Atlas

An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a map of Earth or a region of Earth, but there are atlases of the other planets (and their satellites) in the Solar System. Furthermore, atlases of anatomy exist, mapping out the human body or other organisms. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic features and political boundaries, many atlases often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics. They also have information about the map and places in it.

Etymology

The word atlas dates from 1636, first in reference to the English translation of Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator, who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.

History

The first work that contained systematically arranged woodcut maps of uniform size, intended to be published in a book, thus representing the first modern atlas, was De Summa totius Orbis (1524–26) by the 16th-century Italian cartographer Pietro Coppo. Nonetheless, this distinction is conventionally awarded to the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius who in 1570 published the collection of maps Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.

Atlas (computer)

The Atlas Computer was a joint development between the University of Manchester, Ferranti, and Plessey. The first Atlas, installed at Manchester University and officially commissioned in 1962, was one of the world's first supercomputers, considered to be the most powerful computer in the world at that time. It was said that whenever Atlas went offline half of the United Kingdom's computer capacity was lost. It was a second-generation machine, using discrete germanium transistors. Two other Atlas machines were built: one for British Petroleum and the University of London, and one for the Atlas Computer Laboratory at Chilton near Oxford.

A derivative system was built by Ferranti for Cambridge University. Called the Titan, or Atlas 2, it had a different memory organisation and ran a time-sharing operating system developed by Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. Two further Atlas 2s were delivered: one to the CAD Centre in Cambridge (later called CADCentre, then AVEVA), and the other to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), Aldermaston.

Atlas (topology)

In mathematics, particularly topology, one describes a manifold using an atlas. An atlas consists of individual charts that, roughly speaking, describe individual regions of the manifold. If the manifold is the surface of the Earth, then an atlas has its more common meaning. In general, the notion of atlas underlies the formal definition of a manifold and related structures such as vector bundles and other fibre bundles.

Charts

The definition of an atlas depends on the notion of a chart. A chart for a topological space M (also called a coordinate chart, coordinate patch, coordinate map, or local frame) is a homeomorphism from an open subset U of M to an open subset of Euclidean space. The chart is traditionally recorded as the ordered pair .

Formal definition of atlas

An atlas for a topological space M is a collection of charts on M such that . If the codomain of each chart is the n-dimensional Euclidean space and the atlas is connected, then M is said to be an n-dimensional manifold.

Forum (alternative dispute resolution)

Forum, formerly known as the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) is an organization that provides arbitration and mediation services to businesses, based at its Minneapolis, Minnesota headquarters and offices in New Jersey. The organization was founded in 1986. As of 2008, the National Arbitration Forum administered over 200,000 cases a year, most of which were consumer debt collection cases. In 2009, the National Arbitration Forum ceased administration of new consumer arbitrations as part of a consent decree with Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson concerning the NAF's ties with debt collection firms. The company maintains a panel of over 1,600 arbitrators and mediators who are attorneys and former judges located across the United States and in 35 countries around the world. Panelists arbitrate and mediate the disputes.

The company is an "approved"dispute resolution service provider of ICANN domain name disputes and has handled more than 7,600 cases.

Forum (shopping centre)

Forum is a shopping centre in Helsinki, Finland, opened in 1985 and located between the streets of Mannerheimintie, Simonkatu, Yrjönkatu and Kalevankatu.

The original Forum building is located in the corner of Mannerheimintie and Simonkatu. The shopping centre has been constantly expanded to also fill other buildings in the city block.

The shopping centre includes an underground parking lot, with connections to the nearby surroundings, including to Stockmann.

As well as numerous businesses, the Forum city block includes the privately owned Amos Anderson art museum and the Forum medical and dental health centre.

Forum is the only privately owned shopping centre in the Finnish capital area. Bilinguality is emphasised in the shopping centre, because it is owned by Finland-Swedish organisations, most notably Föreningen Konstsamfundet, which was founded in 1940 by Amos Anderson. The organisation supports Finland-Swedish culture and publications, and deals out grants, which amount up to 3 million euro per year. This is financed by the rent from the Forum shopping centre building.