from Indonesia competed at the 1994 Gay Games in New York City. The team had been the Indonesian national champions. At the 2000 Gay Games VI in Sydney, netball and volleyball were the two sports with the highest rates of transgender athletes participating. There were eight teams of indigenous players, with seven identifying as transgender. They came from places like Palm Island in northern


title: Netball content: Queensland, Samoa, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. Teams with transgender players were allowed to participate in several divisions including men's, mixed and transgender; they were not allowed to compete against the cisgender women's teams. The objective of a game is to score more goals than the opposition. Goals are scored when a team member positioned in the attacking shooting circle shoots the ball through the goal ring. The goal rings are in diameter and sit atop -high goal posts that have no backboards. A -radius semi-circular "shooting circle" is an area at each end of the court. The goal posts


title: Netball content: are located within the shooting circle. Each team defends one shooting circle and attacks the other. The netball court is long, wide, and divided lengthwise into thirds. The ball is usually made of leather or rubber, measures in circumference, and weighs . A normal game consists of four 15-minute quarters and can be played outdoors or in a covered stadium. Each team is allowed seven players on the court. Each player is assigned a specific position, which limits their movement to a certain area of the court. A "bib" worn by each player contains a two-letter abbreviation indicating this position.


title: Netball content: Only two positions are permitted in the attacking shooting circle, and can therefore shoot for a goal. Similarly, only two positions are permitted in the defensive shooting circle; they try to prevent the opposition from shooting goals. Other players are restricted to two thirds of the court, with the exception of the Centre, who may move anywhere on the court except for a shooting circle. At the beginning of every quarter and after a goal has been scored, play starts with a player in the centre position passing the ball from the centre of the court. These "centre passes" alternate


title: Netball content: between the teams, regardless of which team scored the last goal. When the umpire blows the whistle to restart play, four players from each team can move into the centre third to receive the pass. The centre pass must be caught or touched in the centre third. The ball is then moved up and down the court through passing and must be touched by a player in each adjacent third of the court. Players can hold the ball for only three seconds at any time. It must be released before the foot they were standing on when they caught it


title: Netball content: touches the ground again. Contact between players is only permitted if it does not impede an opponent or the general play. When defending a pass or shot players must be at least away from the player with the ball. If illegal contact is made, the player who contacted cannot participate in play until the player taking the penalty has passed or shot the ball. If the ball is held in two hands and either dropped or a shot at goal is missed, the same player cannot be the first to touch it unless it first rebounds off the goal. Indoor


title: Netball content: netball is a variation of netball, played exclusively indoors, in which the playing court is often surrounded on each side and overhead by a net. The net prevents the ball from leaving the court, permitting faster play by reducing playing stoppages. Different forms of indoor netball exist. In a seven-per-side version called "action netball", seven players per team play with rules similar to netball. However, a game is split into 15-minute halves with a three-minute break in between. This version is played in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and England. A six-per-side version of the sport is also played in


title: Netball content: New Zealand. Two Centres per team can play in the whole court except the shooting circles; the remaining attacking and defending players are each restricted to one half of the court, including the shooting circles. The attacking and Centre players may shoot from outside the shooting circle for a two-point goal. A five-per-side game is also common in indoor netball. Players can move throughout the court, with the exception of the shooting circles, which are restricted to certain attacking or defending players. Fast5 (originally called Fastnet) is a variation on the rules of netball designed to make games faster and


title: Netball content: more television-friendly. The World Netball Series promotes it to raise the sport's profile and attract more spectators and greater sponsorship. The game is much shorter, with each quarter lasting only six minutes and only a two-minute break between quarters. The coaches can give instructions from the sideline during play, and unlimited substitutions are allowed. Like six-per-side indoor netball, attacking players may shoot two-point goals from outside the shooting circle. Each team can separately nominate one "power play" quarter, in which each goal scored by that team is worth double points and the centre pass is taken by the team that


title: Netball content: conceded the goal. Netball has been adapted in several ways to meet children's needs. The rules for children are similar to those for adults, but various aspects of the game (such as the length of each quarter, goal height, and ball size) are modified. Fun Net is a version of netball developed by Netball Australia for five- to seven-year-olds. It aims to improve basic netball skills using games and activities. The Fun Net program runs for 8–16 weeks. There are no winners or losers. The goal posts are high, and a smaller ball is used. Netball Australia also runs a


