The artist Jason de Caires Taylor creates human sculptures in positions as state of high spirit and with objects of everyday life, and put on the seabed. With time the sculptures will become part of the environment, even becoming artificial coral reefs that are home to marine life, the work of this artist joins two things i love, art and environment, it's breathtaking! take a look
Noble tree is a favorite material for the work of many sculptors. What age is growing, standing still in the same place, waiting to be used for artistic work… These beautiful, wooden sculptures are fabulous as woods described in so many stories. Wizards, forest fairies, Mogli… living in the woods, and in this case are like Pinocchio and made of wood.
Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, astronomers observed the planets' parent stars -- called HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 -- tens of light years away from our solar system.
One of the massive, dying stars has an additional mystery object orbiting it, according to team leader Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, who, in 1992, became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. The new research is expected to shed light on the evolution of planetary systems around dying stars. It also will help astronomers to understand how metal content influences the behavior of dying stars. The research will be published in December in the Astrophysical Journal. The first author of the paper is Sara Gettel, a graduate student from Penn State's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the paper is co-authored by three graduate students from Poland.
The three newly-discovered planetary systems are more evolved than our own solar system. "Each of the three stars is swelling and has already become a red giant -- a dying star that soon will gobble up any planet that happens to be orbiting too close to it," Wolszczan said. "While we certainly can expect a similar fate for our own Sun, which eventually will become a red giant and possibly will consume our Earth, we won't have to worry about it happening for another five-billion years."
Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. Penn State is a major partner in the design, construciton, and operation of this telescope, which is one of the largest in the world. In 1992, Wolszczan became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. Credit: Marty Harris/McDonald Obs./UT-Austin.
Wolszczan also said that one of the massive, dying stars -- BD +48 738 -- is accompanied not only by an enormous, Jupiter-like planet, but also by a second, mystery object. According to the team, this object could be another planet, a low-mass star, or -- most interestingly -- a brown dwarf, which is a star-like body that is intermediate in mass between the coolest stars and giant planets. "We will continue to watch this strange object and, in a few more years, we hope to be able to reveal its identity," Wolszczan said.
The three dying stars and their accompanying planets have been particularly useful to the research team because they have helped to illuminate such ongoing mysteries as how dying stars behave depending on their metallicity. "First, we know that giant stars like HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 are especially noisy. That is, they appear jittery, because they oscillate much more than our own, much-younger Sun. This noisiness disturbs the observation process, making it a challenge to discover any companion planets," Wolszczan said. "Still, we persevered and we eventually were able to spot the planets orbiting each massive star."
Comparison of the current-day Sun and the Sun as a red giant in the future. Credit: User:Mysid, User:Mrsanitazier.
Once Wolszczan and his team had confirmed that HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 did indeed have planets orbiting around them, they measured the metal content of the stars and found some interesting correlations. "We found a negative correlation between a star's metallicity and its jitteriness. It turns out that the less metal content each star had, the more noisy and jittery it was," Wolszczan explained. "Our own Sun vibrates slightly too, but because it is much younger, its atmosphere is much less turbulent."
Wolszczan also pointed out that, as stars swell to the red-giant stage, planetary orbits change and even intersect, and close-in planets and moons eventually get swallowed and sucked up by the dying star. For this reason, it is possible that HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 once might have had more planets in orbit, but that these planets were consumed over time. "It's interesting to note that, of these three newly-discovered stars, none has a planet at a distance closer than 0.6 astronomical units -- that is, 0.6 the distance of the Earth to our Sun," Wolszczan said. "It might be that 0.6 is the magic number at which any closer distance spells a planet's demise."
Observations of dying stars, their metal content, and how they affect the planets around them could provide clues about the fate of our own solar system. "Of course, in about five-billion years, our Sun will become a red giant and likely will swallow up the inner planets and the planets' accompanying moons. However, if we're still around in, say, one-billion to three-billion years, we might consider taking up residence on Jupiter's moon, Europa, for the remaining couple billion years before that happens," Wolszczan said. "Europa is an icy wasteland and it is certainly not habitable now, but as the Sun continues to heat up and expand, our Earth will become too hot, while at the same time, Europa will melt and may spend a couple billion years in the Goldilocks zone -- not to hot, not to- old, covered by vast, beautiful oceans."
The library contains a rich archive, as rare books and documents. the Unesco project, featured collaboration of institutions from various countries.
The World Digital Library (WDL), operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress, is now available on the Internet. In order to facilitate navigation, the information is divided by continent. Thirty-two institutions from various countries contributed to form the collection, which is rich. Are maps, rare documents, books. Cave paintings, photos and pictures, like those of Japan.
The WDL has stated that its mission is to promote international and intercultural understanding, expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences, and to build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and among countries.
The library intends to make available on the Internet, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.
The search can be done by period, theme, or places - all available in seven languages, including English of course, and in some cases you can hear the information. Click here to access the World Digital Library.
