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Professor Shonku (short Story Collection)
''Professor Shonku'' is a collection of nine science fiction short stories by Satyajit Ray featuring the fictional scientist-inventor Professor Shonku. The collection was first published in 1965 by Calcutta publisher NewScript Publications. The original collection contained seven stories, while the eight and ninth stories were added in later editions. Eight of the nine stories were published in the children's magazine '' Sandesh'', while the ninth, "Professor Shonku o Bhoot", was previously published in ''Ashcharya''. The short stories are written in epistolary form, using dated diary entries as a framing device. Introduction The first of Professor Shonku's diaries is discovered by Tarak Chatterjee, an amateur (and rather poor) writer, who has a fascination for tiger stories. On hearing that a large meteor had crashed into the Matharia areas of the Sundarbans, he visited the location in search of tiger skin. Failing to find them, he looked around only to find a red notebook in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of film-making, Ray is celebrated for works including ''The Apu Trilogy'' (1955–1959), ''The Music Room'' (1958), ''The Big City'' (1963) and ''Charulata'' (1964). Ray was born in Calcutta to nonsense rhyme author Sukumar Ray. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent film-making after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film ''Bicycle Thieves'' (1948) during a visit to London. Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. Ray's first film, ''Pather Panchali'' (1955) won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with ''Aparajito'' (1956) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Android (robot)
An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids were completely within the domain of science fiction and frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot technology now allow the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots. Terminology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' traces the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' 1728 '' Cyclopaedia,'' in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created. By the late 1700s, "androides", elaborate mechanical devices resembling humans performing human activities, were displayed in exhibit halls. The term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons. The term ''android'' was used in a more modern sense by the French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam in his work '' Tomorrow's Eve'' (1886). This story features an artificial humanlike robot named Hadaly. As said by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combination of 2 conscious states of brain wakefulness and REM sleep. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and mental imagery, which does not mimic real perception, and is under voluntary control. Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus (i.e., a real perception) is given some additional significance. Many hallucinations happen also during sleep paralyses. Hallucinations can occur in any sensory modality—visual, auditory, olfa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rose
A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be erect shrubs, climbing, or trailing, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles. Their flowers vary in size and shape and are usually large and showy, in colours ranging from white through yellows and reds. Most species are native to Asia, with smaller numbers native to Europe, North America, and northwestern Africa. Species, cultivars and hybrids are all widely grown for their beauty and often are fragrant. Roses have acquired cultural significance in many societies. Rose plants range in size from compact, miniature roses, to climbers that can reach seven meters in height. Different species hybridize easily, and this has been used in the development of the wide range of garden roses. Etymology The name ''rose'' comes from L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snake
Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, altho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populous city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 States of Brazil, states and the Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. It is the largest country to have Portuguese language, Portuguese as an List of territorial entities where Portuguese is an official language, official language and the only one in the Americas; one of the most Multiculturalism, multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass Immigration to Brazil, immigration from around the world; and the most populous Catholic Church by country, Roman Catholic-majority country. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a Coastline of Brazi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circus
A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclists as well as other object manipulation and stunt-oriented artists. The term ''circus'' also describes the performance which has followed various formats through its 250-year modern history. Although not the inventor of the medium, Philip Astley is credited as the father of the modern circus. In 1768, Astley, a skilled equestrian, began performing exhibitions of trick horse riding in an open field called Ha'Penny Hatch on the south side of the Thames River, England. In 1770, he hired acrobats, tightrope walkers, jugglers and a clown to fill in the pauses between the equestrian demonstrations and thus chanced on the format which was later named a "circus". Performances developed significantly over the next fifty years, with large-scale theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guinea Pig
The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig (''Cavia porcellus''), also known as the cavy or domestic cavy (), is a species of rodent belonging to the genus ''Cavia'' in the family Caviidae. Breeders tend to use the word ''cavy'' to describe the animal, while in scientific and laboratory contexts, it is far more commonly referred to by the common name ''guinea pig''. Despite their common name, guinea pigs are not native to Guinea, nor are they closely related biologically to pigs, and the origin of the name is still unclear. They originated in the Andes of South America. Studies based on biochemistry and hybridization suggest they are domesticated animals that do not exist naturally in the wild, descendants of a closely related cavy species such as '' C. tschudii''. They were originally domesticated as livestock for a source of meat, and are still consumed in some parts of the world. In Western society, the guinea pig has enjoyed widespread popularity as a pet since its introducti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formulae
In science, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically, as in a mathematical formula or a ''chemical formula''. The informal use of the term ''formula'' in science refers to the general construct of a relationship between given quantities. The plural of ''formula'' can be either ''formulas'' (from the most common English plural noun form) or, under the influence of scientific Latin, ''formulae'' (from the original Latin). In mathematics In mathematics, a formula generally refers to an identity which equates one mathematical expression to another, with the most important ones being mathematical theorems. Syntactically, a formula (often referred to as a ''well-formed formula'') is an entity which is constructed using the symbols and formation rules of a given logical language. For example, determining the volume of a sphere requires a significant amount of integral calculus or its geometrical analogue, the method of exhaustion. However, having done thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nilgiris (mountains)
The Nilgiri Mountains form part of the Western Ghats in northwestern Tamil Nadu, Southern Karnataka, and eastern Kerala in India. They are located at the trijunction of three states and connect the Western Ghats with the Eastern Ghats. At least 24 of the Nilgiri Mountains' peaks are above , the highest peak being Doddabetta, at . Etymology The word Nilgiri, comes from Sanskrit word ''neela'' (blue) + ''giri'' (mountain), has been in use since at least 1117 CE. In Tamil literature it is mentioned as ''Iraniyamuttam'' It is thought that the bluish flowers of kurinji shrubs gave rise to the name. Location The Nilgiri Hills are separated from the Karnataka Plateau to the north by the Moyar River. Three national parks border portions of the Nilgiri mountains. Mudumalai National Park lies in the northern part of the range where Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu meet, covering an area of 321 km². Mukurthi National Park lies in the southwest part of the range, in Kerala, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brontosaurus
''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from Greek , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of gigantic quadruped sauropod dinosaurs. Although the type species, ''B. excelsus'', had long been considered a species of the closely related ''Apatosaurus'' and therefore invalid, researchers proposed in 2015 that ''Brontosaurus'' is a genus separate from ''Apatosaurus'' and that it contains three species: ''B. excelsus'', ''B. yahnahpin'', and ''B. parvus''. ''Brontosaurus'' had a long, thin neck and a small head adapted for a herbivorous lifestyle, a bulky, heavy torso, and a long, whip-like tail. The various species lived during the Late Jurassic epoch, in the Morrison Formation of what is now North America, and were extinct by the end of the Jurassic.Foster, J. (2007). ''Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World''. Indiana University Press. 389pp. Adult individuals of ''Brontosaurus'' are estimated to have measured up to long and weighed up to . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypnotism
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychological Association Division 30 defined hypnosis as a "state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion". For critical commentary on this definition, see: There are competing theories explaining hypnosis and related phenomena. ''Altered state'' theories see hypnosis as an altered state of mind or trance, marked by a level of awareness different from the ordinary state of consciousness. In contrast, ''non-state'' theories see hypnosis as, variously, a type of placebo effect,Kirsch, I., "Clinical Hypnosis as a Nondeceptive Placebo", pp. 211–25 in Kirsch, I., Capafons, A., Cardeña-Buelna, E., Amigó, S. (eds.), ''Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Regul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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