Alphabet (from Alpha, and Beta, the two first letters of the Greek alphabet), is the series of characters used in writing a language, and intended to represent the sounds of which it consists.
The English alphabet, like most of those of modern Europe, is derived directly from the Latin, the Latin from the ancient Greek, and that from the Phoenician, which again is believed to have had its origin in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Hebrew alphabet also having the same origin. The names of the letters in Phoenician and Hebrew must have been almost the same, for the Greek names, which, with the letters, were borrowed from the former, differ little from the Hebrew. By means of the names we may trace the process by which the Egyptian characters were transformed into letters by the Phoenicians. Some Egyptian character would, by its form, recall the idea of a house, for example, in Phoenician or Hebrew beth. This character would subsequently come to be used wherever the sound b occurred. Its form might be afterwards simplified, or even completely modified, but the name would still remain, as beth still continues the Hebrew name for b, and beta the Greek. Our letter m, which in Hebrew was called mim, water, has still a considerable resemblance to the zigzag wavy line which had been chosen to represent water, as in the zodiacal symbol for Aquarius.
The letter o, of which the Hebrew name means eye, no doubt originally intended to represent that organ. While the ancient Greek alphabet gave rise to the ordinary Greek alphabet and the Latin, the Greek alphabet of later times furnished elements for the Coptic, the Gothic, and the old Slavic alphabets. The Latin characters are now employed by a great many nations, such as the Italian, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch, the German, the Hungarian, the Polish, etc, each nation having introduced such modifications or additions as are necessary to express the sound of the language peculiar to it. The Greek alphabet originally possessed only sixteen letters, though the Phoenician had twenty-two.
The original Latin alphabet, as it is found in the oldest inscriptions, consisted of twenty-one letters; namely, the vowels a, e, i, o, and u (v), and the consonants b, c, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, x, z. The Anglo-Saxon alphabet had two characters for the digraph th, which were unfortunately not retained in later English; it had also the character ae. It wanted j, v, y (consonant), and z. The German alphabet consists of the same letters as the English, but the sounds of some of them are different.
Anciently certain characters called Runic were made use of by the Teutonic nations, to which some would attribute an origin independent of the Greek and Latin alphabets. While the alphabets of the west of Europe are derived from the Latin, the Russian, which is very complete, is based on the Greek, with some characters borrowed from the Armenian, etc. Among Asiatic alphabets, the Arabian (ultimately of Phoenician origin) has played a part analogous to that of the Latin in Europe, the conquests of Mohammedanism having imposed it on the Persian, the Turkish, the Hindustani, etc. The Sanskrit or Devanagari alphabet is one of the most remarkable alphabets of the world. As now used it has fourteen characters for the vowels and diphthongs, and thirty-three for the consonants, besides two other symbols. Our alphabet is a very imperfect instrument for what it has to perform, being both defective and redundant. An alphabet is not essential to the writing of a language, since ideograms or symbols may be used instead, as in Chinese.
In the English language there are twenty-six letters, A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y and Z, these twenty-six letters occur in use most disproportionately. At the start of the 20th century the proportion of use was as follows, but this will vary as new words, particularly scientific names are added to the English language:
E - 1000 , T - 770, A - 728, I - 704, S - 680, O - 672, N - 670, H - 540, R - 528, D - 392, L - 360, U - 296, C - 280, M - 272, F - 236, W - 190, Y - 184, P - 168, G - 168, B - 158, V - 120, K - 88, J - 55, Q - 50, X - 46, Z - 22
However, as an initial letter, the proportionate use was very different, with the most popular initial letters being:
S - 1194, C - 937, P - 804, A - 574, T - 571, D - 505, B - 463, M - 439, F - 388, I - 377, E- 340, H - 308, L - 298 and R - 291.
The most commonly occurring end letters are R, S, T, and D. Research Alphabet
Pollux (Beta Geminorum) is the southernmost of the two stars in the zodiacal constellationGemini, called the heavenly twins, the other twin being Castor.
Pollux is a star of the first magnitude and is 33 light-years away from the earth. Research Pollux
Beet (Beta) is a genus of plants of the family Chenopodiaceae distinguished by its fruit being inclosed in a tough woody or spongy five-lobed enlarged calyx. Two species only are known in general cultivation, namely, the sea-beet Beta maritima) and the garden beet (Beta vulgaris). The former is a tough-rooted perennial, common on many parts of the British coast and sometimes formerly cultivated for its leaves, which are an excellent substitute for spinach.
Of the garden beet, which differs from the last in being of only biennial duration and in forming a tender fleshy root, two principal forms are known to cultivators, the chard beet and the common beet. In the chard beet the roots are small, white, and rather tough, and the leaves are furnished with a broad, fleshy midrib (chard), employed as a vegetable by the French, who dress the ribs like sea-kale under the name of poiree. Some writers regard this as a peculiar species, and call it Beta cicia or hortensis.
