Samba

Samba (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɐ̃bɐ]) is a Brazilian musical genre and dance style originating in Brazil, with its roots in Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions, particularly Angola and the Congo. Although there were various forms of samba in Brazil in the form of various popular rhythms and regional dances that originated from the drumming, samba as music genre is seen as a musical expression of urban Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Imperial Brazil.

It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival. Considered one of the most popular Brazilian cultural expressions, samba has become an icon of Brazilian national identity. The Bahian Samba de Roda (dance circle), which became a UNESCO Heritage of Humanity in 2005, is the main root of the samba carioca, the samba that is played and danced in Rio de Janeiro.

The modern samba that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century is predominantly in a 2/4 tempo varied with the conscious use of a sung chorus to a batucada rhythm, with various stanzas of declaratory verses. Traditionally, the samba is played by strings (cavaquinho and various types of guitar) and various percussion instruments such as tamborim. Influenced by American orchestras in vogue since the Second World War and the cultural impact of US music post-war, samba began to use trombones, trumpets, choros, flutes, and clarinets.

MacWWW

MacWWW, also known as Samba, is an early minimalist web browser from 1992 meant to run on Macintosh computers. It was the first web browser for the Mac OS platform, and the first for any non-Unix operating system. MacWWW tries to emulate the design of WorldWideWeb. Unlike modern browsers it opens each link in a new window only after a double-click. It was a commercial product from CERN and cost 50 European Currency Units

The browser is no longer available from its original ftp location, but can still be downloaded from mirrors.

History

It was written at CERN by Robert Cailliau and later Nicola Pellow helped with the development. Pellow worked original on the Line Mode Browser and both browsers shared some parts of the source code after her switching. Pre-alpha version were available, but this version worked only on "coliur [sic] mac but not on big black and white ones it seems."

Version 1.00 was released on 12 May 1993 with the commentary: "We know there is much to be improved, but it works well on system 7 and system 6.0.5".

Samba (rice)

Samba is a variety of rice grown in Sri Lanka and some parts of India (mainly in Tamil Nadu), and has a small ovular grain, compared to the long grain of basmati rice.

Description

Samba rice has a distinct taste and can be described as having a more 'starchy' or 'corny' flavor, and thus is an acquired taste preferred mainly by the locals.

The grain itself is much harder than the other varieties and when cooked is less 'fluffy' in texture so gives a more filling meal with a higher caloric value.

All Samba rice grain is harvested locally and there are many sub-varieties ranging in grain size and price. Jiru Samba is the most expensive sub-variety and has the smallest grain. It is approximately a third the size of a grain of basmati rice.

Cultivation

Samba rice is grown extensively in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Rice grown in Samba season (Aug through Jan) is referred to as Samba rice. This rice is grown for a longer duration compared to other types of rice.

Ant colony

An ant colony, also called a formicary. is the basic family unit around which ants organize their lifecycle. Ant colonies are eusocial, and are very much like those found in other social Hymenoptera, though the various groups of these developed sociality independently through convergent evolution. The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, a large number of sterile females ("workers") and, seasonally, a large number of winged sexual males and females. Periodically, swarms of the winged sexuals (known as alates) depart the nest in great nuptial flights. The males die shortly thereafter, along with most of the females. A small percentage of the females survive to initiate new nests.

Supercolonies

Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2.7 km² (670 acres). In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations nested along the 6,004-kilometre (3,731 mi) stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony. The researchers claim that this case of unicoloniality cannot be explained by loss of their genetic diversity due to the genetic bottleneck of the imported ants. In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony".