title: Emory University

text: Emory University is ranked 22nd among national universities in the United States and 71st among global universities by "U.S. News & World Report", 98th among global universities and 19th in the United States in the "Times Higher Education World University Rankings" for 2017–18. QS University Rankings listed Emory as 27th in the United States. The university has been named both a Hidden Ivy and a "New Ivy". The university was ranked 17th among colleges and universities in the United States in a "The Wall Street Journal" survey.


title: Emory University

text: "The Princeton Review" named the Emory University School of Law as one of the best 169 law schools in the U.S. in 2014. "Bloomberg Businessweek" ranked Goizueta Business School's BBA Program ninth in the nation in 2014. "The Economist" ranked Goizueta Business School's MBA program 27th in the nation in 2019.


title: Emory University

text: In 2012, following an internal investigation led by Emory Provost Earl Lewis and Jones Day Law Firm, Emory University announced that members of Emory University's Office of Admission and Institutional Research intentionally misreported data concerning entering students' standardized test scores and class rankings between 2000 and 2012 to standard reference sources and third parties who rank colleges and universities. For example, while the office reported that 89% of its students graduated in the top 10% of their class, only 75% actually had. Following the investigation, the individuals responsible for the misreportings were fired or resigned and the university issued a public apology. The university made several corrective actions in 2012 and 2013, including the hiring of independent data advisers, to ensure accurate data collection and reporting in the future.


title: Emory University

text: Emory University is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In 2015, Emory received $572.4 million from external funding agencies. Emory University leads the nation in the number of students with Kirschstein-National Research Service Award pre-doctoral fellowships from the National Institutes of Health.


title: Emory University

text: Emory University has a strong partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 1947, the university donated 15 acres of land to the United States Department of Health and Human Services for the construction of the CDC headquarters. The Emory University Prevention Research Center (EPRC) and Emory Center for Injury Control are funded by the CDC. Emory University's African Center of Excellence for Public Health Security, which seeks to improve preparedness and response to health threats in low-income countries, is a five-year, multimillion-dollar cooperative program with the CDC and International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI). The Emory University Center for Global Safe Water (CGSW), which conducts applied research, evaluation, and training to promote global health equity through universal access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene, works in collaboration with the CDC. The Emory University Global Health Institute, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, partners with the CDC to enhance public health infrastructure in low-resource countries. The Emory University Hospital Isolation Unit and Quarantine Station was established by the CDC following the 2003 SARS outbreak. The isolation and treatment facilities at Emory University played a crucial role in ending the 2014 Ebola virus cases in the United States. CDC scientists and administrators hold memberships and frequently speak at Emory University's Vaccine Dinner Club (VDC), an association that holds monthly academic meetings to discuss and advance vaccine research. In 2015, Emory was made a member of the CDC's Prevention Epicenters Program, a research program in which CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) collaborates with academic investigators to conduct innovative infection control and prevention research.


title: Emory University

text: In 2015, Emory University, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Public Health Foundation of India, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences established the Center for Control of Chronic Conditions in New Delhi, India. The center aims to improve the prevention and care of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental health, and injuries in India.


title: Emory University

text: The International Association of National Public Health Institutes is based at the university. The association was chartered in 2006 with a $20 million, five-year grant through Emory University from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2015, the Emory Global Health Institute and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were made lead partners for the newly created, $75 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS).


title: Emory University

text: Emory University research is heavily funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services's National Institutes of Health. The federal agency awarded the university nearly $300 million in the fiscal year of 2015. In 2015, Emory University was one of four institutions selected by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for its seven-year, multimillion-dollar Tuberculosis Research Units (TBRU) program, which aims to drive innovation in tuberculosis research and reduce the global burden of the disease. In 2015, an Emory-led research consortium received a five-year, $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research human immune responses to Varicella zoster virus and pneumococcal vaccination. The university also received a $9 million grant over five years from the NIH to support one of three national Centers for Collaborative Research in Fragile X syndrome. The grant is a renewal of Emory's National Fragile X Research Center, continuously funded by the NIH for more than 10 years. In 2015, the university received an $8.9 million grant over five years from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to better understand the role of reactive oxygen species and inflammation in blood vessel function and to explore new interventions and preventive approaches for atherosclerosis and aortic aneurysms. In 2015, the university received an $8 million grant over five years from the NIH to develop and validate mathematical models of how prior immunity affects recall immune responses to influenza viruses. The researchers will create and disseminate powerful, user-friendly modeling tools for use by the wider research community in developing more effective vaccines. In 2015, the university received a $3.6 million grant over five years from the NIH to examine the effects of maternal stress on brain function, development, and behavior in African-American infants, including the biochemical connection between the brain and the microbiome. In 2015, the university received a $3.5 million grant over five years from the NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI) for an Informatics Technology for Cancer Research award. Winship Cancer Institute and Emory School of Medicine researchers will develop software tools to help the cancer research community gain new insights from cancer imaging "big data" and develop new open-source cancer research applications. In 2015, the university received a $3.4 million grant from the NIH International Collaborations in Infectious Disease Research Program to support a partnership between the Emory Vaccine Center and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in New Delhi, India to study dengue virus infection in India.


title: Emory University

text: The Emory University Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and the Emory Vaccine Center are world leaders in AIDS Vaccine Development and HIV Pathogenesis studies are funded by nine different institutes of the National Institutes of Health and by the Georgia Research Alliance. The centers include one of the largest groups of academic vaccine scientists in the world and are currently attempting to develop an effective HIV vaccine. Emory University Researchers Dr. Dennis C. Liotta, Dr. Raymond F. Schinazi and Dr. Woo-Baeg Choi discovered Emtricitabine, a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) used in the treatment of HIV. The drug was named as one of the world's most important antiviral drugs by the World Health Organization and is included in their Model List of Essential Medicines.


title: Emory University

text: Emory is a global leader in Ebola research and treatment. The university was one of three institutions that successfully treated medical evacuees during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. In 2015, the United States Department of Health and Human Services named Emory University the lead coordinating center for the National Ebola Training and Education Center (NETEC). The university will collaborate with the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response on the program, which will receive $12 million in funding over the next five years. The program will support training of health care providers and facilities to manage Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases. Its objectives are to develop metrics to measure facility and health care worker readiness to care for Ebola patients, conduct assessments of state and regional Ebola Treatment Centers, create education materials related to care of patients with possible Ebola and other special pathogens and offer technical and training assistance to public health departments and health facilities. The university also received a $10.8 million grant over three years from the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to lead a 10-institution national team developing improved therapeutics and vaccines for multiple strains of Ebola virus. In 2015, Emory received a three-year, $2.2 million grant from the CDC to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, including Ebola, in health-care facilities.


title: Emory University

text: Emory and Georgia Tech have a strong research partnership. In 2015, Emory and Georgia Tech were awarded an $8.3 million grant by the NIH to establish a National Exposure Assessment Laboratory. The laboratory will research the impact of environmental chemicals on children's health. In 2015, the two universities received a five-year, $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create new bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs and concentrations in healthcare robotics, which will be the first program of its kind in the Southeastern United States. In 2015, Emory University, Georgia Tech, and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta were awarded a four-year, $1.8 million grant by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in order to expand the Atlanta Cystic Fibrosis Research and Development Program. , Emory jointly manages the second-largest cystic fibrosis population in the United States. In 2015, Emory and Georgia Tech received a $1.6 million grant from the Coulter Translational Research Partnership Program to accelerate nine promising technologies developed in research laboratories with commercialization potential.


