Air draft

Air draft (or air draught) is the distance from the surface of the water to the highest point on a vessel. This is similar to the "deep draft" of a vessel which is measured from the surface of the water to the deepest part of the hull below the surface, but air draft is expressed as a height, not a depth.

The vessel's "clearance" is the distance in excess of the air draft which allows a vessel to pass safely under a bridge or obstacle such as power lines, etc. A bridge's clearance is most often noted on charts as measured from the surface of the water to the under side of the bridge at Mean Highest High Water (MHHW) which is the most restrictive clearance. The height of the tide at any time below its highest point at MHHW will then increase the clearance under the bridge.

In 2014, the United States Coast Guard reported that 1.2% of the collisions it investigated in the recent past were due to vessels attempting to pass underneath structures with insufficient clearance.

At several bridges, such as the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach, California, NOAA has installed an "Air Gap" measuring device that accurately measures the distance from its sensor on the bridge to the water surface and can be accessed by marine pilots and ship's masters to aid them in making real time determination of clearance.

Draft

Draft or draught may mean:

Watercraft dimensions

Selection processes

Entertainment

Draft (sports)

A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players. When a team selects a player, the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract, and no other team in the league may sign the player.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams or teams in other countries.

An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft, sometimes with a "lottery" factor to discourage teams from purposely losing.

Other types of drafts include the expansion draft, in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league; and the dispersal draft, in which a league's surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise.

Conscription

Conscription, or drafting, is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

In China, the State of Qin instituted universal military service following the registration of every household. This allowed huge armies to be raised, and was instrumental in the creation of the Qin Empire that conquered a large area of what is now China in 221 BC.

Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war; and ideological objection, for example, to a perceived violation of individual rights. Those conscripted may evade service, sometimes by leaving the country. Some selection systems accommodate these attitudes by providing alternative service outside combat-operations roles or even outside the military, such as Zivildienst (civil service) in Austria and Switzerland. Most post-Soviet countries conscript soldiers not only for Armed Forces but also for paramilitary organizations which are dedicated to police-like domestic only service (Internal Troops) or non-combat rescue duties (Civil Defence Troops) – none of which is considered alternative to the military conscription.

Airó

Airó is a Portuguese parish, located in the municipality of Barcelos. The population in 2011 was 913, in an area of 3.02 km².

References

Air (classical element)

Air (also sometimes called Wind) is often seen as a universal power or pure substance. Its fundamental importance to life can be seen in words such as aspire, inspire, perspire and spirit, all derived from the Latin spirare.

Greek and Roman tradition

Air is one of the four classical elements in ancient Greek philosophy and science. According to Plato, it is associated with the octahedron; air is considered to be both hot and wet. The ancient Greeks used two words for air: aer meant the dim lower atmosphere, and aether meant the bright upper atmosphere above the clouds.Plato, for instance writes that "So it is with air: there is the brightest variety which we call aether, the muddiest which we call mist and darkness, and other kinds for which we have no name...." Among the early Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers, Anaximenes (mid-6th century BCE) named air as the arche. A similar belief was attributed by some ancient sources to Diogenes Apolloniates (late 5th century BCE), who also linked air with intelligence and soul (psyche), but other sources claim that his arche was a substance between air and fire.Aristophanes parodied such teachings in his play The Clouds by putting a prayer to air in the mouth of Socrates.

Air (singer)

AIR is a name under which Kōji Kurumatani (車谷浩司) releases his songs. He started AIR two months after SPIRAL LIFE broke up in April 1996. His work is noted for lyrics that take on social issues and politics, and can be classified as alternative rock.

Discography

Singles

Albums