Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Supermarket

A supermarket is a departmentalized self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise. It is larger in size and has a wider selection than a traditional grocery store.The supermarket typically comprises meat, produce, dairy, and baked goods departments along with shelf space reserved for canned and packaged goods as well as for various nonfood items such as household cleaners, pharmacy products, and pet supplies. Most supermarkets also sell a variety of other household products that are consumed regularly, such as alcohol where permitted, household cleaning products, medicine, clothes, and some sell a much wider range of non-food products.

The traditional supermarket occupies a large floor space on a single level and is situated near a residential area in order to be convenient to consumers. Its basic appeal is the availability of a broad selection of goods under a single roof at relatively low prices. Other advantages include ease of parking and, frequently, the convenience of shopping hours that extend far into the evening. Supermarkets usually make massive outlays for newspaper and other advertising and often present elaborate in-store displays of products. Supermarkets are often part of a chain that owns or controls sometimes by franchise other supermarkets located in the same or other towns; this increases the opportunities for economies of scale.

In North America, supermarket chains are often supplied from the distribution centers of a larger business, such as Loblaw Companies in Canada, which owns thousands of supermarkets across the nation. They have a distribution center in every province — usually in the largest city in the province.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is a biological course by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's form or structure through cell growth and differentiation. Some insects, amphibians, molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and tunicates undertake metamorphosis, which is usually accompanied by a change of habitat or behavior. Scientific usage of the term is exclusive, and is not applied to common aspects of growth, including rapid growth spurts. References to “metamorphosis” in mammals are imprecise and only colloquial.

Metamorphosis usually proceeds in distinct stages, usually starting with larva or nymph, optionally passing through pupa, and ending as adult. The immature stages of a species that metamorphoses are regularly called larva. But in the complex metamorphosis of many insect species, only the first stage is called a larva and sometimes even that bears a different name; the distinction depends on the nature of the metamorphosis.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Permanent makeup

Permanent makeup is a cosmetic technique which employs tattoos as a means of producing designs that resemble makeup, such as eyelining and other permanent enhancing colors to the skin of the face, lips and eyelids. It is also used to produce artificial eyebrows, particularly in people who have lost it as a consequence of old age, disease, such as alopecia, chemotherapy or a genetic disturbance, and to disguise scars and white spots in the skin such as in vitiligo. It is also used to restore or enhance the breast's areola, such as after breast surgery.

Other names used are dermapigmentation, micropigmentation, permanent cosmetics and cosmetic tattooing. These procedures are regulated in many countries and states, many of them requiring a registered professional, such as an esthetician, dermatologist or plastic surgeon to perform it. In the United States and other countries, the inks used in permanent makeup and the pigments in these inks are subject to FDA regulation as cosmetics and color additives.