title: Emory University

text: In 2015, Emory University received a $15 million grant from the Wounded Warrior Project in order to establish the "Warrior Care Network" and develop innovative approaches to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).


title: Emory University

text: In 2015, Emory University and the University of South Florida received a $2.5 million grant over five years from the John E. Fogarty International Center (FIC) to study links between infectious disease transmission and agricultural practices.


title: Emory University

text: Emory University's original campus was established in Oxford, Georgia in 1836. The 56-acre campus, located 38 miles east of Emory's Atlanta Campus, is home to Oxford College of Emory University and was the site of military headquarters and infirmaries during the American Civil War. Many of the buildings were designed with Neoclassical architecture and Gothic Revival architecture. In 1975, the United States National Register of Historic Places designated the campus as part of the Oxford Historic District.


title: Emory University

text: Emory's Atlanta Campus, established in the early twentieth century on a Beaux-Arts master plan by Pittsburgh architect Henry Hornbostel, covers more than 600 acres in Atlanta's historic neighborhood of Druid Hills. The university campus is heavily forested with pine, maples, oak, and magnolias, and Peavine Creek, a branch of the Peachtree Creek, runs through the campus. The Arbor Day Foundation named Emory a Tree Campus USA school in 2015. Many of the university's buildings are designed with multi-hued granite and Spanish Saltillo tile. The university has one of the largest inventories by square footage of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified building space among campuses in the United States.


title: Emory University

text: The campus is home to the Emory University Hospital, Michael C. Carlos Museum, which has the largest collection of ancient artifacts in the Southeastern United States, the Winship Cancer Institute, Georgia's first and only cancer center designated by the National Cancer Institute, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, one of eight National Institutes of Health-funded national primate research centers, and a number of other academic, art, medical, and student facilitates. In 1991, Emory opened the first collegiate LGBT student center in the Southeastern United States which is the tenth oldest in the nation. Undergraduate dormitories include the Undergraduate Residential Center, Clairmont Residential Center, Tower Apartments, Alabama Hall, Complex, Dobbs Hall, Harris Hall, Eagle Hall, Raoul Hall and Turman Hall. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Egleston hospital, and Emory Point are located adjacent to the campus.


title: Emory University

text: In 2015, a $52 million expansion and renovation project of the Sanford S. Atwood Chemistry Center was completed. The new, 270,000-square-foot complex contains laboratories, interactive teaching and study spaces, and a chemistry library. The completion of the complex was accompanied by a $1.2 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to advance and modernize the university's chemistry curriculum.


title: Emory University

text: In the Candler Library Annex of Robert W. Woodruff Library, there is a 1920s Pietro Caproni reproduction of Bertel Thorvaldsen's "The Triumph of Alexander" frieze. The frieze depicts Alexander the Great and his army entering Babylon following their victory over the Achaemenid Empire in the Battle of Gaugamela.


title: Emory University

text: During the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the university hosted the United States Olympic women's gymnastics team on its Atlanta Campus. The team, known as the Magnificent Seven, won the first-ever gold medal for the United States in the women's team all-around competition. The university housed international officials and journalists and served as a training facility for Olympians. The Cox Hall Ballroom was transformed into a news center for the Olympic foreign press.


title: Emory University

text: In February 2017, Emory announced that its R. Howard Dobbs University Center, built in 1986 from a neofuturistic postmodernist design by local architect John C. Portman Jr., to house the university's main student/faculty center and dining hall (Coca-Cola Commons), would be demolished and replaced with a new $98 million Campus Life Center, designed by Durham, North Carolina-based Duda Paine Architects. Reasons given for the replacement included inconvenience of food delivery to the dining hall, undersized kitchen facilities, and inadequate fenestration in the Commons. The new state-of-the-art building, dubbed the Emory Student Center (ESC), opened in May 2019, and includes a larger dining hall, study and collaboration spaces, game room, a 1400+ person multipurpose space, coffee shop, food emporium. It is the first building on Emory's campus to receive a LEED platinum rating.


title: Emory University

text: Emory University's total enrollment for fall 2021 was 15,846 students, with 8,197 undergraduates and 7,649 graduate and professional students. 21% of students are Georgia residents, the remaining come from 49 other states, D.C., and more than 100 countries. 40% of students are male, 60% are female. The student to faculty ratio is 7:1, with an average class size of 25 students.


title: Emory University

text: Of the 1,534 freshmen enrolled in fall 2021, 31% were Caucasian, 22% were Asian, 13% were Black/African American, 11% were Latino/Hispanic, 18% were International, 1% were Native American and 4% did not identity; 57% were female and 43% were male.


title: Emory University

text: Students may engage in the performing and fine arts as an area of academic study or as extracurricular activities. Undergraduates may pursue a major in the performing arts (dance, theater, or music) or in film studies, art history, visual arts, or creative writing. Graduate programs in art history, film studies, and music are offered. There are more than 50 student organizations dedicated to the arts. Students can explore artistic interests as diverse as architecture, breakdancing, poetry, and improvisational comedy. Emory routinely hosts arts events in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts that are open to the Emory and Atlanta communities. Recent performances include Bang on a Can All-Stars (a side project of drummer Glenn Kotche from the rock band Wilco), jazz performer Esperanza Spalding, and New York's Cedar Lake Dance Company. A program called Creativity Conversations brings artistic minds to campus to discuss art and the creative process. Guests have included Philip Glass, Jimmy Carter, Salman Rushdie, Seamus Heaney and Rita Dove. Rita Dove also gave the keynote address at Emory's 2013 Commencement.


title: Emory University

text: The Barkley Forum Center for Debate Education is an intercollegiate debate organization at Emory University. The center is named in honor of Emory alumnus Alben Barkley, 35th Vice President of the United States. Debating was established at the university in 1837 and the intercollegiate debate team was formed in 1914. Emory's Barkley Forum debate team has won 3 National Debate Tournaments and over 25 individual champion speaker awards.


title: Emory University

text: The university received the 2008 Presidential Award for General Community Service, which is the highest federal recognition given to higher education institutions for their commitment to community service, service-learning and civic engagement. About 25% of Emory students participate in Volunteer Emory, Emory's umbrella community service group. As one of the most popular groups on campus, Volunteer Emory offers dozens of ways to serve the community, working with varied organizations including the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Trees Atlanta, PAWS Atlanta, and Jones Boys and Girls Club. Emory Cares International Service Day brings together students, alumni and other community members to volunteer at a number of projects organized by Emory and its many partners around the city of Atlanta and in cities worldwide.


title: Emory University

text: "The Emory Wheel" is the student-run newspaper of Emory University. The "Wheel" is published twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday, during the regular school year, and is updated regularly at its website. Serving the Emory community since 1919, the "Wheel" is editorially and financially independent from the university. The staff is composed entirely of students, with the exception of the general manager, who oversees advertising and whose salary is paid by the newspaper.


title: Emory University

text: Through the Centers of International Programs Abroad, Emory University students can study in over 40 countries at the top academic institutions in the world including the National University of Singapore, Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Nanjing University, Oxford University, Imperial College London, the School of Oriental and African Studies, Yonsei University, Trinity College Dublin, University of St. Andrews, University of Melbourne, Hertie School of Governance, University of Amsterdam, Sciences Po, University of Cape Town, and Tel Aviv University.


