Palm Cove, Queensland

Palm Cove is a beach community in Far North Queensland, Australia located 27 kilometres (17 mi) north of the city of Cairns. It is named after the palm trees that line the beach. At the 2006 census, Palm Cove had a population of 1,215.

History

Shortly before World War I in 1918, the land that is today Palm Cove was bought by Albert Veivers from Archdeacon Campbell. Archdeacon Campbell had been known as a priest at Cairns church who experimented with bringing different agricultural crops to the Cairns region. Veivers was important in the advancement of Palm Cove by having the first road built. The creation of the road led property values in Palm Cove to increase dramatically, leading to more prosperity for the community. Shortly after World War II, in which Palm Cove was used as a training base for Australian soldiers, the number of people traveling to Palm Cove greatly increased. The opening of the Ramada Reef Resort in 1986 marked the first international hotel chain to be located in Palm Cove and the town has continued to increase in national and international recognition ever since.

Cove

A cove is a small type of bay or coastal inlet. Coves usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks, or recesses in a coast are often considered coves. Colloquially, the term can be used to describe a sheltered bay.

Geomorphology describes coves as precipitously walled and rounded cirque-like openings as in a valley extending into or down a mountainside, or in a hollow or nook of a cliff or steep mountainside.

Coves are formed by differential erosion, which occurs when softer rocks are worn away faster than the harder rocks surrounding them. These rocks further erode to form a circular bay with a narrow entrance, called a cove.

A notable example is Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England. To its west, a second cove, Stair Hole, is forming.

References

The Sims

The Sims is a life simulation video game series, developed by EA Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is one of the best-selling video games series of all time. As of September 2013, the franchise has sold more than 175 million copies worldwide.

The series was created by Maxis, before the series moved to The Sims Studio between 2006 and 2008. The Sims Studio then reintegrated into the new EA Maxis label in 2012.

The games in The Sims series are largely sandbox games, in that they lack any defined goals (except for some later expansion packs and console versions which introduced this gameplay style). The player creates virtual people called "Sims" and places them in houses and helps direct their moods and satisfy their desires. Players can either place their Sims in pre-constructed homes or build them themselves. Each successive expansion pack and game in the series augmented what the player could do with their Sims.

Development

Game designer Will Wright was inspired to create a "virtual doll house" after losing his home during the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and subsequently rebuilding his life. Replacing his home and his other possessions made him think about adapting that life experience into a game. When he initially took his ideas to the Maxis board of the directors, they were skeptical and gave little support or financing for the game. The directors at Electronic Arts, which bought Maxis in 1997, were more receptive — SimCity had been a great success for them, and they foresaw the possibility of building a strong Sim franchise.

Barrier reef

Barrier reef may refer to:

Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.CNN labelled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland.

A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of human use, such as fishing and tourism. Other environmental pressures on the reef and its ecosystem include runoff, climate change accompanied by mass coral bleaching, and cyclic population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish. According to a study published in October 2012 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the reef has lost more than half its coral cover since 1985.