An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice or come to rest on the seabed in shallower water. The word iceberg is a partial loan translation from Dutch ijsberg, literally meaning ice mountain. Icebergs are often referred to simply as bergs.

Typically, only one-tenth of the volume of an iceberg is above water. The shape of the under water portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface. This has led to the expression “tip of the iceberg”, generally applied to a problem or difficulty, meaning that the visible trouble is only a small manifestation of a larger problem.

Icebergs generally range from 3–250 feet above sea level and weigh 100,000 to 200,000 tons. The tallest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was 550 ft above sea level, making it the height of a 55-story building. 

Though usually confined by winds and currents to move close to the coast, the largest icebergs recorded are calved, or broken off from, the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

When an iceberg melts, it makes a fizzing sound called “Bergie Seltzer.” This sound is made when compressed air bubbles trapped in the iceberg pop. The bubbles come from air trapped in snow layers that later become glacial ice. Ice campers who camp on top of flat or hollowed icebergs are known as icebergers.

There was no system in place before 1912 to track icebergs to guard against ship collisions. The sinking of the RMS Titanic, which caused the deaths of more than 1,500 of its 2,223 passengers, created the demand for a system to observe icebergs. For the remainder of the ice season of that year, the United States Navy patrolled the waters and monitored ice flow. 

Aerial surveillance of the seas in the early 1930s allowed for the development of charter systems that could accurately detail the ocean currents and iceberg locations. In 1945, experiments tested the effectiveness of radar in detecting icebergs. A decade later, oceanographic monitoring outposts were established for the purpose of collecting data. These outposts continue to serve in environmental studies.

El Chupacabra is a legendary cryptid rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter’s Latin American communities. The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats.

Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1990 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail. Biologists and wildlife management officials view the Chupacabra as an urban legend.

The first reported attacks occurred in March 1995 in Puerto Rico. In this attack, eight sheep were discovered dead, each with three puncture wounds in the chest area and completely drained of blood. Initially it was suspected that the killings were committed by a Satanic cult. Later, more killings were reported around the island, and many farms reported loss of animal life. Each of the animals had their bodies bled dry through a series of small circular incisions.

In July 2004, a rancher near San Antonio, Texas, killed a hairless dog-like creature, which was attacking his livestock. This animal, initially given the name the Elmendorf Beast, was later determined by DNA assay conducted at University of California, Davis to be a coyote with demodectic or sarcoptic mange. In October 2004, two more carcasses were found in the same area. Biologists in Texas examined samples from the two carcasses and determined they were also coyotes suffering from very severe cases of mange.

In April 2006, MosNews reported that the chupacabra was spotted in Russia for the first time. Reports from Central Russia beginning in March 2005 tell of a beast that kills animals and sucks out their blood. Thirty-two turkeys were killed and drained overnight. Reports later came from neighboring villages when 30 sheep were killed and had their blood drained. Finally, eyewitnesses were able to describe the chupacabra. In May 2006, experts were determined to track the animal down.

On January 11, 2008, a sighting was reported at the province of Capiz in the Philippines. Some of the residents from the barangay believed that it was the chupacabra that killed eight chickens. The owner of the chickens saw a dog-like animal attacking his chickens.

The most common description of Chupacabra is a reptile-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. This form stands approximately 3 to 4 feet high, and stands and hops in a similar fashion to a kangaroo. In at least one sighting, the creature was reported to hop 20 feet. This variety is said to have a dog or panther-like nose and face, a forked tongue, and large fangs. It is said to hiss and screech when alarmed, as well as leave behind a sulfuric stench. When it screeches, some reports assert that the chupacabra’s eyes glow an unusual red which gives the witnesses nausea.

Another description of Chupacabra, although not as common, describes a strange breed of wild dog. This form is mostly hairless and has a pronounced spinal ridge, unusually pronounced eye sockets, fangs, and claws. It is claimed that this breed might be an example of a dog-like reptile. Unlike conventional predators, the chupacabra is said to drain all of the animal’s blood (and sometimes organs) through a single hole or two holes.

Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Marie von Sivers in the early 20th century. Primarily a performance art, it is also used in education and as a movement therapy. The word eurythmy stems from Greek roots meaning beautiful or harmonious rhythm. The term was used by Greek and Roman architects to refer to the harmonious proportions of a design or building.

The gestures that build the basic movement repertoire of a eurythmist are connected to the sounds and rhythms of language, to the tonal experience of music, to fundamental soul experiences such as joy and sorrow. Once this fundamental repertoire is mastered, it can be composed into free artistic expressions. The eurythmist also works to cultivate a feeling for the qualities of straight lines and curves, the directions of movement in space, contraction and expansion, and color.

The element of color is also emphasized both through the costuming, usually given characteristic colors for a piece, and formed of long, loose fabrics that accentuate the movements rather than the bodily form, and through the lighting, which saturates the space and changes with the moods of the piece. Copper eurythmy rods and copper balls are used in various eurythmy exercises, including therapeutic exercises.

Eurythmy’s aim is to bring the artists’ expressive movement and both the performers’ and audience’s feeling experience into harmony with a piece’s content. Eurythmy is thus sometimes called visible music or visible speech, expressions that originate with its founder, Rudolf Steiner, who described eurythmy as an art of the soul.

When performing eurythmy with music, the three major elements of music, melody, harmony and rhythm, are all expressed. The melody is primarily conveyed through expressing its rise and fall, the specific pitches, and the intervallic qualities present. Harmony is expressed through movement between tension and release, as expressions of dissonance and consonance, and between the more inwardly directed minor mood and the outwardly directed major mood.

Breaths or pauses are expressed through a larger or smaller movement in space, giving new impulse to what follows. Beat is conveyed through greater emphasis of downbeats, or those beats upon which stress is normally placed. Beat is generally treated as a subsidiary element, expressed through greater emphasis on the down beats. Eurythmy has only occasionally been done to popular music, in which beat plays a large role.

The timbre of individual instruments is brought into the quality both of the tonal gestures and the whole movement of the eurythmist. Usually there will be a different eurythmist or group of eurythmists expressing each instrument, for example in chamber or symphonic music.

Eurythmy is used therapeutically, normally on the advice of a physician, to compensate for somatic or psychological imbalances. The aim is to strengthen the organism’s salutogenic capacity to heal itself. Eurythmy has also been used in many social contexts, including workplaces and prisons, with the aim of rejuvenating individuals and their social relationships.

Miraculous resurrection of one type or another has been a recurrent theme or central doctrine of many religions. The accounts represent the resurrection of individuals, as well as a general resurrection of humanity. Christianity also uses the term to refer to God’s resurrection of Jesus. Accounts of resurrection also occur in other religious traditions.

The earliest known recurrent theme of resurrection was in ancient Egyptian religion and it was especially focused upon an individual in the cults of Isis and Osiris. A cyclic dying-and-rising god motif was prevalent throughout ancient Mesopotamian and classical literature and practice.

There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection has been demonstrated on at least two famous occasions in Chan or Zen Buddhist tradition. One is the famous resurrection story of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.

In the literal sense of the word, resurrection refers to the event of a dead person completely returning to life. Thus, it is not to be confused with things like immortality in which the soul continues to live after death, free of the body.

The resurrection of Jesus is the central doctrine in Christianity. The day of Jesus’ resurrection is actually the 3rd day after Passover, which was the day that Jesus died, fullfilling all of the prophesies concerning the Lamb of God that would pay the cost for the sins of the world. Passover was the day when the Hebrew people would bring a lamb for sacrifice that would attone for the sins of their households.

The word Easter is not from any accurate translaltion, as it was placed into the bible by the Roman government during their inaccuate translation concerning the resurrection. Cultural elements, such as the Easter Bunny and Easter egg hunts, have become part of the holiday’s modern celebrations, and those aspects are often celebrated by many non-Christians as well. There are also some Christian denominations that do not celebrate Easter.

The resurrected Jesus Christ commissioned his followers to, among other things, raise the dead. Throughout Christian history up to the present day there have been various accounts of Christians raising people from the dead. In the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death, including the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days.

Traditionally, Easter eggs, hard-boiled eggs dyed bright red to symbolize the spilt Blood of Christ and the promise of eternal life, are cracked together to celebrate the opening of the Tomb of Christ.

