Sri Lanka (/sriːˈlɑːŋkə, -ˈlæŋkə/ or i/ʃriː-/;Sinhalese - ශ්රී ලංකාව, Tamil Ilaṅkai), officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon (/sᵻˈlɒnˌ seɪ-ˌ siː-/), is an island country in South Asia near south-east India.
Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest. Its documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II.
A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, and languages. In addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the Pāli Canon, dates back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. The country's recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when Sri Lankan military defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009.
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations. Transport is important because it enables trade between persons, which is essential for the development of civilizations.
Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals and pipelines and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations) and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.
Vehicles traveling on these networks may include automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, people, helicopters, watercraft, spacecraft and aircraft. Operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose including financing, legalities and policies. In the transport industry, operations and ownership of infrastructure can be either public or private, depending on the country and mode.
Transport is a three-piece independent rock band from Brisbane, Queensland, made up of Keir Nuttall (guitar, vocals), Scott Saunders (bass, vocals) and Steve Pope (drums).
Transport was formed in 2001 when all three members were studying at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. In 2003 they won Australia's National Campus Band Competition.
Transport also tours and records as the band of Brisbane singer and Sony-BMG artist Kate Miller-Heidke, joined by singer and violinist Sallie Campbell.
Transport's material is written and developed co-operatively by the band, and Keir Nuttall has also contributed songs to Kate Miller-Heidke's repertoire, notably her turntable hit Space They Cannot Touch from 2004's Telegram, and her 2007 single Words.
Transport's first two EPs and other songs including the single Sunday Driver were recorded by producer Guy Cooper on the Gold Coast.
The band has continued to record and perform independently of Kate Miller-Heidke, mainly at Brisbane venues but also on interstate tours and live radio broadcasts. The band's song Sunday Driver was downloaded a record 24,000 times from the website of youth radio network Triple J, and in Britain Stone Hearted has been aired on BBC Radio 1 and on Kerrang! Radio.
A transport is a device that handles a particular physical storage medium (such as magnetic tape, audio CD, CD-R, or other type of recordable media) itself, and extracts or records the information to and from the medium, to (and from) an outboard set of processing electronics that the transport is connected to.
A transport houses no electronics itself for encoding and decoding the information recorded to and from a certain format of media. It only extracts and records information to the media, as well as handling mechanical operations for accessing the media itself, such as playing or rewinding a tape, or accessing the tracks on a disc.
An example of a transport for a storage medium would be an audiophile-grade audio CD transport, which houses no D/A converter, unlike most ordinary audio CD players. Instead, the audio CD transport is connected to an external D/A converter via a coaxial (SPDIF) or optical (Toslink) digital audio connection to convert the digital audio information to analog for interfacing to most audio equipment.