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Fasting is the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food and in some cases drink, for a period of time. Depending on the tradition, fasting practices may forbid sexual intercourse, masturbation, as well as refraining from eating certain types or groups of food .Medical fasting can be a way to promote detoxification.Fasting for religious and spiritual reasons has been a part of human custom since pre-history. It is mentioned in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testament, in the Mahabharata, in the Upanishads and in the Qur'an.

Along with obligatory prayer, it is one of the greatest obligations of a Bahá'í. The Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi explains It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires.Buddhist monks and nuns following the Vinaya rules commonly do not eat each day after the noon meal, though many orders today do not enforce this. This is not considered a fast, but rather a disciplined regime aiding in meditation. Fasting is generally considered by Buddhists as a form of asceticism and as such is rejected as a deviation from the Middle way.

Cellular differentiation is a concept from developmental biology describing the process by which cells acquire a "type". The morphology of a cell may change considerably during differentiation, but the genetic material remains the same, with few exceptions.

A cell that is able to differentiate into many cell types is known as pluripotent. These cells are called stem cells in animals and meristematic cells in higher plants. A cell that is able to distinguish into all cell types is known as totipotent. In mammals, only the zygote and early embryonic cells are totipotent, while in plants, many differentiated cells can become totipotent with simple laboratory techniques.

In most multicellular organisms, not all cells are alike. For example, cells that make up the human skin are different from cells that make up the inner organs. Yet, all of the different cell types in the human body are all derived from a single fertilized egg cell through differentiation.

The Taj Mahal is a monument located in Agra, India, constructed in 22 years by a workforce of 22,000. The Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned its construction as a mausoleum for his favourite wife, Arjumand Bano Begum, who is better known as Mumtaz Mahal.

The Taj Mahal is generally considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a style that combines elements of Indian, Islamic and Persian architectures. The Taj Mahal has achieved special note because of the romance of its inspiration. While the white domed marble mausoleum is the most familiar part of the monument, the Taj Mahal is actually an integrated complex of structures.

Shah Jahan, who commissioned the monument, was a prolific patron with effectively limitless resources. He had previously created the gardens and palaces of Shalimar in honor of his wife, Mumtaz. After her death in childbirth Shah Jahan was reportedly inconsolable; the court chronicler 'Abd al-Hamid Lahawri tells us that before her death the emperor had but twenty white hairs in his beard, but thereafter many more. The contemporary court chroniclers paid an unusual amount of attention to Mumtaz Mahal's death and Shah Jahan's grief at her demise, and it may well be that the traditional "love-story".