Agape is one of several Greek words translated into English as love. The word has been used in different ways by a variety of contemporary and ancient sources, including Biblical authors. Many have thought that this word represents divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love.

Greek philosophers at the time of Plato and other ancient authors have used forms of the word to denote love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity. This is in contrast to philia, an affection that could denote either brotherhood or generally non-sexual affection, and eros, an affection of a sexual nature.

The term agape is rarely used in ancient manuscripts, but was used by the early Christians to refer to the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, which they were committed to reciprocating and practicing towards God and among one another.

The word has been expounded on by many Christian writers in a specifically Christian context. Thomas Jay Oord has defined agape as an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being. Oord also argues that agape is not the only form of Christian love. Philia and eros can also be forms of love appropriate for Christians to express.

Agape received a broader usage under later Christian writers as the word that specifically denoted Christian love or charity. The New Testament provides a number of definitions and examples of agape that generally expand on the meanings derived from ancient texts, denoting brotherly love, love of one’s spouse or children, and the love of God for all people.

In the New Testament the noun agape is often used to describe God’s love. However, the verb form agapao is at times used in a negative sense, where it retains its more general meaning of affection rather than divine love. The word agape in its plural form is used in the New Testament to describe a meal or feast eaten by early Christians. It is sometimes believed to be either related to the Eucharist, or another term used for the Eucharist.

A planetesimal is a solid object arising during the accumulation of planets whose internal strength is dominated by self gravity and whose orbital dynamic is not significantly affected by gas drag. This corresponds to objects with a diameter larger than approximately 1 mile in the solar nebula. The word planetesimal comes from the mathematical concept infinitesimal and literally means an ultimately small fraction of a planet.

While the name is always applied to small bodies during the process of planet formation, some scientists also use the term planetesimal as a general term to refer to many small solar system bodies such as asteroids which are left over from the formation process.

In the current Solar System, these small bodies are usually also classified by dynamics and composition, and may have subsequently evolved to become comets or Kuiper belt objects. In other words, some planetesimals became other populations once planetary formation had finished, and may be referred to by either or both names.

It is generally believed that about 3.8 billion years ago, after a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, most of the planetesimals within the solar system had either been ejected from the solar system entirely, into distant eccentric orbits such as the Oort cloud, or had collided with larger objects due to the regular gravitational nudges from the planets between Jupiter and Neptune. A few planetesimals may have been captured as moons, such as the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, and many of the small high-inclination moons of the Jovian planets.

A widely accepted theory of planet formation states that planets form out of dust grains that collide and stick to form larger and larger bodies. When the bodies reach sizes of approximately one kilometer, then they can attract each other directly through their mutual gravity, aiding further growth into moon-sized protoplanets enormously. This is how planetesimals are often defined.

Bodies that are smaller than planetesimals must rely on Brownian motion or turbulent motions in the gas to cause the collisions that can lead to sticking. Alternatively, planetesimals can form in a very dense layer of dust grains that undergoes a collective gravitational instability in the mid-plane of a protoplanetary disk. Many planetesimals may eventually break apart during violent collisions, but a few of the largest planetesimals can survive such encounters and continue to grow into protoplanets and later, planets.

Planetesimals that have survived to the current day are valuable to scientists because they contain information about the birth of our solar system. Although their exteriors are subjected to intense solar radiation that can alter their chemistry, their interiors contain pristine material essentially untouched since the planetesimal was formed. This makes each planetesimal a “time capsule”, and their composition can tell us of the conditions in the Solar Nebula from which our planetary system was formed.

Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another’s suffering. It is often the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. Compassion is considered in all the major religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues.

The noted American monk Bhikkhu Bodhi states that compassion supplies the complement to loving-kindness, whereas loving-kindness has the characteristic of wishing for the happiness and welfare of others, compassion has the characteristic of wishing that others be free from suffering, a wish to be extended without limits to all living beings. It arises by entering into the subjectivity of others, by sharing their interiority in a deep and total way. It springs up by considering that all beings, like ourselves, wish to be free from suffering, yet despite their wishes continue to be harassed by pain, fear and sorrow.

