Oasis

In geography, an oasis (plural: oases) or cienega (Southwestern United States) is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even humans if the area is big enough. The location of oases has been of critical importance for trade and transportation routes in desert areas; caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water and food can be replenished. Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route. For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames, and Kufra, situated in modern-day Libya, have at various times been vital to both North-South and East-West trade in the Sahara Desert.

Oases are formed from underground rivers or aquifers such as an artesian aquifer, where water can reach the surface naturally by pressure or by man-made wells. Occasional brief thunderstorms provide subterranean water to sustain natural oases, such as the Tuat. Substrata of impermeable rock and stone can trap water and retain it in pockets, or on long faulting subsurface ridges or volcanic dikes water can collect and percolate to the surface. Any incidence of water is then used by migrating birds, which also pass seeds with their droppings which will grow at the water's edge forming an oasis.

Smithers-Oasis

Smithers-Oasis is a company specializing in floristry products headquartered in Kent, Ohio, United States. The company created water-absorbing foam in 1954 and leads manufacturing and marketing of various products in the global florist industry.

History

The company was founded in 1954 by V.L. Smithers in Kent, Ohio after he developed a water absorbent foam to use in floral arrangements. Since then, other products have been developed including floral accessories, cellular growing media, and post-harvest plant products. The company is headquartered in Kent and operates a manufacturing plant there. Corporate offices were returned to Kent in late 2013 from Cuyahoga Falls, where they had been located since 1992.

Products

Wet floral foam

Oasis is a trademarked name for wet floral foam, the spongy phenolic foam used for real flower arranging. It soaks up water like a sponge and acts both as a preservative to prolong the life of the flowers and a support to hold them in place. The foam's structure is similar to that of plants and has capillary action to move water to the surface and up the stem. It is often green, but is also available in many other colours, such as purple, red, yellow, and brown. It usually is supplied in a brick shape, but can be bought in spherical shapes. Oasis can be bought wholesale or in arts and craft and gardening stores, particularly ones that feature large faux flower collections for creating artificial arrangements.

Oasis (TV series)

Oasis was a short lived CITV drama series which was about a group of children who ran an inner city farm. It's best known for featuring John Simm and Dean Gaffney. It was set in a wasteland site in south London.

The drama series ran from 5 January to 9 March 1993 for 10 episodes, made by Zenith North, the team behind Byker Grove for Carlton; their first children's drama series for the ITV network.

Cast

External links

Mast (hieroglyph)

The ancient Egyptian ship's mast hieroglyph is one of the oldest language hieroglyphs from Ancient Egypt. It is used on a famous label of Pharaoh Den of the First dynasty, but forms part of the location hieroglyph: Emblem of the East.

Language usage of ship's mast

The hieroglyphic language equivalent of the mast is 'kh'-('ḥ'), and means "to stand erect", or "to stand vertical"; its use is extensive throughout the language history, and hieroglyphic tomb reliefs and story-telling of Ancient Egypt. It is possibly a forerunner hieroglyph to khā-(now spelled: kh3), the sun rising upon the horizon.

Rosetta Stone usage

In the 198 BC Rosetta Stone, the ship's mast hieroglyph has the unique usage in the final line of the Ptolemy V decree: the mast is used twice-(adjective, verb):

From right, hieroglyphs: sedge of the South, Papyrus clump with leaves of North-Nile Delta, wife-hieroglyph, the tree-hieroglyph, and the Ship's Mast hieroglyph

From right, hieroglyphs: sedge of the South, Papyrus clump with leaves of North-Nile Delta, wife-hieroglyph, the tree-hieroglyph, and the Ship's Mast hieroglyph

Mast (sailing)

The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sail, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation light, look-out position, signal yard, control position, radio aerial or signal lamp. Large ships have several masts, with the size and configuration depending on the style of ship. Nearly all sailing masts are guyed masts.

Until the mid-19th century all vessels' masts were made of wood formed from a single or several pieces of timber which typically consisted of the trunk of a conifer tree. From the 16th century, vessels were often built of a size requiring masts taller and thicker than could be made from single tree trunks. On these larger vessels, to achieve the required height, the masts were built from up to four sections (also called masts), known in order of rising height above the decks as the lower, top, topgallant and royal masts. Giving the lower sections sufficient thickness necessitated building them up from separate pieces of wood. Such a section was known as a made mast, as opposed to sections formed from single pieces of timber, which were known as pole masts.

MAST2

Microtubule-associated serine/threonine-protein kinase 2 is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MAST2 gene. The protein encoded by this gene controls TRAF6 and NF-kappaB activity.

Interactions

MAST2 has been shown to interact with PCLKC.

Model organisms

Model organisms have been used in the study of MAST2 function. A conditional knockout mouse line called Mast2^{tm1a(KOMP)Wtsi} has been generated. Male and female animals underwent a standardized phenotypic screen to determine the effects of deletion. Additional screens performed: - In-depth immunological phenotyping

References

Further reading