Analysis is the resolution of an object whether of the senses or the intellect, into its component elements. In philosophy it is the mode of resolving a compound idea into its simple parts, in order to consider them more distinctly, and arrive at a more precise knowledge of the whole. Analysis is opposed to synthesis, by which we combine and class our perceptions, and contrive expressions for our thoughts, so as to represent their several divisions, classes, and relations.
In mathematics, analysis is, in the widest sense, the expression and development of the functions of quantities by calculation;
in a narrower sense the resolving of problems by algebraic equations. The analysis of the ancients was exhibited only in geometry, and made use only of geometrical assistance, whereby it is distinguished from the analysis of the moderns, which extends to all measurable objects, and expresses in equations the mutual dependence of magnitudes. Analysis is divided into lower and higher, the lower comprising, besides arithmetic and algebra, the doctrines of functions, of series, combinations, logarithms, and curves, the higher comprising the differential and integral calculus, and the calculus of variations.
In chemistry, analysis is the process of decomposing a compound substance with a view to determine either (a) what elements it contains (known as qualitative analysis), or (b) how much of each element is present (known as quantitative analysis). Thus by the first process we learn that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and by the second that it consists of one part of hydrogen by weight to eight parts of oxygen. Research Analysis
In its narrow, everyday use, vegetable is a word indicating any herb that is cultivated specially for table use in whole or part, such as the turnip (root), cabbage (leaves), broccoli (flowers), peas and beans (fruit). In its widest sense it includes all living things that are not animals - trees, shrubs, herbs, ferns, mosses, seaweeds, fungi, and the microscopic diatoms.
The unit of structure, the cell, is essentially the same in both animals and plants, but the combination of the cells into tissues and organs shows marked differences.
All animals depend for their food upon material originally elaborated by plants. The green plants alone have the power to construct this basic food material from elemental substances, and physiological processes different from those of animal assimilation are rendered necessary. The fungi approach the animals in this respect: they must feed upon material that has already done service as part of the structure of other plants or of animals.
The fine divisions of roots explore the soil in search of water in which are dissolved the salts of sodium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, etc. The hairs with which the rootlets are clothed absorb this fluid by osmosis, and it is passed upward through the long vessels of the wood bundles until it reaches the cells of the leaf. These cells contain green bodies (chloroplasts) in their protoplasm, and it is these that impart the green colour to leaves and soft shoots. In the leaf-skin (epidermis) there are innumerable pores or stomata through which surplus water from the roots is evaporated and through which atmospheric air is admitted to the spaces between the leaf-cells.
The chloroplasts in these cells have the power to utilise solar energy in decomposing the carbon dioxide of the air, and the cells retain the carbon, setting free the oxygen. Water from the roots is broken up also into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and with these plus carbonstarch is formed. This, converted into grape sugar, is passed from cell to cell to parts of the plant whore it is needed for the production of new cells, wood, bark, leaves, or fruit. Starch is the material from which are made all the organic substances produced by the plant.
The surplus over present requirements is stored up as reserves in seeds, enlarged roots or stems, bulbs, or tubers for renewed growth or floral display at a later season. Waste products are converted into resins, oils/wax, or alkaloids - many of these being of considerable economic value to man. Part of the water stream from the roots passes by osmosis from cell to cell, where it is necessary in order to keep the protoplasm in an active condition; any insufficiency is followed by a flagging of the tissues, the drooping of leaves and young shoots. In addition to the absorption of carbon by the protoplasts for building purposes, the leaf-cells also take up oxygen from the atmosphere and give off carbon much as animals do.
As the plant respires without lungs and assimilates without digestive organs, so also it can effect movements without a muscular system and react to external stimuli without a nervous system. It is sensitive to light and heat; many plants have distinct night and day positions for their leaves. It responds positively and negatively to the force of gravity, the root going down into the earth and the stem rising into the air. The growing tip of a stem or shoot commonly nutates, i.e. moves from side to side or in a circle or ellipse. The plant can orientate itself, i.e. take up a definite position in regard to the incidence of light or other external stimulus. These movements appear to be controlled largely by alterations in the position of the mobile chloroplasts.
