Express

Express or EXPRESS may refer to:

Mail and transportation

Brands

Express (weaponry)

The term express was first applied to hunting rifles and ammunition beginning in the middle 19th century, to indicate a rifle or ammunition capable of higher than typical velocities. The early express cartridges used a heavy charge of black powder to propel a lightweight, often hollow point bullet, at high velocities to maximize point blank range. Later the express cartridges were loaded with nitrocellulose based gunpowder, leading to the Nitro Express cartridges, the first of which was the .450 Nitro Express.

The term express is still in use today, and is applied to rifles, ammunition, and a type of iron sight. With the widespread adoption of small bore, high velocity rifle cartridges, the meaning of express has shifted in modern usage, and refers to high velocity, large bore rifles and ammunition, typically used for hunting large or dangerous game at close range.

History

The name originates with a rifle built by James Purdey in 1856 (based on a pattern established a year earlier by William Greener) and named the Express Train, a marketing phrase intended to denote the considerable velocity of the bullet it fired. It was not the first rifle or cartridge of this type but it was Purdey's name express that stuck.

Ekspress

Ekspress (Russian: Экспресс meaning Express), is a series of geostationary communications satellites owned by Russian State Company for Satellite Communications. The first satellite of this kind was launched on October 13, 1994. The satellites are produced by the company JSC Information Satellite Systems.

Overview

The Ekspress series of communication satellites (industry code 11F639) was developed by the satellite company NPO PM as a replacement for the old Gorizont series of comsats. The first satellite of the series, Ekspress 1, was launched in 1994. It had a mass of 2.5 tons, 17 channels and an operational lifetime of at 5–7 years.

Starting in the mid-1990s, NPO PM started to make significant effort to close the technology gap between Russian and Western communication satellites. Cooperation with the French company Alcatel (now Thales Alenia Space) was begun in 1995. The first satellite of a new second series, Ekspress A-1, had 12 Alcatel-built transponders. It was lost in a rocket failure in 1999, but a replacement, Ekspress A-2 was successfully launched in March, 2000.

Sad (sura)

Sūrat Ṣād (Arabic: سورة ص‎, "The Letter Sad") is the 38th sura of the Qur'an with 88 ayat and 1 sajdah (39:24). Sad (ص) is the name of the eighteenth letter in the Arabic alphabet.

Saad was sent to Muhammad by God while he was coping with rejection from his tribe, the Quraysh, and struggling to keep his own faith. It recounts stories of previous prophets, describes the splendors of heaven, and warns of the monstrosities of hell. The sura dates to the 2nd Meccan Period, meaning it was revealed only five or six years into the development of Islam.

Historical context

Sura 38 substantiates Muhammad's role as Prophet through concrete examples of previous messengers of God and the evils that have befallen the people who did not heed sacred messages. Angelika Neurwirth terms these “retribution legends” (McAuliffe, 105). They “prove that divine justice is at work in history, the unjustly harassed being rewarded with salvation, the transgressors and unbelievers punished by annihilation” (McAuliffe, 106). Through regular reference to biblical characters and a self-assertive tone praising both Muhammad and God, the reader can attribute this sura to the 2nd Meccan Period, according to Noldeke’s chronology . The coherent text builds up to descriptions of both heaven and hell on the Day of Judgment. The wide scope of historical figures—ranging from Old Testament characters such as David, Solomon, and Job, to the devil of Islam, Iblis—were designed to resonate with a wide audience in the face of the disbelief among the Quaryash, Muhammad’s clan; as Ernst poignantly states, Muhammad was likely dealing with “religiously well-informed skeptics” . Like many contemporary passages, Sura 38 attempts to convert the reader to a monotheistic religion honoring Muhammad as Prophet by promising salvation for true believers on the Day of Judgment.

Tsade

Ṣade (also spelled Ṣādē, Tsade, Ṣaddi, Ṣad, Tzadi, Sadhe, Tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Çādē , Hebrew ˈṢādi צ, Aramaic Ṣādhē , Syriac Ṣāḏē ܨ, and Arabic Ṣād ص. Its oldest sound value is probably /sˤ/, although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects. It represents the coalescence of three Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants" in Canaanite. Arabic, which kept the phonemes separate, introduced variants of ṣād and ṭāʾ to express the three (see ḍād, ẓāʾ). In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with ʿayin and ṭēt, respectively, thus Hebrew ereẓ ארץ (earth) is araʿ ארע in Aramaic.

The Phoenician letter is continued in the Greek San (Ϻ) and possibly Sampi (Ϡ), and in Etruscan 𐌑 Ś. It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabet.

The corresponding letter of the Ugaritic alphabet is 𐎕 ṣade.

The letter is known as "tsadik" in Yiddish, and Hebrew speakers often give it that name as well. This name for the letter probably originated from a fast recitation of the alphabet (i.e., "tsadi, qoph" -> "tsadiq, qoph"), influenced by the Hebrew word tzadik, meaning 'righteous person'.