One Of The Earliest Inventions Of The Ancient World, The Candle Is Sti

One of the earliest inventions of the ancient world, the candle is still favored for the beautiful light cast by its flame. In its most basic form the candle consists of a cylinder of wax, tallow, or similar material surrounding and saturating a fibrous wick. Ancient Egyptian tombs at Thebes bear relief carvings of cone-shaped candles on dish-like holders, or candlesticks. The oldest known candle fragment was found at Vaison, near Avignon, in France and dates from the 1st century AD. During the Middle Ages in Europe, the usual source of light for poor peasants was the rushlight, consisting of a reed stripped to its pith and dipped in oil. Both tallow and beeswax candles were commonly known, but beeswax candles were so costly that only the wealthy could afford them. Tallow candles were called dips. Tallow is processed suet, or hard fat, from cattle and sheep. Formerly, wicks were simply flax or cotton yarn. Modern wicks are of woven cotton treated with mineral salts so that they curl back into the flame as they burn and thus do not collect unburned carbon. For most of the Middle Ages, families who wanted candles had to make them. It was not until the growth of medieval town life that candlemaking became a specialized craft. As early as the 13th century, members of guilds of chandlers, or candlemakers, went from house to house in London and Paris making candles. Candlemaking as a domestic art was never entirely lost. In some localities throughout the medieval period and on into much more modern times, candles were still made in the home kitchen. As it was done then, dipped candles are made by cutting the wicks to the right length and hanging them from a frame over a tub of melted wax. The wicks are dipped repeatedly at intervals into the wax until the coating reaches the right thickness. Then they are moved to a table where they are smoothed and finished. Beeswax candles continue to be made by dripping the melted wax over a suspended wick. Most beeswax candles are used in religious ceremonies. In the 19th century chemists discovered that candles could be made harder and would burn longer if stearic acid, an ingredient of animal fat, was added to the candle wax. In addition to stearic acid, other important candle stocks were introduced. Spermaceti, derived from the oil in the head cavity of the sperm whale, made a candle that would burn very brightly. Beeswax was usually added to make the spermaceti candle less brittle. In the 1850s paraffin wax was isolated from the residue of crude oil distillation. The problem of its low melting point is overcome by adding small amounts of stearic acid or other materials. Machinery for mass-producing candles was developed in the 19th century. This consists of rows of cylindrical molds in a metal tank equipped for alternate heating and cooling. The molds of modern machines are made of high-grade tin and are finely finished inside to produce a smooth finish on the candles. The molds make candles upside down. Wicks may be placed in the mold before wax is added or may be inserted later. Molten wax that has been colored and scented as desired is poured into the molds, and cold water is circulated around the outside of the molds to harden the wax quickly. Large machines of this type can produce as many as 1,500 candles per hour. A later method of candlemaking is by extrusion. Liquid wax is fed into a machine that produces long, wax cylinders, which are cut into desired lengths. Holes are pierced through the cylinders, and wicks are run through the holes. Drawn candles, or tapers, begin with the wick wound on and stretched between two large drums. The drums rotate back and forth, drawing the wick through a shallow pan of melted wax and causing layers of wax to build up on the wick. The wick is passed through larger and larger holes in a die, smoothing the layers as the candle grows to the desired thickness. It is then removed and cut into short lengths and shaped. Long thin church candles and tiny birthday cake candles are made by

