Saffron

Saffron (pronounced /ˈsæfrən/ or /ˈsæfrɒn/) is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the "saffron crocus". Saffron crocus grows to 20–30 cm (8–12 in) and bears up to four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas, which are the distal end of a carpel. The styles and stigmas, called threads, are collected and dried to be used mainly as a seasoning and colouring agent in food. Saffron, long among the world's most costly spices by weight, is native to Greece or Southwest Asia and was first cultivated in Greece. As a genetically monomorphic clone, it was slowly propagated throughout much of Eurasia and was later brought to parts of North Africa, North America, and Oceania.

The saffron crocus, unknown in the wild, probably descends from Crocus cartwrightianus, which originated in Crete;C. thomasii and C. pallasii are other possible precursors. The saffron crocus is a triploid that is "self-incompatible" and male sterile; it undergoes aberrant meiosis and is hence incapable of independent sexual reproduction—all propagation is by vegetative multiplication via manual "divide-and-set" of a starter clone or by interspecific hybridisation. If C. sativus is a mutant form of C. cartwrightianus, then it may have emerged via plant breeding, which would have selected for elongated stigmas, in late Bronze Age Crete.

Saffron (singer)

Samantha Marie Sprackling (born 3 June 1968, Lagos, Nigeria) more commonly known as Saffron, is the lead singer of the electronica band Republica. She was also an actress at one point, performing for two years in Starlight Express in London, and in the video for the Chesney Hawkes hit "The One and Only" and, as a dancer, in the video for N-Joi's single "Mindflux".

Following the breakup of Republica, she worked with The Cure, appearing on the track "Just Say Yes". She had previously been the featured vocalist on N-Joi's 1990 single "Anthem"; The Prodigy's "Fuel My Fire" (from their 1997 album The Fat of the Land); Deepsky's "Smile" (from the 2002 album In Silico); Jeff Beck's "Pork-U-Pine" (from the 2003 album Jeff) and Junkie XL's songs "Crusher", "Spirits", and "Beauty Never Fades" (from his 2003 album Radio JXL: A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin). In 2010, Republica reformed and released a re-recording of their 1996 hit "Ready to Go" on 7 June 2010.

In addition to her musical career, Saffron has recently been making a return to acting and can be seen as Detective Sergeant Tessa Ruth in the 2014 UK gangster drama "Looters, Tooters and Sawn Off Shooters" (King Brothers Ltd)

Saffron (disambiguation)

Saffron is a spice.

Saffron may also refer to

Color

Other uses

Factor

Factor, a Latin word meaning "who/which acts", may refer to:

Commerce

Science and technology

Biology

Computer science and information technology

Factoring (finance)

Factoring is a financial transaction and a type of debtor finance in which a business sells its accounts receivable (i.e., invoices) to a third party (called a factor) at a discount. A business will sometimes factor its receivable assets to meet its present and immediate cash needs.Forfaiting is a factoring arrangement used in international trade finance by exporters who wish to sell their receivables to a forfaiter. Factoring is commonly referred to as accounts receivable factoring, invoice factoring, and sometimes accounts receivable financing. Accounts receivable financing is a term more accurately used to describe a form of asset based lending against accounts receivable.

Factoring is not the same as invoice discounting (which is called an "Assignment of Accounts Receivable" in American accounting – as propagated by FASB within GAAP). Factoring is the sale of receivables, whereas invoice discounting ("assignment of accounts receivable" in American accounting) is a borrowing that involves the use of the accounts receivable assets as collateral for the loan. However, in some other markets, such as the UK, invoice discounting is considered to be a form of factoring, involving the "assignment of receivables", that is included in official factoring statistics. It is therefore also not considered to be borrowing in the UK. In the UK the arrangement is usually confidential in that the debtor is not notified of the assignment of the receivable and the seller of the receivable collects the debt on behalf of the factor. In the UK, the main difference between factoring and invoice discounting is confidentiality.

Von Neumann algebra

In mathematics, a von Neumann algebra or W*-algebra is a *-algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space that is closed in the weak operator topology and contains the identity operator. They were originally introduced by John von Neumann, motivated by his study of single operators, group representations, ergodic theory and quantum mechanics. His double commutant theorem shows that the analytic definition is equivalent to a purely algebraic definition as an algebra of symmetries.

Two basic examples of von Neumann algebras are as follows. The ring L^∞(R) of essentially bounded measurable functions on the real line is a commutative von Neumann algebra, which acts by pointwise multiplication on the Hilbert space L²(R) of square integrable functions. The algebra B(H) of all bounded operators on a Hilbert space H is a von Neumann algebra, non-commutative if the Hilbert space has dimension at least 2.

Von Neumann algebras were first studied by von Neumann (1930) in 1929; he and Francis Murray developed the basic theory, under the original name of rings of operators, in a series of papers written in the 1930s and 1940s (F.J. Murray & J. von Neumann 1936, 1937, 1943; J. von Neumann 1938, 1940, 1943, 1949), reprinted in the collected works of von Neumann (1961).