title: Emory University

text: Fraternities have existed on Emory's campus as early as 1840. One early chronicler makes the case that Emory's "temple" of the Mystic Seven may have been the first chapter of a national fraternity established anywhere in the South. Today, the Greek-letter sororities and fraternities play a part in leavening Emory's campus life. For undergraduates, Greek life comprises approximately 30% of the Emory student population. The Office of Greek Life recognizes and regulates on-campus chapters of fraternities and sororities. Fraternities have on-campus housing located on Eagle Row, and Sorority Village, a series of townhouses, faces the fraternity houses.


title: Emory University

text: Hundreds of student clubs and organizations operate on Emory's campus. These include numerous student government, special interest, and service organizations. The Student Government Association charters and provides most of the funding for other student groups, and represents students' interests when dealing with the administration. The Student Government Association oversees divisional councils, each coinciding with the undergraduate, graduate and professional schools of the university. Notable among these are the College Council (CC) which handles students' concerns primarily for the undergraduate body of the Emory College of Arts and Sciences and annually sponsors the State of Race event, and the BBA Council which does similar activities for the Goizueta Business School BBA Program. The Student Programming Council is the school's primary programming organization, responsible for planning multiple events every year: Homecoming Week, Dooley's week, and a plethora of other events that happen around campus that benefit the students in a proactive way. Emory also has several secret societies—the Paladin Society, the D.V.S. Senior Honor Society, Ducemus, Speculum, and The Order of Ammon. Emory has a partnership with Coca-Cola in which they pledged 3 million dollars over a 5-year period for "Service for Learning" which projects that Emory student volunteers participate to help preserve nature trails, create urban farms, as well as restore neighborhood parks. Emory University also has many Black student organizations, including: the Black Student Alliance, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Voices of Inner Strength Gospel Choir (VOIS).


title: Emory University

text: The intramural sports program provides an athletic outlet for the entire Emory community. Emory has numerous club sports and a variety of recreational and competitive intramural teams. The Outdoor Emory Organization sponsors weekend trips of outdoor activities such as rafting, rock climbing and hiking.


title: Emory University

text: Emory ranks among top schools in both the "U.S. News & World Report" rankings of the best national universities and the Directors' Cup of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) for best all-around athletics program. Emory's 18 varsity sports teams, known as the Eagles, are members of the NCAA's Division III in the University Athletic Association (UAA). Emory has never had an intercollegiate football team.


title: Emory University

text: Emory University has over 13,200 faculty and staff members and over 133,000 living alumni. Awards and honors recognizing Emory alumni and faculty include the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bancroft Prize, Booker Prize, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, National Humanities Medal, Peabody Award, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, American Mathematical Society Fellowship, MacArthur Fellows Program, Rhodes Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, American Society for Clinical Investigation, National Academy of Sciences, and National Research Council.


title: Emory University

text: Isaac Stiles Hopkins (1859C) and Robert Stewart Hyer (BA 1881, MA 1882), founding presidents of Georgia Institute of Technology and Southern Methodist University, respectively;


title: Emory University

text: Bobby Jones (Law 1929), the only golfer to win a Grand Slam, founder of the Masters Golf Tournament, and regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time;


title: Emory University

text: Christopher McCandless (1990C), Alaskan wilderness adventurer and main subject of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild";


title: Emory University

text: Distinguished faculty: Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States; Sir Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-winning novelist; Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize recipient; William Foege, tenth Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director; Nathan McCall, "New York Times" bestselling author; James T. Laney, 17th president of Emory University, United States ambassador to Korea from 1993 to 1997; Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize winner; and US poet laureate and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent.


title: Kalmykia

text: Kalmykia (; , ), officially the Republic of Kalmykia, is a republic of Russia, located in the Lower Volga region of southern Russia. The republic is part of the Southern Federal District, and borders Dagestan to the south and Stavropol Krai to the southwest; Volgograd Oblast to the northwest and north and Astrakhan Oblast to the north and east; Rostov Oblast to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. Kalmykia is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the predominant religion.


title: Kalmykia

text: The republic covers an area of , with a small population of about 275,000 residents. The republic is home to the Kalmyks, a people of Mongol origin who are primarily of Buddhist faith. The capital of the republic is the city of Elista, which has gained a reputation for international chess.


title: Kalmykia

text: The republic is located in Southern Russia, lying north of the North Caucasus. A small stretch of the Volga River flows through eastern Kalmykia. Other major rivers include the Yegorlyk, the Kuma, and the Manych. Lake Manych-Gudilo is the largest lake; other lakes of significance include Lakes Sarpa and Tsagan-Khak. The highest point of Kalmykia is high Shared, located in the Yergeni hills.


title: Kalmykia

text: The republic's wildlife includes the saiga antelope, whose habitat is protected in Chyornye Zemli Nature Reserve.


title: Kalmykia

text: The average January temperature is and the average July temperature is . Average annual precipitation ranges from in the east of the republic to in the west. The small town of Utta is the hottest place in Russia. On July 12, 2010, during a significant heatwave affecting all of Russia, an all-time record-high temperature was observed at .


title: Kalmykia

text: According to the Kurgan hypothesis, the upland regions of modern-day Kalmykia formed part of the cradle of Indo-European culture. Hundreds of Kurgans can be seen in these areas, known as the Indo-European "Urheimat" (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture, Yamna culture).


title: Kalmykia

text: The territory of Kalmykia is unique in that it has been the home in successive periods to many major world religions and ideologies. Some of the first people to invade this territory were Scythians, Sarmatians. Prehistoric paganism and shamanism gave way to Judaism amongst some of the Khazars (who included Muslims and Christians in equal or greater numbers as well). This was succeeded by Islam with the Alans while the Mongol hordes brought Tengriism, and the later Nogais were Muslims, before their replacement by the present-day Buddhist Oirats/Kalmyks. With the annexation of the territory by the Russian Empire, Christianity arrived with Slavic settlers, before all religion was suppressed after the Russian Revolution. Shamanism has in all probability remained a constant, often hidden, substrate of folk practice, as it is today.


title: Kalmykia

text: The ancestors of the Kalmyks, the Oirats, migrated from the steppes of southern Siberia on the banks of the Irtysh River, reaching the Lower Volga region by the early-17th century. Historians have given various explanations for the move, but generally recognise that the Kalmyks sought abundant pastures for their herds. Another motivation may have involved escaping the growing dominance of the neighbouring Dzungar Mongol tribe.


title: Kalmykia

text: They reached the lower Volga region in or about 1630. That land, however, was not uncontested pastures, but rather the homeland of the Nogai Horde, a confederation of Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes. The Kalmyks expelled the Nogais, who fled to the Caucasian plains and to the Crimean Khanate, areas (at least theoretically) under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Some Nogai groups sought the protection of the Russian garrison at Astrakhan. The remaining nomadic Mongol Oirat tribes became vassals of the Kalmyk Khan.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyks settled in the wide-open steppes - from Saratov in the north to Astrakhan on the Volga delta in the south and to the Terek River in the southwest. They also encamped on both sides of the Volga River, from the Don River in the west to the Ural River in the east. Although these territories had been recently annexed by the Tsardom of Russia, Moscow was in no position to settle the area with Russian colonists. This area under Kalmyk control would eventually be called the Kalmyk Khanate.


title: Kalmykia

text: Within twenty-five years of settling in the Lower Volga region, the Kalmyks became subjects of the Tsar of Russia. In exchange for protecting Russia's southern border, the Kalmyks were promised an annual allowance and access to the markets of Russian border settlements. The open access to Russian markets was supposed to discourage mutual raiding on the part of the Kalmyks and of the Russians and Bashkirs, a Russian-dominated Turkic people, but this was not often the practice. In addition, Kalmyk allegiance was often nominal, as the Kalmyk Khans practised self-government, based on a set of laws they called the Great Code of the Nomads ("Iki Tsaadzhin Bichig").


