Puff

Puff may refer to:

General

Names

Foods with high air content

Low-density materials and products

Science, computing

Polytene chromosome

Polytene chromosomes are over-sized chromosomes which have developed from standard chromosomes and are commonly found in the salivary glands of Drosophila melanogaster. Specialized cells undergo repeated rounds of DNA replication without cell division (endomitosis), to increase cell volume, forming a giant polytene chromosome. Polytene chromosomes form when multiple rounds of replication produce many sister chromatids that remain fused together.

Function

In addition to increasing the volume of the cells' nuclei and causing cell expansion, polytene cells may also have a metabolic advantage as multiple copies of genes permits a high level of gene expression. In Drosophila melanogaster, for example, the chromosomes of the larval salivary glands undergo many rounds of endoreduplication, to produce large amounts of glue before pupation. Another example within the organism itself is the tandem duplication of various polytene bands located near the centromere of the X chromosome which results in the Bar phenotype of kidney-shaped eyes.

Tata

Tata or TATA may refer to:

Places

Companies

People

Surname

Awan dynasty

The Awan Dynasty was the first dynasty of Elam of which anything is known today, appearing at the dawn of historical record. The Elamites were likely major rivals of neighboring Sumer from remotest antiquity; they were said to have been defeated by Enmebaragesi of Kish (ca. 25th century BC), who is the earliest archaeologically attested Sumerian king, as well as by a later monarch, Eannatum I of Lagash.

Awan was a city or possibly a region of Elam whose precise location is not certain, but it has been variously conjectured to be north of Susa, in south Luristan, close to Dezful, or Godin Tepe.

Elam and Sumer

According to the Sumerian king list, a dynasty from Awan exerted hegemony in Sumer at one time. It mentions three Awan kings, who supposedly reigned for a total of 356 years. Their names have not survived on the extant copies, apart from the partial name of the third king, "Ku-ul...", who it says ruled for 36 years. This information is not considered reliable, but it does suggest that Awan had political importance in the 3rd millennium BC.

Elf (Middle-earth)

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion. Tolkien had been writing about Elves long before he published The Hobbit.

Development

Background

The modern English word elf derives from the Old English word ælf (which has cognates in all other Germanic languages). Numerous types of elves appear in Germanic mythology, the West Germanic concept appears to have come to differ from the Scandinavian notion in the early Middle Ages, and Anglo-Saxon concept diverged even further, possibly under Celtic influence. Tolkien would make it clear in a letter that his Elves differ from those "of the better known lore", referring to Scandinavian mythology.

By 1915 when Tolkien was writing his first elven poems, the words elf, fairy and gnome had many divergent and contradictory associations. Tolkien had been gently warned against using the term 'fairy', which John Garth supposes may have been due to the word becoming increasingly used to indicate homosexuality, although despite this warning Tolkien continued to use it.