Friday, May 30, 2014

Doula

A Doula provides non-medical support to women and families during labour, childbirth and the postpartum period. Doula comes from Ancient Greek δούλη (doulē) meaning "female slave."

Thursday, May 29, 2014

convalidation

convalidation of marriage is, in Roman Catholic canon law, making a putative marriage a valid one, after the removal of an impediment, or its dispensation, or the removal of defective consent. Once a putative marriage has been validated, it cannot be annulled.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

putative marriage

A putative marriage is an apparently valid marriage, entered into in good faith on the part of at least one of the partners, but that is legally invalid due to a technical impediment, such as a preexistent marriage on the part of one of the partners. Unlike someone in a common-law, statutory, or ceremonial marriage, a putative spouse is not legally married. Instead, a putative spouse believes himself or herself to be married in good faith and is given legal rights as a result of this person's reliance upon this good-faith belief.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Monday, May 26, 2014

Solutrean

The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Palaeolithic, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Aleatoric

Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.

The term became known to European composers through lectures by acoustician Werner Meyer-Eppler at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the beginning of the 1950s. According to his definition, "a process is said to be aleatoric ... if its course is determined in general but depends on chance in detail" (Meyer-Eppler 1957, 55). Meyer-Eppler's German terms Aleatorik (noun) and aleatorisch (adjective), however, both mean "aleatory". By mistakenly rendering them, his translator inadvertently created a new English word, "aleatoric", which quickly became fashionable (Jacobs 1966). More recently, the variant "aleatoriality" has been introduced (Roig-Francolí 2008, 340).

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Physiocracy

Physiocracy (from the Greek for "Government of Nature") is an economic theory developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of "land agriculture" or "land development." Their theories originated in France and were most popular during the second half of the 18th century. Physiocracy is perhaps the first well-developed theory of economics.

Friday, May 23, 2014

framekiller

A framekiller (or framebuster or framebreaker) is a piece of JavaScript code that prevents a Web page from being displayed within a frame. A frame is a subdivision of a Web browser window and can act like a smaller window. This kind of script is often used to prevent a frame from an external Web site being loaded from within a frameset without permission.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

waterphone

A waterphone is a type of atonal acoustic musical instrument constructed largely of a stainless steel resonator "bowl" with a cylindrical "neck", which may or may not contain a small amount of water, and with brass rods around the rim of the bowl. The waterphone produces a vibrant ethereal type of music.

Several sizes and design variants of the instrument are available. It is generally played in a seated position by a soloist and played by bowing or drumming and movement so as to affect the water inside, and thus the resonant characteristics of the bowl and rods. The waterphone is recognized as a true musical instrument and appears in movie soundtracks, record albums, and is used in live performance.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

duende

duende m (plural duendes)

  1. The power to attract through personal magnetism and charm

Monday, May 19, 2014

beehive

A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Natural beehives are naturally occurring structures occupied by honeybee colonies, while domesticated honeybees live in man-made beehives, often in an apiary. These man-made structures are typically referred to as "beehives". Several species of Apis live in hives, but only the western honey bee (Apis mellifera) and the eastern honey bee (Apis cerana) are domesticated by humans. Natural beehive is comparable to a bird's nest built with a purpose to protect the dweller.

The beehive's internal structure is a densely-packed matrix of hexagonal cells made of beeswax, called a honeycomb. The bees use the cells to store food (honey and pollen) and to house the "brood" (eggs, larvae, and pupae).

Artificial beehives serve two purposes: production of honey and pollination of nearby crops. Artificial hives are commonly transported so that bees can pollinate crops in other areas. A number of patents have been issued for beehive designs.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

toadyism

toadyism (uncountable)

  1. sycophancy, the practice or quality of a toady, i.e., fawning, obsequious, extremely deferential (and essentially self-serving) behavior towards (an)other(s).

