Claude Monet, French painter, a leading figure in the late-19th-century movement called impressionism. Monet's paintings captured scenes of middle-class life and the ever-changing qualities of sunlight in nature. His technique of applying bright, unmixed colors in quick, short strokes became a hallmark of impressionism.The son of a successful tradesman in marine supplies, Monet grew up in Le Havre on the Normandy coast. He showed signs of artistic talent as a teenager, drawing skillful caricatures of local personalities. He admired the work of many of the more adventurous artists of his day, landscapists associated with the Barbizon School, such as Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Constant Troyon, and Henri Rousseau. The Barbizon painters promoted landscape painting that stood without reference to historic, religious, or mythological stories, a concept that was then new to French art. Monet also admired French realist artists Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier. The realists depicted members of the working classes, who until then had been considered unworthy subjects for art. Monet received crucial early guidance from two artists who specialized in painting seascapes out-of-doors, Eugène Boudin, a fellow painter from Le Havre, and Dutch artist Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet met in 1862. The unusual viewpoints (scenes shown from above or below), and broad areas of bright color in Japanese woodblock prints also influenced Monet's work.Monet's formal art training began in 1859 at the Académie Suisse, a studio that provided models for aspiring artists to draw or paint, but gave little direct instruction. Another future leader of the impressionists, Camille Pissarro, was a fellow student there, and the two soon became close friends. After serving briefly in the French military in Algeria, Monet joined a Parisian studio run by Charles Gabriel Gleyre in 1862. Gleyre's studio was essentially student-run. Like the Académie Suisse, it encouraged students to draw from models, rather than from plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman statues, which was the common teaching method of more conservative academies. In Gleyre's studio Monet met several artists who would become fellow impressionists, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. Bazille, who came from a wealthy family, gave Monet regular financial support during the 1860s.In 1865 Monet had his first works—two ambitious seascapes—accepted by the Salon, a juried art exhibition sponsored annually by the official French Academy of Fine Arts. Thereafter he had a checkered record of acceptance and rejection by the conservative Salon jury, although his works received praise from critics such as French writer Émile Zola and were purchased by discerning and influential buyers.Monet's canvases from the mid-1860s were massive. The unfinished Luncheon on the Grass, a picnic scene begun in 1865, was originally intended to measure roughly 4.5 m by 6 m (15 ft by 20 ft). For two other large paintings from that time, Monet's future wife Camille Doncieux posed in elegant attire: The Green Dress (1866, Kunsthalle, Bremen, Germany), which was shown in the Salon of 1866, and Women in the Garden (1867, Musée d'Orsay, Paris). After the Salon rejected Women in the Garden for its 1867 exhibition, Monet may have reconsidered investing so much effort in a single painting that might not sell, and he began to work on a smaller scale.In 1869 Monet and Renoir painted a series of landscapes en plein air (outdoors) at a fashionable bathing place, La Grenouillère, on the Seine River near Paris. In these small works, Monet's quick daubs of fresh colors aptly capture the movement of the water and gaiety of the scene.Despite his father's disapproval, in 1870 Monet married Camille, who had already borne him a son. To escape the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), during which German troops threatened Paris, the couple went to London, then to Holland. They returned in 1872 and settled in Argenteuil, a sailing center on the Seine River outside Paris. Monet painted numerous vibrant, light-filled views of this fast-growing suburban town; he also produced more intimate family studies.
- 25/01/2008
- 04:54:54
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O'Keeffe is best known for her large paintings of desert flowers, sun-bleached animal skulls, and New Mexico landscapes. On her first visit in 1929, she fell in love with the stark beauty of the New Mexican desert, and moved there in 1949. In her paintings she typically presented single blossoms or objects such as a cow's skull in close-up views. Although O'Keeffe handled her subject matter representationally, the starkly linear quality, the thin, clear coloring, and the boldly patterned compositions produce abstract designs. A number of her works have an abstracted effect, the flower paintings in particular—such as Black Iris (1926, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)—in which the details of the flower are so enlarged that they become unfamiliar and surprising.In the 1960s, inspired by a series of airplane flights, O'Keeffe introduced motifs of sky and clouds, as seen from the air, into her paintings. One of her largest works is the mural Sky Above Clouds IV (1965, Art Institute of Chicago), which is 2.4 m (8 ft) tall by 7.3 m (24 ft) wide. O'Keeffe's paintings hang in museums throughout the United States. In 1997 the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the world's largest public collection of works by O'Keeffe.
- 25/01/2008
- 04:50:37
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Insectivorous Plants, also carnivorous plants, plants that gain some of their nutrition from animals, especially insects, captured by the plants themselves. Most occur in bogs where the soil is acid and poor in available nitrogen; capturing insects is one way of getting nitrogenous compounds without manufacturing them. At the same time, the green leaves of these plants manufacture carbohydrates. The trapping mechanism of insectivorous plants is relatively small. Therefore, prey is almost inevitably limited to small insects.Insectivorous plants are diverse and represent members of three orders of dicots: Nepenthales, Scrophulariales, and Rosales. A majority are in the Nepenthales, including the pitcher plant, sundews and the Venus's-flytrap, and East Indian pitcher plants. Others include the bladderworts, butterworts, and the Australian pitcher plant. Discussed below are the sundews and bladderworts. Certain species of fungus are known to be carnivorous as well.The sundews include about 90 to 100 species of mainly perennial herbs. Found worldwide, they are among the most common of insectivorous plants. The small white, pink, or purple flowers grow alone or in one-sided clusters. The leaves form small rosettes on the ground in bog areas; the upper surface of each leaf is covered with prominent, gland-tipped, green to reddish hairs. The glands excrete a clear, sticky fluid that clings to them like dewdrops; the name sundew is taken from these drops, as they are not dried up by the sunlight. If a small insect alights on the leaf or brushes past it, it is held fast by the sticky hairs, which curve inward and press the victim down onto the surface of the blade, where it is digested.The bladderworts make up about five genera of widely distributed herbs. The most widespread genus contains about 275 species found in temperate and tropical regions throughout the world. Some species of this genus are aquatic and others terrestrial. Several tropical species are air plants (see Epiphyte) resembling orchids. Among the aquatic bladderworts, some root in the mud; others, such as the common bladderwort, are rootless, floating freely in ponds. The common and scientific names of the genus refer to the many utricles, or bladders, borne on the leaves of the common bladderwort.The bladders of the common bladderwort range up to 0.5 cm (up to 0.2 in) in diameter. Each has an orifice that is guarded by bristles. When tiny aquatic insects or other animals, including minute fish, touch these bristles, the bladder suddenly dilates, sucking in and trapping the animal. By digesting its prey, the bladderwort obtains the food that plants normally get through a root system.Other family members include the purple bladderwort, common in eastern U.S. ponds, and the nonaquatic butterworts.Scientific classification: The Australian pitcher plant belongs to the family Cephalotaceae and is classified as Cephalotus follicularis. Sundews make up the family Droseraceae. Bladderworts belong to the family Lentibulariaceae. The most widespread genus of bladderworts is Utricularia. The common bladderwort is classified as Utricularia vulgaris.