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyk Khanate reached its peak of military and political power under Ayuka Khan (ruled 1672–1724, khan 1690–1724). During his era, the Kalmyk Khanate fulfilled its responsibility to protect the southern borders of Russia and conducted many military expeditions against its Turkic-speaking neighbours. Successful military expeditions were also conducted in the Caucasus. The Khanate experienced economic prosperity from free trade with Russian border towns, with China, with Tibet and with Muslim neighbours. During this era, the Kalmyks also kept close contacts with their Oirat kinsmen in Dzungaria, as well as with the Dalai Lama in Tibet.


title: Kalmykia

text: After the October Revolution in 1917, many Don Kalmyks joined the White Russian army and fought under the command of Generals Denikin and Wrangel during the Russian Civil War. Before the Red Army broke through to the Crimean Peninsula towards the end of 1920, a large group of Kalmyks fled from Russia with the remnants of the defeated White Army to the Black Sea ports of Turkey.


title: Kalmykia

text: The majority of the refugees chose to resettle in Belgrade, Serbia. Other, much smaller, groups chose Sofia (Bulgaria), Prague (Czechoslovakia) and Paris and Lyon (France). The Kalmyk refugees in Belgrade built a Buddhist temple there in 1929.


title: Kalmykia

text: In July 1919, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued an appeal to the Kalmyk people, calling for them to revolt and to aid the Red Army. Lenin promised to provide the Kalmyks, among other things, a sufficient quantity of land for their own use. The promise came to fruition on November 4, 1920, when a resolution was passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee proclaiming the formation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast. Fifteen years later, on October 22, 1935, the Oblast was elevated to republic status, Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.


title: Kalmykia

text: In line with the policy of "Korenizatsiya" based on the concept of titular nations, the government of the Soviet Union adopted a strategy of national delimitation, while at the same time enforcing the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. According to Dorzha Arbakov, decentralized governing bodies were a tool the Bolsheviks used to control the Kalmyk people:


title: Kalmykia

text: After establishing control, the Soviet authorities did not overtly enforce an anti-religion policy, other than through passive means, because it sought to bring Mongolia and Tibet into its sphere of influence. The government also was compelled to respond to domestic disturbances resulting from the economic policies of War Communism and the 1921 famine.


title: Kalmykia

text: The passive measures that were taken by Soviet authorities to control the people included the imposition of a harsh tax to close places of worship and religious schools. The Cyrillic script replaced Todo Bichig, the traditional Kalmyk vertical script.


title: Kalmykia

text: On January 22, 1922, Mongolia proposed to migrate the Kalmyks during the famine in Kalmykia, but Russia refused. 71–72,000 Kalmyks died during the famine. Revolts erupted among the Kalmyks in 1926 and 1930 (on 1942–1943, see the next section). In March 1927, Soviet deported 20,000 Kalmyks to the tundras of Siberia and Karelia.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyks of the Don Voisko Oblast were subject to the policies of de-cossackization where villages were destroyed, khuruls (temples) and monasteries were burned down and executions were indiscriminate. At the same time, grain, livestock and other foodstuffs were seized.


title: Kalmykia

text: In December 1927 the Fifteenth Party Congress of the Soviet Union passed a resolution calling for the "voluntary" collectivization of agriculture. The change in policy was accompanied by a new campaign of repression, directed initially against the small farming class. The objective of this campaign was to suppress the resistance of farming peasants to the full-scale collectivization of agriculture.


title: Kalmykia

text: On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. By August 12, 1942, the German Army Group South captured Elista, the capital of the Kalmyk ASSR. After capturing the Kalmyk territory, German army officials established a propaganda campaign with the assistance of anti-communist Kalmyk nationalists, including white emigre, Kalmyk exiles. German benevolence, however, did not extend to all people living in the Kalmyk ASSR. At least 93 Jewish families, for example, were rounded up and killed. The total Jewish dead numbered between 100 and upwards of 700, according to documents held in the Kalmyk State Archives. The campaign was focused primarily on recruiting and organizing Kalmyk men into anti-Soviet militia units.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyk units were extremely successful in flushing out and killing Soviet partisans. But by December 1942, the Soviet Red Army retook the Kalmyk ASSR, forcing the Kalmyks assigned to those units to flee, in some cases with their wives and children in hand.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyk units retreated westward into unfamiliar territory with the retreating German army and were reorganized into the Kalmuck Legion, although the Kalmyks themselves preferred the name Kalmuck Cavalry Corps. The casualty rate also increased substantially during the retreat, especially among the Kalmyk officers. To replace those killed, the German army imposed forced conscription, taking in teenagers and middle-aged men. As a result, the overall effectiveness of the Kalmyk units declined.


title: Kalmykia

text: By the end of the war, the remnants of the Kalmuck Cavalry Corps had made their way to Austria where the Kalmyk soldiers and their family members became post-war refugees.


title: Kalmykia

text: Those who did not want to leave formed militia units that chose to stay behind and harass the oncoming Soviet Red Army.


title: Kalmykia

text: Although a number of Kalmyks chose to fight against the Soviet Union, the majority by and large did not, fighting the German army in regular Soviet Red army units and in partisan resistance units behind the battlelines throughout the Soviet Union. Before their removal from the Soviet Red Army and from partisan resistance units after December 1943, approximately 8,000 Kalmyks were awarded various orders and medals, including 21 Kalmyk men who were recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union.


title: Kalmykia

text: On December 27, 1943, Soviet authorities declared that "many Kalmyks" were guilty of cooperation with the German Army and cited that as a justification to order the deportation of the entire Kalmyk population, including those who had served with the Soviet Army, to various locations in Central Asia and Siberia. In conjunction with the deportation, the Kalmyk ASSR was abolished and its territory was split between adjacent Astrakhan, Rostov and Stalingrad Oblasts and Stavropol Krai. To completely obliterate any traces of the Kalmyk people, the Soviet authorities renamed the former republic's towns and villages.


title: Kalmykia

text: Due to their widespread dispersal in Siberia, their language and culture suffered a possibly irreversible decline. Khrushchev finally allowed their return in 1957, when they found their homes, jobs, and land occupied by imported Russians and Ukrainians, who remained. On January 9, 1957, Kalmykia again became an autonomous oblast, and on July 29, 1958, an autonomous republic within the Russian SFSR.


title: Kalmykia

text: In the following years, bad planning of agricultural and irrigation projects resulted in widespread desertification. On orders from Moscow, sheep production increased beyond levels that the fragile steppe could sustain, resulting in 1.4 million acres (5666 km) of the artificial desert. To ramp up output, economically nonviable industrial plants were constructed.


title: Kalmykia

text: After the dissolution of the USSR, Kalmykia kept the status of an autonomous republic within the newly formed Russian Federation (effective March 31, 1992).