title: Netball content: modified game called Netta aimed at 8- to 11-year-olds. The goal height and ball size are the same as for adults, but players rotate positions during the game, permitting each player to play each position. Netta was created to develop passing and catching skills. Its rules permit six seconds between catching and passing the ball, instead of the three seconds permitted in the adult game. Most players under 11 play this version at netball clubs. A version called High Five Netball is promoted by the All England Netball Association. It is aimed at 9- to 11-year-old girls and includes only


title: Netball content: five positions. The players swap positions during the game. When a player is not on the court, she is expected to help the game in some other way, such as being the timekeeper or scorekeeper. High Five Netball has four six-minute quarters. The recognised international governing body of netball is the International Federation of Netball Associations (IFNA), based in Manchester, England. Founded in 1960, the organisation was initially called the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball. The IFNA is responsible for compiling world rankings for national teams, maintaining the rules for netball and organising several major international competitions. As


title: Netball content: of July 2012, the IFNA has 49 full and 24 associate national members in five regions. Each region has an IFNA regional federation. The IFNA is affiliated with the General Association of International Sports Federations, the International World Games Association and the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations. It is also a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code. Netball is a popular participant sport in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. Non-Commonwealth entities with full IFNA membership include Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Argentina, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the United States, along with former Commonwealth members Zimbabwe, Ireland and Hong


title: Netball content: Kong. According to the IFNA, over 20 million people play netball in more than 80 countries. International tournaments are held among countries in each of the five IFNA regions, either annually or every four years. School leagues and national club competitions have been organised in England, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica since the early twentieth century. Franchise-based netball leagues did not emerge until the late 1990s. These competitions sought to increase the profile of the sport in their respective countries. Despite widespread local interest, participation was largely amateur. Netball was first included in the 1998 Commonwealth Games and has been


title: Netball content: a fixture ever since; it is currently one of the "core" sports that must be contested at each edition of the Games. The major international tournament in Africa is organised by the Confederation of Southern African Netball Associations, which invites teams from Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and the Seychelles to take part. The tournament is hosted by a country within the region; senior and under 21 teams compete. The tournament has served as a qualifier for the World Championships. South Africa launched a new domestic competition in 2011 called Netball Grand Series. It features eight


title: Netball content: regional teams from South Africa and is aimed at increasing the amount of playing time for players. It runs for 17 weeks and replaces the National Netball League, which was played over only two weeks. According to Proteas captain Elsje Jordaan, it was hoped that the competition would create an opportunity for players to become professional. The American Federation of Netball Associations (AFNA) hosts two tournaments each year: the Caribbean Netball Association (CNA) Under 16 Championship and the AFNA Senior Championship. The CNA championship involves two divisions of teams from the Caribbean islands. In 2010 five teams competed in two


title: Netball content: rounds of round robin matches in the Championship Division, while four teams competed in the Developmental Division. Jamaica, which has lost only once in the tournament, decided not to play the 2011 tournament. The AFNA Senior Championship includes Canada and the US along with the Caribbean nations. The tournament serves as a qualifier for the World Championship. Jamaica, with its high ranking, does not have to qualify; this leaves two spots to the other teams in the tournament. The Asian Netball Championship is held every four years. The seventh Asian games were held in 2009 and featured Singapore, Thailand, Maldives,


title: Netball content: Taiwan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, India and Pakistan. There is also an Asian Youth Netball Championship for girls under 21 years of age, the seventh of which was held in 2010. The major netball competition in Europe is the Netball Superleague, which features nine teams from England, Wales and Scotland. The league was created in 2005. Matches are broadcast on Sky Sports. Netball has been featured at the Pacific Games, a multi-sport event with participation from 22 countries from around the South Pacific. The event is held every four years and has 12 required sports; the host country chooses


title: Netball content: the other four. Netball is not a required sport and has missed selection, particularly when former French or American territories host the games. The ANZ Championship was a Trans-Tasman competition held between 2008 and 2016 that was broadcast on television in both New Zealand and Australia. It was contested among ten teams from Australia and New Zealand. It began in April 2008, succeeding Australia's Commonwealth Bank Trophy and New Zealand's National Bank Cup as the pre-eminent netball league in those countries. The competition was held annually between April and July, consisting of 69 matches played over 17 weeks. The ANZ


