Aachen

Aachen (German pronunciation: [ˈʔaːxən]), also known as Bad Aachen, is a spa and border town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a residence of Charlemagne, and later the coronation place for German kings.

Aachen is the westernmost city of Germany, on its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, 61 km (38 mi) west-southwest of Cologne in a former coal-mining area.RWTH Aachen University is in the city. Aachen's industries include science, engineering and information technology. In 2009, Aachen was ranked eighth among cities in Germany for innovation.

Name

The name Aachen is a modern descendant, like southern German Ach(e), Aach ‘river, stream’, of Old High German aha ‘water; stream’ which directly translates (and etymologically corresponds to) Latin Aquae, referring to the springs. The location has been inhabited by humans since the Neolithic era, about 5,000 years ago, attracted to its warm mineral springs. Latin Aquae figures in Aachen’s Roman name Aquae granni, which meant ‘Grannus’ waters’, referring to the Celtic god of healing who was worshiped at the springs. This word became Åxhe in Walloon and Aix in French, and subsequently Aix-la-Chapelle after Charlemagne had a cathedral built there in the late eighth century and then made the city his empire’s capital.

Aachen (district)

The district of Aachen (German: Städteregion Aachen) is a district in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Heinsberg, Düren, Euskirchen, and also the Netherlands province of Limburg and the Belgian province of Liège.

History

Becoming effective on 21 October 2009, the Städteregion Aachen (literally: "cities region" Aachen) was formed from the former district Aachen (Kreis Aachen) and the city of Aachen. This is the first Städteregion that was formed in North Rhine-Westphalia. Its status is similar to that of the district Hanover (Region Hannover) in Lower Saxony, in that the powers of the city of Aachen are slightly less than those of an district-free city (Kreisfreie Stadt).

The former district Aachen was created in 1975 in the reorganization of the district North Rhine-Westphalia, by merging the previous districts (Landkreise) of Aachen and Monschau, and some parts of the districts of Düren, Jülich and Schleiden as well as the Selfkant district, while a part of the former district was incorporated to the district-free city of Aachen.

Aachen I

Aachen I is an electoral constituency (German: Wahlkreis) represented in the German Bundestag. Part of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and including the city of Aachen, the constituency elects one representative under the mixed member proportional representation (MMP) system. Under the current constituency numbering system, it is designated as constituency 87. The constituency was created for the 1949 election, the first election in West Germany after World War II. It was called Aachen-Stadt until being renamed Aachen at the 1980 election. It assumed its current name for the 2013 election.

Election results

2009 election

The following table does not list parties which did not contest or gain constituency votes.

References

Female

Female (♀) is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, that produces non-mobile ova (egg cells). Most female mammals, including female humans, have two X chromosomes.

Defining characteristics

The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male. A female individual cannot reproduce sexually without access to the gametes of a male (an exception is parthenogenesis). Some organisms can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

There is no single genetic mechanism behind sex differences in different species and the existence of two sexes seems to have evolved multiple times independently in different evolutionary lineages. Patterns of sexual reproduction include

Plant reproductive morphology

Plant reproductive morphology is concerned with the physical form and structure (the morphology) of those parts of plants directly or indirectly concerned with sexual reproduction.

Among all living organisms, flowers, which are the reproductive structures of angiosperms, are the most varied physically and show a correspondingly great diversity in methods of reproduction. Plants that are not flowering plants (green algae, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, ferns and gymnosperms such as conifers) also have complex interplays between morphological adaptation and environmental factors in their sexual reproduction. The breeding system, or how the sperm from one plant fertilizes the ovum of another, depends on the reproductive morphology, and is the single most important determinant of the genetic structure of nonclonal plant populations. Christian Konrad Sprengel (1793) studied the reproduction of flowering plants and for the first time it was understood that the pollination process involved both biotic and abiotic interactions. Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection utilized this work to build his theory of evolution, which includes analysis of the coevolution of flowers and their insect pollinators.

Female (1933 film)

Female is a 1933 Warner Bros. Pre-Code film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Ruth Chatterton and George Brent. It is based on the novel of the same name by Donald Henderson Clarke.

Plot

Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) is the wealthy owner and hard-driving, no-nonsense head of a large automobile company, inherited from her father. Her work has caused her to lose her youthful romanticism, and she has casual affairs with men, including her own employees.

Alison hosts a party at her mansion, but becomes fed up with the men out to either sell her things or marry her for her money. She dresses down and goes to an amusement park, where she picks up a man at a shooting gallery. They have fun together, but he refuses her offer to go home with him.

The next day, they meet again at her factory. To their mutual astonishment, he turns out to be Jim Thorne (George Brent), a gifted engineer she has ordered her underlings to hire away from her competition. Saying that she has no time now, Alison has him come to her mansion that night, supposedly to discuss his plans for the company in detail. She attempts to seduce him, but he rejects her as anything other than his employer.