Quest

In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and (frequently) as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and the overcoming of many obstacles, typically including much travel. The aspect of travel also allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures (an objective of the narrator, not of the character).

Quest objects

The hero normally aims to obtain something or someone by the quest, and with this object to return home. The object can be something new, that fulfills a lack in his life, or something that was stolen away from him or someone with authority to dispatch him.

Sometimes the hero has no desire to return; Sir Galahad's quest for the Holy Grail is to find it, not return with it. A return may, indeed, be impossible: Aeneas quests for a homeland, having lost Troy at the beginning of Virgil's Aeneid, and he does not return to Troy to re-found it but settles in Italy (to become an ancestor of the Romans).

Flux

Flux is a simple and ubiquitous concept throughout physics and applied mathematics describing the flow of a physical property in space, frequently also with time variation. It is the basis of the field concept in physics and mathematics. There exist two common usages of the term flux, each with rigorous mathematical frameworks: For transport phenomena, flux is defined as a vector, whereas in electromagnetism, flux is a scalar quantity, as defined by the surface integral. The terms "flux", "current", "flux density", "current density", can sometimes be used interchangeably and ambiguously, though the terms used below match those of the contexts in the literature.

Origin of the term

The word flux comes from Latin: fluxus means "flow", and fluere is "to flow". As fluxion, this term was introduced into differential calculus by Isaac Newton.

Flux as flow rate per unit area

In transport phenomena (heat transfer, mass transfer and fluid dynamics), flux is defined as the rate of flow of a property per unit area, which has the dimensions [quantity]·[time]⁻¹·[area]⁻¹. For example, the magnitude of a river's current, i.e. the amount of water that flows through a cross-section of the river each second, or the amount of sunlight that lands on a patch of ground each second is also a kind of flux.

Trove

Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator; a free faceted-search engine hosted by the National Library of Australia, in partnership with content providers including members of the National & State Libraries Australasia. It is one of the most well-respected and accessed GLAM services in Australia, with over 70,000 daily users.

History

Trove's origins can be seen in the development of earlier services such as the Australian Bibliographic Network. It was originally known as the Single Business Discovery Service, a project that was launched in August 2008. The intention was to create a single point of entry for the public to the various online discovery services developed by the library between 1997 and 2008 including Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, Picture Australia, Libraries Australia, Music Australia, Australia Dancing, PANDORA search service, ARROW Discovery Service and the Australian Newspapers Beta service.

The key features of the service were designed to create a faceted search system specifically for Australian content. Tight integration with the provider databases has allowed "Find and Get" functions (e.g. viewing digitally, borrowing, buying, copying). Important extra features include the provision of a "check copyright" tool and persistent identifiers (which enables stable URLs).

Guide

A guide is a person who leads travelers or tourists through unknown or unfamiliar locations. The term can also be applied to a person who leads others to more abstract goals such as knowledge or wisdom.

Travel and recreation

Explorers in the past venturing into territory unknown by their own people invariably hired guides. Lewis and Clark hired Sacagawea to help them explore the American West, and Wilfred Thesiger hired guides in the deserts that he ventured into, such as Kuri on his journey to the Tibesti Mountains in 1938.

Tour guide

Tour guides lead visitors through tourist attractions and give information about the attractions' natural and cultural significance. Often, they also act as interpreters for travellers who do not speak the local language. Automated systems like audio tours are sometimes substituted for human tour guides. Tour operators often hire guides to lead tourist groups.

Mountain guide

Mountain guides are those employed in mountaineering; these are not merely to show the way but stand in the position of professional climbers with an expert knowledge of rock and snowcraft, which they impart to the amateur, at the same time assuring the safety of the climbing party. This professional class of guides arose in the middle of the 19th century when Alpine climbing became recognized as a sport.

Dragon

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian countries.

The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word dragon derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".

Name

The word dragon entered the English language in the early 13th century from Old French dragon, which in turn comes from Latin draconem (nominative draco) meaning "huge serpent, dragon", from the Greek word δράκων, drakon (genitive drakontos, δράκοντος) "serpent, giant seafish". The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, and this usage was also current in English up to the 18th century.