In some countries, octopuses surgeries may not be performed without anaesthesia.

In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anesthesia. In the UK, until 2013, the common octopus, (Octopus vulgaris), was the only invertebrate protected under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 extending to them protections not normally afforded to invertebrates. In 2013, this legislation was extended to include all cephalopods.

Octopuses are highly intelligent, possibly more so than any other order of invertebrates. The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists, but maze and problem-solving experiments have shown evidence of a memory system that can store both short- and long-term memory. It is not known precisely what contribution learning makes to adult octopus behavior. Young octopuses learn almost no behaviors from their parents, with whom they have very little contact.

An octopus has a highly complex nervous system, only part of which is localized in its brain. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neuronsare found in the nerve cords of its arms, which have limited functional autonomy. Octopus arms show a variety of complex reflexactions that persist even when they have no input from the brain. Unlike vertebrates, the complex motor skills of octopuses are not organized in their brain using an internal somatotopic map of its body, instead using a nonsomatotopic system unique to large-brained invertebrates. Some octopuses, such as the mimic octopus, will move their arms in ways that emulate the shape and movements of other sea creatures.

In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. They have been reported to practice observational learning, although the validity of these findings is widely contested on a number of grounds. Octopuses have also been observed in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them. Octopuses often break out of their aquariums and sometimes into others in search of food. They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs.

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Albany, NY had a higher population in 1910 than it does now.

Interestingly enough, the population of Albany in the 1910s was 100,253 while the population was 97,856 at the time of the 2010 census. Albany has close ties with the nearby cities of Troy, Schenectady, andSaratoga Springs, forming a region called the Capital District. The bulk of this area is made up of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area(MSA). Its 2010 population was 870,716, the fourth-largest urban area in New York and the 58th-largest MSA in the country.

In the 20th century, the city opened one of the first commercial airports in the world, the precursor of today’s Albany International Airport. The 1920s saw the rise of a powerfulpolitical machine controlled by the Democratic Party. The city’s skyline changed in the 1960s with the construction of the Empire State Plaza and the uptown campus of SUNY Albany, mainly under the direction of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. While Albany experienced a decline in its population due to urban sprawl, many of its historic neighborhoods were saved from destruction through the policies of Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, the longest-serving mayor of any city in the United States. More recently, the city has experienced growth in the high-technology industry, with great strides in the nanotechnology sector.

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Google's founders were willing to sell their company for under $1 million in 1999 but the buyers turned them down.

Excite.com is a collection of web sites and services, launched in December 1995. Excite is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal showing news and weather etc. (outside USA only), asearch engine, a web-based email, instant messaging, stock quotes, and a customizable user homepage. The content is collated from over 100 different sources.

Excite’s portal and services are owned by Excite Networks, but in the USA, Excite is a personal portal, called My Excite, which is operated by Mindspark; owned by IAC Search and Media.

According to Justin Rohrlich, writing for Minyanville.com, later in 1999, two graduate students at Stanford University, Sergey Brinand Larry Page, decided that Google, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Bell and offered it to him for $1 million, but Bell rejected the offer, and later threw Vinod Khosla, one of Excite’s venture capitalists, out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. Excite’s refusal to buy what became a $180 billion company by 2010 was labeled by Rohrlich a “stupid business decision”.

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Israel is the only country in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women

Israel is the only country in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women. Women have taken part in Israel’s military before and since the founding of the state in 1948, with women currently comprising 33% of all IDF soldiers and 51% of its officers, fulfilling various roles within the Ground, Navy and Air Forces. The 2000 Equality amendment to the Military Service law states that “The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.” As of now, 88% to 92% of all roles in the IDF are open to female candidates, while women can be found in 69% of all positions.

Formerly women conscripts served in the Women’s Army Corps, commonly known by its Hebrew acronym, Chen. After a five-week period of basic training they served as clerks, drivers, welfare workers, nurses, radio operators, flight controllers, ordnance personnel, and course instructors.

Sixty–five percent of Israeli girls serve in the army, 25 percent opt out on religious grounds, the remainder are exempted for physical, emotional or marital reasons. A law passed in 1978 made exemptions for women on religious grounds automatic upon the signing of a simple declaration attesting to the observance of orthodox religious practices. This legislation raised considerable controversy, and IDF officials feared that the exemption could be abused by any nonreligious woman who did not wish to serve and thus further exacerbate the already strained personnel resources of the IDF. Women exempted on religious grounds were legally obliged to fulfill a period of alternative service doing social or educational work assigned to them. In practice, however, women performed such service only on a voluntary basis.

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