FIFA

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA /ˈfiːfə/; English:International Federation of Association Football) is the governing body of association football, futsal and beach football. FIFA is responsible for the organisation of football's major international tournaments, notably the World Cup which commenced in 1930 and the Women's World Cup which commenced in 1991.

FIFA was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, its membership now comprises 209 national associations. Member countries must each also be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America.

Although FIFA does not control the rules of football (that being the responsibility of the International Football Association Board), it is responsible for both the organization of a number of tournaments and their promotion, which generate revenue from sponsorship. In 2013 FIFA had revenues of over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, for a net profit of 72 million, and had cash reserves of over 1.4 billion U.S. dollars.

2014 FIFA World Cup

The 2014 FIFA World Cup was the 20th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014, after the country was awarded the hosting rights in 2007. It was the second time that Brazil staged the competition (the first was in 1950), and the fifth time that it was held in South America.

Thirty-one national teams advanced through qualification competitions to join the host nation in the final tournament. A total of 64 matches were played in 12 venues located in as many host cities across Brazil. For the first time at a World Cup finals, match officials used goal-line technology, as well as vanishing foam for free kicks.FIFA Fan Fests in each host city gathered a total of 5 million people, and the country received 1 million visitors from 202 countries.

Every World Cup-winning team since the first edition in 1930 – Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Uruguay – qualified for this tournament. Spain, the title holders, were eliminated at the group stage, along with England and Italy. Uruguay were eliminated in the round of 16, and France exited in the quarter-finals. Brazil, who had won the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, lost to Germany in the semi-finals and eventually finished in fourth place. In the final, Germany defeated Argentina 1–0 to win the tournament and secure the country's fourth world title, the first after the German reunification in 1990, when as West Germany they also beat Argentina in the World Cup final. Germany became the first European team to win a World Cup staged in the Americas, and this result marked the first time that sides from the same continent had won three consecutive tournaments (following Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010).

2010 FIFA World Cup

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. The bidding process for hosting the tournament finals was open only to African nations; in 2004, the international football federation, FIFA, selected South Africa over Egypt and Morocco to become the first African nation to host the finals.

The matches were played in 10 stadiums in nine host cities around the country, with the final played at the Soccer City stadium in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg. Thirty-two teams were selected for participation via a worldwide qualification tournament that began in August 2007. In the first round of the tournament finals, the teams competed in round-robin groups of four teams for points, with the top two teams in each group proceeding. These 16 teams advanced to the knockout stage, where three rounds of play decided which teams would participate in the final.

MSN

MSN (stylized as msn) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, the same release date as Windows 95.

Along with Windows 95's release, Microsoft debuted The Microsoft Network, a subscription-based dial-up online service that it later turned into an Internet service provider named MSN Dial-up. At the same time, the company launched a new web portal named Microsoft Internet Start and set it as the first default home page of Internet Explorer, its original web browser. In 1998, Microsoft renamed and moved this web portal to the domain name MSN.com, where it has remained since then.

In addition to its original MSN Dial-up service, Microsoft has used the 'MSN' brand name for a wide variety of products and services over the years, notably Hotmail (which is now Outlook.com), Messenger (which was once synonymous with 'MSN' in Internet slang and has now been replaced by Skype), and its search engine (which is now Bing), as well as several other rebranded and discontinued services.

Moesin

Moesin is a protein that in humans is encoded by the MSN gene.

Moesin (for membrane-organizing extension spike protein) is a member of the ERM protein family which includes ezrin and radixin. ERM proteins appear to function as cross-linkers between plasma membranes and actin-based cytoskeletons. Moesin is localized to filopodia and other membranous protrusions that are important for cell-cell recognition and signaling and for cell movement.

Interactions

Moesin has been shown to interact with:

References

Further reading

This article incorporates text from the United States National Library of Medicine, which is in the public domain.

Draft (engineering)

In engineering, draft is the amount of taper for molded or cast parts perpendicular to the parting line. It can be measured in degrees or mm/mm (in/in).

Consider the fabrication of a hollow plastic box, without lid. Once the plastic has hardened around the mold, the mold must be removed. As the plastic hardens, it may contract slightly. By tapering the sides of the mold by an appropriate "draft angle", the mold will be easier to remove.

If the mold is to be removed from the top, the box should taper in towards the bottom, such that measuring the bottom internal dimension will yield a smaller length and width than measuring the top from which the mold is extracted.

By specifying the opening length and width, a draft angle, and a depth, it is not necessary to specify the dimensions for the internal surface, as these may be calculated from the above.

The manufacture of a part that incorporates zero or negative angles may require a mold that can be separated into two or more parts, in order to release the casting.

Draft (sports)

A draft is a process used to allocate certain players to sports teams. In a draft, teams take turns selecting from a pool of eligible players. When a team selects a player, the team receives exclusive rights to sign that player to a contract, and no other team in the league may sign the player.

The best-known type of draft is the entry draft, which is used to allocate players who have recently become eligible to play in a league. Depending on the sport, the players may come from college, high school or junior teams or teams in other countries.

An entry draft prevents expensive bidding wars for young talent and ensures that no one team can sign contracts with all of the best young players and make the league uncompetitive. To encourage parity, teams that do poorly in the previous season usually get to choose first in the postseason draft, sometimes with a "lottery" factor to discourage teams from purposely losing.

Other types of drafts include the expansion draft, in which a new team selects players from other teams in the league; and the dispersal draft, in which a league's surviving teams select players from the roster of a newly defunct franchise.