CHRISTMAS

&MORE

CHRISTMAS

Christmas is an annual religious and cul-tural holiday commemorating the birthof Jesus Christ, celebrated generally on December 25 by billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christianliturgical year, it closes the Advent season and initiates the twelve days of Christ-mastide, which ends after the twelfth night. Christmas is a civil holiday in many of the world’s nations, is celebrated cul-turally by an increasing number of non-Christians, and is an integral part of the Christmas and holiday season.

While the birth year of Jesus is estimated among modern historians to have been between 7 and 2 BC, the exact month

and day of his birth are unknown. His birth is mentioned in two of the four canonical gospels. By the early-to-mid 4th century, the Western Christian Church had placed Christmas on December 25, a date later adopted in the East, although some chur-ches celebrate on the December 25 of the older Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to January 7 in the modern-day Gregorian calendar. The date of the Christmas may have initially been chosen to correspond with the day exactly nine months after early Christians believed Jesus to have been conceived, or with one or more ancient polytheistic festi-vals that occurred near southern solstice.

Winter solstice is an astronomical phen-omenon, which marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

Winter solstice occurs for the North-ern Hemisphere in December and for the Southern Hemisphere in June.

The axial tilt of Earth and gyroscopic effects of the planet’s daily rotation keep the axis of rotation pointed at the same point in the sky. As the Earth fol-lows its orbit around the Sun, the same hemisphere that faced away from the Sun, experiencing winter, will, in half a year, face towards the Sun and experi-ence summer. Since the two hemisph-eres face opposite directions along the planetary pole, one polar hemisphere experiences winter, the other experienc-es summer.

More evident from high latitudes, a hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs onthe shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest. The win-ter solstice itself lasts only a moment in time, so other terms are used for the day on which it occurs, such as “midwinter”, or “the shortest day”. For the same rea-son, it should not be confused with “the first day of winter” or “the start of win-ter”. The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shor-tening of days.

WINTER SOLTICE

Animal slaughter is the killing of non-human animals, usually referring to kill-ing domestic livestock. In general, the animals would be killed for food; how-ever, they might also be slaughtered for other reasons such as being diseased and unsuitable for consumption.

The animals most commonly slaugh-tered for food are cattle and water buf-falo for beef and veal, sheep and lambs for lamb and mutton, goats for goat meat,pigs for pork and ham, deer for venison,horses for horse meat, poultry (mainly chickens, turkeys and ducks), and increa-singly, fish in the aquaculture industry (fish farming). The use of a sharpened blade for the slaughtering of livestock has been practiced throughout history. Prior to the development of electric stun-ning equipment, simply striking them witha blunt instrument, sometimes followed by exsanguination with a knife, has killed some species.

ANIMAL SLAUGHTER

The belief that this was unnecessarily cruel and painful to the animal eventuallyled to the adoption of specific stunning and slaughter methods in many countries. One of the first campaigners on the mat-ter was the eminent physician, Benja-min Ward Richardson, who spent many years of his later working life develop-ing more humane methods of slaughter as a result of attempting to discover and adapt substances capable of producing general or local anesthesia to relieve pain in people. As early as 1853, he designed a chamber that could kill animals by gas-sing them. He also founded the Model Abattoir Society in 1882 to investigate and campaign for humane methods of slaughter, and experimented with the use of electric current at the Royal Polytech-nic Institution. The development of stun-ning technologies and such were extr-emely popular within the first half of thetwentieth century.

STUN NING

Stunning is the process of rendering animals immobile or unconscious, with-out killing the animal, prior to their be-ing slaughtered for food.

A primitive form of stunning was used in pre-modern times in the case of cat-tle, which were poleaxed prior to being bled out. However, prior to humane sla-ughter pistols and electric stunners, pigs, sheep and other animals (including cattle) were simply struck while fully conscious.

The belief that this was unnecessarily cruel and painful to the animal being sla-ughtered eventually led to the compul-sory adoption of stunning methods in many countries. One of the first camp-aigners on the matter was the eminent physician, Benjamin Ward Richardson,who spent many years of his later work-ing life developing more humane meth-ods of slaughter. As early as 1853, he de-signed a lethal chamber that would gas animals to death relatively painlessly, andhe founded the Model Abattoir Society in 1882 to investigate and campaign for humane methods of slaughter. He even experimented with the use of electric cur-rent at the Royal Polytechnic Institution.

