Cotton (from Arabic qutn), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.
The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.
The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru.
Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production and led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.
Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Especially in earlier medieval periods the term often implied not only a certain status, but also that the count had specific responsibilities or offices. The etymologically related English term "county" denoted the territories associated with some countships, but not all.
The title of count is typically not used in England or English-speaking countries, and the term earl is used instead. A female holder of the title is still referred to as a countess, however.
Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced , most commonly spelled cue, but also kew, kue, and que.
Tips may refer to:
- Tips Industries, an Indian film production company and record label
- Tips (Windows), a component of Microsoft Windows
- Ernest Oscar Tips, a Belgian aviation designer and entrepreneur
- "Tips", a song by Rodney Atkins from the album Take a Back Road
TIPS as an acronym may refer to:
- TARGET Instant Payment Settlement, an instant payment system of the euro area
- Operation TIPS, Terrorism Information and Prevention System
- Tether Physics and Survivability Experiment, a satellite to experiment with space tether
- Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, see TRIZ
- Thermally Induced Phase Separation, a common method used in scaffold design for tissue engineering
- Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIPs), a series of best-practice manuals for the treatment of substance use and other related disorders published by the US government
- Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, an artificial channel within the liver
- Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, a set of Bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury
- Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, a journal in the Trends series
- Trends in Plant Science, a journal in the Trends series
- Triisopropylsilyl, a type of silyl ether
- Triisopropylsilane, a hydrosilane
- Turkish Institute for Police Studies, University of North Texas
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