title: Netball content: Championship saw netball become a semi-professional sport in both countries, with increased media coverage and player salaries. The competition was replaced by new leagues in 2017, the Suncorp Super Netball (Australia) and ANZ Premiership (New Zealand). There are four major international netball competitions; the Netball World Cup, Netball at the Commonwealth Games, Netball Quad Series and Fast5 Netball World Series. Netball's important competition is the World Netball Championships (also known as the Netball World Cup), held every four years. It was first held in 1963 at the Chelsea College of Physical Education at Eastbourne, England, with eleven nations competing. Since


title: Netball content: its inception the competition has been dominated primarily by the Australian and New Zealand teams, which hold ten and four titles, respectively. Trinidad and Tobago is the only other team to win a championship title. That title, won in 1979, was shared with New Zealand and Australia; all three teams finished with equal points at the end of the round robin, and there were no finals. The Fast5 Series is a competition among the top six national netball teams, as ranked by the INF World Rankings. It is organised by the INF in conjunction with the national governing bodies of


title: Netball content: the six competing nations, UK Sport, and the host city's local council. The All England Netball Association covers air travel, accommodation, food and local travel expenses for all teams, while the respective netball governing bodies cover player allowances. It is held over three days, with each team playing each other once during the first two days in a round-robin format. The four highest-scoring teams advance to the semi-finals; the winners face each other in the Grand Final. The competition features modified fastnet rules and has been likened to Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens. A new format featuring shorter matches with


title: Netball content: modified rules was designed to make the game more appealing to spectators and television audiences. The World Netball Series was held annually in England from 2009 to 2011. Netball gained Olympic recognition in 1995 after 20 years of lobbying. Although it has never been played at the Summer Olympics, politicians and administrators have been campaigning to have it included in the near future. Its absence from the Olympics has been seen by the netball community as a hindrance in the global growth of the game by limiting access to media attention and funding sources. Some funding sources became available with


title: Netball content: recognition in 1995, including the International Olympic Committee, national Olympic committees, national sport organisations, and state and federal governments. One study found that over 14 weeks of play about 5% of people develop an injury. The most common injury is of the ankle (usually lateral ligament ankle strain and less often an ankle fracture). Knee injuries were less common and included anterior cruciate ligament injuries. The main cause of these injuries is believed to be due to incorrect landing. One study found not warm-up as a risk factor. Hypermobility, have a range of motion beyond normal limits, has been associated


title: Netball content: with injuries in one small study. Higher grade players, in both senior and junior competitions, are more susceptible to injuries than lower grade players, due to the high intensity and rapid pace of the game. In October 2005, Australian captain Liz Ellis, developed an ACL in a match against New Zealand. This injury ruled her out of the chance to play at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth games. In October 2014, Casey Kopua ruptured the patella tendon in her left knee and had knee surgery to repair the tendon that would result in her missing up to 6 months of netball.


title: Netball content: Netball Netball is a ball sport played by two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s. By 1960, international playing rules had been standardised for the game, and the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball (later renamed the International Netball Federation (INF)) was formed. As of 2011, the INF comprises more than 60 national teams organized into five global regions. Games are played on a rectangular court with raised goal rings at each end. Each team attempts to score goals by passing a ball down the court and


title: "Njörðr" content: having once wed his unnamed sister while he was still among the Vanir, and the couple produced their children Freyr and Freyja from this union, though this custom was forbidden among the Æsir. Chapter 5 relates that Odin gave all of his temple priests dwelling places and good estates, in Njörðr's case being Nóatún. Chapter 8 states that Njörðr married a woman named Skaði, though she would not have intercourse with him. Skaði then marries Odin, and the two had numerous sons. In chapter 9, Odin dies and Njörðr takes over as ruler of the Swedes, and he continues the


title: Nine-ball content: player until he or she misses, commits a foul, or pockets the 9 ball for the win. The penalty for a foul is that the player's inning ends and the opponent comes to the table with , able to place the cue ball anywhere on the table prior to shooting. Nine-ball is a relatively fast-paced game and is rarely played by the rack. Instead, players normally play a match (or ) to a set number of games, often five, seven or nine. The first player to win that set number of games wins the match. The object balls are placed


