Super car

100 V8 Super cars is the main motor racing series in Australia. A V8 Super car is a five-liter V8 powered sedan, and races are held in all state of Australia as well as New Zealand and China.

The Australian Touring Car Championship evolve into V8 Touring Cars in the near the beginning 1990s. The company AVESCO was chartered to take the business rights of the ATCC from 1997, and imaginary the moniker "V8 Super car". The series is known now by the name "V8 Super car Championship Series", and the victor is awarded the "Australian Touring Car Championship".

Development of the regulations

To the dissatisfaction of a majority of fans who had watched a long history of Ford-Holden battles in Australian touring car categories since the 1960s, international touring car regulations seemed intended to prevent the Australian-built Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon in the early 90s. However, this was avoided with V8 only regulations being drafted, in partnership Ford and Holden, to display case their large Australian made cars.

Nissan who had conquered in the early 90s had their Turbo AWD Skyline GT-R controversially barred from the series, whilst BMW were allowable to carry on. Nissan vowed never to return to touring car racing in Australia again, and a short time later ceased Australian manufacture.

Finally the BMW team of Paul Morris left to head a separate new Australian Super Touring Championship, and in the mid 90s this ST series ran in rivalry to the V8 group. Super Touring with its many makes had the backing of the Australian Racing Drivers Club and sensationally two Bathurst 1000s were held each year in 1997 and 1998, one for V8s and the other for ST. The bulk of sponsorship, driver talent, and fan notice remained with the more popular V-8 group during this era leaving the ASTC to later collapse as an part-time group.

Wood

Wood is the xylem tissue of woody plants, especially trees but also shrubs. Wood from the latter is only formed in small sizes, reducing the diversity of uses. Wood is a hygroscopic, cellular and anisotropic material. Dry wood is composed of fibers of cellulose (40%–50%) and hemicellulose (20%–30%) held together by lignin (25%–30%).
Artists can use wood to make delicate sculptures.Wood has been used by man for millenia for lots of purposes, being many things to many people. One of its main uses is as fuel. It might also be used as a material, for making artworks, boats, buildings, furniture, ships, tools, weapons, etc. Wood has been an important construction material since humans began building shelters, and remains in plentiful use today. Construction wood is normally known as timber in International English, and lumber in American English. Wood can be broken down and be made into chipboard, engineered wood, hardboard, medium-density fibreboard, oriented strand board, paper or used to make other synthetic substances.

Sagebrush

Sagebrush, or Big Sagebrush is the common name for Artemisia tridentata, a shrub or small tree from the composite family (Asteraceae). The name sagebrush is also used for several related members of the genus Artemisia, such as California Sagebrush It is a coarse, hardy silvery-grey bush with yellow flowers and grows in arid sections of the western United States. It is the main vegetation across vast areas of the Great Basin desert. Along rivers or in other relatively wet areas, sagebrush can grow as tall as 10 feet (3 meters).
Sagebrush has a strong pungent fragrance, particularly when wet, which is not unlike common sage. It is, however, dissimilar to common sage and has a bitter taste. It is thought that this odor serves to discourage browsing.
Sagebrush leaves are wedge-shaped, and are attached to the branch by the narrow end. The outer and wider end is usually divided into three lobes (although leaves with two or four lobes are not uncommon), hence the scientific name tridentata. The leaves are enclosed with fine silvery hairs, which are thought to keep the leaf cool and minimize water loss. Most of the leaves are carried year-round, as sagebrush tends to grow in areas where winter precipitation is greater than summer precipitation.
sagebrush leaves compare favorably to alfalfa for livestock nutrition value. However, they also have oils that are toxic to the symbiotic bacteria in the rumen of most ruminants. These oils have the most effect on cattle. Cattle that resort to sagebrush due to the lack of other fodder in the winter often freeze to death before starving, as they rely in large part on the heat of their digestive action for warmth. Ranchers call this condition "hollow belly". Sheep can stand moderate consumption of sagebrush leaves, especially the fresh spring buds. Pronghorn are the only large herbivore to browse sagebrush extensively. As pronghorn are the only remaining big herbivore that evolved along with sagebrush (deer are a more recent arrival from Asia), this is not surprising. There is speculation that some of the herbivores that went extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene such as the Ground Sloth or the American Camel were also capable of browsing sagebrush.
Sagebrush flowers in the late summer or early fall. The flowers are yellow and are carried in long, slender clusters.

