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Savannah Cathedral 2015 17 046.jpg
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. According to '' Britannica'', there exists four savanna forms; ''savanna woodland'' where trees and shrubs form a light canopy, ''tree savanna'' with scattered trees and shrubs, ''shrub savanna'' with distributed shrubs, and ''grass savanna'' where trees and shrubs are mostly nonexistent.Smith, Jeremy M.B.. "savanna". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/science/savanna/Environment. Accessed 17 September 2022. Savannas maintain an open canopy despite a high tree density. It is often believed that savannas feature widely spaced, scattered trees. However, in many savannas, tree densities are higher and trees are more regularly spaced than in fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert
A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts". Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks, which consequently break in pieces. Although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter, and the resulting fragments and rubble strewn over t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcalá De Henares
Alcalá de Henares () is a Spanish city in the Community of Madrid. Straddling the Henares River, it is located to the northeast of the centre of Madrid. , it has a population of 193,751, making it the region's third-most populated municipality. Predated by earlier settlements ('' oppida'') on the left bank of the Henares, the city has its origins in the Complutum settlement founded in Roman times on the right bank (north) of the river, that became a bishopric seat in the 5th century. One of the several Muslim citadels in the Middle Mark of al-Andalus (hence the name ''Alcalá'', a derivative of the Arabic term for citadel) was established on the left bank, while, after the Christian conquest culminated circa 1118, the bulk of the urban nucleus returned to the right bank. For much of the late middle-ages and the early modern period before becoming part of the province of Madrid, Alcalá de Henares was a seigneurial estate of the archbishops of Toledo. Its historical centre is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Eden (translator)
Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576) was an English alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographical works of other writers helped to foster enthusiasm for overseas exploration in Tudor England. Early life Richard Eden, the son of a cloth merchant, attended Christ's College, Cambridge and then Queens' College, graduating BA in 1538 and MA in 1544. As a protégé of Sir Thomas Smith, Eden associated with intellectuals such as John Cheke and Roger Ascham and served in a minor Treasury position from 1544 to 1546. From the late 1540s Eden worked for Richard Whalley, who would be Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1595. He was salaried at £20 per annum as he sought the secret of turning base metal into gold. Eden set out to translate Vannoccio Biringuccio's ''De la pirotechnia'' into English and had completed the first 22 chapters in 1552, but he made the mistake of lending out the manuscript and was unable to retrieve it. However, he included a translation of its first three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was only in 1884 that it began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society''. In 1895, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 bound volumes. In 1933, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as 12 volumes with a one- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemics''. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a character. By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given typeface is called a glyph. Conceptualization There are two main opposing grapheme concepts. In the so-called ''referential conception'', graphemes are interpreted as the smallest units of writing that correspond with sounds (more accurately phonemes). In this concept, the ''sh'' in the written English word ''shake'' would be a grapheme because it represents the phoneme /ʃ/. This referential concept is linked to the ''dependency hypothesis'' that claims that writing merely depicts speech. By contrast, the ''analogical concept'' defines graphemes analogou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago. The subregion includes all the islands in the Antilles, plus The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term Caribbean, although the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland nations which have Caribbean coastlines, such as Belize, French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as the Atlantic island nations of Barbados, Bermuda, and Trinidad and Tobago, all of which are geographically distinct from the three main island groups, but culturally related. Origin and use of the term In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to record his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taíno Language
Taíno is an extinct Arawakan language that was spoken by the Taíno people of the Caribbean. At the time of Spanish contact, it was the most common language throughout the Caribbean. Classic Taíno (Taíno proper) was the native language of the Taíno tribes living in the northern Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and most of Hispaniola, and expanding into Cuba. The Ciboney dialect is essentially unattested, but colonial sources suggest it was very similar to Classic Taíno, and was spoken in the westernmost areas of Hispaniola, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and most of Cuba. By the late 15th century, Taíno had displaced earlier languages, except in western Cuba and pockets in Hispaniola. As the Taíno culture declined during Spanish colonization, the language was replaced by Spanish and other European languages, like English and French. It is believed to have been extinct within 100 years of contact, but possibly continued to be spoken in isolated pockets ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UCMP
The University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) is a paleontology museum located on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The museum is within the Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB), designed by George W. Kelham and completed in 1930. Its collections are primarily intended for research and are, thus, not accessible to the public. A limited number of fossils from the collection is on display in the VLSB. Although located on the Berkeley campus, the museum is the primary locality for storing fossils collected statewide. The original fossils, around which the current collection has grown, were those gathered as part of the California Geological Survey from 1860-1867. Website UCMP was one of the first museums to have its own website in the early 1990s, due to its location within a technology-oriented university with a good Internet connection. The site has been applauded for its use of visually appealing graphics, was nominated for a Webby Award five t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago and the Russian Far East to the east. The continental landmass is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Africa to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and by Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean to the south. The division between Europe and Asia as two continents is a historical social construct, as many of their borders are over land; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of the six, five, or four continents on Earth. In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on paleomagnetic data. Eurasia covers around , or around 36.2% of the Earth's total land area. It is also home to the lar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steppe
In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome A steppe may be semi-arid or covered with grass or with shrubs or with both, depending on the season and latitude. The term " steppe climate" denotes the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest but not dry enough to be a desert. Steppe soils are typically of the chernozem type. Steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid or continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to and in winter, . Besides this major seasonal difference, fluctuations between day and night are also very great. In both the highlands of Mongolia and northern Nevada, can be reached during the day with sub-freezing readings at night. Mid-latitude steppes feature hot summer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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