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CN

Specialty Definition: CN

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Specialty Definition: Canadian National Railway

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

CN redirects here, as it's the most common usage of the abbreviation in Canada; for more uses, see CN (disambiguation).

Canadian National Railway
logo or herald

The Canadian National Railway (CN), once the largest railway in Canada, is currently one of the largest freight railways in North America.

During World War I, the Canadian Pacific Railway fell into debt when they were forced to transport soldiers and war materials across Canada for the war effort. Prime Minister Robert Laird Borden suggested the creation of a new, government-run railroad. In 1918 the government combined 16 smaller government-owned railroads (failed private roads which the government had taken over), creating a temporary corporation known as the Canadian Government Railways. Informally, this was known as the Canadian National Railway, and it was under this name that the railway was formally incorporated in 1919.

The Grand Trunk Railroad was also absorbed into Canadian National by 1923. The company also owned a chain of hotels and a steamship line, and it introduced the first national radio service to entertain passengers on the railway. This service later evolved into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1937, Canadian National expanded into the airline industry with the establishment of Trans-Canada Air Lines. Trans-Canada Air became a separate company in 1977, renamed Air Canada.

The railway never did earn a profit in peacetime until 1978 when railroads became subsidized by the government. By this time it had lost almost all passenger services to airlines and automobiles. In 1977 passenger services on both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific were shifted to a new company, Via Rail.

Canadian National was privatized in 1995. In 1998 it merged with the Illinois Central Railway, which connected the already existing lines from Vancouver, British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia with an American line running from Chicago, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana. It is now one of the largest freight railways on the continent.

The management has, as a result of the railway's rebranding as being "North American", has instructed employees not to refer to the railroad as "Canadian National", or any other name mentioning Canada. Canada's Transport Minister has called this move "obscene". [1]

External Link

• Official Website

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Canadian National Railway."

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CN (disambiguation)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

CN or cn may stand for:

• Canadian National Railway and the
  • CN Tower
• Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee
• Cartoon Network
• Chief of Navy
• China
• China (People's Republic), ISO country code
• credit note
• Cuneo, Province of Italy
• Cyanide (CN)
• Gnaeus (Cn.)

Wikipedia:This is a disambiguation page. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "CN (disambiguation)."

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CN gas

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

CN, or chloracetophenon, is a gas used as a riot control agent. It has the molecular form C₈H₁₃ClO. It was investigated, but not used, during the First and Second World Wars, and was used by United States forces in Vietnam. As its toxicity is apparently greater than that of CS gas, it has largely been supplanted by the latter agent.

.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "CN gas."

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Cyanide

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A cyanide is any chemical compound that contains the group CN, with the carbon atom triple bonded to the nitrogen atom. Inorganic cyanides contain the highly toxic cyanide ion CN^- and are the salts of the acid hydrogen cyanide (HCNCN). Organic cyanides contain the CN group single-bonded to another carbon atom and are also known as nitriles.

Appearance

Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless gas with a faint, bitter, almond-like odor. Some people are unable to smell cyanide at all, due to a genetic trait. Sodium cyanide (NaCNCN) and potassium cyanide (KCNCN) are both white solids with a bitter, almond-like odor in damp air.

Occurrence and use

Cyanides can be produced by certain bacteria, fungi, and algae, and are found in a number of foods and plants. Cyanide occurs naturally in cassava roots, which are potato-like tubers of cassava plants grown in tropical countries; these must be processed prior to consumption. Fruits which have a pit, such as cherries or apricots, often contain some cyanides in the pit. Bitter almonds from which almond oil and flavoring is made also contain cyanide.

Hydrogen cyanide is contained in vehicle exhaust and in tobacco smoke. The smoke of burning plastics contains hydrogen cyanide, and house fires often result in cyanide poisonings. A deep blue pigment called Prussian Blue, used in the making of blueprints, also contains hydrogen cyanide.

Cyanides and hydrogen cyanide are used in electroplating, metallurgy, production of chemicals, photographic development, making plastics, fumigating ships, and some mining processes.

Effects on the human body

To deal with the cyanides contained in many foods, the body has an enzyme (rhodanide synthetase) which can convert small amounts of cyanides to the harmless sulfur containing thiocyanate (SCNCN⁻). Cyanides also combine with a chemical to form vitamin B12.

In larger amounts, cyanides are harmful to people. Symptoms of moderate poisoning include vomiting, convulsions, deep breathing, shortness of breath and anxiety; more serious cases result in convulsions, loss of consciousness, and death after apnea and heart arrest.

Exposure to lower levels of cyanide over a long period (e.g. after use of cassava roots as a primary food source in tropical Africa) results in increased blood cyanide levels. These may result in weakness of the fingers and toes, difficulty walking, dimness of vision, deafness, and decreased thyroid gland function, but chemicals other than cyanide may have contributed to these effects. Skin contact with cyanide can produce irritation and sores.

It is not known whether cyanides can directly cause birth defects in people. Birth defects were seen in rats that ate diets of cassava roots. Effects on the reproductive system were seen in rats and mice that drank water containing sodium cyanide.

