The alpaca (Vicugna pacos) is a species of South American camelid descended from the vicuña. It is similar to, and often confused with, the llama. However, alpacas are often noticeably smaller than llamas. The two animals are closely related and can successfully cross-breed. Alpacas and llamas are related to the guanaco. There are two breeds of alpaca: the Suri alpaca and the Huacaya alpaca. Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile at an altitude of 3,500 to 5,000 metres (11,000 to 16,000 feet) above sea...

Ornithischia () is an extinct clade of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name Ornithischia, or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek stem ornith- (ὀρνιθ-), meaning "of a bird", and ischion (ἴσχιον), plural ischia, meaning "hip joint". However, birds are only distantly related to this group as birds are theropod dinosaurs.Ornithischians with well known anatomical adaptations include the ceratopsians or "horn-faced" dinosaurs (e.g. Triceratops), armored dinosaurs (Thyreophora) such as stegosaurs...

Therizinosaurs (once called segnosaurs) were small to giant-sized, mainly herbivorous, theropod dinosaurs that have been found across the Early to Late Cretaceous deposits in Mongolia, China and North America. Various features of the forelimbs, skull and pelvis unite these finds as both theropods and maniraptorans, close relatives to birds. The representative genus, Therizinosaurus, is derived from the Greek θερίζω (therízo, meaning scythe, reap or cut) and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning lizard). The older representative, Segnosaurus, is derived from the Latin word segnis (meaning slow) and the Greek...

The Siberian Route (Russian: Сибирский тракт; Sibirsky trakt), also known as the Moscow Highway (Moskovsky trakt, Московский тракт) and Great Highway (Bolshoi trakt, Большой тракт), was a historic route that connected European Russia to Siberia and China. == History == The construction of the road was decreed by the Tsar and was not finished until the mid-19th century. Previously, Siberian transport had been mostly by river via Siberian River Routes. The first Russian settlers arrived in Siberia by the Cherdyn river route which was superseded by the Babinov overland route in the late 1590s. The...

The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising (Russian: Восстание декабристов, tr. Vosstanie dekabristov) took place in Imperial Russia on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Tsar Nicholas I's assumption of the throne the day before, as his elder brother Constantine had removed himself from the line of succession. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the Decembrists (Russian: Декабристы, romanized: Dekabristy). == Union of Salvation and Union of Prosperity == At first, many officers were encouraged...

The Persian Constitutional Revolution (Persian: مشروطیت‎ Mashrūtiyyat, or انقلاب مشروطه Enghelāb-e Mashrūteh), also known as the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, took place between 1905 and 1911. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Persia (Iran) during the Qajar dynasty.The revolution opened the way for fundamental change in Persia, heralding the modern era. It was a period of unprecedented debate in a burgeoning press, and new economic opportunities. Many groups fought to shape the course of the revolution, and all segments of society were in some way changed by it. The...

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number of shares, effectively nationalizing the company. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) when Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asked foreign countries to refer to Persia by its endonym Iran. In 1954 it was renamed again to the British Petroleum Company (BP), one of the antecedents of the modern...

EEG microstates are transient, patterned, quasi-stable states or patterns of an electroencephalogram. These tend to last anywhere from milliseconds to seconds and are hypothesized to be the most basic instantiations of human neurological tasks, and are thus nicknamed "the atoms of thought". Microstate estimation and analysis was originally done using alpha band activity, though broader bandwidth EEG bands are now typically used. The quasi-stability of microstates means that the "global [EEG] topography is fixed, but strength might vary and polarity invert." == History == The concept of temporal...