title: Kalmykia

text: The head of the government in Kalmykia is called "The Head of the Republic". The President of Russia selects a candidate for the Head of the Republic position and presents it to the Parliament of Kalmyk Republic, the People's Khural, for approval. If a candidate is not approved, the President of the Russian Federation can dissolve the Parliament and set up new elections.


title: Kalmykia

text: From 1993 to 2010, the Head of the Republic was Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov. He also was the president of the world chess organization FIDE until the Russo-Ukrainian War. He has spent much of his fortune on promoting chess in Kalmykia—where chess is compulsory in all primary schools—and also overseas, with Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, hosting many international tournaments.


title: Kalmykia

text: In the late 1990s, the Ilyumzhinov government was alleged to be spending too much government money on chess-related projects. The allegations were published in Sovietskaya Kalmykia, the opposition newspaper in Elista. Larisa Yudina, the journalist who investigated these accusations, was kidnapped and murdered in 1998. Two men, Sergei Vaskin and Tyurbi Boskomdzhiv, who worked in the local civil service, were charged with her murder, one of them having been a former presidential bodyguard. After prolonged investigations by the Russian authorities, both men were found guilty and jailed, but no evidence was discovered that Ilyumzhinov himself was in any way responsible.


title: Kalmykia

text: On October 24, 2010, Ilyumzhinov was replaced by Alexey Orlov as the new Head of Kalmykia. Since September 2019 the acting President of Kalmykia is Batu Khasikov.


title: Kalmykia

text: Since 2008, Anatoly Kozachko has been President of the Parliament, the People's Khural. The current Prime Minister of Kalmykia is Lyudmila Ivanovna. All the three top politicians belong to the Kremlin's "United Russia" Party.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyk Nationalist Oirat-Kalmyk People’s Congress has been convening since 2015 and supporting certain people in the People's Khural of Kalmykia elections, as well as pushing for political change inside Kalmykia.


title: Kalmykia

text: According to the 2010 Census, Kalmyks make up 57.4% of the republic's population. Other groups include Russians (30.2%), Dargins (2.7%), Kazakhs (1.7%), Chechens (1.2%), Turks (1.3%), Avars (0.8%) Ukrainians (0.5%), Koreans (0.5%).


title: Kalmykia

text: This statistics is about the demographics of the Kalmyks in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Russian Federation.


title: Kalmykia

text: Tibetan Buddhism is the traditional and most popular religion among the Kalmyks, while Russians in the country practice predominantly Russian Orthodoxy. A minority of Kalmyks practice pre-Buddhist shamanism or Tengrism (a contemporary revival of the Turkic and Mongolic shamanic religions). Many people are unaffiliated and non-religious.


title: Kalmykia

text: According to a 2012 survey, 47.6% of the population of Kalmykia adhere to Buddhism, 18% to the Russian Orthodox Church, 4.8% to Islam, 3% to Tengrism or Kalmyk shamanism, 1% are unaffiliated Christians, 1% are either Orthodox Christian believers who do not belong to a church or are members of non-Russian Orthodox churches, 0.4% adhere to forms of Hinduism, and 9.0% follow other religions or did not give an answer to the survey. In addition, 13% of the population declared themselves to be "spiritual but not religious" and another 13% to be atheist.


title: Kalmykia

text: Kalmykia has a developed agricultural sector. Other developed industries include the food processing and oil and gas industries.


title: Kalmykia

text: As most of Kalmykia is arid, irrigation is necessary for agriculture. The Cherney Zemli Irrigation Scheme () in southern Kalmykia receives water from the Caucasian rivers Terek and Kuma via a chain of canals: water flows from the Terek to the Kuma via the Terek-Kuma Canal, then to the Chogray Reservoir on the East Manych River via the Kuma-Manych Canal, and finally into Kalmykia's steppes over the Cherney Zemli Main Canal, constructed in the 1970s.


title: Kalmykia

text: The government of Kalmykia spends about $100 million annually. Its annual oil production is about 1,270,000 barrels.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyks of Kyrgyzstan live primarily in the Karakol region of eastern Kyrgyzstan. They are referred to as Sart Kalmyks. The origin of this name is unknown. Likewise, it is not known when, why and from where this small group of Kalmyks migrated to eastern Kyrgyzstan. Due to their minority status, the Sart Kalmyks have adopted the Kyrgyz language and culture of the majority Kyrgyz population. As a result, nearly all now are Muslims.


title: Kalmykia

text: Although Sart Kalmyks are Muslims, Kalmyks elsewhere, by and large, remain faithful to the Gelugpa Order of Tibetan Buddhism. In Kalmykia, for example, the Gelugpa Order with the assistance of the government has constructed numerous Buddhist temples. In addition, the Kalmyk people recognize Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader and Erdne Ombadybadykowkow, a Kalmyk American, as the supreme lama of the Kalmyk people. The Dalai Lama has visited Elista on a number of occasions.


title: Kalmykia

text: The Kalmyks have also established communities in the United States, primarily in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The majority are descended from those Kalmyks who fled from Russia in late 1920 to France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and, later, Germany. Many of those Kalmyks living in Germany at the end of World War II were eventually granted passage to the United States.


title: Kalmykia

text: As a consequence of their decades-long migration through Europe, many older Kalmyks are fluent in German, French, and Serbo-Croatian, in addition to Russian and their native Kalmyk language. There are several Kalmyk Buddhist temples in Monmouth County, New Jersey, where the vast majority of American Kalmyks reside, as well as a Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center and monastery in Washington Township, New Jersey. At one point during the 20th century, there was a Kalmyk Buddhist temple in Belgrade, Serbia.


title: Kalmykia

text: The word "Kalmyk" means 'those who remained'. Its origin is unknown but this name was known centuries before a large part of the Kalmyks moved back from the Volga River to Dzhungaria in the 18th century.


title: Kalmykia

text: There are three cultural subgroups within the Kalmyk nation: "Turguts", "Durbets" (Durwets), and "Buzavs" (Oirats, who joined the Russian Cossacks), as well as some villages of Hoshouts and Zungars. The Durbets subgroup includes the "Chonos" tribe (literally meaning "a tribe of the wolf", also called "Shonos", "Chinos", "A-Shino", or "A-Chino"), which is considered to be one of the most ancient tribes in the world, dating back to the 6th to 11th century.


title: Kalmykia

text: Most of the Republic of Kalmykia lies in the Caspian Depression, a low-lying region down to below sea level.


title: Google+

text: Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015.


title: Google+

text: Due to low user engagement and disclosed software design flaws that potentially allowed outside developers access to personal information of its users, the Google+ developer API was discontinued on March 7, 2019, and Google+ was shut down for business and personal use on April 2, 2019.


title: Google+

text: Google+ was the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (introduced 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (introduced 2008, retired by March 2012), and Orkut (introduced in 2004, operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014).


title: Google+

text: Google+ was introduced in June 2011. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest-based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply "friends") into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums.


title: Google+

text: According to a 2016 book by a former Facebook employee, some leaders at Facebook saw Google's foray into social networking as a serious threat to the company. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg instituted a company-wide "lockdown", signaling that employees were supposed to dedicate time to bringing Facebook's features into line with Google+.


title: Google+

text: Assessments of Google+ growth varied widely, because Google first defined the service as a social network, then later as "a social layer across all of Google's services", allowing them to share a user's identity and interests. According to Ars Technica, Google+ signups were "often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services." Consequently, the reported number of active users on Google+ grew significantly, but the average time users spent on the site was a small fraction of that on comparable social media services.


