Bär

Bär (or Baer, from German: bear) is the surname of:

See also

Bārû

In ancient Mesopotamian religion, a practitioner of a form of divination based on hepatoscopy, reading of omens from a liver of a sacrificial animal. Baru began the divination ceremony by first addressing the oracle gods, Šamaš and Adad, with prayers and benedictions, requesting them to "write" their message upon the entrails of the sacrificial animal. During the Sumerian period, the predictions offered by the divination ceremony were in a form of binary, yes or no answers. In the late Assyrian period, the method evolved to predict specific events, that were in turn considered to be either favorable or unfavorable. The totals of favorable and unfavorable events were tallied to generate either a positive or a negative verdict. Divinations of baru were not universally trusted and there is evidence that Sennacherib separated baru into groups to avoid collusion in situations that necessitated reliable reports to important questions.

References

BR

BR or Br may refer to:

Places

Science

Computing

Bristol

Bristol (ⁱ/ˈbrɪstəl/) is a city, unitary authority and county in South West England with an estimated population of 442,500 in 2015. It is England's sixth and the United Kingdom's eighth most populous city, and the most populous city in Southern England after London. People from Bristol are known as Bristolians. The city borders the counties of Somerset and Gloucestershire, with the historic cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively.

Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the Rivers Frome and Avon, and around the beginning of the 11th century the settlement was known as Brycgstow (Old English "the place at the bridge"). Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was in Gloucestershire until 1373, when it became a county. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London (with York and Norwich) in tax receipts. Bristol was eclipsed by the rapid rise of Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham during the Industrial Revolution.

At-Bristol

At-Bristol is a science centre and charity in Bristol, England.

At-Bristol's stated aim is "to make science accessible to all." To achieve this, it displays interactive hands-on exhibits, produces shows and workshops for visitors from schools and for members of the public, and also has a planetarium.

At-Bristol is also host to the South West branch of the Science Learning Centres, and together they offer continuing professional development for teachers and other science communicators.

History and background

The project opened in 2000 as the successor to the Exploratory, a science museum and demonstration centre, founded by Richard Gregory in the former terminus train shed at Bristol Temple Meads Station (later home to the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum). The Exploratory was a separate organisation and none of the exhibits or staff were transferred when Bristol's new museum opened in a city centre site as part of the regeneration of the historical Floating Harbour. The project was funded with £44.3 million from the National Lottery, Millennium Commission, South West of England Regional Development Agency, and a further £43.4 million from commercial partners (including a controversial donation from Nestlé) and Bristol City Council. The selection and design of exhibits were criticised by Gregory and other scientific adviser as being "totally inappropriate to the spirit of science".Goéry Delacôte served as Chief Executive from 2005 until 2012.

Bristol (1866)

Bristol was a large sidewheel steamer launched in 1866 by William H. Webb of New York for the Merchants Steamship Company. One of Narragansett Bay's so-called "floating palaces", the luxuriously outfitted Bristol and her sister ship Providence, each of which could carry up to 1,200 passengers, were installed with the largest engines then built in the United States, and were considered to be amongst the finest American-built vessels of their era.

Both ships would spend their entire careers steaming between New York and various destinations in and around Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Bristol was eventually destroyed by a fire while in port in 1888.

Development

Bristol and Providence owed their existence to a short-lived company known as the Merchants Steamship Company, which placed the initial order for the vessels with the Webb shipyard in about 1865. Merchants Steamship was an amalgamation of three existing Narragansett Bay shipping lines, the Commercial Line, Neptune Line and Stonington Line. The Company intended to run the two steamers between New York and Bristol, Rhode Island in competition with the Fall River Line, which ran a similar service from New York to Fall River, Massachusetts (both Lines then linking up to railway lines that continued on to Boston).