.shop
.shop is a proposed top-level domain (TLD) for the Internet, submitted to ICANN for approval as a sponsored TLD (sTLD). Nine companies including Google, Amazon and Famous Four Media have filed applications for this TLD.
History
The idea of a .shop generic top-level domain was around since at least 1999, when an attempt to register it with IAHC was made. Its proposed usage is similar to current endeavors: to provide a dedicated space for ecommerce on the Internet. In 2000, Commercial Connect, LLC requested to operate a .shop registry from ICANN .
Commercial Connect's application from 2000 was well-received, but other domains were prioritized. It is still considered by ICANN to be pending. Japan's GMO Registry also expressed interest in the top level domain name space in late 2009, though Commercial Connect was the most vested candidate that had taken prior steps towards attaining delegation. In 2011, Commerccial Connect was reported to have the support of ecommerce companies, with its completed application awaiting final approval as of June 2010. To further this support, Richard E. Last of the National Retail Federation and shop.org joined the board in late 2011.
Variety store
A variety store (also pound shop, dollar store, and other names) is a retail store that sells a wide range of inexpensive household goods.
Variety stores often have product lines including food and drink, personal hygiene products, small home and garden tools, office supplies, decorations, electronics, garden plants, toys, pet supplies, remaindered books, recorded media, and motor and bike consumables. Larger stores may sell frozen foods and fresh produce.
Variety stores arose in the early 20th century, with Woolworth's model to reduce store overheads by simplifying the duties of sales clerks. They may now be found all over the world.
A variety store often sells all goods at a single price, in which case it may be called a price-point retailer. The name of the store often reflects this, and in different markets it may be called a dollar store, pound shop, euro store and so on.
Economics
Some items are offered at a considerable discount over other retailers, whereas others are at much the same price point as conventional retail establishments. There are two ways variety stores make a profit:
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from an ordered stack of paper sheets that are folded together into sections or sometimes left as a stack of individual sheets. The stack is then bound together along one edge by either sewing with thread through the folds or by a layer of flexible adhesive. For protection, the bound stack is either wrapped in a flexible cover or attached to stiff boards. Finally, an attractive cover is adhered to the boards and a label with identifying information is attached to the covers along with additional decoration. Book artists or specialists in book decoration can greatly expand the previous explanation to include book like objects of visual art with high value and artistic merit of exceptional quality in addition to the book's content of text and illustrations.
Bookbinding is a specialized trade that relies on basic operations of measuring, cutting, and gluing. A finished book depends on a minimum of about two dozen operations to complete but sometimes more than double that according to the specific style and materials. All operations have a specific order and each one relies on accurate completion of the previous step with little room for back tracking. An extremely durable binding can be achieved by using the best hand techniques and finest materials when compared to a common publisher's binding that falls apart after normal use.
Spine (journal)
Spine is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal covering research in the field of orthopaedics, especially concerning the spine. It was established in 1976 and is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. The current editor-in-chief is James N. Weinstein. Spine is considered the leading orthopaedic journal covering cutting-edge spine research. Spine is available in print, online, and on the iPad; there is an accompanying Spine blog. Spine is considered the most cited journal in orthopaedics today.
Affiliated societies
The following societies are affiliated with Spine:
Thorns, spines, and prickles
In plant morphology, thorns, spines, prickles, and in general spinose structures (as spinose teeth, spinose apical process) are all hard structures with sharp, stiff ends, generally with the same function of physically deterring animals from eating the plant material.
In common language the terms are used more or less interchangeably, but in botanical terms, thorns are derived from shoots (so they can be branched or not, they can have leaves or not, and they arise from a bud), spines are derived from leaves (the entire leaf or some part of the leaf that has vascular bundles inside, like the petiole or a stipule), and prickles are derived from the epidermis (so they can be found anywhere on the plant, and do not have vascular bundles inside so they can be removed more easily and cleanly than thorns and spines).
Leaf margins also may have teeth, and if those teeth are sharp, they are called spinose teeth on a spinose leaf margin (some authors consider them a kind of spine). On a leaf apex, if there is an apical process (generally an extension of the midvein), and if it is specially sharp, stiff, and spinelike, it can be called spinose or pungent apical process (again, some authors call them a kind of spine). When epidermis is covered with very long, stiff trichomes (more correctly called bristles in this case, for some authors a kind of prickle) is called hispid vestiture, if is covered with stinging trichomes it can be called urent vestiture.
Opium
Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium latex contains approximately 12% of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off, and dehydrated. The word "meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to infant stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies.
The production of opium itself has not changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine, has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semisynthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum.
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