title: Google+

text: In 2011, Google+ had 10 million users two weeks after the launch. In a month, it had 25 million. In October 2011, the service had 40 million users, according to Larry Page. At the end of 2011, Google+ had 90 million users. In October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users used the social layer by interacting with Google+'s enhanced properties, such as Gmail, the +1 button, and YouTube comments. Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the social network by interacting with the Google+ social-networking stream. According to ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India.


title: Google+

text: Google+'s user engagement was lower than that of its competitors; ComScore estimated that the average amount of time spent by users on the site during the month of January 2012 amounted to only 3.3minutes, while on Facebook this metric was over 136 times greater, at 7.5hours. In March 2013, average time spent on the site had increased but remained low, at about 7minutes according to Nielsen (not including traffic from apps). In February 2014, "The New York Times" likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google's stated 540 million "monthly active users" and noting that almost half did not visit the site. The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Google's various services.


title: Google+

text: In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, departed the company with management responsibility going to David Besbris. By March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google+ with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing.


title: Google+

text: In an interview with Steven Levy published on May 28, 2015, Horowitz said that Google+ was about to undergo a "huge shift" that would better reflect how the service is actually used. By that time, two core Google+ functions, communications and photos, had become standalone services. Google Photos, Google's photo and video library, was announced at the May 2015 Google I/O conference. Google Hangouts, Google's communications platform, was announced two years earlier, also at Google I/O. Google subsequently refocused Google+ on shared interests, removing features not supporting "an interest-based social experience". The company also eliminated the Google+ social layer; users no longer needed a Google+ profile to share content and communicate with contacts. The transition began with YouTube, where a Google+ profile was no longer required to create, upload, or comment on a channel, but a Google+ page was instead required. YouTube comments no longer appeared on Google+ or vice versa.


title: Google+

text: On November 18, 2015, Google+ underwent a redesign with the stated intent of making the site simpler and faster, making the new features of Communities and Collections more prominent, and removing features such as Hangouts integration, Events and Custom URLs, though Events and Custom URLs were eventually added back. Until January 24, 2017, users accessing the site using desktop computers could access some of the discontinued features by selecting the option "Back to classic G+".


title: Google+

text: On October 8, 2018, Google announced it would be ending the consumer version of Google+ by the end of August 2019, later changing that date to April 2, 2019. The company cited low user engagement and difficulties in "creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets consumers' expectations", noting that 90% of user sessions on the service lasted less than five seconds. It also acknowledged a design flaw in an API that could expose private user data. Google said it found no evidence that "any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API" or that "any Profile data was misused."


title: Google+

text: According to "The Wall Street Journal," the data exposure was discovered in the spring of 2018, and was not reported by the company because of fears of increased regulatory scrutiny. The newspaper said that "the move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook, and is widely seen as one of Google's biggest failures."


title: Google+

text: On December 10, 2018, Google reported that a subsequent Google+ API update exposed customer data for six days before being discovered, again saying there was no evidence of any breach. The bug allowed outside developers access to personal information of users. Over 52.5 million users were affected. The company moved the service's shutdown date to April 2019, and said it would "sunset all Google+ APIs in the next 90 days."


title: Google+

text: On its business-oriented G Suite, Google replaced Google+ with a similar product called Currents, which facilitates internal communications. A few months after the Google+ closure, in July 2019, the company soft launched an experimental social networking platform called "Shoelace", oriented toward organizing local activities and events. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Shoelace shut down on May 12, 2020. On June 5, 2020, Google announced that Currents is replacing Google+ for all G Suite customers on July 6, 2020. On February 10, 2022, Google announced that it would be planning to "wind down" Currents and transition its users to Google Chat in 2023.


title: Google+

text: Google+'s user base was roughly 60% male and 25% female in November 2013, and 15% "other" or unknown. Early adopters of Google+ in mid-2011 were mostly male (71.24%), and the dominant age bracket (35%) was between 25 and 34. An August 2011 survey estimated that 13% of U.S. adults had joined Google+.


title: Google+

text: A Google+ user profile was a publicly visible account of a user that was attached to many Google properties. It included basic social networking services like a profile photo, an about section, a cover photo, previous work and school history, interests, places lived and an area to post status updates. It also included several identity service sections, such as a contributor and other profiles area that allowed users to link their "properties across the web". These sections were optionally linked to other social media accounts one had, any blogs one owns or have written or sites one is a contributor to. This area was used for Google Authorship. Customized or Vanity URLs were made available to the public starting on October 29, 2013, to any account that was 30+ days old and had a profile photo and at least 10 followers. Google removed author photos from search results in June 2014, and in August 2014 Google stopped showing authorship in search results, both photo and author name.


title: Google+

text: Circles was a core feature of the Google+ Social Platform. It enabled users to organize people into groups or lists for sharing across various Google products and services. Organization of circles was done through a drag-and-drop interface until a site redesign in 2015 reduced it to a simple checkbox interface. Once a circle was created, a Google+ user could share specific private content to only that circle. For example, work-themed content could be shared with only colleagues, and one's friends and family could see more personal content and photos. The option to share Public or with Everyone was always available. Users were originally able to create Shared Circles, a one-time share to promote a circle of individuals, but the feature has been removed.


title: Google+

text: Another function of Circles was to control the content of one's Stream. If a user clicked on a Circle in the Circle Streams list, the Stream portion of the page (the center) would contain only posts shared by users in that Circle. For the unsegmented Stream (including content from all of a user's Circles), each Circle had a drop-down configuration item with four options: none, fewer, standard, and more. The none position required the user to select the Circle name explicitly to see content from users in that Circle. The remaining positions controlled the quantity of posts which appeared in one's main Stream, but the algorithm controlling what showed has not been disclosed.


title: Google+

text: In the "Stream", which occupied the main portion of the page, users could see updates from those in their Circles and posts in Communities they had joined. There was a compose button which allowed users to create a post. Along with the text entry field, there were icons to upload and share photos and videos, and to create a poll. The Stream could be filtered to show only posts from specific Circles.


title: Google+

text: Starting in November 2011, Google+ profiles were used as the background account for many Google services including YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Android, Google Play, Google Music, Google Voice, Google Wallet, Google Local and more. As of January 10, Google Search was customized with a feature called Search Plus Your World, which inserted content shared on Google+ profiles and brand pages under Web Search results, if one was logged into one's Google+ account while using it. The feature, which was opt-in, was received with controversy over the emphasis of Google+ profiles over other social networking services. The feature built upon the earlier "Social Search" feature which indexes content shared or published by authors; "Social Search", however, relied partly upon returns from non-Google services, such as Twitter and Flickr. As of July 2011, tweets were no longer shown due to the expiration of Google's contract with Twitter.


title: Google+

text: The privacy setting allowed users to disclose certain information to the circles of their choice. Users could also see their profile visitors.


title: Google+

text: Google+ featured a "+1 button" which allowed people to recommend sites and posts, similar in use to Facebook's Like button.


title: Google+

text: Google+ Pages was released on November 7, 2011 to all users, allowing businesses to connect with fans. It allowed entities which were not individuals (such as organizations, companies, and publications) to set up profiles, or "pages", for the posting and syndication of posts. It was similar to Facebook Pages.