title: "National Security Agency" content: as a behind-the-scenes adviser to other departments, and directly during and after Vice Admiral Bobby Ray Inman's directorship. NSA was a major player in the debates of the 1990s regarding the export of cryptography in the United States. Restrictions on export were reduced but not eliminated in 1996. Its secure government communications work has involved the NSA in numerous technology areas, including the design of specialized communications hardware and software, production of dedicated semiconductors (at the Ft. Meade chip fabrication plant), and advanced cryptography research. For 50 years, NSA designed and built most of its computer equipment in-house, but from


title: "National Security Agency" content: of privacy. , the collection process remains legal and grounded in the ruling from Smith v. Maryland (1979). A prominent opponent of the data collection and its legality is U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who issued a report in 2013 in which he stated: "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval...Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment". As


title: "Neo Geo (system)" content: different cartridges into a single cabinet, a unique feature that was also a key economic consideration for operators with limited floorspace, as well as saving money in the long-run. With its games stored on self-contained cartridges, a game cabinet can be exchanged for a different game title by swapping the game's ROM Cartridge and cabinet artwork. A home console version was also made, called AES (Advanced Entertainment System). It was originally launched as a rental console for video game stores in Japan (called Neo Geo Rental System), with its high price causing SNK not to release it for home use


title: "Nashville, Tennessee" content: some 42 square miles of suburban jurisdictions to expand its tax base. This increased uncertainty among residents, and created resentment among many suburban communities. Under the second charter for metropolitan government, which was approved in 1962, two levels of service provision were proposed: the General Services District and the Urban Services District, to provide for a differential in tax levels. Residents of the Urban Services District had a full range of city services. The areas that made up the General Services District, however, had a lower tax rate until full services were provided. This helped reconcile aspects of services and


title: "North American Free Trade Agreement" content: attempting to pressure it out of, specifically focusing on the dairy industry. However, this has not yet taken place, as Quebec, which holds approximately half the country's dairy farms, still supports supply management. Maquiladoras (Mexican assembly plants that take in imported components and produce goods for export) have become the landmark of trade in Mexico. They moved to Mexico from the United States, hence the debate over the loss of American jobs. Income in the maquiladora sector has increased 15.5% since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. Other sectors now benefit from the free trade agreement, and the share of


title: "Nuclear fission" content: The feat was popularly known as "splitting the atom", and would win them the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for ""Transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"", although it was not the modern nuclear fission reaction later discovered in heavy elements, which is discussed below. Meanwhile, the possibility of "combining" nuclei—nuclear fusion—had been studied in connection with understanding the processes which power stars. The first artificial fusion reaction had been achieved by Mark Oliphant in 1932, using two accelerated deuterium nuclei (each consisting of a single proton bound to a single neutron) to create a helium-3 nucleus. After


title: Negotiation content: for a major concession of actual importance. Chicken: Negotiators propose extreme measures, often bluffs, to force the other party to chicken out and give them what they want. This tactic can be dangerous when parties are unwilling to back down and go through with the extreme measure. Defence in Depth: Several layers of decision-making authority is used to allow further concessions each time the agreement goes through a different level of authority. In other words, each time the offer goes to a decision maker, that decision maker asks to add another concession to close the deal. Deadlines: Give the other


title: "Nikolai Bukharin" content: shortage in 1928, Stalin reversed himself and proposed a program of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization because he believed that the NEP was not working fast enough. Stalin felt that in the new situation the policies of his former foes–Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev—were the right ones.Bukharin was worried by the prospect of Stalin's plan, which he feared would lead to “military-feudal exploitation” of the peasantry. Bukharin did want the Soviet Union to achieve industrialization but he preferred the more moderate approach of offering the peasants the opportunity to become prosperous, which would lead to greater grain production for sale abroad.


