Sea slug

Sea slug is a common name which is applied to some marine invertebrates that more or less resemble terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are actually snails, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary time have lost their shells, or have a greatly reduced shell or an internal shell. The name "sea slug" is most often applied to nudibranchs, as well as to a paraphyletic set of other marine gastropods without obvious shells.

The phrase "sea slug" is, however, also sometimes applied to taxa in other phyla, such as the sea cucumbers, which are not mollusks but echinoderms. Although the other animals sometimes called "sea slugs" are not gastropods, they are nonetheless soft-bodied, and their overall shape is slug-like.

Sea slugs come in an outstanding variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, with gills and pointed tentacles on their backs. Sea slugs have translucent bodies that have just about every color on the rainbow. Due to the bright, outgoing colors found on the reef, there is a constant threat of predators. This is the cause for a warning of color to show the sea slugs’ predators that they are poisonous with stinging cells, but their colors are mainly for disguise. Like all gastropods, they have razor-sharp teeth, called radulas. Most sea slugs have two pairs of tentacles on their head used primarily for sense of smell, with a small eye at the base of each tentacle. Many have feathery structures (ceratia) on the back, often in a contrasting color. These act as gills. All species of sea slugs have a selected prey, that is specifically fitted for them to hunt. This can be among other sea slugs, jellyfish, bryozoans, sea anemones, plankton, and other various organisms.

Sea Slug (missile)

Seaslug was a first generation surface-to-air missile designed by Armstrong Whitworth (later part of the Hawker Siddeley group) for use by the Royal Navy. It came into operational service in the 1960s and was still in use at the time of the Falklands War.

Seaslug was intended to engage high-flying targets such as reconnaissance aircraft or bombers before they could launch stand-off weapons. Later improvements meant that it could also be used against ships.

Development

Work on what became Seaslug began in 1949 under 'Stage 1' of the Royal Navy's post-war missile program. The weapon was intended to counter high-altitude nuclear-armed bombers before they could release their weapons. Development made use of on an earlier programme by the Fairey Aviation Company known as "LOPGAP" (Liquid Oxygen / Petrol Guided Anti-aircraft Projectile), and a Victory Ship specially converted into prototype escort ship, HMS Girdle Ness (A387), was procured. The original system differed in having a triple launcher. The Seaslug Mark 1 finally entered service in 1961 on County class destroyers, each fitted with a single twin missile launcher.

Slug

Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word slug is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a small internal shell, particularly sea slugs and semislugs (this is in contrast to the common name snail, which applies to gastropods that have a coiled shell large enough that the animal can fully retract its soft parts into the shell).

Various taxonomic families of land slugs form part of several quite different evolutionary lineages, which also include snails. Thus, the various families of slugs are not closely related, despite a superficial similarity in the overall body form. The shell-less condition has arisen many times independently during the evolutionary past, and thus the category "slug" is emphatically a polyphyletic one.

Taxonomy

Of the six orders of Pulmonata, two – the Onchidiacea and Soleolifera – solely comprise slugs. A third family, the Sigmurethra, contains various clades of snails, semi-slugs (i.e. snails whose shells are too small for them to retract fully into) and slugs. The taxonomy of this group is in the process of being revised in light of DNA sequencing. It appears that pulmonates are paraphyletic and basal to the opisthobranchs, which are a terminal branch of the tree. The family Ellobiidae are also polyphyletic.

Semantic URL

Semantic URLs, also sometimes referred to as clean URLs, RESTful URLs, user-friendly URLs, or search engine-friendly URLs, are Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) intended to improve the usability and accessibility of a website or web service by being immediately and intuitively meaningful to non-expert users. Such URL schemes tend to reflect the conceptual structure of a collection of information and decouple the user interface from a server's internal representation of information. Other reasons for using clean URLs include search engine optimization (SEO), conforming to the representational state transfer (REST) style of software architecture, and ensuring that individual web resources remain consistently at the same URL. This makes the World Wide Web a more stable and useful system, and allows more durable and reliable bookmarking of web resources.

Semantic URLs also do not contain implementation details of the underlying web application. This carries the benefit of reducing the difficulty of changing the implementation of the resource at a later date. For example, many non-semantic URLs include the filename of a server-side script, such as example.php, example.asp or cgi-bin. If the underlying implementation of a resource is changed, such URLs would need to change along with it. Likewise, when URLs are non-semantic, if the site database is moved or restructured it has the potential to cause broken links, both internally and from external sites, the latter of which can lead to removal from search engine listings. The use of semantic URLs presents a consistent location for resources to user-agents regardless of internal structure. A further potential benefit to the use of semantic URLs is that the concealment of internal server or application information can improve the security of a system.

Slug (projectile)

A slug is a term used for a solid ballistic projectile. It is "solid" in the sense of being composed of one piece; the shape can vary widely, including partially hollowed shapes. The term is occasionally applied to bullets (just the projectile, never the cartridge as a whole), but is most commonly applied to shotgun projectiles, to differentiate them from shotshells containing shot. Slugs are commonly fired from smoothbored barrels that are unable to impart the gyroscopic spin required for in-flight stability.

A water-slug refers to operating a submarine's torpedo tube that has been filled with water rather than a torpedo, thus shooting a "slug of water.".

See also

SEA

SEA or Sea may refer to:

Organizations

Science and technology

90.9 Sea FM

90.9 Sea FM (callsign 4SEA) is a radio station on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It is part of the Southern Cross Austereo Today Network, and is also the network hub for the regional Today Stream, broadcasting shows at times from 9am - 12am across the Sea, Star and Hot FM Networks across Australia.

The Sea FM brand name and original logo was created by Gold Coast Broadcasters Pty Ltd for just the one station - 90.9 Sea FM - after the Gold Coast was granted a new commercial FM licence. 90.9 Sea FM began broadcasting in 1989 with programming consulted by Austereo. The original Sea FM on-air line-up was a strong team of experienced Announcers, many having made their name previously in Metropolitan radio including - Craig Bruce (FOX FM) & Sammy Power, Ian 'Lofty' Fulton (4IP), Grahame "Durry" Rodgers (2SM & 2NX), Sue Moses (2MMM & Channel 10), Gregg Easton (2UW & 4BK), Joe Miller (3XY & EON FM), Dean Miller and Simon Franks.

In November 2011, controversy erupted after rumours surfaced that popular long-term breakfast co-host, Moyra Major, was to be replaced by entertainer Charli Robinson, after Robinson had filled in for six weeks while Major was on maternity leave. It was reported that Major had been replaced due to a significant increase in ratings for the breakfast show during Robinson's stint as co-host.