The common beet includes all the fleshy-rooted varieties, such as red beet (with a fleshy large carrot-shaped root), yellow beet, sugar-beet, mangel-wurzel, etc. For garden purposes the best is the red beet of Castelnaudary, so called from a town in the south-west of France. The beet requires a rich light soil, and being a native of the Mediterranean region is impatient of severe cold, requiring to be taken up in the beginning of winter and packed in dry sand, or in pits like potatoes, the succulent leaves having been first removed.
Red beet is principally used at table, but if eaten in great quantity is said to be injurious. The beet may be taken out of the ground for use about the end of August, but it does not attain its full size and perfection until the month of October. A good beer was formerly brewed from the beet, which yielded a spirit of good quality.
From the white beet the French, during the wars with Napoleon I, succeeded in preparing sugar, that article, as British colonial produce, having been prohibited in France. Since that time, with the increase of chemical and technical knowledge, the making of beet-sugar has become an important industry in France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Belgium, and Holland and in England, though the early failure of attempts to produce beet-sugar on a large scale seem to have been mainly due to artificial conditions of trade competition. Research Beet
Erwin Neher is a German cell physiologist. He was born in 1944 at Landsberg in Germany and trained originally as a physicist in Munich and at the University of Wisconsin. While working at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, he took a year-long sabbatical to work with the physiologist Sakmann at Yale University. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1991 with Bert Sakmann for his studies on ion channels and beta-endorphin. Neher and Sakmann developed the patch-clamp technique in 1976 to measure the electrical activity of very small portions of cell membranes. This technique revolutionized the study of ion channels.
To perform the technique a glasspipette with a tip diameter of about one micrometer is pressed against a cell and slight suction is then applied to seal the cellmembrane against the pipette. The technique allows the flow of ions through a single channel and transitions between different states of a channel to be monitored with a time resolution of microseconds. Using this method, Neher and Sakmann investigated the effect of beta-endorphin on the membrane of cells. Beta-endorphin is a neurohormone secreted by the pituitary gland and an opiate that has been found to play a clinical role in the perception of pain, behavioural patterns, obesity, diabetes, and psychiatric disorders. Neher and Sakmann demonstrated that beta-endorphin acts not only on nerves in the brain to regulate their secretion of neurotransmitters but also, via calcium channels, acts on the walls of arteries in the brain. Research Erwin Neher
Hans Geiger was a German physicist. He was born in 1882 at Neustadt-an-der- Haardt and died in 1945. He studied at Erlangen and moved to Manchester where he worked under Ernest Rutherford from 1906 to 1912. He investigated beta-ray radioactivity, and helped to devise a counter to measure it (the geiger counter). He was professor at Kiel in 1925 and at Tubingen in 1929 and later worked at Berlin. Research Hans Geiger
Albumin is one of the three main components of plasma. The other two proteins are globulins and fibrinogen. All three proteins are manufactured by the liver. These three proteins circulate in plasma and act as carriers for small molecules. Albumin, the most plentiful, is similar in texture to egg whites and gives blood its gummy texture. It is soluble in water and coagulable by heat. The globulins, three in number: alpha, beta, and gamma. They are divided on the basis of electrophoretic mobility. The globulins transport certain proteins. They number half the albumin proteins found in plasma. The globulin proteins are insoluble in water, soluble in saline solutions, and coagulable by heat. Globulins are also found in cerebrospinal fluid. Gamma globulins are the antibodies of the blood, giving immunity to disease. Only 3% of plasma is made up of fibrinogen. It is an important link in the chain of reactions that leads to blood clotting (coagulation). It uses the enzyme thrombin to form a web of fine protein fibres, called fibrin, that bindblood cells together, creating a bridge over which injured tissue can rebuild itself while blood continues to flow underneath. As an important factor to coagulation, it is often referred to as factorI. Research Albumin
Plasma, made of about 92% water, is the blood's solvent. It is the liquid part of the blood, or blood minus cells, containing proteins, minerals, and salts. Its main components are the three proteins: albumin, globulins, and fibrinogen, all of which are manufactured by the liver. These three proteins circulate in plasma and act as carriers for small molecules. Salts, minerals, sugars, fats, and proteins, all important nutrients, are transported through plasma. All of the chemicals needed by cells to stay alive are brought to them by the blood. At the same time, bicarbonates in the plasma act as a filter to remove poisonous waste to the kidneys. Albumin, the most plentiful, is similar to egg whites and gives blood its gummy texture. The globulins, three in number: alpha, beta, and gamma, transport certain proteins. They number half the albumin proteins found in plasma. Gamma globulins are the antibodies of the blood, giving immunity to disease. Only 3% of plasma is made up of fibrinogen. It is an important link in the chain of reactions that leads to blood clotting. It forms a web of fine protein fibres that bindblood cells together, creating a bridge over which injured tissue can rebuild itself while blood continues to flow underneath. Research Plasma
Propranolol is a beta-adrenergic blocker drug used for many purposes including: reducing angina attacks, stabilising irregular heartbeat, lowering blood pressure and reducing the frequency of migraine headaches. Research Propranolol
Abbreviations
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