A European digital library for all – researchers, professionals and the public. A single access point to Europe's cultural heritage.
Europeana is the common access point to the collections of European libraries, archives and museums from all around Europe. The portal acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, the works of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are some of the highlights on Europeana.
Europeana is a simple but powerful tool for finding resources from all over Europe. All data will be available for everyone to consult – and to use, copyright permitting. For example, the library is a rich source of materials for the creative and information industries in developing new products and services, for tourism and for teaching.
Experience shows that online library services work. Gallica, the online section of the French National Library, gets 4 000 downloads a day and 1.5 million hits a month.
Around 1500 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana. These range from major international names like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library and the Louvre to regional archives and local museums from every member of the EU. Together, their assembled collections let users explore Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage from prehistory to the modern day.
Adding material and improving search tools:
After the launch of the prototype, Europeana has developed into a fully operational service, and more content is continuously added to the library. At the end of 2010 over 15 million digital items are accessible.
New features – such as annotation tools for researchers – are being developed and added to Europeana in response to user demand. And in due course, the intention is for users to contribute materials too (through an open-source approach, like Wikipedia ).
In its Strategic Plan for 2011-2015, which was published in January 2011, Europeana outlines four strategic tracks that will shape its further development:
Aggregate – to build the open trusted source for European cultural and scientific heritage content;
Facilitate – to support the cultural and scientific heritage sector through knowledge transfer, innovation and advocacy;
Distribute – to make heritage available to users wherever they are, whenever they want it;
Engage – to cultivate new ways for users to participate in their cultural and scientific heritage.
The Europeana Foundation is the governing body of the Europeana service. Its members are the presidents and chairs of European associations for cultural heritage and information associations.
The Foundation promotes collaboration between museums, archives, audiovisual collections and libraries so that users can have integrated access to their content through Europeana and other services.
The Foundation is incorporated under Dutch law as Stichting Europeana and is housed within the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands. It provides a legal framework for the governance of Europeana, employing the staff, bidding for funding and enabling the sustainability of the service.
The executive director of the Europeana Foundation is Jill Cousins
Europeana Projects.
There are a number of projects – the Europeana Group – that are contributing technology solutions and content to Europeana.[8] These projects are run by different cultural heritage institutions, and are part-funded by the European Commission’s eContentplus programme eContentplus programme and the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP).
The Europeana Group projects are:
Europeana v1.0 is developing a fully functional Europeana website.
APEnet – Archives Portal Europe
ASSETS aims to improve the usability of Europeana.
ATHENA aggregates museum content and promotes standards for museum digitisation and metadata.
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Europe
CARARE aggregates content for the archaeology and architectural heritage.
ECLAP will build a large digital library of performing arts and UGC.
Europeana Connect adds sound material to Europeana.
European Film Gateway (EFG)
Europeana Libraries will add over 5 million digital objects to Europeana from 19 of Europe’s leading research and university libraries.
Europeana Local brings content from regional and local content holders.
Europeana Regia is digitising royal manuscripts from Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
EURO-Photo digitises photographs from news agencies.
EUscreen contributes television material to Europeana.
Europeana Travel will bring material associated with travel, trade, tourism and migration into Europeana.
Heritage of People’s Europe (HOPE) aims to improve access to digital social history collections.
JUDAICA Europeana looks at the Jewish contribution to Europe's cultural heritage.
Linked Heritage aims to add substantial new content from commercial and public sectors, and enrich Europeana's metadata with a "linked data" approach.
Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO)
Natural Europe connects the digital collections of natural history museums.
OpenUp! brings Europe's natural history heritage to Europeana
PATHS
The European Library aggregates the content of national libraries.
thinkMOTION gathers content from the field of motion systems.
Europeana and the projects contributing content to Europeana.eu have been funded by the European Commission under eContentplus, the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) and similar programmes. In order to participate in a wide range of projects, which are only funded by the Commission for 50-100% of the costs and do not include overheads, Europeana is also reliant for an element of its funding on Member States’ ministries of culture and education.
The European digital library does not bring together content into a single database but Europeana is a single access point, linking up to databases all over Europe. Users no longer need to search digital libraries individually to find what they are looking for.
The single access point ("portal") is run by Europeana Foundation. Created on 8 November 2007, the Foundation is a collection of European cultural institutions – all committed to the project but retaining their independence, for example in hiring staff or seeking sponsorship.
Its founding members include European associations of libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual archives. The operational structure supporting Europeana is hosted by the Dutch National Library.
What does "EUROPEANA" mean?
EUROPEANA was chosen as a name of Graeco-Latin origin meaning "European collection", to refer to its rich cultural content and to the different types of media available (books, newspapers, photos, maps, films and sound). Major libraries and important collections about authors or places have often been given names with a similar latinate construction (e.g. Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Gallica, Belgica, Bodleiana, Luxemburgensia, Kantiana, Voltairiana).