The reproductive process is, in essentials, similar to that of animals, the ovules or seed-eggs in the ovary requiring to be fertilised by male sperms represented by the pollen grains produced in the anthers. The result of such fertilisation is to cause the ovule to develop into an embryo capable of further development under suitable conditions into a plant resembling the parent. Research Vegetable
An animal is an organized and sentient living being. Life in the earlier periods of natural history was attributed almost exclusively to animals. With the progress of science, however, it was extended to plants. In the case of the higher animals and plants there is no difficulty in assigning the individual to one of the two great kingdoms of organic nature, but in their lowest manifestations, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are brought into such immediate contact that it becomes almost impossible to assign them precise limits, and to say with certainty where the one begins and the other ends. From form no absolute distinction can be fixed between animals and plants. Many animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea-mats, etc, so resemble plants in external appearance that they were looked upon as such. With regard to internal structure no line of demarcation can be laid down, all plants and animals being, in this respect, fundamentally similar; that is, alike composed of molecular, cellular, and fibrous tissues. Neither are the chemical characters of animal and vegetable substances more distinct. Animals contain in their tissues and fluids a larger proportion of nitrogen than plants, whilst plants are richer in carbonaceous compounds than the former. In some animals, moreover, substances almost exclusively confined to plants are found. Thus the outer wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose, a substance largely found in plant-tissues; whilst chlorophyll, the colouring-matter of plants, occurs in Hydra and many other lower animals.
Power of motion, again, though broadly distinctive of animals, cannot be said to be absolutely characteristic of them. Thus many animals, as oysters, sponges, corals, etc, in their mature condition are rooted or fixed, while the embryos of many plants, together with numerous fully developed forms, are endowed with locomotive power by means of vibratile, hair-like processes called cilia. The distinctive points between animals and plants which are most to be relied on are those derived from the nature and mode of assimilation of the food. Plants feed on inorganic matters, consisting of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and mineral matters. They can only take in food which is presented to them in a liquid or gaseous state. The exceptions to these rules are found chiefly in the case of plants which live parasitically on other plants or on animals, in which cases the plant may be said to feed on organic matters, represented by the juices of their hosts. Animals, on the contrary, require organized matters for food. They feed either upon plants or upon other animals. But even carnivorous animals can be shown to be dependent upon plants for subsistence; since the animals upon which Carnivora prey are in their turn supported by plants. Animals, further, can subsist on solid food in addition to liquids and gases; but many animals (such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by their tissues, such forms possessing no distinct digestive system.
Animals require a due supply of oxygen gas for their sustenance, this gas being used in respiration. Plants, on the contrary, require carbon dioxide. The animal exhales or gives out carbon dioxide as the part result of its tissue-waste, whilst the plant taking in this gas is enabled to decompose it into its constituent carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the former for the uses of its economy, and liberates the oxygen, which is thus restored to the atmosphere for the use of the animal. Animals receive their food into the interior of their bodies, and assimilation takes place in their internal surfaces. Plants, on the other hand, receive their food into their external surfaces, and assimilation is effected in the external parts, as are exemplified in the leaf-surfaces under the influence of sunlight. All animals possess a certain amount of heat or temperature which is necessary for the performance of vital action. The only classes of animals in which a constantly-elevated temperature is kept up are birds and mammals. The bodily heat of the former varies from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 112 degrees Fahrenheit and of the latter from 96 degrees to 104 degrees. The mean or average heat of the human body is about 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and it never falls much below this in health. Below birds animals are named cold-blooded, this term meaning in its strictly physiological sense that their temperature is usually that of the medium in which they live, and that it varies with that of the surrounding medium, Warm-blooded animals, on the contrary, do not exhibit such variations, but mostly retain their normal temperature in any atmosphere. The cause of the evolution of heat in the animal body is referred to the union (by a process resembling ordinary combustion) of the carbon and hydrogen of the system with the oxygen taken in from the air in the process of respiration. Research Animal
Bacteria are a diverse group of ubiquitous micro organisms all of which consist of only a single cell that lacks a distinct nuclear membrane and has a cell wall of a unique composition.
