Swan

Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus Cygnus. The swans' close relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. There are six or seven species of swan in the genus Cygnus; in addition there is another species known as the coscoroba swan, although this species is no longer considered one of the true swans. Swans usually mate for life, though "divorce" does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure, and if a mate dies, the remaining swan will take up with another. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.

Etymology and terminology

The English word 'swan', akin to the German Schwan, Dutch zwaan and Swedish svan, is derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing). Young swans are known as swanlings or as cygnets, from Greek κύκνος, kýknos and from the Latin word cygnus ("swan") and the Old French suffix -et ("little"). An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen.

Swan (nuclear primary)

Swan was a U.S. test nuclear explosive, which was developed into the XW-45 warhead.

It was tested standalone on June 22, 1956 in shot Redwing Inca. It was tested again as the primary of a thermonuclear device on July 2, 1956 in shot Redwing Mohawk. Both tests were successful. It subsequently served as the primary in numerous thermonuclear devices during the 1950s.

Most subsequent U.S. primaries are Swan-derived, including the Robin, the Tsetse, the Python, and the much later (asymmetrical) ovoid (prolate) primaries.

Design features

The Swan device is the first design to incorporate a two-point hollow-pit air lens implosion assembly together with fusion boosting.

The Swan device had a yield of 15 kilotons, weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg), and had a (symmetrical) ovoid (non-prolate) shape with a diameter of 11.6 inches (29.5 cm) and a length of 22.8 inches (58 cm), a length to diameter ratio of 1.97.

The above schematic illustrates what were probably its essential features.

One-point safety

Wenat (sternwheeler)

Wenat was a stern-wheel steamboat that, under the name Swan, was built and operated, briefly, on the Tualatin River, in the state of Oregon. In 1858, Swan was sold, moved to the lower Willamette River, renamed Cowlitz, and placed on a route between Portland, Oregon the Cowlitz River.

In 1868, Cowlitz was rebuilt, renamed Wenat, which was operated from 1868 to 1875 on the Willamette and Cowlitz rivers. In 1875, was transferred to Puget Sound, where it operated on several rivers flowing into the sound, including the Duwamish, the Puyallup, and the Skagit, before being converted into an unpowered barge in 1878.

Construction

Wenat was built, as Swan, on the Tualatin River by Silus E. "Si" Smith and George A. Pease in 1857, at a police called Moore’s Mills, where a dam on the Tualatin was planned to be built.

Moore’s Mill, named after James M. Moore, was about three miles up the Tualatin River from Linn City, Oregon, which was on the west side of Willamette Falls.

In July 1858, Swan was purchased by Charles Holman (d.1886), H.D. Huntington, and Oliff Olson of Monticello W.T. (now Longview), for a price of $7,500. According to one source, the sale occurred on completion of the Swan.

List of character races in Dungeons & Dragons

A character race is a fundamental part of the identity and nature of characters in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

Each race has a distinct appearance, behavior and often range of statistics associated with it. The following races have appeared in D&D throughout its history.

Core races

In each edition, the core player character races are detailed in one of that edition's core rulebooks: Men & Monsters for "original" Dungeons & Dragons, the Basic Set and Rules Cyclopedia for "basic" Dungeons & Dragons and the Player's Handbook for all other editions.

Races from other sourcebooks

Key

References

Race and society

Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races, often with biologist tagging of particular "racial" attributes beyond mere anatomy, as more socially and culturally determined than based upon biology. Such interpretations are often deconstructionist and poststructuralist in that they critically analyze the historical construction and development of racial categories.

Social interpretation of physical variation

Incongruities of racial classifications

Marks (1995) argued that even as the idea of "race" was becoming a powerful organizing principle in many societies, the shortcomings of the concept were apparent. In the Old World, the gradual transition in appearances from one racial group to adjacent racial groups emphasized that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them," as Blumenbach observed in his writings on human variation. In parts of the Americas, the situation was somewhat different. The immigrants to the New World came largely from widely separated regions of the Old World—western and northern Europe, western Africa, and, later, eastern Asia and southern and eastern Europe. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In the United States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ∼23% for a sample of African Americans from New Orleans. In a survey of college students who self-identified as white in a northeastern U.S. university, the west African and native American genetic contribution were 0.7% and 3.2%.

Racing

In sport, racing is a competition of speed, against an objective criterion, usually a clock or to a specific point. The competitors in a race try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goal.

A race may be run continuously from start to finish or may be made of several segments called heats, stages or legs. A heat is usually run over the same course at different times. A stage is a shorter section of a much longer course or a time trial.

Early records of races are evident on pottery from ancient Greece, which depicted running men vying for first place. A chariot race is described in Homer's Iliad.

Forms of racing

Running a distance is the most basic form of racing, but races may be conducted in vehicles, such as boats, cars, cycles and aircraft; or with animals such as horses or dogs. Other forms of racing are by skis, kicksled, skates or wheelchair. In a relay race members of a team take turns in racing parts of a circuit or performing a certain racing form.