title: Ontario content: as one drives the QEW Skyway bridge, is an industrial wasteland; U.S. Steel-owned Stelco announced in the autumn of 2013 that it would close in 2014, with the loss of 875 jobs. The move flummoxed a union representative, who seemed puzzled why a plant with capacity of 2 million tons per annum would be shut while Canada imported 8 million tons of steel the year before. Algoma Steel maintains a plant in Sault Ste Marie. Toronto, the capital of Ontario, is the centre of Canada's financial services and banking industry. Neighbouring cities are home to product distribution, IT centres, and


title: "Old English literature" content: In the process, some original content was interweaved through the translations. Other important Old English translations include: "Historiae adversum paganos" by Orosius, a companion piece for St. Augustine's "The City of God"; the "Dialogues" of Gregory the Great; and Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People". Ælfric of Eynsham, who wrote in the late 10th and early 11th century, is believed to have been a pupil of Æthelwold. He was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons, which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. In the translation of the first six books of


title: "Olympic Games" content: it will be able to fund the Games. After the work of the evaluation commission, a list of candidates is presented to the General Session of the IOC, which must assemble in a country that does not have a candidate city in the running. The IOC members gathered in the Session have the final vote on the host city. Once elected, the host city bid committee (together with the NOC of the respective country) signs a Host City Contract with the IOC, officially becoming an Olympic host nation and host city. By 2016, the Olympic Games will have been hosted


title: "Combined oral contraceptive pill" content: the previously mentioned uses despite extensive use for these conditions. PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome, is a syndrome that is caused by hormonal imbalances. Women with PCOS often have higher than normal levels of estrogen all the time because their hormonal cycles are not regular. Over time, high levels of uninhibited estrogen can lead to endometrial hyperplasia, or overgrowth of tissue in the uterus. This overgrowth is more likely to become cancerous than normal endometrial tissue. Thus, although the data varies, it is generally agreed upon by most gynecological societies that due to the high estrogen levels that women with


title: "Organized crime" content: corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or poorly defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually. A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning "rule by thieves". Heroin: Source countries / production: three major regions known as the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos, Thailand), Golden Crescent (Afghanistan) and Central and South America.


title: "One Foot in the Grave" content: were a constantly cheerful, but incredibly boring, couple who provided yet another annoyance to the Meldrews, who dreaded any upcoming visits to them; Victor once said that he had hoped they were both dead. In "The Worst Horror of All", when the couple attempted a surprise visit, the Meldrews hid in their house to give the impression they were away on holiday, and then took the phone off the hook for several days afterwards, though these efforts to avoid them were in vain. They are referenced a number of times in the series for giving the Meldrews bizarre and always


title: Olive content: Olive The olive, known by the botanical name Olea europaea, meaning "European olive", is a species of small tree in the family Oleaceae, found in the Mediterranean Basin from Portugal to the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and southern Asia as far east as China, as well as the Canary Islands and Réunion. The species is cultivated in many places and considered naturalized in all the countries of the Mediterranean coast, as well as in Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Java, Norfolk Island, California, and Bermuda. "Olea europaea" is the type species for the genus "Olea". The olive's fruit, also called the olive,


title: Olive content: is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region as the source of olive oil; it is one of the core ingredients in Mediterranean cuisine. The tree and its fruit give their name to the plant family, which also includes species such as lilacs, jasmine, "Forsythia", and the true ash trees ("Fraxinus"). The word "olive" derives from Latin ' ("olive fruit", "olive tree"), possibly through Etruscan 𐌄𐌋𐌄𐌉𐌅𐌀 (eleiva) from the archaic Proto-Greek form *ἐλαίϝα (*elaíwa) (Classic Greek ', "olive fruit", "olive tree"). The word "oil" originally meant "olive oil", from ', (', "olive oil"). Also in multiple other languages the


title: Olive content: word for "oil" ultimately derives from the name of this tree and its fruit. The oldest attested forms of the Greek words are the Mycenaean , ', and , ' or , "", written in the Linear B syllabic script. The olive tree, "Olea europaea", is an evergreen tree or shrub native to the Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa. It is short and squat, and rarely exceeds in height. 'Pisciottana', a unique variety comprising 40,000 trees found only in the area around Pisciotta in the Campania region of southern Italy often exceeds this, with correspondingly large trunk diameters. The silvery green


