Mendoza

Mendoza may refer to:

Places

People

Music

Other uses

Mendoza River

The Mendoza River is a river in the province of Mendoza, Argentina. It is formed in the Andes range between the Aconcagua and the Tupungato, by the confluence of the Vacas, the Cuevas and the Tupungato Rivers, the last being its major tributary.

The upper valley of the Mendoza begins at around 2,600 metres (8,500 ft) above mean sea level, and it is U-shaped, of glacial origin. The river reaches Uspallata, then crosses the Precordillera through the Potrerillos Valley, flows along the Cacheuta Canyon and reaches the plain. It forms an arc and turns northeast, finally emptying into the Bañados de Guanacache, which join the San Juan River, part of the system of the Desaguadero River.

The river has a mean flow of 50 cubic metres per second (1,800 cu ft/s), and supplies water for the main oasis in the otherwise arid province. Its course through Potrerillos, at about 1,350 metres (4,430 ft) above sea level, features rapids, which are employed for rafting (level III–IV on the International Scale of River Difficulty during the summer). In Potrerillos the river is also dammed, forming a reservoir, which feeds a hydroelectric power station.

Mendoza (name)

Mendoza is a Basque surname, also occurring as a place name.

The name Mendoza means "cold mountain", derived from the Basque words mendi (mountain) and (h)otz (cold) + definite article '-a' (Mendoza being mendi+(h)otza). The original Basque form with an affricate sibilant (/ts/, Basque spelling /tz/) evolved in Spanish to the current form.

Originally the noble family line bearing the surname was based in the castle of the same name, not far from Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, where it still stands out. However, one of the family branches comes from Laudio, 50 km away to the northwest from Vitoria-Gasteiz. The family got involved in the medieval bloody War of the Clans. Not only that, the house of Mendoza set up close ties with Castile since the High Middle Ages, with its members participating in their civil wars and the Castilian expansion south. They got wider renown after their involvement in the conquest of America after 1492.

In Erandio, a baserri exists with the same name. Its original name "mendotza" developed to "mendontze" in the 1890s, "mendoche" in the 1920s, "mendotxe" in the 1980s to the restored original of "mendotza" being the current.

BPM 37093

BPM 37093 (V886 Centauri) is a variable white dwarf star of the DAV, or ZZ Ceti, type, with a hydrogen atmosphere and an unusually high mass of approximately 1.1 times the Sun's. It is about 50 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus, and vibrates; these pulsations cause its luminosity to vary. Like other white dwarfs, BPM 37093 is thought to be composed primarily of carbon and oxygen, which are created by thermonuclear fusion of helium nuclei in the triple-alpha process.

In the 1960s, it was predicted that as a white dwarf cools, its material should crystallize, starting at the center. When a star pulsates, observing its pulsations gives information about its structure. BPM 37093 was first observed to be a pulsating variable in 1992, and in 1995 it was pointed out that this yielded a potential test of the crystallization theory. In 2004, Antonio Kanaan and a team of researchers of the Whole Earth Telescope estimated, on the basis of these asteroseismological observations, that approximately 90% of the mass of BPM 37093 had crystallized. Other work gives a crystallized mass fraction of between 32% and 82%. Any of these estimates would result in a total crystalline mass in excess of 5×10²⁹ kilograms.

Esox

Esox is a genus of freshwater fish, the only living genus in the family Esocidae—the esocids which were endemic to North America and Eurasia during the Paleogene through present.

The species of this genus are known as pike and pickerel. The type species is E. lucius, the northern pike.

The big pike species are native to the Palearctic and Nearctic ecozones, ranging across northern North America and from Western Europe to Siberia in Eurasia.

Pikes have the elongated, torpedo-like form of predatory fishes, with sharply pointed heads and sharp teeth. Their coloration is typically grey-green with a mottled or spotted appearance with stripes along their backs, providing camouflage among weeds. Individual pike marking patterns are unique, like fingerprints. Pike can grow to a maximum recorded length of 1.83 m (6 ft), reaching a maximum recorded weight of 35 kg (77 lb).

Species

There currently seven recognized species in this genus:

Lucy (2014 film)

Lucy is a 2014 English-language French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson and produced by his wife Virginie Silla for his company Europacorp. The film was shot in Taipei, Paris and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked and Choi Min-sik. Johansson portrays the title character, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.

The film was released on July 25, 2014, and became a box office success, grossing over $463 million against a budget of $40 million. It received mainly positive, but also polarized, critical reviews, with praise for Johansson's performance, entertaining or intriguing themes and visuals, and criticism for having a nonsensical plot, especially its focus on the ten percent of the brain myth and resulting abilities.

Plot

Lucy is a 24-year-old American woman living and studying in Taipei, Taiwan. She is tricked into working as a drug mule by her new boyfriend, whose employer, Mr. Jang, is a Korean mob boss and drug lord. Lucy delivers a briefcase to Mr. Jang containing a highly valuable synthetic drug called CPH4. After seeing her boyfriend shot and killed, she is captured. A bag of the drug is forcibly sewn into her abdomen and that of three other drug mules who will also transport the drug for sale in Europe. While Lucy is in captivity, one of her captors kicks her in the abdomen, breaking the bag and releasing a large quantity of the drug into her system. As a result, she begins acquiring increasingly enhanced physical and mental capabilities, such as telepathy, telekinesis, mental time travel, and the ability not to feel pain or other discomforts. She kills off her captors and escapes.