African aesthetic

While the African continent is vast and its peoples diverse, certain standards of beauty and correctness in artistic expression and physical appearance are held in common among various African societies.

Taken collectively, these values and standards have been characterised as comprising a generally accepted African aesthetic.

Cool

In African Art in Motion, African art scholar and Yale professor Robert Farris Thompson turns his attention to cool in both the African and African-American contexts:

See also

References

Cool & Dre

Cool & Dre are a team of American record producers and songwriters from North Miami, a suburb of Miami, Florida, consisting of Marcello "Cool" Valenzano and Andre "Dre" Christopher Lyon.

Epidemic Records

The duo started their own record label, Epidemic Records. They signed a contract with Jive Records in 2003 concerning the distribution of their first artist, Dirtbag.

In August 2010, the duo officially partnered with Cash Money Records. In April 2011, the duo signed a deal with Interscope Records through Cash Money (the first time Cash Money is under another Universal label), also to distribute their label Epidemic Records.

Production discography

Singles produced

References

Cool (The Time song)

"Cool" is a song by The Time, released as the second single from their eponymous debut album. Like most of the album, the song was recorded in Prince's home studio in April 1981, and was produced, arranged, and performed by Prince with Morris Day later adding his lead vocals. The song was co-written with Revolution guitarist Dez Dickerson and contains background vocals by keyboardist Lisa Coleman, however both were uncredited.

The funk-pop relies heavily on synthesizers to provide both the bass and melody for the upbeat song. A guitar solo is present and a relatively simple drumbeat drives the song along. "Cool" sets up the persona created for Day as a wealthy playboy, one who is also popular, and of course, "cool". Day built a career around the persona. Prince's backing vocals are very apparent in the song, especially in the chorus.

The classic video for the song is directed by Chuck Statler, who is best known for directing the early Devo videos.

"Cool" was only issued as a 7" single with an edit of the song and a continuation as the B-side. The full version was only released on the album and on a promo release. One of The Time's more popular numbers, "Cool" is a staple in concert and a live version of the song recorded at the House of Blues in 1998 was included on Morris Day's 2004 album, It's About Time.

SMAP

SMAP is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates. While originally consisting of six members, the group currently consists of five: Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori. The group's name is an acronym standing for Sports Music Assemble People.

The best selling boyband in Asia by more than 35 million records sold, SMAP released their first CD in 1991 and has since released over fifty singles and twenty albums. Approximately more than half of the singles and a half of the albums have reached the top of the Japanese Oricon music charts. In recent years, the interval between the band's single CD releases has become longer, and they are now released approximately once a year.

The members of SMAP have also pursued careers outside of music, including involvement in television variety shows, dramas, commercials, and movies, making them one of the most popular Johnny's groups. Largely due to their popularity, Johnny & Associates became the most successful agency in Japan, with earnings of almost three billion Japanese yen in 1995.

SMAP1

Stromal membrane-associated protein 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SMAP1 gene.

The protein encoded by this gene is similar to the mouse stromal membrane-associated protein-1. This similarity suggests that this human gene product is also a type II membrane glycoprotein involved in the erythropoietic stimulatory activity of stromal cells. Alternate splicing results in multiple transcript variants encoding different isoforms.

References

Further reading

Soil Moisture Active Passive

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is an American environmental research satellite launched on 31 January 2015. It is one of the first Earth observation satellites being developed by NASA in response to the National Research Council’s Decadal Survey.

Mission overview

SMAP will provide measurements of the land surface soil moisture and freeze-thaw state with near-global revisit coverage in 2–3 days. SMAP surface measurements will be coupled with hydrologic models to infer soil moisture conditions in the root zone. These measurements will enable science applications users to:

SMAP observations will be acquired for a period of at least three years after launch. A comprehensive validation, science, and applications program will be implemented, and all data will be made available publicly through the NASA archive centers.