Van

A van is a kind of vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van it can be bigger or smaller than a truck and SUV, and bigger than an automobile. There is some varying in the scope of the word across the different English-speaking countries. The smallest vans, minivans, are commonly used for transporting people from a family. Larger vans with passenger seats are used for institutional purposes, such as transporting students. Larger vans with only front seats are often used for business purposes, to carry goods and equipment. Specially-equipped vans are used by television stations as mobile studios. Postal services and courier companies use large step vans to deliver packages.

Word origin and usage

Van meaning a type of vehicle arose as a contraction of the word caravan. The early records of van as a vehicle in English are in the mid 19th century meaning a covered wagon for transporting goods (earliest reported record 1829). Caravan with the same meaning has records since the 1670s. A caravan, meaning one wagon, had arisen as an extension or corruption of caravan meaning a convoy of multiple wagons.

List of Gun Sword characters

This is a list of the fictional characters, with biographical details, in the Japanese anime Gun Sword (full name Gun x Sword: the "x" is silent) the story of which takes place on the fictional "Planet of Endless Illusion".

Protagonists

Van

Voiced by: Takanori Hoshino (Japanese), David Vincent (English)

Van is the primary protagonist of the series. He is traveling the world, searching after a mysterious man with an artificial claw hand who killed his bride, Helena, on the day of their wedding. Van swore to kill this man to avenge Helena.

His primary weapon is a shape-memory cloth held at his side like a pistol. When an electrical charge is run through the weapon, it can change configuration to a dueling sword or extend to grapple or embed itself into walls. Van can also spin it in place from its hilt at high speed to act as an efficient shield against projectiles.

Through his travels he has been given several titles, including: "Van the Unemployed", "Van the Freeloader", "Hangover Van", "Steel Van", "Invincible Van", "Pretty Boy Van from the Garbage Dump", "Van the Unsung Hero who Gives It All He's Got", "Van of the Dawn" (his favorite), "Daybreak Van", "Nice Guy Van", "Van that Weird Guy who Helped Out", "Van of a Thousand Conquests", "Van of a Thousand Naps" (according to Joshua), "Van, The Devil in The Poisoned Tuxedo", and "Van the Devil's Swallowtail Suit". Although laconic and calm of nature, whenever information about the Claw's whereabouts are mentioned, he quickly shifts to extreme anger.

Van, Turkey

Van (Armenian: Վան; Kurdish: Wan‎; Ottoman Turkish: فان‎) is a city in eastern Turkey's Van Province, located on the eastern shore of Lake Van. The city has a long history as a major urban area. It has been a large city since the first millennium BC, initially as the capital of Urartu in the 9th century BC and later as the center of the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan. It remained an important center of Armenian culture until the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Today, Van has a Kurdish majority and a sizable Turkish minority.

In 2010 the official population figure for Van was 367,419, but many estimates put it much higher with a 1996 estimate stating 500,000 and former Mayor Burhan Yengun is quoted as saying it may be as high as 600,000. The Van Central district stretches over 2,289 square kilometres (884 square miles).

History

Archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BC. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometres to the south of Van Castle, is the only source of information about the oldest culture of Van.

Gas

Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or compound molecules made from a variety of atoms (e.g. carbon dioxide). A gas mixture would contain a variety of pure gases much like the air. What distinguishes a gas from liquids and solids is the vast separation of the individual gas particles. This separation usually makes a colorless gas invisible to the human observer. The interaction of gas particles in the presence of electric and gravitational fields are considered negligible as indicated by the constant velocity vectors in the image. One type of commonly known gas is steam.

The gaseous state of matter is found between the liquid and plasma states, the latter of which provides the upper temperature boundary for gases. Bounding the lower end of the temperature scale lie degenerative quantum gases which are gaining increasing attention. High-density atomic gases super cooled to incredibly low temperatures are classified by their statistical behavior as either a Bose gas or a Fermi gas. For a comprehensive listing of these exotic states of matter see list of states of matter.

Gas (musician)

Gas is a music project of Wolfgang Voigt (born 1961), a Cologne, Germany-based electronic musician. Voigt cites his youthful LSD experiences in the Königsforst, a German forest situated near his hometown of Köln, as the inspiration behind his work under the name Gas. He has claimed that the intention of the project is to "bring the forest to the disco, or vice-versa".

Aliases and projects

Voigt is known for his numerous, nearly inexhaustible list of one-off projects and aliases. Of these, his best known is arguably Gas, a project that saw the marriage of ambient music and 4/4 techno.

Other names under which Voigt has released music include, but are not limited to, All, Auftrieb, Brom, C.K. Decker, Centrifugal Force, Crocker, Dextro NRG, Dieter Gorny, Digital, Dom, Doppel, Filter, Freiland, Fuchsbau, Gelb, Grungerman, Kafkatrax, Love Inc., M:I:5, Mike Ink, Mint, Panthel, Popacid, Riss, RX7, Split Inc., Strass, Studio 1, Tal, Vinyl Countdown, W.V., Wassermann, and X-Lvis.

Characteristics

Gas (album)

Gas is the debut album by Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project. It is the second release under the Gas name, preceded only by the Modern EP. It was released on 29 November, 1996 on the Mille Plateaux label. Like all Gas albums, the tracks are untitled. Along with Modern, it is unusual in that the artwork does not share the unifying forest theme common to all other Gas releases.

Track listing