It is emphasised that in order to manifest effective compassion for others it is first of all necessary to be able to experience and fully appreciate one’s own suffering and to have, as a consequence, compassion for oneself. The Buddha is reported to have said, “It is possible to travel the whole world in search of one who is more worthy of compassion than oneself. No such person can be found.”

Compassion for all life, human and non-human, is central to the Jain tradition. Though all life is considered sacred, human life is deemed the highest form of earthly existence. To kill any person, no matter their crime, is considered unimaginably abhorrent. It is the only substantial religious tradition that requires both monks and laity to be vegetarian. It is suggested that certain strains of the Hindu tradition became vegetarian due to strong Jain influences.

The Jain tradition’s stance on nonviolence, however, goes far beyond vegetarianism. Jains refuse food obtained with unnecessary cruelty. Many practice a lifestyle similar to veganism in response to factory farming. Jains run animal shelters all over India. Jain monks go to inordinate lengths to avoid killing any living creature, sweeping the ground in front of them in order to avoid killing insects, and even wearing a face mask to avoid inhaling the smallest fly.

The life of Jesus embodies for Christians the very essence of compassion. Christ’s example challenges Christians to forsake their own desires and to act compassionately towards others, particularly those in need or distress. In the parable of The Good Samaritan he holds up to his followers the ideal of compassionate conduct. The heritage within Western Christendom of compassion as the principle of charity has resulted in recent times in the growth of remarkable charitable phenomena such as Oxfam and Live Aid, with global reach and budgets of millions of dollars. True Christian compassion, say the Gospels, should extend to all, even to the extent of loving one’s enemies.

The Dalai Lama has said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Salutogenesis is a term coined by Aaron Antonovsky, a Professor of Medical Sociology. The term describes an approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease. More specifically, the model is concerned with the relationship between health, stress and coping. His theories reject the traditional medical dichotomy separating health and illness. He describes the relationship as a continuous variable, what he called the health-ease versus dis-ease continuum.

Antonovsky developed the term from his studies of how people manage stress and stay well. He observed that stress is ubiquitous, but not all individuals have negative health outcomes in response to stress. Instead, some people achieve health despite their exposure to potentially disabling stress factors.

In his 1979 book Health, Stress and Coping, he described a variety of influences that led him to the question of how people survive, adapt and overcome in the face of even the most punishing life stress experiences. In his theory, whether a stress factor will be either pathogenic, neutral or salutary, depends on what he called generalized resistance resources or GRRs. A GRR is any coping resource that is effective in avoiding or combating a range of psychosocial stressors, resources such as money, ego-strength and social support.

Antonovsky’s formulation was that the GRRs enabled individuals to make sense of and manage events. He argued that over time, in response to positive experiences provided by successful utilization of different GRRs, an individual would develop an attitude that was in itself the essential tool for coping.

The sense of coherence is a theoretical formulation that provides a central explanation for the role of stress in human functioning. Beyond the specific stress factors that one might encounter in life, and beyond the perception and response to those events, what determines whether stress will cause harm is whether or not the stress violates the sense of coherence.

In his formulation, the sense of coherence has three components:

Comprehensibility: a belief that things happen in an orderly and predictable fashion and a sense that you can understand events in your life and reasonably predict what will happen in the future.

Manageability: a belief that you have the you have the skills or ability, the support, the help, or the resources necessary to take care of things, and that things are manageable and within your control.

Meaningfulness: a belief that things in life are interesting and a source of satisfaction, that things are really worth it and that there is good reason or purpose to care about what happens.

The third element is the most important. If a person believes there is no reason to persist and survive and confront challenges, if they have no sense of meaning, then they will have no motivation to comprehend and manage events. His essential argument is that salutogenesis depends on experiencing a strong sense of coherence. His research demonstrated that the sense of coherence predicts positive health outcomes.

Antonovsky viewed his work as primarily addressed to the fields of health psychology, behavioral medicine and the sociology of health. The term has been adopted in the medical fields of healthcare and preventive medicine. It has also been been adopted as a term to describe traditional concepts in alternative medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy and anthroposophical medicine.