SHELL FISH

Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic inverte-brates used as food, including various species of mollusks, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environments, some kinds are found in freshwater. In addition a few species of land crabs are eaten, for example Cardisoma guanhumi in the Caribbean.

Despite the name, shellfish are not a kind of fish, but are simply water-dwell-ing animals. Many varieties of shellfish (crustaceans in particular) are actually closely related to insects and arachnids, making up one of the main classes of the phylum Arthropod. Cephalopods (squid,

octopus, cuttlefish) and bivalves (clams, oysters) are mollusks, as are snails and slugs for that matter.

Familiar marine mollusks enjoyed as a food source by humans include many species of clams, mussels, oysters, win-kles, and scallops. Some crustaceans commonly eaten are shrimp, lobster, cray-fish, and crabs. Echinoderms are not as frequently harvested for food as mollusksand crustaceans, however sea urchin roe is quite popular in parts of the world.

Most shellfish eat a diet composed prmarily of phytoplankton, zooplankton and few others.

Shellfish are among the most common food allergens.

THECAROLINAS

The culture of the Carolinas is a distinct subset of larger Southern culture. Not-ably, the coastal Carolina region was set-tled by Europeans over a century before the inland regions of the South, and wasinfluenced by the culture of the Carib-bean, especially Barbados; many of the early governors during the unified per-iod were Barbadians. Though the two

states both form part of the South, thereare historically a number of significant differences in the settlement patterns, political development, and economic gro-wth of the two states. For example, dur-ing the Civil War, SC was the first Sou-thern state to secede from the Union, while NC was the last state to secede.

During the war, SC was generally one of the strongest supporters of the Con-federacy. Many North Carolinians (esp-ecially in the western part of the state),

however, refused to support the Confed-eracy at all; they either remained neutral

or covertly supported the Union.

Tobacco is a plant inside of the genus Nicotiana within the Solanaceae family. While there are more than 70 species oftobacco, the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent species N. rus-tica is also widely used around the world.

Dried tobacco leaves are mainly smo-ked in cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco and flavored shisha tobacco. They are also consumed as snuff, chewing tobac-co and dipping tobacco.

Tobacco contains the alkaloid nicotine,a stimulant. Tobacco use is a risk factorfor many diseases, especially those aff-ecting the heart, liver and lungs, and sev-eral cancers. In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) named tobacco as the world’sgreatest cause of death.

TO

BA

CC

OThe English word tobacco originates

from the Spanish and Portuguese word tabaco. The precise origin of the Span-ish/Portuguese word is disputed but it generally thought to have originated, at least in part, from Taino, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean. In Taino, it was said to refer either to a roll of tobac-co leaves, or to the tabago, a kind of Y-shaped pipe for sniffing tobacco smoke also known as snuff.However, similarwords in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian were commonly used from 1410 to de-fine medicinal herbs which are believ-ed to have originated from the Arabic word tabbaq, a word reportedly dating to the 9th century, as the name of vari-ous herbs.

The heart is a muscular organ in hu-mans and other animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients, as well as removing metabolic wastes.

The heart is located in the middle com-partment of the mediastinum in the chest.

In humans, other mammals and birds the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria; and lower leftand right ventricles. Commonly the right atrium and ventricle are referred toget-her as the right heart and their left cou-nterparts as the left heart. Fish in con-trast have two chambers, an atrium and a ventricle, while reptiles have three cha-mbers. In a healthy heart, blood flows one way through the heart due to heart valves, which prevent backflow. The heartis enclosed in a protective sac, the peri-cardium, which also contains a small am-ount of fluid. The wall of the heart is madeup of three layers: epicardium; myocar-dium; and endocardium.

The heart pumps blood through both circulatory systems. Blood low in oxygenfrom the systemic circulation enters the right atrium from the superior and in-ferior vena cavae and passes to the rightventricle. From here it is pumped into the pulmonary circulation, through the lungs where it receives oxygen and givesoff carbon dioxide. Oxygenated blood then returns to the left atrium, passesthrough the left ventricle and is pumpedout through the aorta to the systemic circulation−where the oxygen is used and metabolized to carbon dioxide.

In addition the blood carries nutrients from the liver and gastrointestinal tract to various organs of the body, while tra-nsporting waste to the liver and kidneys.

HEART