Postelsia

Postelsia palmaeformis, also known as the sea palm (not to be confused with the southern sea palm) or palm seaweed, is a species of kelp and classified within brown algae. The sea palm is found along the western coast of North America, on rocky shores with constant waves. It is one of the few algae that can survive and remain erect out of the water; in fact, it spends most of its life cycle exposed to the air. It is an annual, and edible, though harvesting of the alga is discouraged due to the species' sensitivity to overharvesting.

History

The sea palm was known by the natives of California by the name of Kakgunu-chale before any Europeans entered the region. Postelsia was first scientifically described by Franz Josef Ruprecht (1814–1870) in 1852 from a specimen found near Bodega Bay in California. Ruprecht, an Austro-Hungarian who became curator of botany at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1839, studied seaweed specimens collected by botanist Ilya Vosnesensky, and published a paper describing one seagrass and five seaweeds, one of which was Postelsia. The sea palm has been used by several textbooks, such as the Campbell–Reece Biology textbook, as an example of multicellular protists, as well as an example of the class Phaeophyceae.

Palm (unit)

The palm may be either one of two obsolete non-SI units of measurement of length.

In English usage the palm, or small palm, also called handbreadth or handsbreadth, was originally based on the breadth of a human hand without the thumb, and has origins in ancient Egypt. It is distinct from the hand, the breadth of the hand with the thumb, and from the fist, the height of a clenched fist. It is usually taken to be equal to four digits or fingers, or to three inches, which, following the adoption of the international inch in 1959, equals exactly 7.62 centimetres. It is today used only in the field of biblical exegesis, where opinions may vary as to its precise historic length.

In other areas, such as parts of continental Europe, the palm (French: palme, Italian: palmo) related to the length of the hand, and derived from the Roman great palm, the Latin: palmus major.

History

Ancient Egypt

On surviving Ancient Egyptian cubit-rods, the royal cubit is divided into seven palms of four digits each. Five digits are equal to a hand, with thumb; and six to a closed fist. The royal cubit measured approximately 525 mm, so the length of the ancient Egyptian palm was about 75 mm.

Hand

A hand (Latin manus) is a prehensile, multi-fingered organ located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints remarkably similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking.

Fingers contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, feet, legs) each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, so that handedness—the preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pencil, reflects individual brain functioning.

Some evolutionary anatomists use the term hand to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally — for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.

Palme

Palme or Palmé may refer to

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SEA

SEA or Sea may refer to:

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Science and technology

Sea (advertisement)

Sea is an advertising campaign launched by Diageo in 2007 to promote Smirnoff brand vodka. It centres on a 60-second commercial created by J. Walter Thompson, which premiered on 17 August 2007 in showings of The Bourne Ultimatum at select cinemas across the United Kingdom. Various tie-ins were launched, including the "Smirnoff Purifier", an online game, point of sale "Smirnoff purity kits", and a tour of a custom-built "Smirnoff Purification Installation" used to make potable samples of water taken from saline or otherwise undrinkable water at selected sites. In all, the campaign cost £5,000,000 to create, making it the largest campaign ever taken on by Diageo for its Smirnoff brand.

Commercial

Production of the sixty second commercial, developed by J. Walter Thompson, took place over seven months. The filming of the commercial took place over a period of several weeks in February 2007, primarily in the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand, with additional filming at the white cliffs of Dover and Auckland harbour. The director chosen to oversee the piece was Daniel Kleinman, known for his previous work on James Bond title sequences and adverts for Levi's and Durex.

Seah (unit)

The se'ah or seah (Hebrew: סאה‎) is a unit of dry measure of ancient origin used in Halakha (Jewish law), which equals one third of an ephah, or bath. Its size in modern units varies widely according to the criteria used for defining it.

According to Herbert G. May, chief editor of two classic Bible-related reference books, the bath may be archaeologically determined to have been about 5.75 gallons (22 liters) from a study of jar remains marked 'bath' and 'royal bath' from Tell Beit Mirsim. Since the bath unit has been established to be 22 litres, 1 se'ah would equal 7.33 litres or 7.33dm³.

In the context of a mikveh, a se'ah can be about twice as much in order to accommodate even the most stringent rabbinical ruling on immersion. A mikveh must, according to the classical regulations, contain enough water to cover the entire body of an average-sized person; based on a mikveh with the dimensions of 3 cubits deep, 1 cubit wide, and 1 cubit long, the necessary volume of water was estimated as being 40 se'ah of water. The exact volume referred to by a seah is debated, and classical rabbinical literature specifies only that it is enough to fit 144 eggs; most Orthodox Jews use the stringent ruling of the Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, according to which one seah is 14.3 litres, and therefore a mikveh must contain approximately 575 litres . This volume of water could be topped up with water from any source, but if there were less than 40 seahs of water in the mikveh, then the addition of 3 or more pints of water from an unnatural source would render the mikveh unfit for use, regardless of whether water from a natural source was then added to make up 40 seahs from a natural source; a mikveh rendered unfit for use in this way would need to be completely drained away and refilled from scratch.