- 25/01/2008
- 03:03:12
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In humans, the disease can appear in three forms: cutaneous, inhalation, and gastrointestinal. The cutaneous, or external form, primarily involves the skin and is contracted mainly by those who handle contaminated hides, wool, or carcasses. The bacteria enter through a cut or other opening in the skin, and a dark, itchy bump that resembles an insect bite appears. The bump then develops into an open sore with a black area in the center. The cutaneous form of anthrax can be treated with antimicrobial drugs. Death results in about 20 percent of untreated cases. Veterinarians, mill workers, laboratory researchers, and other people at risk of exposure to anthrax are generally vaccinated against the disease.Humans contract internal forms of anthrax by inhaling anthrax spores or by eating contaminated meat. People who work with animal hair and wool are most likely to inhale the spores, especially in areas where anthrax occurs in animals. Symptoms of inhaled anthrax initially resemble those of a cold or the flu—general aches and pains, fever, fatigue, cough, and mild chest pain. Inhaled anthrax is fatal unless the infected person has been vaccinated or antibiotics are administered soon after inhalation. Ciprofloxacin, penicillin, and other antibiotics are effective treatments, except in rapidly progressing cases.The gastrointestinal form of anthrax results from eating contaminated meat. Its symptoms are nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and severe diarrhea. The disease can be fatal in 20 percent to 60 percent of cases.One of the oldest known diseases, anthrax was once epidemic and still appears in many areas of the world. It was the first infectious disease for which scientists isolated the causative organism. French parasitologist C. J. Davaine first saw the rod-shaped organisms under a microscope in the blood of infected sheep in 1850. German bacteriologist Robert Koch demonstrated in 1876 that the disease occurred when spores of Bacillus anthracis were injected into mice. French biologist Louis Pasteur also demonstrated that the bacteria caused the disease and in 1881 developed an effective vaccine against anthrax in animals.The worst outbreak of anthrax occurred in 1979, when a biological weapons plant in Sverdlovsk, Russia (present-day Yekaterinburg), accidentally released airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 people. In 1998 American scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory used newly developed techniques to determine that the spores released in the accident contained at least four different strains of anthrax. This raised concerns that Russia, and possibly other countries, were working on a vaccine-resistant form of anthrax for use as a biological weapon.During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, about 150,000 members of the armed services were vaccinated against anthrax because of fears that Iraq had been developing biological weapons. The United States Department of Defense later approved a program to vaccinate members of the armed forces stationed in the Middle East. Cases of inhaled anthrax were reported in several states in the United States in 2001. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation quickly became involved in investigating the cause of these cases because they followed closely after terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
- 25/01/2008
- 02:58:45
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Consideration of disorders of the nervous system is the province of neurology; psychiatry deals with behavioral disturbances of a functional nature. The division between these two medical specialties cannot be sharply defined, because neurological disorders often manifest both organic and mental symptoms. For a discussion of functional mental illness, Mental Illness.Diseases of the nervous system include genetic malformations, poisonings, metabolic defects, vascular disorders, inflammations, degeneration, and tumors, and they involve either nerve cells or their supporting elements. Vascular disorders, such as cerebral hemorrhage or other forms of stroke, are among the most common causes of paralysis and other neurologic complications. Some diseases exhibit peculiar geographic and age distribution. In temperate zones, multiple sclerosis is a common degenerative disease of the nervous system, but it is rare in the Tropics.The nervous system is subject to infection by a great variety of bacteria, parasites, and viruses. For example, meningitis, or infection of the meninges investing the brain and spinal cord, can be caused by many different agents. On the other hand, one specific virus causes rabies. Some viruses causing neurological ills affect only certain parts of the nervous system. For example, the virus causing poliomyelitis commonly affects the spinal cord; viruses causing encephalitis attack the brain.Inflammations of the nervous system are named according to the part affected. Myelitis is an inflammation of the spinal cord; neuritis is an inflammation of a nerve. It may be caused not only by infection but also by poisoning, alcoholism, or injury. Tumors originating in the nervous system usually are composed of meningeal tissue or neuroglia (supporting tissue) cells, depending on the specific part of the nervous system affected, but other types of tumor may metastasize to or invade the nervous system (see Cancer). In certain disorders of the nervous system, such as neuralgia, migraine, and epilepsy, no evidence may exist of organic damage. Another disorder, cerebral palsy, is associated with birth defects.