title: Olive content: leaves are oblong, measuring long and wide. The trunk is typically gnarled and twisted. The small, white, feathery flowers, with ten-cleft calyx and corolla, two stamens, and bifid stigma, are borne generally on the previous year's wood, in racemes springing from the axils of the leaves. The fruit is a small drupe long, thinner-fleshed and smaller in wild plants than in orchard cultivars. Olives are harvested in the green to purple stage. Canned black olives have often been artificially blackened (see below on processing) and may contain the chemical ferrous gluconate to improve the appearance. "Olea europaea" contains a seed


title: Olive content: commonly referred to in American English as a pit or a rock, and in British English as a stone. The six natural subspecies of "Olea europaea" are distributed over a wide range: The subspecies "O. e. maroccana" and "O. e. cerasiformis" are respectively hexaploid and tetraploid. Wild growing forms of the olive are sometimes treated as the species "Olea oleaster". Hundreds of cultivars of the olive tree are known. An olive's cultivar has a significant impact on its colour, size, shape, and growth characteristics, as well as the qualities of olive oil. Olive cultivars may be used primarily for oil,


title: Olive content: eating, or both. Olives cultivated for consumption are generally referred to as table olives. Since many olive cultivars are self-sterile or nearly so, they are generally planted in pairs with a single primary cultivar and a secondary cultivar selected for its ability to fertilize the primary one. In recent times, efforts have been directed at producing hybrid cultivars with qualities useful to farmers, such as resistance to disease, quick growth, and larger or more consistent crops. Fossil evidence indicates the olive tree had its origins some 20–40 million years ago in the Oligocene, in what is now corresponding to Italy


title: Olive content: and the eastern Mediterranean Basin. The olive plant later was first cultivated some 7,000 years ago in Mediterranean regions. The edible olive seems to have coexisted with humans for about 5,000 to 6,000 years, going back to the early Bronze Age (3150 to 1200 BC). Its origin can be traced to the Levant based on written tablets, olive pits, and wood fragments found in ancient tombs. The immediate ancestry of the cultivated olive is unknown. Fossil "Olea" pollen has been found in Macedonia and other places around the Mediterranean, indicating that this genus is an original element of the Mediterranean


title: Olive content: flora. Fossilized leaves of "Olea" were found in the palaeosols of the volcanic Greek island of Santorini (Thera) and were dated about 37,000 BP. Imprints of larvae of olive whitefly "Aleurolobus (Aleurodes) olivinus" were found on the leaves. The same insect is commonly found today on olive leaves, showing that the plant-animal co-evolutionary relations have not changed since that time. Other leaves found on the same island are dated back to 60,000 BP, making them the oldest known olives from the Mediterranean. As far back as 3000 BC, olives were grown commercially in Crete; they may have been the source


title: Olive content: of the wealth of the Minoan civilization. Olives are not native to the Americas. Spanish colonists brought the olive to the New World, where its cultivation prospered in present-day Peru and Chile. The first seedlings from Spain were planted in Lima by Antonio de Rivera in 1560. Olive tree cultivation quickly spread along the valleys of South America's dry Pacific coast where the climate was similar to the Mediterranean. Spanish missionaries established the tree in the 18th century in California. It was first cultivated at Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769 or later around 1795. Orchards were started at


title: Olive content: other missions, but in 1838, an inspection found only two olive orchards in California. Cultivation for oil gradually became a highly successful commercial venture from the 1860s onward. In Japan, the first successful planting of olive trees happened in 1908 on Shodo Island, which became the cradle of olive cultivation. An estimated 865 million olive trees are in the world today (as of 2005), and the vast majority of these are found in Mediterranean countries, with traditionally marginal areas accounting for no more than 25% of olive-planted area and 10% of oil production. Olive oil has long been considered sacred.


