),

Albedo (), or reflection coefficient, derived from Latin albedo " whiteness " ( or reflected sunlight ), in turn from albus " white ", is the diffuse reflectivity or reflecting power of a surface.

The earliest certain ancestor of " A " is aleph ( also called ' aleph ), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet ( which, by consisting entirely of consonants, is an abjad rather than a true alphabet ).

1625 ), Peter Paul Rubens

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln ( née Hanks ), in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky ( now LaRue County ).

Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates ( the top four were elected ), though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.

Nevertheless, in 1861, Lincoln justified the war in terms of legalisms ( the Constitution was a contract, and for one party to get out of a contract all the other parties had to agree ), and then in terms of the national duty to guarantee a republican form of government in every state.

Together with Plato and Socrates ( Plato's teacher ), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition ( Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica, Berlin, 1831 – 1870 ), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.

An American in Paris is scored for 3 flutes ( 3rd doubling on piccolo ), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in B flat, bass clarinet in B flat, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B flat, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, wood block, cymbals, low and high tom-toms, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, 4 taxi horns resembling the pitches A, B, C and D, alto saxophone / soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone / soprano saxophone / alto saxophone, baritone saxophone / soprano saxophone / alto saxophone, and strings.

Winning the 1951 Best Picture Oscar and numerous other awards, the film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, featured many tunes of Gershwin, and concluded with an extensive, elaborate dance sequence built around the An American in Paris symphonic poem ( arranged for the film by Johnny Green ), costing $ 500, 000.

It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media ; its equivalents, the Grammy Awards ( for music ), Emmy Awards ( for television ), and Tony Awards ( for theatre ) are modeled after the Academy.

Although there are seven other types of annual awards presented by the Academy ( the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, the Scientific and Engineering Award, the Technical Achievement Award, the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, and the Student Academy Award ) plus two awards that are not presented annually ( the Special Achievement Award in the form of an Oscar statuette and the Honorary Award that may or may not be in the form of an Oscar statuette ), the best known one is the Academy Award of Merit more popularly known as the Oscar statuette.

In order to prepare the role of an important old actress, a theatre student interviews three actresses who were her pupils: an international diva ( Glòria Marc, played by Núria Espert ), a television star ( Assumpta Roca, played by Rosa Maria Sardà ) and a dubbing director ( Maria Caminal, played by Anna Lizaran ).

It is the basis for Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC ), which is used for civil timekeeping all over the Earth's surface, and for Terrestrial Time, which is used for astronomical calculations.

The latter is not to be confused with TA ( NPL ), which denotes an independent atomic time scale, not synchronised to TAI or to anything else.

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures ( BIPM, France ), combines these measurements to retrospectively calculate the weighted average that forms the most stable time scale possible.

This time scale is expressed in the form of tables of differences UTC-UTC ( k ) ( equivalent to TAI-TAI ( k )) for each participating institution k. ( The same circular also gives tables of TAI-TA ( k ), for the various unsynchronised atomic time scales.

Starting from Julian Date 2443144. 5 ( 1 January 1977 00: 00: 00 ), corrections were applied to the output of all participating clocks, so that TAI would correspond to proper time at mean sea level ( the geoid ).

The instant that the gravitational correction started to be applied serves as the epoch for Barycentric Coordinate Time ( TCB ), Geocentric Coordinate Time ( TCG ), and Terrestrial Time ( TT ).

Altruism is a motivation to provide something of value to a party who must be anyone but oneself, while duty focuses on a moral obligation towards a specific individual ( e. g., a god, a king ), or collective ( e. g., a government ).

The term was originally coined in the 19th century by the founding sociologist and philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, and has become a major topic for psychologists ( especially evolutionary psychology researchers ), evolutionary biologists, and ethologists.

In the science of ethology ( the study of animal behaviour ), and more generally in the study of social evolution, altruism refers to behaviour by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor.

He identified four major motives for altruism: altruism to ultimately benefit the self ( egoism ), to ultimately benefit the other person ( altruism ), to benefit a group ( collectivism ), or to uphold a moral principle ( principlism ).