- 25/01/2008
- 02:55:16
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Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, on February 12, 1809, Darwin was the fifth child of a wealthy and sophisticated English family. His maternal grandfather was the successful china and pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood; his paternal grandfather was the well-known 18th-century physician and savant Erasmus Darwin. After graduating from the elite school at Shrewsbury in 1825, young Darwin went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. In 1827 he dropped out of medical school and entered the University of Cambridge, in preparation for becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. There he met two stellar figures: Adam Sedgwick, a geologist, and John Stevens Henslow, a naturalist. Henslow not only helped build Darwin's self-confidence but also taught his student to be a meticulous and painstaking observer of natural phenomena and collector of specimens. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, the 22-year-old Darwin was taken aboard the English survey ship HMS Beagle, largely on Henslow's recommendation, as an unpaid naturalist on a scientific expedition around the world.Darwin spent the rest of his life expanding on different aspects of problems raised in the Origin. His later books—including The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)—were detailed expositions of topics that had been confined to small sections of the Origin. The importance of his work was well recognized by his contemporaries; Darwin was elected to the Royal Society (1839) and the French Academy of Sciences (1878). He was also honored by burial in Westminster Abbey after he died in Downe, Kent, on April 19, 1882.
- 25/01/2008
- 02:51:10
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The black hole concept was developed by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzchild in 1916 on the basis of physicist Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
- 22/01/2008
- 02:29:03
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All you do is talk about your theory of us getting hit by a cometthat's itI don't see a point for his "essay"
- 22/01/2008
- 02:24:55
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About 5.000 stars can be seen with the naked eye, although not all of these stars are visible at any given time or from any given place.All stars are composed of hot glowing gas. The outer layers of some stars are so empty that they can be described as red-hot vacuums. Other stars are so dense that a teaspoonful of the material composing the outer layers would weight several tons.Stars are made chiefly of hydrogen and a smaller amount of helium. Even the most abundant of the other elements present in stars - oxygen, carbon, neon and nitrogen - are generally present in very small quantities.
- 22/01/2008
- 02:16:48
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Coastal erosion of rocky cliffs and sandy beaches results from the action of ocean waves and currents.This is especially severe during storms.In many parts of the world the loss of land due to coastal erosion represents a serious problem.The action of waves, however, does not extend to a great depth, and the sea tends to cut a flat platform, characteristic of marine erosion, into coastal rocks.
- 22/01/2008
- 02:07:06
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Sir Francis Bacon was one of the pioneers of modern scientific thought.He was born at York House, in the Strand, London, and educated Trinity Collefe, University of Cambridge.Elected to the House of Commons in 1584, he served until 1614. He wrote letters of sound advice to Queen Elizabeth I, but his suggestions were never implemented, and he completely lost favor with the queen in 1593, when he opposed a bill for a royal subsidy. He regained the respect of the court, however, with the accession of James I to the English throne in 1603.
- 21/01/2008
- 03:40:21
- Score: 1 out of 1 people found this comment useful.
For many years gorillas were classified as a single species within the genus Gorilla. However, recent genetic evidence suggests that this classification should be modified to distinguish two separate species: the western and eastern gorillas, each represented by several subspecies.Western gorillas live in the western portion of central Africa (Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Mbini). Eastern gorillas live in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire), Rwanda, and Uganda. Although nearly all gorillas found in zoos are western gorillas rather than eastern gorillas, a subspecies of the eastern gorilla commonly known as the mountain gorilla is most familiar due to extensive research and popular documentary and motion-picture portrayals of its life in the wild.
- 08/01/2008
- 03:06:52
- Score: 3 out of 3 people found this comment useful.
Nice Work. However Aristotle was born as you correctly said in 384 BC, meaning he couldn't possibly belong to a catholic family, since Christianity hadn't yet come to existence.
- 24/10/2007
- 23:59:28
- Score: 0 out of 0 people found this comment useful.
As a matter of fact this measure is practiced in Greece as well. Hopefully it will be practiced worldwide.
- 15/10/2007
- 03:01:22
- Score: 1 out of 1 people found this comment useful.