title: Google+

text: Google+ Badges was quietly introduced to select enterprises beginning on November 9, 2011, and officially released to the public on November 16. Badges were sidebar widgets which embed "Add to Circles" buttons and drop-down lists into off-site websites and blogs, similar to Facebook's Like Box widgets. This was officially treated by Google as a replacement for the older Google Friend Connect and its widgets, and GFC was announced by Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle on November 23, 2011, as scheduled to be retired by March 12, 2012, on all non-Blogger sites in favor of Google+ Page Badges.


title: Google+

text: Google+ Views was introduced on April 1, 2014. It featured a "view counter", which is displayed on every user's profile page. The view counter showed the number of times the user's content had been seen by others, including photos, posts, and profile page. This feature was later removed in favor of an insights feature.


title: Google+

text: Google+ Communities was released on December 6, 2012. This allowed users to create ongoing conversations about particular topics. Google+ Communities were also able to be created and managed under Google+ Page accounts.


title: Google+

text: Events allowed users to invite other people to share photos and media in real time. This was removed from Google+ as part of the November 2015 redesign, but later added back in a different location. Events were later included on the user's profile.


title: Google+

text: The Discover page showed trending posts and articles on Google+ and around the web. It was similar to the What's Hot page that was removed as part of the November 2015 redesign.


title: Google+

text: On June 11, 2014, Google combined Google Places and Google+ Local Business Pages with the Google My Business product. The product used the interface of Google+ but had many more features, including insights and analytics. On May 30, 2012, Google Places was replaced by Google+ Local, which integrated directly with the Google+ service to allow users to post photos and reviews of locations directly to its page on the service. Additionally, Google+ Local and Maps featured detailed reviews and ratings from Zagat, which was acquired by Google in September 2011.


title: Google+

text: In May 2015, Google+ launched the “Collections” feature which was inspired by Pinterest. It allowed users to "build content collections based on topics and interests".


title: Google+

text: According to Joseph Smarr, one of the Google+ team's technical leads, Google+ was a typical Google web application: it used Java servlets for the server code and JavaScript for the browser-side of the UI, largely built with Google's Closure framework, including the JavaScript compiler and the template system. They used the HTML5 History API to maintain good-looking URLs in modern browsers despite the AJAX app. To achieve fast response times Google often rendered the Closure templates on the server side before any JavaScript was loaded; then the JavaScript found the right DOM nodes, hooked up event handlers, etc. The back ends were built mostly on top of Bigtable and Colossus/GFS, and other common Google technologies such as MapReduce.


title: Google+

text: Within a day of the website's launch, various news agencies reported that Google+ was blocked by the People's Republic of China. This is part of a wider policy of censorship in mainland China. As of June 2011, Google+ remained unavailable in mainland China. While it was not technically "blocked", it was made impossible to use by slowing it down to a crawl. The Iranian government had also blocked access to Google+ from July 11, 2011, as part of Internet censorship in Iran.


title: Google+

text: On February 20, 2012, Internet users from China realized that state restrictions on Google+ had been relaxed for unknown reasons, allowing them to post on Google+ pages. In particular, Chinese users began to inundate the official election campaign pages of U.S. president Barack Obama on Google+ with often off-topic comments.


title: Google+

text: In July 2011, Google+ required users to identify themselves using their real names, and some accounts were suspended when this requirement was not met. Google VP Bradley Horowitz stated that a violation of the terms of service would only affect offenders' access to Google+ and not any of the other services that Google provided. However, there were early reports of account holders being temporarily locked out of all of Google services.


title: Google+

text: On October 19, 2011, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Google executive Vic Gundotra revealed that Google+ would begin supporting pseudonyms and other types of identity "within a few months". Starting on January 23, 2012, Google+ began allowing the use of established pseudonyms. In July 2014, Google+'s policy was changed to allow any name to be used.


title: Google+

text: On November 6, 2013, YouTube, Google's popular video-hosting site, began requiring that commenting on its videos be done via a Google+ account, making it impossible to reply to pre-Google+ integrated comments. YouTube said that its new commenting system featured improved tools for moderation, and comments would no longer be shown chronologically with two top comments at the top when applicable, but would be featured according to "relevance" and popularity, determined by the commenters' community engagement, reputation, and up-votes for a particular comment. Instead of the "@" sign for mentions, YouTube comments used a "+" sign.


title: Google+

text: The decision led hundreds of thousands of users to criticize the change. Some YouTube commenters and content creators complained that the Google+ requirement that users use their real name created online privacy and security concerns. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim voiced his disapproval in one of a few comments subsequent to the change including the temporary addition of the following comments, "Why the fuck do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video?" and "I can't comment here anymore, since I don't want a google+ account" to the description of the first ever public video on the site. Thousands of commenters on YouTube pasted text art tanks and stick figures called "Bob" to protest the new commenting system and Google+. Supporters of the changes said it was a positive step at cleaning up the "virtual cesspool" of homophobic, racist, sexist and offensive comments found on YouTube. However, this actually increased the spam, and in fixing the issue, Google took the opportunity to strike back against those posting "Bob" ASCII art in protest at the company's actions.


title: Google+

text: On July 27, 2015, it was announced that the integration with Google+ would be discontinued and that YouTube would require only a Google+ page to use all the features, such as uploading videos and posting comments. YouTube had these changes rolled out over the course of several months, with the comments feature already having an update directly after the announcement: comments only appeared on YouTube and were no longer shared to the social network platform.


title: Google+

text: In October 2018, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Google, Inc. and Alphabet, Inc. due to "non-public" Google+ account data being exposed as a result of a privacy bug that allowed app developers to gain access to private information of users. The litigation was settled in July 2020 for $7.5 million and 1,720,029 claimants received $2.15 each.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc with "" in June 2004, followed by "" and "Half-Life 2" later that year. Source does not have a concise version numbering scheme; instead, it was released in incremental versions. The engine was succeeded by Source 2.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source distantly originates from the GoldSrc engine, itself a heavily modified version of John Carmack's Quake engine with some code from the Quake II engine. Carmack commented on his blog in 2004 that "there are still bits of early "Quake" code in "Half-Life 2"". Valve employee Erik Johnson explained the engine's nomenclature on the Valve Developer Community:


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source was developed part-by-part from this fork onwards, slowly replacing GoldSrc in Valve's internal projects and, in part, explaining the reasons behind its unusually modular nature. Valve's development of Source since has been a mixture of licensed middleware and in-house-developed code. Among others, Source uses Bink Video for video playback.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source was created to evolve incrementally with new technology, as opposed to the backward compatibility-breaking "version jumps" of its competitors. Different systems within Source are represented by separate modules which can be updated independently. With Steam, Valve can distribute these updates automatically among its many users. In practice, however, there have been occasional breaks in this chain of compatibility. The release of "" and "The Orange Box" both introduced new versions of the engine that could not be used to run older games or mods without the developers performing upgrades to code and, in some cases, content. Both cases required markedly less work to update its version than competing engines.


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Source 2006 branch was the term used for Valve's games using technology that culminated with the release of "Half-Life 2: Episode One". HDR rendering and color correction were first implemented in 2005 using "", which required the engine's shaders to be rewritten. The former, along with developer commentary tracks, were showcased in "". "Episode One" introduced Phong shading and other smaller features. Image-based rendering technology had been in development for "Half-Life 2", but was cut from the engine before its release. It was mentioned again by Gabe Newell in 2006 as a piece of technology he would like to add to Source to implement support for much larger scenes that are impossible with strictly polygonal objects.