Bacteria are usually classified by means of Gram's stain, whether or not they require oxygen, and on the basis of shape. A bacterial cell may be spherical, rod-like, spiral, comma-shaped, corkscrew-shaped, or filamentous, resembling a fungal cell. The majority of bacteria range in size from 0.5 to 5 mm. Many are motile, bearing flagella, possess an outer slimy capsule, and produce resistant spores. In general bacteria reproduce only asexually, by simple division of cells, but a few groups undergo a form of sexual reproduction. Bacteria are largely responsible for decay and decomposition of organic matter, producing a cycling of such chemicals as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur. A few bacteria obtain their food by means of photosynthesis, some are saprophytes, and others are parasites, causing disease. The symptoms of bacterial infections are produced by toxins. Research Bacteria
The Crossopterygii is a division of fish known as the lung fishes. They have a single or double lung, and a modified heart and vascular system. They live in shallow fresh water where oxygen levels are insufficient for gills. Research Crossopterygii
Gills are the respiratory organs of aquatic animals. They are specialized thin-walled regions of the body surface through which dissolved oxygen is taken into the blood and carbon dioxide released into the water. The gills of fish lie in gill slits on each side of the gullet. The gills of molluscs and fanworms have hair-like cilia that trap food particles in the water flowing over the gills. The external gills of amphibian larvae are feathery structures projecting from the body wall. Research Gills
Herring is the general name of fishes of the genus Clupea, the most important of which is the Clupea harengus, or common herring. It is of wide distribution in the
North Atlantic, 45 degrees North latitude being about the southern limit. It measures from 10 to 12 inches in length, with blue-green back and brilliant silvery white under parts. It has small teeth in both jaws, and is of an elegant shape, the body being much compressed.
It was once supposed that the herrings migrated in two great shoals every summer from the Polar Seas to the coasts of Britain and France, returning in the winter, but the migration is probably only from a deeper part of the ocean to a shallower. The feeding ground of the herring is probably the mud deposits found in the deeper parts of the sea, and it seems to be a fact that during their visits to the shallower waters of the coast for the purpose of spawning they do not feed, or feed very little.
In summer the herring leaves the deep water where it has passed the winter and spring months, and seeks the coast where it may deposit its ova, and where they may be exposed to the influences of oxygen, heat, and sun-light, which are essential to their development. They are generally followed by multitudes of hakes, dog-fishes, etc, and gulls and other sea-birds hover over the shoals. They swim near the surface, and are therefore easily taken by net.
It was erroneously thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries that so great is the herring's fecundity that enormous number could be taken without reducing their abundance, as many as 68,000 eggs having been counted in the roe of one female. As a result, massive drift nets were used to fish millions of Herring from the sea. However, in the mid-20th century over fishing had almost wiped out the Herring and a suspension of fishing for them was put in place until their numbers returned.
Herrings are traditionally taken throughout the year, but in the greatest quantities in summer. In Scotland the herring fishery was long one of the most important industries. Research Herring
Nutrition is the strategy adopted by an organism to obtain the chemicals it needs to live, grow, and reproduce. The term is also applied to the science of food, and its effect on human and animal life, health, and disease.
Nutrition involves the study of the basic nutrients required to sustain life, their bio-availability in foods and overall diet, and the effects upon them of cooking and storage. It is also concerned with dietary deficiency diseases. There are six classes of nutrients: water, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Water is involved in nearly every body process. Animals and humans will succumb to water deprivation sooner than to starvation. Carbohydrates are composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The major groups are starches, sugars, and cellulose and related material (or ' roughage'). The prime function of the carbohydrates is to provide energy for the body; they also serve as efficient sources of glucose, which the body requires for brain functioning, utilisation of foods, maintenance of body temperature. Roughage includes the stiff structural materials of vegetables, fruits, and cereal products. Proteins are made up of smaller units, amino acids. The primary function of dietary protein is to provide the amino acids
required for growth and maintenance of body tissues. Both vegetable and animal foods are protein sources. Fats serve as concentrated sources of energy, and protect vital organs such as the kidneys and skeleton. Saturated fats derive primarily from animal sources; unsaturated fats from vegetable sources such as nuts and seeds. Vitamins are essential for normal growth, and are either fat-soluble or water-soluble. Fat-soluble vitamins include A, essential to the maintenance of mucous membranes, particularly the conjunctiva of the eyes; D, important to the absorption of calcium; E, an antioxidant; and K, which aids blood clotting. Water-soluble vitamins are the B complex, essential to metabolic reactions, and C, for maintaining connective tissue and cell functioning. Minerals are vital to normal development; calcium and iron are particularly important as they are required in relatively large amounts. Minerals required by the body in trace amounts include chromium, copper, fluoride, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, and zinc. Research Nutrition
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Analysis
