Theme or themes may refer to:
In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel *e or *o from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and those without it are athematic. Used more generally, a thematic vowel is any vowel found at the end of the stem of a word.
PIE verbs and nominals (nouns and adjectives) consist of three parts:
The thematic vowel, if present, occurs at the end of the suffix (which may include other vowels or consonants) and before the ending:
Athematic forms, by contrast, have a suffix ending in a consonant, or no suffix at all (or arguably a null suffix):
For several reasons, athematic forms are thought to be older, and the thematic vowel was likely an innovation of late PIE: Athematic paradigms (inflection patterns) are more "irregular", exhibiting ablaut and mobile accent, while the thematic paradigms can be seen as a simplification or regularisation of verbal and nominal grammar. In the Anatolian languages, which were the earliest to split from PIE, thematic verbs are rare or absent. Furthermore, during late PIE and in the older daughter languages, a number of athematic forms were replaced by thematic ones, as in prehistoric Greek *thes- 'god' versus *thes-o- > Classical Greek θεός (theós).
The Family Way is a soundtrack recording composed by Paul McCartney, released in January 1967. The album is the soundtrack to the 1966 film of the same name, directed by Roy Boulting and starring Hayley Mills. Produced and arranged by George Martin, the album was credited to "The George Martin Orchestra" and issued under the full title The Family Way (Original Soundtrack Album). A 45rpm single, again credited to the George Martin Orchestra, was issued on 23 December 1966, comprising "Love in the Open Air" backed with "Theme From 'The Family Way'", as United Artists UP1165.
The Family Way won an Ivor Novello Award in 1967. It was remastered and released on CD in 1996 with new musical compositions not on the original 1967 soundtrack album.
The recording took place over November and December 1966, before the Beatles began work on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney's involvement in the project was minimal, according to biographer Howard Sounes, who quotes Martin's recollection that he had to "pester Paul for the briefest scrap of a tune" with which to start writing the score. After McCartney had provided "a sweet little fragment of a waltz tune", Martin continued, "I was able to complete the score."
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the main components of the wheel and axle which is one of the six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction with axles, allow heavy objects to be moved easily facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Wheels are also used for other purposes, such as a ship's wheel, steering wheel, potter's wheel and flywheel.
Common examples are found in transport applications. A wheel greatly reduces friction by facilitating motion by rolling together with the use of axles. In order for wheels to rotate, a moment needs to be applied to the wheel about its axis, either by way of gravity, or by the application of another external force or torque.
The English word wheel comes from the Old English word hweol, hweogol, from Proto-Germanic *hwehwlan, *hwegwlan, from Proto-Indo-European *kwekwlo-, an extended form of the root *kwel- "to revolve, move around". Cognates within Indo-European include Icelandic hjól "wheel, tyre", Greek κύκλος kúklos, and Sanskrit chakra, the latter both meaning "circle" or "wheel".
A parallel of a curve is the envelope of a family of congruent circles centered on the curve. It generalises the concept of parallel lines. It can also be defined as a curve whose points are at a fixed normal distance from a given curve. These two definitions are not entirely equivalent as the latter assumes smoothness, whereas the former does not.
A parallel curve is also called an offset curve and this is the preferred term in CAGD. (In other geometric contexts, the term offset can also refer also to translation.) Offset curves are important for example in numerically controlled machining, where they describe for example the shape of the cut made by a round cutting piece of a two-axis machine. The shape of the cut is offset from the trajectory of the cutter by a constant distance in the direction normal to the cutter trajectory at every point.
In the area of 2D computer graphics known as vector graphics, the (approximate) computation of parallel curves is involved in one of the fundamental drawing operations, called stroking, which is typically applied to polylines or polybeziers (themselves called paths) in that field.
In botany and horticulture, an offset is a small, virtually complete daughter plant that has been naturally and asexually produced on the mother plant. They are clones, meaning that they are genetically identical to the mother plant. In the plant nursery business and gardens, they are detached and grown on in order to produce new plants. This is a cheap and simple process for those plants that readily produce offsets as it does not usually require specialist materials and equipment.
Offsets form when meristem regions of plants, such as axillary buds or homologous structures differentiate into a new plant with the ability to become self-sustaining. This is particularly common in species that develop underground storage organs, such as bulbs, corms and tubers. Tulips and lilies are examples of plants that display offset characteristics by forming cormlets around the original mother corm.
When propagating plants to increase a stock of a cultivar, thus seeking identical copies of parent plant, various cloning techniques (asexual reproduction) are used. Offsets are a natural means by which plants may be cloned.