Hegemony ( (listen), UK also , US also ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th c. BC – AD 6th c.), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the hegemon city-state over other city-states. In the 19th century, hegemony denoted the "social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu" and "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society".In theories of imperialism, the hegemonic order dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government. The term hegemonism denoted the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over other countries, e.g. the hegemony of the Great Powers established with European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and...

A pellicle mirror is an ultra-thin, ultra-lightweight semi-transparent mirror employed in the light path of an optical instrument, splitting the light beam into two separate beams, both of reduced light intensity. Splitting the beam allows its use for multiple purposes simultaneously. The thinness of the mirror practically eliminates beam or image doubling due to a non-coincident weak second reflection from the nominally non-reflecting surface, a problem with mirror-type beam splitters. The name pellicle is a diminutive of pellis, a skin or film. In photography In photography, the pellicle mirror has been employed in single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, at first to enable through-the-lens exposure measurement and possibly to reduce camera shake, but later most successfully to enable fast series photography, which otherwise would be slowed down by the movement of the reflex mirror, while maintaining constant finder vision.The first use of pellicle mirrors for consumer photography however were in color separation cameras. The Devin Tricolor Camera from at least the 1938 version used two pellicle mirrors plus...

The Nicobar pigeon or Nicobar dove (Caloenas nicobarica, Car: ma-kūö-kö) is a bird found on small islands and in coastal regions from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, east through the Malay Archipelago, to the Solomons and Palau. It is the only living member of the genus Caloenas alongside the extinct spotted green pigeon, and is the closest living relative of the extinct dodo and Rodrigues solitaire. Taxonomy In 1738, the English naturalist Eleazar Albin included a description and two illustrations of the Nicobar pigeon in his A Natural History of Birds. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the Nicobar pigeon with all the other pigeons in the genus Columba. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Columba nicobarica and cited Albin's work. The species is now placed in the genus Caloenas erected by English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1840 with the Nicobar pigeon...