title: Olive content: The olive branch was often a symbol of abundance, glory, and peace. The leafy branches of the olive tree were ritually offered to deities and powerful figures as emblems of benediction and purification, and they were used to crown the victors of friendly games and bloody wars. Today, olive oil is still used in many religious ceremonies. Over the years, the olive has also been used to symbolize wisdom, fertility, power, and purity. The olive was one of the main elements in ancient Israelite cuisine. Olive oil was used for not only food and cooking, but also lighting, sacrificial offerings,


title: Olive content: ointment, and anointment for priestly or royal office. The olive tree is one of the first plants mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), and one of the most significant. An olive branch was brought back to Noah by a dove to demonstrate that the flood was over (Book of Genesis, 8:11). The olive is listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 as one of the seven species that are noteworthy products of the Land of Israel. The ancient Greeks smeared olive oil on their bodies and hair as a matter of grooming and good health. Olive oil was used to


title: Olive content: anoint kings and athletes in ancient Greece. It was burnt in the sacred lamps of temples and was the "eternal flame" of the original Olympic games. Victors in these games were crowned with its leaves. In Homer's "Odyssey", Odysseus crawls beneath two shoots of olive that grow from a single stock, and in the "Iliad", (XVII.53ff) is a metaphoric description of a lone olive tree in the mountains, by a spring; the Greeks observed that the olive rarely thrives at a distance from the sea, which in Greece invariably means up mountain slopes. Greek myth attributed to the primordial culture-hero


title: Olive content: Aristaeus the understanding of olive husbandry, along with cheese-making and bee-keeping. Olive was one of the woods used to fashion the most primitive Greek cult figures, called "xoana", referring to their wooden material; they were reverently preserved for centuries. It was purely a matter of local pride that the Athenians claimed that the olive grew first in Athens. In an archaic Athenian foundation myth, Athena won the patronship of Attica from Poseidon with the gift of the olive. According to the fourth-century BC father of botany, Theophrastus, olive trees ordinarily attained an age around 200 years, he mentions that the


title: Olive content: very olive tree of Athena still grew on the Acropolis; it was still to be seen there in the second century AD; and when Pausanias was shown it, c. 170 AD, he reported "Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits." Indeed, olive suckers sprout readily from the stump, and the great age of some existing olive trees shows that it was perfectly possible that the olive tree of the Acropolis dated to the Bronze Age. The


title: Olive content: olive was sacred to Athena and appeared on the Athenian coinage. Theophrastus, in "On the Causes of Plants", does not give as systematic and detailed an account of olive husbandry as he does of the vine, but he makes clear (in 1.16.10) that the cultivated olive must be vegetatively propagated; indeed, the pits give rise to thorny, wild-type olives, spread far and wide by birds. Theophrastus reports how the bearing olive can be grafted on the wild olive, for which the Greeks had a separate name, "kotinos". In his "Enquiry into Plants" (2.1.2–4) he states that the olive can be


title: Olive content: propagated from a piece of the trunk, the root, a twig, or a stake. According to Pliny the Elder, a vine, a fig tree, and an olive tree grew in the middle of the Roman Forum; the latter was planted to provide shade (the garden plot was recreated in the 20th century). The Roman poet Horace mentions it in reference to his own diet, which he describes as very simple: "As for me, olives, endives, and smooth mallows provide sustenance." Lord Monboddo comments on the olive in 1779 as one of the foods preferred by the ancients and as one


title: Olive content: of the most perfect foods. Vitruvius describes of the use of charred olive wood in tying together walls and foundations in his "": The thickness of the wall should, in my opinion, be such that armed men meeting on top of it may pass one another without interference. In the thickness there should be set a very close succession of ties made of charred olive wood, binding the two faces of the wall together like pins, to give it lasting endurance. For that is a material which neither decay, nor the weather, nor time can harm, but even though buried


title: Olive content: in the earth or set in the water it keeps sound and useful forever. And so not only city walls but substructures in general and all walls that require a thickness like that of a city wall, will be long in falling to decay if tied in this manner. The Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem is mentioned several times in the New Testament. The Allegory of the Olive Tree in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans refers to the scattering and gathering of Israel. It compares the Israelites to a tame olive tree and the Gentiles to a wild


title: Olive content: olive branch. The olive tree itself, as well as olive oil and olives, play an important role in the Bible. The olive tree and olive oil are mentioned seven times in the Quran, and the olive is praised as a precious fruit. Olive tree and olive-oil health benefits have been propounded in Prophetic medicine. Muhammad is reported to have said: "Take oil of olive and massage with it – it is a blessed tree" (Sunan al-Darimi, 69:103). Olives are substitutes for dates (if not available) during Ramadan fasting, and olive tree leaves are used as incense in some Muslim Mediterranean