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Seroprevalence

Seroprevalence is the number of persons in a population who test positive for a specific disease based on serology (blood serum) specimens; often presented as a percent of the total specimens tested or as a proportion per 100,000 persons tested. As positively identifying the occurrence of disease is usually based upon the presence of antibodies for that disease (especially with viral infections such as Herpes Simplex and HIV), this number is not significant if the specificity of the antibody is low.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Toxoplasmosis

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. The parasite infects most genera of warm-blooded animals, including humans, but the primary host is the felid (cat) family. Animals are infected by eating infected meat, by ingestion of feces of a cat that has itself recently been infected, or by transmission from mother to fetus. Cats are the primary source of infection to human hosts, although contact with raw meat, especially pork, is a more significant source of human infections in some countries. Fecal contamination of hands is a significant risk factor.

Over half of the world's human population is estimated to carry a Toxoplasma infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that overall seroprevalence in the United States as determined with specimens collected by the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2004 was found to be 10.8%, with seroprevalence among women of childbearing age (15 to 44 years) 11%.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

tatami

A tatami () is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Traditionally made of rice straw to form the core (though nowadays sometimes the core is composed of compressed wood chip boards or polystyrene foam), with a covering of woven soft rush (igusa) straw, tatami are made in standard sizes, with the length exactly twice the width. Usually, on the long sides, they have edging (heri) of brocade or plain cloth, although some tatami have no edging.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

bier


A bier is a stand on which a corpse, coffin or casket containing a corpse, is placed to lie in state or to be carried to the grave.

In Christian burial, the bier is often placed in the centre of the nave with candles surrounding it, and remains in place during the funeral.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

are

The are (symbol a) is a unit of area, equal to 100 square metres (10 m × 10 m), used for measuring land area. It was defined by older forms of the metric system, but is now outside of the modern International System (SI).

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Kırkpınar

Kırkpınar is a Turkish oil-wrestling (Turkish: yağlı güreş) tournament. It is held annually, usually in late June, near Edirne, Turkey since 1346.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Sponsons

Sponsons are projections from the sides of a watercraft, for protection, stability, or the mounting of equipment such as armaments or lifeboats, etc. They extend a hull dimension at or below the waterline and serve to increase flotation or add lift when underway.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Krugerrand

The Krugerrand is a South African gold coin, first minted in 1967 to help market South African gold. The coin, produced by the South African Mint, proved popular and by 1980 the Krugerrand accounted for 90% of the global gold coin market. The name itself is a compound of Kruger (the man depicted on the obverse) and rand, the South African unit of currency. During the 1970s and 1980s some countries forbade import of the Krugerrand because of the association with the apartheid government of South Africa, which has since been abolished. The Krugerrand today is a popular coin among collectors.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Dysthymia


Dysthymia (also known as neurotic depression, is a mood disorder consisting of chronic depression, with less severe but longer lasting symptoms than major depressive disorder. The concept was coined by Dr Robert Spitzer (an editor of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III)) as a replacement for the term "depressive personality" in the late 1970s.

According to the DSM's definition of dysthymia, it is a serious state of chronic depression, which persists for at least 2 years; it is less acute and severe than major depressive disorder. As dysthymia is a chronic disorder, sufferers may experience symptoms for many years before it is diagnosed, if diagnosis occurs at all. As a result, they may believe that depression is a part of their character, so they may not even discuss their symptoms with doctors, family members, or friends.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Uranian

Uranian is a 19th century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with "a female psyche in a male body" who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types. It is believed to be an English adaptation of the German word Urning, which was first published by activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) in a series of five booklets (1864–65) which were collected under the title Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe ("Research into the Riddle of Man-Manly Love"). Ulrich developed his terminology before the first public use of the term "homosexual", which appeared in 1869 in a pamphlet published anonymously by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–82).

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Jujutsu

Jujutsu, also known as jujitsu, ju-jitsu, or Japanese jiu-jitsu, is a Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon.

lordosis

  Lordosis is historically defined as an abnormal inward curvature of the lumbar spine.