HMV Retail Ltd, formerly HMV Group plc, is a British entertainment retailing company operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index. The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on Oxford Street in 1921, and the HMV name was also used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards. The retail side of the business began to expand in the 1960s, and in 1998 was divested from EMI, the successor to the Gramophone Company, to form what would become HMV Group.
HMV stands for His Master's Voice, the title of a painting by Francis Barraud of the dog Nipper listening to a cylinder phonograph, which was bought by the Gramophone Company in 1899. For advertising purposes this was changed to a wind-up gramophone, and eventually used simply as a silhouette.
HMV owned the Waterstone's bookshop chain from 1998 until 2011, and has owned the music retailer Fopp since August 2007. It purchased a number of former Zavvi stores in February 2009, and also branched into live music venue management that year by purchasing MAMA Group. It sold the group in December 2012.
Group may refer to:
In shooting, a shot grouping, or simply grouping, is the placement of multiple shots on a target, the shots taken in one shooting session. The closeness of the grouping, the nearness of all the shots to each other, is a measure of the accuracy of a weapon, and a measure of the shooter's consistency and skill.
For firearms that shoot one round at a time, a shot grouping can be used to measure the accuracy of the system comprised out of weapon as well as the precision and uniformity of the ammunition by fixing the weapon into position on a test mount, and aiming it at a target. Multiple shots using rounds from same type and batch are fired to observe how the weapon groups the shots. If a person holds the weapon and shoots it, the grouping measures the combination of the person's skill and the weapon's accuracy.
In shotgun shooting, the grouping is also called the pattern. The pattern is the spread of shot from a single shotgun shell, measured as the smallest circle containing all the shots on the target. The barrel of a shotgun is designed to deliver a wide or narrow grouping, depending on the expected use. Shooting at close range indicates a cylinder bore barrel to deliver a wide grouping, while for hunting at longer distances such as 50 yards or meters, a choke is recommended for a tighter grouping.
A stratigraphic unit is a volume of rock of identifiable origin and relative age range that is defined by the distinctive and dominant, easily mapped and recognizable petrographic, lithologic or paleontologic features (facies) that characterize it.
Units must be mappable and distinct from one another, but the contact need not be particularly distinct. For instance, a unit may be defined by terms such as "when the sandstone component exceeds 75%".
Sequences of sedimentary and volcanic rocks are subdivided on the basis of their lithology. Going from smaller to larger in scale, the main units recognised are Bed, Member, Formation, Group and Supergroup.
A bed is a lithologically distinct layer within a member or formation and is the smallest recognisable stratigraphic unit. These are not normally named, but may be in the case of a marker horizon.
A member is a named lithologically distinct part of a formation. Not all formations are subdivided in this way and even where they are recognized, they may only form part of the formation.