There are medical tests to measure blood and urine levels of cyanide; however, small amounts of cyanide are not always detectable in blood and urine. Tissue levels of cyanide can be measured if cyanide poisoning is suspected, but cyanide is rapidly cleared from the body, so the tests must be done soon after the exposure. An almond-like odor in the breath may alert a doctor that a person was exposed to cyanide.

Mechanism of toxicity and treatment

Cyanide ion kills all aerobic organisms by shutting down the respiration in cells. It interrupts the electron transport chain in the inner membrane of the mitochondrion because it binds more strongly than oxygen to the Fe⁺³ in cytochrome a₃, preventing this cytochrome from combining electrons with oxygen.

Contrary to popular belief, cyanide does not bind well to ferrous hemoproteins, such as hemoglobin, the mechanism which makes carbon monoxide toxic. One of the therapies for cyanide poisoning is to convert part of the hemoglobin of the blood from ferrous hemoglobin to ferric; this creates a pool of binding potential that can divert cyanide from the cytochromes it poisons. This is done with the compound 4-Dimethylaminophenyl.

Use as a poison

The cyanide ion, if used as poison, is generally delivered in the form of gaseous hydrogen cyanide or in the form of potassium cyanide (KCN) or sodium cyanide (NaCN).

Zyklon B, the poison gas used in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust, works by delivering hydrogen cyanide gas. Cyanide is also the compound used in US execution chambers.

The cyanide salts are fast acting "suicide pills". When they reach the stomach acids, cyanide ions are released; therefore they work faster on an empty stomach. Famous cyanide salt suicides include:

• Hermann Göring
• Joseph Goebbels
• Alan Turing
• Peoples Temple mass suicide

Poisoning by cyanide also figures prominently in crime fiction, for example Agatha Christie's Sparkling Cyanide; cyanide is the instrument of one murder in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

Cyanides were stockpiled in both the Soviet and the United States chemical weapons arsenals in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was thought to be planning to use hydrogen cyanide as a "blitzkrieg" weapon to clear a path through the opposing front line, knowing that the harmful gas itself would evaporate and allow unprotected access to the captured zone.

Mining

Cyanide salts are used in silver and gold mining. The ore is finely ground and mixed or sprayed with cyanide solution. The precious metal cations bind to the cyanide anions and form a soluble cyanide. The left-over dirt is discarded and the metal is recovered from the clear solution with zinc. This process can result in environmental and health problems.

Fishing

Cyanides are used to capture live fish near coral reefs for the aquarium and seafood market. In this method, a diver uses a large needleless syringe to squirt a cyanide solution into areas where the fish are hiding, stunning them so that they can be easily gathered. Environmental organizations decry the practice.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cyanide."

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ISO 3166-2:CN

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

ISO 3166-2 codes for the People's Republic of China. The purpose of this family of standards is to establish a worldwide series of short abbreviations for places, for use on package labels, containers and such. Anywhere where a short alphanumeric code can serve to clearly indicate a location in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than the full place name. US readers may wish to consider them as the equivalent of worldwide zip or postal codes. Within the Wikipedia, the codes from the country pages link to the pages for the locations they identify.

Codesystem: 2-character-numeric

Latest Change: ISO 3166-2:2002-05-21

Encoding list (34)

Municipalities (4)

CN-11 Beijing
CN-50 Chongqing
CN-31 Shanghai
CN-12 Tianjin

Provincies (23)

CN-34 Anhui
CN-35 Fujian
CN-62 Gansu
CN-44 Guangdong
CN-52 Guizhou
CN-46 Hainan
CN-13 Hebei
CN-23 Heilongjiang
CN-41 Henan
CN-42 Hubei
CN-43 Hunan
CN-32 Jiangsu
CN-36 Jiangxi
CN-22 Jilin
CN-21 Liaoning
CN-63 Qinghai
CN-61 Shaanxi
CN-37 Shandong
CN-14 Shanxi
CN-51 Sichuan
CN-71 Taiwan (disputed province)
CN-53 Yunnan
CN-33 Zhejiang

Autonomous Regions (5)

CN-45 Guangxi
CN-15 Nei Mongol
CN-64 Ningxia
CN-65 Xinjiang
CN-54 Xizang

Special administrative regions (2)

CN-91 Hong Kong
CN-92 Macau

See also

• ISO 3166-2, the reference table for all country region codes.
• ISO 3166-1, the reference table for all country codes, as used for domain names on the internet.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "ISO 3166-2:CN."

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Abbreviations & Acronyms: CN

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Commercial Usage: CN

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Photo Album: CN

Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Photomicrograph of the pons at the level of the CN VI nucleus, (Abducens N.), from a patient with Type III poliomyelitis. Credit: CDC.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Digital Photo Gallery: CN
 

"CN Tower" by Maciek M Commentary: "The CN Tower."	"CN Tower" by João Estêvão A. De Freitas Commentary: "Center of Toronto with the CN Tower."
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Usage Frequency: CN

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expression: CN

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: CN

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Modern Translation: CN

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Derivations: CN

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Anagrams: CN

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