Orthopedic cast

An orthopedic cast, body cast, plaster cast, or surgical cast, is a shell, frequently made from plaster or fiberglass, encasing a limb (or, in some cases, large portions of the body) to stabilize and hold anatomical structures, most often a broken bone (or bones), in place until healing is confirmed. It is similar in function to a splint.

Plaster bandages consist of a cotton bandage that has been combined with plaster of paris, which hardens after it has been made wet. Plaster of Paris is calcined gypsum (roasted gypsum), ground to a fine powder by milling. When water is added, the more soluble form of calcium sulfate returns to the relatively insoluble form, and heat is produced.

The setting of unmodified plaster starts about 10 minutes after mixing and is complete in about 45 minutes; however, the cast is not fully dry for 72 hours.

Nowadays bandages of synthetic materials are often used, often knitted fiberglass bandages impregnated with polyurethane, sometimes bandages of thermoplastic. These are lighter and dry much faster than plaster bandages. However, plaster can be more easily moulded to make a snug and therefore more comfortable fit. In addition, plaster is much smoother and does not snag clothing or abrade the skin.

Cast (gymnastics)

A cast is a basic skill on uneven bars in artistic gymnastics. From the front hang, a gymnast pikes (allowing the knee to touch the bar) and slides upwards to a handstand. Some gymnasts may perform the move with straddled legs. It is an "A" move in the Code of Points.

References

Type conversion

In computer science, type conversion, typecasting, and coercion are different ways of, implicitly or explicitly, changing an entity of one data type into another. This is done to take advantage of certain features of type hierarchies or type representations. One example would be small integers, which can be stored in a compact format and converted to a larger representation when used in arithmetic computations. In object-oriented programming, type conversion allows programs to treat objects of one type as one of their ancestor types to simplify interacting with them.

Each programming language has its own rules on how types can be converted. In general, both objects and fundamental data types can be converted. In most languages, the word coercion is used to denote an implicit conversion, either during compilation or during run time. A typical example would be an expression mixing integer and floating point numbers (like 5 + 0.1), where the integers are normally converted into the latter. Explicit type conversions can either be performed via built-in routines (or a special syntax) or via separately defined conversion routines such as an overloaded object constructor.

Athens

Athens (/ˈæθᵻnz/;Modern Greek: Αθήνα, Athína [[aˈθina]], Ancient Greek: Ἀθῆναι Athēnai), is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning around 3,400 years, and the earliest human presence around the 11th–7th centuries BC.Classical Athens was a powerful city-state that emerged in conjunction with the seagoing development of the port of Piraeus. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political impact on the European continent and in particular the Romans. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece. In 2015, Athens was ranked the world's 29th richest city by purchasing power and the 67th most expensive in a UBS study.

Athens (disambiguation)

Athens is the capital city of Greece.

Athens may also refer to:

Placename

OpenAthens

OpenAthens is an identity and access management service, supplied by Eduserv, a not-for-profit information technology services company based in United Kingdom. Solutions for Identity provider(IdP) organisations are: OpenAthens Managed Directory (OpenAthens MD), where individual usernames are held in the cloud, OpenAthens Local Authentication (OpenAthens LA) where individual usernames are held locally, integration with ADFS or LDAP or integration of any third party service supporting SAML where usernames can be held in the cloud, locally or both. OpenAthens SP software for Service Providers supports multiple platforms and federations.

History

With origins in the University of Bath initiative to reduce IT procurement costs for itself and other universities, the Athens project was conceived in 1996. Spun off from Bath University through the vehicle of charitable status, Eduserv was established as a not for profit organisation in 1999.

The service was originally named Athena after the Greek goddess of knowledge and learning. It is rumoured that the name change was partially caused by a common typo, but it was actually due to the name Athena being already trademarked (EU000204735). Launching as 'Athens' in 1997 (UK00002153200), the name has since been changed to 'OpenAthens' in 2007 and renewed as such again in 2015 (EU013713821).