Nuts are shelled by soaking in water (salt water, probably) for 24 hours, then the nuts are boiled for 5 minutes. The boiling softens the shell, and makes cracking (by hand or machine) much easier. Nuts that are to be sold as blanched or sliced nuts, may be boiled again, before blanching and/or slicing.
A parsec is an astronomical unit of measurement that is equivalent to 3.26 light years distance, or the distance photons will travel in vacuum over the period of 3.26 years.
The other commonly used unit in astronomy and in Star Trek is called the Parsec (parallax of one arc second). The parsec is defined to be the distance at which a star would have a parallax angle p equal to one second of arc (1/3600 deg).