Dal Lake

The Dal Lake is a famous lake in Srinagar, Kashmir, in Indian controlled Kashmir . The lake itself is linked to a number of other lakes of the Kashmir valley. It is well known for its shikaras or house boats. The lake spans 18 square Km, and is separated by causeways into four basins, called Gagribal, Lokut Dal, Bod Dal and Nagin. Lokut-dal and Bod-dal have an island each in the centre, known as Rup Lank (or Char Chinari) and Sona Lank respectively. Along most of the shore of the Lake is a boulevard, lined with Mughal-era gardens, parks, and hotels. During the winter season the lake sometimes freezes over.
Apart from the houseboats, the Lake and Waterways Dal Authority allows kayaking, canoeing, water surfing and licensed angling on the lake.
With the onset of militancy in the state, tourism dwindled in the 1990s; however after concerted efforts by the authorities, tourist inflow has somewhat improved. Wi-Fi access was implemented across the lake in November 2003, making it the first lake in the world to give wireless connectivity.Sewage, Water hyacinths and silt are the major problems affecting the lake.

Spider silk

Spider silk is a fibre secreted by spiders. Spider silk is a remarkably physically powerful material. Its tensile strength is similar to that of high-grade steel — according to Nature , spider silk has a tensile strength of approximately 1.3 GPa, while one source lists a tensile strength for one form of steel at 1.65 GPa. However, spider silk is much less dense than steel; its ratio of tensile strength to density is perhaps 5 times better than steel — as strong as Aramid filaments, such as Twaron or Kevlar. In fact, a strand of spider silk long sufficient to circle the earth would weigh less than 16 ounces (less than 460 grams).
Spiders usually use their silk to make structures, either for protection for their offspring, or for predation on other creatures. They can also suspend themselves using their silk, in general for the same reasons.
The Trapdoor spider will burrow into the ground and weave a trapdoor-like structure with spindles around so it can tell when prey arrives and take it by surprise.
Many small spiders use silk threads for ballooning. They extrude several threads into the air and let themselves become carried away with upward winds. Although most rides will end a few meters later, it seems to be a ordinary way for spiders to invade islands. Many sailors have reported that spiders have been caught in their ship's sails, even when far from land.

Parachute operation and landing

Choosing when to deploy the parachute is a substance of safety. A parachute should be deployed high enough to give the parachutist time to switch a malfunction, should one occur. Two thousand five hundred feet is the practical minimum for advanced skydivers. In freefall, skydivers monitor their altimeters to decide when to break off from the configuration (if applicable) and when to open their parachutes. Many skydivers open higher to put into practice flying their parachute. On a "hop-and-pop," a jump in which the parachute is instantly deployed upon exiting the aircraft, it is not uncommon for a skydiver to be under canopy as high as 4000 or 5000 feet.
Flying the parachute has two basic challenges: to land where considered, often on a target; and to avoid injury. On a more advanced note, some skydivers enjoy performing aerobatic maneuvers with parachutes. An example of this would be the "Swoop", an extremely exhilarating, but dangerous skill which entails a fast speed approach towards the ground, and then levelling off a couple of feet above the ground to cover as much distance as possible (as much as 600 feet), in a fast horizontal swoop.
A modern parachute or canopy "wing" can glide large distances. Elliptical canopies go faster and farther, and some small, very loaded canopies glide faster than a man can run, which can make them very challenging to land. A highly skilled skydiver using a very small canopy can achieve over 60 mph horizontal speeds in landing.
A good landing will not have any uneasiness at all, and will land the skydiver within a few feet of his intended location. In competitions, champion accuracy skydivers regularly land less than two inches from the center of a target.
Nowadays, most of the skydiving connected injuries happen under a fully opened and functioning parachute, the most common reasons for these injuries are badly-executed, radical maneuvers near to the ground, like hook turns, or too-low or too-high landing flares.

Giant panda

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) ("black-and-white cat-foot") is a mammal classified in the bear family, Ursidae, native to central and southern China.It is easily known by its large, distinctive black patches around the eyes, ears and on its rotund body. Though technically a carnivore, the panda has a diet which is 98% bamboo. However, they may eat other foods such as honey, eggs, fish, and yams.
The Giant Panda is an endangered animal; an estimated 3,000 pandas live in the wildand some 221 were reported to live in captivity at the end of 2006 in China,with twenty pandas living outside of China. However, reports show that the numbers of wild panda are on the rise.The giant panda has long been a most wanted of the public, at least partly on account of the fact that the species has an appealing baby-like cuteness that makes it seem to resemble a living teddy bear. The fact that it is regularly depicted reclining peacefully eating bamboo, as opposed to hunting, also adds to its image of innocence. Though the giant panda is often assumed docile because of their cuteness, they have been known to attack humans, usually assumed to be out of irritation rather than predatory behavior.