Fork

As a piece of cutlery or kitchenware, a fork is a tool consisting of a handle with several narrow tines on one end. The fork is a primarily Western utensil, whereas in East Asia chopsticks have been more prevalent. Today, forks are increasingly available throughout East Asia. The usually metal utensil is used to lift food to the mouth or to hold ingredients in place while they are being cut by a knife. Food can be lifted either by spearing it on the tines, or by holding it on top of the tines, which are often curved slightly. A fork is shaped in the form of a trident but curved at the joint of the handle to the points.

Early history of forks is obscure, as a kitchen and dining utensil it's generally believed to have originated in the Roman Empire, as proved by archaeological evidences. The personal table fork most likely originated in the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. Its use spread to what is now the Middle East during the first millennium CE and then spread into southern Europe during the second millennium. It did not become common in northern Europe until the 18th century and was not common in North America until the 19th century.

Fork (software development)

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but a split in the developer community, a form of schism.

Free and open-source software is that which, by definition, may be forked from the original development team without prior permission without violating copyright law. However, licensed forks of proprietary software (e.g. Unix) also happen.

Etymology

The word fork stems from the Latin word furca, meaning a "fork or similarly shaped instrument." "Fork" in the meaning of "to divide in branches, go separate ways" has been used as early as the 14th century. In the software environment, the word evokes the fork system call, which causes a running process to split itself into two (almost) identical copies that (typically) diverge to perform different tasks.

Tributary

A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or river main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river serve to drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean.

A confluence, where two or more bodies of water meet together, usually refers to the joining of tributaries.

The opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from and flows away from the main stream. Distributaries are most often found in river deltas.

Terminology

"Right tributary" and "left tributary" (or "right-bank tributary" and "left-bank tributary") are terms stating the orientation of the tributary relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream (in the direction the water current of the main stem is going).

Where tributaries have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks. These are typically designated by compass direction. For example, the American River receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago River's North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork; the South Branch has its South Fork, and used to have a West Fork as well (now filled in).

Gaga

Gaga (meaning "mentally senile", "crazy", "infatuated"), ga-ga and variants in other languages may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

Sports

Other uses

Gaga (god)

Gaga is a minor Babylonian deity featured in the Enûma Eliš. She is sent by Anshar to the forces of Tiamat with the formal announcement of Marduk's readiness to battle Tiamat.

References

Gaga (genus)

Gaga (gaga lipfern) is a genus of 19 species of ferns in the family Pteridaceae named after American singer and songwriter Lady Gaga. Two of the 19 species are newly-described—Gaga germanotta from Costa Rica, named after the family of the singer; she was born Stefani Germanotta, and Gaga monstraparva, in honor of Gaga's fans, whom she calls "little monsters". According to biologists, the ferns bear a close resemblance to Gaga's costume from the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards and also bear a distinct DNA sequence spelling GAGA.

Except for the two new species, the rest of the Gaga ferns were reclassified, having previously been assigned to the genus Cheilanthes, based on their outward appearance. Biologists at Duke University explained that they listed the ferns with the name Gaga, due to the singer's active support of equality and individual expression. The decision received widespread attention from the science community and the media.

Background and naming

"We study, in particular, a group of ferns called the cheilanthoid ferns, there are about 500 or 600 of them, and many of them tend to be more adapted to living in desert situations, which is unusual for ferns... We've been doing a lot of molecular sequencing, looking at a lot of plant material, doing a lot of field work, so we're now at the point where we're concluding some of the work, and we have enough evidence to be able to look at all the data and say, 'Hmmm, there's this group here that is really in the wrong genus... We need to give it a new name'."