Grain (unit)

A grain is a unit of measurement of mass equal to 7001647989100000000♠64.79891 milligrams. It is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definition of units of mass. However, there is no evidence of any country ever having used actual seeds or cereal grains. Rather, expressions such as "thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear" appear to have been ritualistic formulas, essentially the premodern equivalent of legal boilerplate.

The grain was the legal foundation of traditional English weight systems, and is the only unit that is equal throughout the troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems of mass. The unit was based on the weight of a single grain of barley, considered equivalent to 1 ¹⁄₃ grains of wheat. The fundamental unit of the pre-1527 English weight system known as Tower weights, was a different sort of grain known as the "wheat grain". The Tower wheat grain was defined as exactly ⁴⁵⁄₆₄ of a troy grain.

Massé

Massé is a French surname. Notable people with the surname include:

See also

Massé, a billiards cueing technique - see Glossary of cue sports terms#massé

Massè

Massè is an arrondissement in the Plateau department of Benin. It is an administrative division under the jurisdiction of the commune of Adja-Ouèrè. According to the population census conducted by the Institut National de la Statistique Benin on February 15, 2002, the arrondissement had a total population of 16,902.

References

Coordinates: 7°09′28″N 2°32′37″E / 7.15778°N 2.54361°E / 7.15778; 2.54361

Mass in B minor

The Mass in B minor (BWV 232) by Johann Sebastian Bach is a musical setting of the complete Ordinary of the Latin Mass. The work was one of Bach's last compositions, not completed until 1749, the year before his death. Much of the Mass gave new form to vocal music that Bach had composed throughout his career, dating back (in the case of the "Crucifixus") to 1714, but extensively revised. To complete the work, in the late 1740s Bach composed new sections of the Credo such as "Et incarnatus est".

It was unusual for composers working in the Lutheran tradition to compose a Missa tota and Bach's motivations remain a matter of scholarly debate. The Mass was never performed in its entirety during Bach's lifetime; the first documented complete performance took place in 1859. Since the nineteenth century it has been widely hailed as one of the greatest compositions in musical history, and today it is frequently performed and recorded.Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach archived this work as the Great Catholic Mass.

GRAIN

GRAIN (initially the International Coalition for Development Action or ICDA) is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

GRAIN's work goes back to the early 1980s, when a number of activists around the world started drawing attention to the dramatic loss of genetic diversity on our farms — the very cornerstone of the world's food supply.

GRAIN began doing research, advocacy and lobbying work under the auspices of a coalition of mostly European development organisations. That work soon expanded into a larger program and network that needed its own footing. In 1990, Genetic Resources Action International, or GRAIN for short, was legally established as an independent non-profit foundation with its headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.

By the mid-1990s, GRAIN reached an important turning point. They realized that they needed to connect more with the real alternatives that were being developed on the ground, in the South. Around the world, and at local level, many groups had begun rescuing local seeds and traditional knowledge and building and defending sustainable biodiversity-based food systems under the control of local communities, while turning their backs on the laboratory developed 'solutions' that had only got farmers into deeper trouble. In a radical organisational shift, GRAIN embarked on a decentralization process that brought them into closer contact with realities on the ground in the South, and into direct collaboration with partners working at that level. At the same time, they brought a number of those partners into their governing body and started regionalizing their staff pool.