The pinyon or piñon pine group grows in the southwestern United States, especially in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The trees yield edible nuts, which are a staple of the Native Americans, and still widely eaten as a snack and as an ingredient in New Mexican cuisine. The name comes from the Spanish pino piñonero, a name used for both the American varieties and the stone pine common in Spain, which also produces edible pine nuts typical of Mediterranean cuisine. Harvesting techniques of the prehistoric Indians are still being used to today to collect the pinyon seeds for personal use or for commercialization. The pinyon nut or seed is high in fats and calories.
Pinyon wood, especially when burned, has a distinctive fragrance, making it a common wood to burn in chimineas. The pinyon pine trees are also known to influence the soil in which they grow by increasing concentrations of both macronutrients and micronutrients.If you have spent any time at all on the Colorado Plateau, you will have seen forests of these trees. There are eight different species of the true piñon or Pinus:
The Medal of Honor is the United States of America's highest and most prestigious personal military decoration that may be awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor. The medal is normally awarded by the President of the United States in the name of the U.S. Congress. Because the medal is presented "in the name of Congress", it is often referred to informally as the "Congressional Medal of Honor". However, the official name of the current award is "Medal of Honor." Within United States Code the medal is referred to as the "Medal of Honor", and less frequently as "Congressional Medal of Honor". U.S. awards, including the Medal of Honor, do not have post-nominal titles, and while there is no official abbreviation, the most common abbreviations are "MOH" and "MH".
There are three versions of the medal, one for the Army, one for the Navy, and one for the Air Force. Personnel of the Marine Corps and Coast Guard receive the Navy version. The Medal of Honor was introduced for the Navy in 1861, soon followed by an Army version in 1862. The Medal of Honor is the oldest continuously issued combat decoration of the United States armed forces.You can click on the image and zoom in to see more detail in the image.
The chili pepper (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli) from Nahuatl chīlli Nahuatl pronunciation: [ˈt͡ʃiːli] is the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. Chili peppers are widely used in many cuisines to add spiciness to dishes. The substances that give chili peppers their intensity when ingested or applied topically are capsaicin and related compounds known as capsaicinoids.
Chili peppers originated in Mexico. After the Columbian Exchange, many cultivars of chili pepper spread across the world, used for both food and traditional medicine.You may wish to read the article because they have found chiles in Sweden from the 12th Century. Think about it.
Worldwide in 2014, 32.3 million tonnes of green chili peppers and 3.8 million tonnes of dried chili peppers were produced. China is the world's largest producer of green chillies, providing half of the global total.
The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, is a large starfish that preys upon hard, or stony, coral polyps (Scleractinia). The crown-of-thorns starfish receives its name from venomous thorn-like spines that cover its upper surface, resembling the biblical crown of thorns. It is one of the largest starfish in the world.
A. planci has a very wide Indo-Pacific distribution. It is perhaps most common in Australia, but can occur at tropical and subtropical latitudes from the Red Sea and the east African coast across the Indian Ocean, and across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of Central America. It occurs where coral reefs or hard coral communities occur in this region.Usually, these starfish are brightly colored, but this is a museum specimen in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.
The Awakening (1980) is a 72-foot (22 m) statue of a giant embedded in the earth, struggling to free himself, located at National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland, USA, just outside the District of Columbia.
The statue consists of five separate aluminum pieces buried in the ground, giving the impression of a distressed giant attempting to free himself from the ground. The left hand and right foot barely protrude, while the bent left leg and knee jut into the air. The 17-foot (5.2 m) high right arm and hand reach farther out of the ground. The bearded face, with the mouth in mid-scream, struggles to emerge from the earth.
The Awakening was created by J. Seward Johnson, Jr. in 1980 as part of Washington, DC's 11th annual Sculpture Conference, and the sculpture was originally installed at Hains Point in East Potomac Park, Washington, D.C.. Hains Point was designated by Congress as the site for a National Peace Garden in 1987. Although no work had started on the National Peace Garden for many years, the decision still prompted the eventual sale of the sculpture by its owner, The Sculpture Foundation. Milton Peterson purchased the sculpture for $750,000 in 2007 for installation at his new National Harbor development in Maryland. Crews removed The Awakening from Hains Point in February 2008 for its move to National Harbor. At the National Harbor development, the sculpture was installed on a specially built beach along the Potomac River.We were surprised to find out that National Harbor was a real estate development with stores and resort hotels. It was quite busy and was interesting to visit.
William Crawford Gorgas KCMG (October 3, 1854 – July 3, 1920) was a United States Army physician and 22nd Surgeon General of the U.S. Army (1914–1918). He is best known for his work in Florida, Havana and at the Panama Canal in abating the transmission of yellow fever and malaria by controlling the mosquitoes that carry these diseases. At the time, his strategy was greeted with considerable skepticism and opposition to such hygiene measures.Gorgas' efforts to eradicate Yellow Fever were built on the previous efforts of Walter Reed and a Cuban doctor, Carlos Finlay. During the construction of the Panama Canal, 5,609 workers died from disease and construction accidents.