Tactical Concerns Essay Example

Tactical Concerns Essay Example Tactical Concerns Essay Tactical Concerns Essay The Israel defense Force have been officially prohibited female soldiers from serving in close combat military operations since 1948. In 2001 women began to serve on experimental basis. The reason for removing female soldiers from the front line is not the reflection of the performance of the female soldiers but that of the enraged male infantryman after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable protective, instinctual aggression which would have resulted in a massacre.Australian soldiers have voiced similar concern saying these soldiers are reluctant to take women on reconnaissance or special operations, as they fear that in the case of combat or discovery, their priority will be to save the women and not to complete the mission. Thus while men might be able to be programmed to kill, it’s is not as easy to program men to neglect women. It has been noted that Islamic militants rarely, if ever, surrender to female soldiers.In modern warfare where intelligence is perhaps more important than enemy casualties every factor reducing combatants’ willingness to fight is considered. Similarly, Iraqi and Afghani civilians are often not intimidated by female soldiers. The military’s conflation of masculinity and the male body was codified into law in 1948 with the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Act, which restricted women’s participation, advancement, and benefits in the Armed Services.The official definition of close combat, or direct ground combat on land, involves deliberate offensive actions; i. e. , †¦engaging an enemy with individual or crew-served weapons while being exposed to direct enemy fire, a high probability of direct physical contact with the enemy by fire, maneuver, or shock effect in order to destroy or capture, or while repelling assault by fire, close combat, or counterattack. This description goes far beyond the experience of being in danger, or serving in a combat zone. Even if physical capabilities were objectively measured, and they are not, that would not be the only issue.Discipline, deployability, and unit cohesion are even more important in close combat units, and various kinds of friction associated with gender integration could detract from those factors and undermine mission accomplishment. Cultural values are also important Assigning female soldiers to close combat units would be tantamount to acceptance of deliberate violence against women, as long as it occurs at the hands of the enemy. The 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces saw this as an unnecessary and unacceptable setback for American cultural values.Conclusion: These points clearly explain the reasons why women should not be allowed in combat zone: Women a are physically weaker than men and therefore standards would have to be lowered and unite effectiveness jeopardized The presence of women in units leads to fraternization, sexual harassment, and sexual assault Women lose a disproportionate share of time due to pregnancy, which would undermine unit readiness Combat would take women away from their families, which would have harmful psychological effects on the children If combat units are open to women, women would have to be drafted; and The presence of women in combat units would adversely affect unit cohesion and undermine the morale of men who do not want to work with women More than 40,000 American women served in the war against Iraq. The Marine Corps awarded twenty-three women the Combat Action Ribbon for service in the Persian Gulf War because they were engaged by Iraqi troops. Desert Storm was a huge turning point for women, much like Vietnam was for African-Americans, and it showed that modern war boundaries between combat and non-combat zones are being blurred. It makes no sense to cling to semantics (combat vs combat support) given the reality of war.Furthermore, allowing both men and women to compete for all military occupational specialties is not an equal rights issue, but one of military effectiveness. It is the matter of safety and security of millions of people which can never be compromised for the sake of equal opportunity’ in a field where the sexual orientation does count.Works cited:1. Bonnie Moradi, Perceived Sexual-Orientation based harassment in Military and Civilian contexts, Military Psychology, 2006, 18 (1), 39-60 2. Diane Sawyer, Primetime Live Interview with Jessica Lynch: An American Story,’ ABC News Transcripts, November 11, 2003.

Theory Aspects of Website Development Assignment

Theory Aspects of Website Development - Assignment Example It is a large scale search engine that employs heavy use of hypertext structure. Its design allows it to crawl and index the web efficiently thence producing satisfying search results. Google search is based on the PigeonRank which is a technology based on collection of flocks of pigeons in dense clusters and in that, it is able to process search queries faster other traditional search engines. Yahoo search is another conventional search engine that has gone through several evolutionary stages to where it is to date. Owned by Yahoo Inc, it indexes the common HTML page formats as well as several other page file-formats. It uses a web-based crawler search engine having customized capabilities of all search engine companies it has acquired to become a powerful search engine tool. Interactivity of web pages: Web pages are documents that can be accessed through web browsers. The information in a web page can take several formats that include HTML, XHTML, DHTML (Dynamic HTML), XML, etc, and these may provide linked navigation to other web pages using hypertext links. The retrieval of web pages may be done either locally or remotely where web servers process user requests using a TCP/IP protocol. When web pages are created, they include both static content and some other which may be within the web server’s file system or dynamically constructed by the server side software. A web site administrator can make a web site interactive using various methods. The use of hypertext links has been the conventional way of achieving this task but there have also emerged other powerful methods that take inclusion of XML and DHTM (Dynamic HTML). XML is highly interactive and it promotes internal web pages linkages rather than internal links.