Formerly a billion was one thousand million (10 to the 9th power) in the USA and France and one million (10 to the 12th power) in Britain and Germany. It is now almost universally taken to be one thousand million. Research Billion
Population is the number of people inhabiting a country, region, area, or town. Population statistics are derived from many sources; for example, through the registration of births and deaths, and from censuses of the population.
The first national censuses were taken in 1800 and 1801 and provided population statistics for Italy, Spain, the UK, Ireland, and the USA; and the cities of London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and New York. Since that time a growing number of countries have taken regular censuses, often at ten-yearly intervals, including Austria (1821), France (1821), China (1851), Russia (1861), Japan (1871), and India (1901). Although censuses are approximately accurate for wealthy industrial countries, this may not be the case with other countries.
Between 1990 and 1995 world population increased by 1.7% a year (the number of elderly increased at 2.7% annually). In mid-1994 world population was 5.7 billion and increasing at the rate of 86 million per annum. According to a UN 'low variant' projection, the world population will be at least 7.9 billion by 2050, 9.8 billion by a mid-range projection, or 13 billion by high-range forecasts.
In September 1994, a UN international conference on population and development was attended by politicians from 150 countries. It emphasised the importance of improving the position of women for effective population control, as well as improved sex education and contraception. Serious population studies date from the later 18th century; for example, Thomas Malthus's 'Essay on the Principle of Population', first published in 1798. Research Population
Blood is one of the three main fluids in the body (the other two are the fluid around cells and the fluid inside the cells). It supplies oxygen, transports nutrients, waste, and hormonal messengers to each of the sixty billion cells in the body, as well as defending the body against foreign material. There are close to 30 trillion blood cells in an adult. Each cubic millimeter of blood contains from 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 million red blood cells and an average total of 7,500 white blood cells.
Blood has four main components: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and liquid plasma. Since both red and white blood cells are continually being destroyed, the body must continue to produce new ones. About 2 1/2 million red blood cells die every second, at the same time, about 2 1/ 2 million new ones are created. Research Blood
About ten billion capillaries lace all body tissues, bringing blood within reach of every cell. They are the smallest blood vessels, microscopic in size, and contain less than five percent of the total circulating blood volume at any one time. Capillaries branch off from the metarterioles which connect arterioles with venules. The capillaries have thin walls, only one cell thick, across which oxygen and metabolic exchanges take place. As blood flows through the capillaries in the lungs, it changes from venous blood to arterial blood by unloading carbon dioxide and picking up oxygen. Its colour changes in the process from a deep crimson to a bright scarlet. As blood flows through tissue capillaries, it changes back from arterial blood to venous blood. The oxygen leaves the blood to enter cells, and the carbon dioxide leaves the cells and enters the blood. Research Capillaries
cosmic background radiation or 3 degree radiation, is electromagnetic radiation left over from the original formation of the universe in the Big Bang around 15 billion years ago. It corresponds to an overall backgroundtemperature of 3K (-2700C/-4540F), or 30C above absolute zero. In 1992 the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, COBE, detected slight 'ripples' in the strength of the backgroundradiation that are believed to mark the first stage in the formation of galaxies.
Cosmic background radiation was first detected 1965 by the American physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who in 1978 shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery. Research Cosmic Background Radiation
BIS is an abbreviation for Board of Inspection and Survey
BIS is an abbreviation for British Interplanetary Society
BIS is an abbreviation for Business Information System BIPS is an abbreviation for Billion Instructions Per Second BIPS is an abbreviation for BraytonCycleIsotope Power System Research BIS
The Virginia Class New Attack Submarine is an American advanced stealth multi-mission nuclear powered submarine class designed for deep ocean anti-submarine warfare and for littoral operations. The Seawolf submarine was developed to provide an eventual replacement for the US Navy Los Angeles Class submarines in combating the Soviet forces, but the prohibitive unit cost of approximately 3 billion US dollars and the changing strategic requirements led to the US Navy defining a smaller new generation submarine called the New Attack Submarine with a unit cost of approximately two thirds that of Seawolf. The hull is 377 feet long by 34 feet wide and the displacement is 7,300 tons submerged. The main propulsion units are the GE Pressure Water Reactor S9G, designed to last as long the submarine, two turbine engines with one shaft and a pump jet propulsor. The top speed is 28 knots submerged. The submarine is armed with twelve vertical missile launch tubes and four torpedo tubes. The vertical launching system has the capacity
to launch 16 Tomahawk missiles in a single salvo. There is capacity for up to 26 Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes and Sub Harpoon anti-ship missiles to be fired from the 21 inch torpedo tubes. Mk 60 CAPTOR mines may also be fitted. Vessels of the Virginia Class will also be fitted with the AN/WLY-1 acoustic countermeasures system being developed by Northrop Grumman. An integral lock out/lock-in chamber is incorporated into the hull for special operations. The chamber hosts a mini-submarine to deliver special warfare forces such as Navy Sea Air Land, SEAL, teams or Marine reconnaissance units for counter-terrorism or localised conflict operations. Research Virginia Class
Language is a system for communication. Language is used for communication among humans and other animals, both verbally and non-verbally, and also to communicate with inanimate objects such as computers, in this sense a language being used to programme the device. The manner with which a language is spoken among a group of people is known as a dialect. A dialect can imply differences of pronounciation, and even the use of different words within the same language. Mandarin Chinese has the most speakers, over one billion people speaking the language, but these are found mainly in China. English is one of the most universaly spoken languages, with over 500 million speakers worldwide, compared with 128 million speakers of French, and 128 million speakers of German. Spanish is also widely spoken with over 417 million speakers worldwide, and Portuguese with 191 million speakers. Arabic is unusual in having numerous regional variations which are generally only spoken, with standard Arabic being written. Throughout the world there are hundreds of language spoken by relatively small numbers of people. In China there are over 55 local languages, which one may colloquially describe as 'Chinese', while outside of Europe, including the USA, almost every tribe of people has its own language, some with perhaps just 100 or fewer members and speakers.
The ability to fluently speak more than one language is widespread throughout the more primitive peoples of the third world, for example over 93 per cent of the population of Tanzania in 1982 were fluent in both their own indigenous language and also in Swahili, enabling members of different tribes to communicate and trade with each other. By contrast, in the developed English speaking Western world (Britain and America) bilinguism is rare, though in non-English speaking European countries bilinguism in English is common, but not as common as bilinguism among people in the third-world.
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Billion
