Knightia - Facts and Figures

Knightia - Facts and Figures Name: Knightia; pronounced NYE-tee-ah Habitat: Rivers and lakes of North America Historical Epoch: Eocene (55-35 million years ago) Size and Weight: About six inches long and a few ounces Diet: Small marine organisms Distinguishing Characteristics: Small size; herring-like appearance    About Knightia Most fossils from the Eocene epoch are well out of the reach of ordinary consumers, but not so the small prehistoric fish Knightia, thousands of specimens of which have been discovered in Wyomings Green River formation (in fact, Knightia is Wyomings official state fossil). Thanks to their abundance, its possible to buy a well-preserved Knightia fossil for under $100, a bargain compared to the average dinosaur! (Buyer beware, though: whenever you purchase a fossil, especially online, its essential to check its provenancethat is, whether it really is a genuine specimen of Knightia or simply a baby salmon that has been crushed between two bricks.) Part of the reason there are so many Knightia fossils is that there were so many Knightiathis six-inch-long fish assembled in vast schools throughout the lakes and rivers of Eocene North America, and lay near the bottom of the aquatic food chain (meaning that these huge populations of Knightia sustained larger, scarcer predators, including the prehistoric fish Diplomystus and Mioplosus). Befitting its small size, Knightia itself fed not on fish, but on tiny marine organisms like plankton and diatoms, and it was very herring-like in its appearance and behaviorso much so that it was originally classified as a species of the herring genus Clupea.

Bits and Bytes

Bits and Bytes Bits and Bytes Bits and Bytes By Simon Kewin In its election manifesto, one of the major political parties in the UK recently promised to provide virtually every household in the country a broadband service of at least 2 megabytes per second by 2012. The â€Å"2 megabytes per second† was actually a mistake. A speed of two megabytes per second is the same way as saying 16 megabits per second, a speed which is technically feasible, but unlikely to be universally available in the UK any time soon. The sentence was altered in later versions of the manifesto to the much more realistic â€Å"2 megabits per second†. The typo, however, highlights how easy it is to make mistakes using technical language where words often have very specific meanings. If you’re using terminology from medicine, computers, statistics etc., it pays to check that you have each term correct. In this case, the original authors confused the words bit and byte. Both are units of computer memory/storage. A bit is the smallest amount of storage, a 0 or a 1, the word formed from a blend of â€Å"binary† and â€Å"digit†. A byte, on the other hand, is a collection of bits – almost always eight of them. So, a kilobyte is eight times larger than a kilobit. While computer memory is generally expressed as a number of bytes (kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes etc.), network speeds are generally expressed as a number of bits per second (kilobits, megabits, gigabits etc.) The terms are very easy to confuse especially when they are abbreviated to just â€Å"meg†, â€Å"gig† etc. as both sets sometimes are. But, a broadband speed of â€Å"2 meg† would always mean â€Å"2 megabits per second† and never â€Å"2 megabytes per second†. Abbreviations are often used for these terms, and the same care needs to be taken. For example, the abbreviation for megabyte is MB whereas the abbreviation for megabit is Mb. The case of the â€Å"b† makes all the difference. The same is true for kilobytes/kilobits (KB/Kb), gigabytes/gigabits (GB/Gb) and so forth. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Words for Facial ExpressionsSelect vs. SelectedThe Difference Between "Shade" and "Shadow"