The harvest mouse (Micromys minutus) is a small rodent native to Europe and Asia. It is typically found in fields of cereal crops, such as wheat and oats, in reed beds and in other tall ground vegetation, such as long grass and hedgerows. It has reddish-brown fur with white underparts and a naked, highly prehensile tail, which it uses for climbing. It is the smallest European rodent; an adult may weigh as little as 4 grams (0.14 oz). It eats chiefly seeds and insects, but also nectar and fruit. Breeding nests are spherical constructions carefully woven from grass and attached to stems well above the ground.These mice are actually an endangered species and are the subject of conservation efforts in Britain since 2001. Too bad this one was in a museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
The Mackay Emerald Necklace gets its name from Mrs. Anna Case Mackay, the owner of the renowned necklace, who donated it to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in 1984. The valuable necklace was given to Mrs. Anna Case Mackay as a wedding gift by her husband Clarence H. Mackay - the American financier who inherited a $500 million estate from his father John W. Mackay, a silver miner turned telegraph mogul - when they got married in 1931.
George Selden's dubious claim that he invented the automobile cast a shadow on the early auto manufacturing industry. His claim rested on a patent application for a "road-engine" that he had filed in 1879. A lawyer schooled in science, Selden was intrigued by the challenge of devising an engine light enough to propel a road vehicle. He designed a small, improved version of George Brayton's compression engine of 1872 and filed a patent application for "a liquid-hydrocarbon engine of the compression type" combined with broadly defined chassis components. Selden deliberately delayed issuance of the patent until 1895, when automobiles were attracting more attention. Soon a patent-pooling association of auto manufacturing companies demanded and received royalties from other manufacturers for the right to produce Selden's "invention." Henry Ford, then just entering the automobile industry, became locked in a highly-publicized legal battle with the Selden interests when his application for a license was turned down in 1903. Ford blasted monopolistic control and exploitation by the "automobile trust" and forever fixed his image as an independent businessman fighting a corporate Goliath for the good of all. Ford's victory in court raised his standing in the automotive industry and made him one of the best known businessmen in America. In 1911 the Selden patent was limited to vehicles with Brayton-type engines as modified by Selden, and his influence quickly faded.
An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case heart transplantation is impossible. Although other similar inventions preceded it from the late 1940s, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by a team including Willem Johan Kolff and Robert Jarvik.
An artificial heart is distinct from a ventricular assist device (VAD) designed to support a failing heart. It is also distinct from a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which is an external device used to provide the functions of both the heart and lungs and are used only for a few hours at a time, most commonly during cardiac surgery.
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy/Radio Shack, Z-80 microprocessor. It was one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail personal computers.
The TRS-80 featured a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the new Zilog Z80 processor (rather than the more common Intel 8080), 4 KB DRAM standard memory (when many 8-bit computers shipped with only 1 KB RAM), small size and desk footprint, floating-point BASIC programming language, standard 64-character/line video monitor, and a starting price of US$600 (equivalent to US$2400 in 2017).
An extensive line of upgrades and add-on hardware peripherals for the TRS-80 was developed and marketed by Tandy/Radio Shack. The basic system could be expanded with up to 48 KB of RAM (in 16 KB increments), and up to four floppy disk drives and/or hard disk drives. Tandy/Radio Shack provided full-service support including upgrade, repair, and training services in their thousands of stores worldwide.
By 1979, the TRS-80 had the largest selection of software in the microcomputer market. Until 1982, the TRS-80 was the best-selling PC line, outselling the Apple II series by a factor of 5 according to one analysis.
This model was filed with the application to the U.S. Patent Office for Patent Number 2,013 issued to John Ireland Howe on March 24, 1841. Howe’s invention was a design for an automated common pin making machine. The goal of the design was to improve upon his earlier patented pin making machine which had not found commercial success. His design was mechanically very complex; the patent document comprised 20 pages of detailed text and five of diagrams. Howe had been a physician working in the New York Alms House where he had observed the inmates making pins by hand. He began to experiment with machinery for automating the process and sought the help of Robert Hoe, a printing press builder, to provide mechanical expertise. His design was for a machine that would take a roll of wire, cut the wire for each pin to proper length, sharpen and polish the pointed end of the pin, and finally form the other end into a metal head. The machine consisted of a series of individual chucks (devices much like on lathes) mounted radially on a vertical shaft that rotated inside a horizontal circular frame. Around the circumference of the frame were mounted various tools that shaped the pins. As the vertical shaft rotated, it brought the chucks into alignment with the tools. One type of tool was the point forming file, or mill. The chuck, which was rotating along the axis of the pin, would make the pin tip contact the file thus grinding it into shape. The file was also rotating as well as moving forward, backwards, and side-to-side in a complex manner so as to produce a point which was round, smooth, free from angles, and slightly convex in shape. Howe made provisions for multiple such tools to progressively shape the point. The other major tool was the head forming mechanism. A carrier removed the pin from its chuck and inserted its blunt end into a set of gripping jaws that held it into a set of dies. The dies formed a thickened section of metal at the end of the pin. A second carrier extracted the pin and inserted the thickened section into a second set of dies which then flattened and formed the final pin head. The machines made from the patent design enabled the Howe Manufacturing Company become one of the largest pin manufacturers in the United States.
The patent model is constructed primary of metal and is about one foot square and one foot tall. It represents the essential elements of the design such as the rotating set of chucks mounted on the vertical shaft, the sharpening mills, and the head making mechanisms. It shows how the rotating table brings the pins to the point sharpening mills. While it is uncertain that the model would be capable of actual pin production, it appears that turning the attached hand crank would cause the machine to go through the motions of actual pin production.