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Source 2007 branch represented a full upgrade of the Source engine for the release of "The Orange Box". An artist-driven, threaded particle system replaced previously hard-coded effects for all of the games within. An in-process tools framework was created to support it, which also supported the initial builds of Source Filmmaker. In addition, the facial animation system was made hardware-accelerated on modern video cards for "feature film and broadcast television" quality. The release of "The Orange Box" on multiple platforms allowed for a large code refactoring, which let the Source engine take advantage of multiple CPU cores. However, support on the PC was experimental and unstable until the release of "Left 4 Dead". Multiprocessor support was later backported to "Team Fortress 2" and "". Valve created the Xbox 360 release of "The Orange Box" in-house, and support for the console is fully integrated into the main engine codeline. It includes asset converters, cross-platform play and Xbox Live integration. Program code can be ported from PC to Xbox 360 simply by recompiling it. The PlayStation 3 release was outsourced to Electronic Arts, and was plagued with issues throughout the process. Gabe Newell cited these issues when criticizing the console during the release of "The Orange Box".


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Left 4 Dead branch is an overhaul of many aspects of the Source engine through the development of the "Left 4 Dead" series. Multiprocessor support was further expanded, allowing for features like split screen multiplayer, additional post-processing effects, event scripting with Squirrel, and the highly-dynamic AI Director. The menu interface was re-implemented with a new layout designed to be more console-oriented. This branch later fueled the releases of "Alien Swarm" and "Portal 2", the former released with source code outlining many of the changes made since the branch began. "Portal 2", in addition, served as the result of Valve taking the problem of porting to PlayStation 3 in-house, and in combination with Steamworks integration creating what they called "the best console version of the game".


title: Source (game engine)

text: In April 2010, Valve released all of their major Source games on OS X, coinciding with the release of the Steam client on the same platform. Valve announced that all their future games would be released simultaneously for Windows and Mac. The first of Valve's games to support Linux was "Team Fortress 2", the port released in October 2012 along with the closed beta of the Linux version of Steam. Both the OS X and Linux ports of the engine take advantage of OpenGL and are powered by Simple DirectMedia Layer. During the process of porting, Valve rearranged most of the games released up to "The Orange Box" into separate, but parallel "singleplayer" and "multiplayer" branches. The game code to these branches was made public to mod developers in 2013, and they serve as the current stable release of Source designated for mods. Support for Valve's internal Steam Pipe distribution system as well as the Oculus Rift are included. In May 2014, Nvidia released ports of "Portal" and "Half-Life 2" to their Tegra 4-based Android handheld game console Nvidia Shield.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source SDK is the software development kit for the Source engine, and contains many of the tools used by Valve to develop assets for their games. It comes with several command-line programs designed for special functions within the asset pipeline, as well as a few GUI-based programs designed for handling more complex functions. Source SDK was launched as a free standalone toolset through Steam, and required a Source game to be purchased on the same account. Since the release of "Left 4 Dead" in late 2008, Valve began releasing "Authoring Tools" for individual games, which constitute the same programs adapted for each game's engine build. After "Team Fortress 2" became free-to-play, Source SDK was effectively made open to all Steam users. When some Source games were updated to Source 2013, the older Source SDKs were phased out. The three applications mentioned below are now included in the install of each game.


title: Source (game engine)

text: There are three applications packaged in the Source SDK: Hammer Editor, Model Viewer, and Face Poser. The Model Viewer is a program that allows users to view models and can be used for a variety of different purposes, including development. Developers may use the program to view models and their corresponding animations, attachment points, bones, and so on. Face Poser is the tool used to access facial animations and choreography systems. This tool allows one to edit facial expressions, gestures and movements for characters, lip sync speech, and sequence expressions and other acting cues and preview what the scene will look like in the game engine.


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Hammer Editor, the engine's official level editor, uses rendering and compiling tools included in the SDK to create maps using the binary space partitioning (BSP) method. Level geometry is created with 3D polygons called brushes; each face can be assigned a texture which also defines the properties of the surface such as the sounds used for footsteps. Faces can also be converted into a displacement allowing for more natural shapes such as hills to be created.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Scenery objects or complex geometry can be imported as separate 3D models from the game directory. These models can also be used as physics objects or interactive props. The editor also features an in-depth logic I/O system that can be used to create complex interactive elements. Signals to trigger different responses or change the state of an entity can be sent between entities such as buttons, NPCs, intangible trigger brushes, and map props.


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Source Dedicated Server (SRCDS) is a standalone launcher for the Source engine that runs multiplayer game sessions without requiring a client. It can be launched through Windows or Linux and can allow for custom levels and assets. Most third-party servers additionally run Metamod:Source and SourceMod, which together provide a framework on top of SRCDS for custom modification of gameplay on existing titles.


title: Source (game engine)

text: The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is a video capture and editing application that works from within the Source engine. Developed by Valve, the tool was originally used to create movies for "Day of Defeat: Source" and "Team Fortress 2". It was also used to create some trailers for Source Engine games. The software was released to the public in 2012.


title: Source (game engine)

text: In June 2016, Valve released the Destinations Workshop Tools, a set of free virtual reality (VR) creation tools running using the Source 2 SDK.


title: Source (game engine)

text: In June 2005, Valve opened the Valve Developer Community (VDC) wiki. VDC replaced Valve's static Source SDK documentation with a full MediaWiki-powered community site.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Valve staff have occasionally produced professional and/or academic papers for various events and publications, including SIGGRAPH, Game Developer Magazine and Game Developers Conference, explaining various aspects of Source engine's development.


title: Source (game engine)

text: "Titanfall", "Titanfall 2", and "Apex Legends" are not included because their engines, while originally based on the Source SDK, were extensively modified to the point that they are effectively different engines. This also applies to The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, as it was ported to Unity and not Source.


title: Source (game engine)

text: Source 2, the successor to Source, was announced by Valve at the Game Developers Conference in March 2015. There, Valve stated that it would be free to use for developers, with support for the Vulkan graphical API, as well as using a new in-house physics engine called Rubikon. In June 2015, Valve announced that "Dota 2", originally made in the Source engine, would be ported over to Source 2 in an update called "Dota 2 Reborn". "Reborn" was first released to the public as an opt-in beta update that same month before officially replacing the original client in September 2015, making it the first game to use the engine. Source 2 had succeeded the original engine by the late 2010s.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: The prime minister of Malaysia (; ) is the head of government of Malaysia. The prime minister directs the executive branch of the federal government. The Yang di-Pertuan Agong appoints as the prime minister a member of Parliament (MP) who, in his opinion, is most likely to command the confidence of a majority of MPs; this person is usually the leader of the party winning the most seats in a general election.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: After the formation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the chief minister of the Federation of Malaya, became the first prime minister of Malaysia.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: According to the Federal Constitution, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall first appoint a prime minister to preside over the Cabinet. The prime minister is to be a member of the Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives), and who in his majesty's judgment is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of that House. This person must be a Malaysian citizen, but cannot have obtained their citizenship by means of naturalisation or registration. The Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall appoint other ministers from either the Dewan Rakyat or Dewan Negara (Senate) with the prime minister's advice.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: The prime minister and his cabinet ministers must take and subscribe to the oath of office and allegiance as well as the oath of secrecy in the presence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong before they can exercise functions of office. The Cabinet is collectively accountable to the Parliament of Malaysia. The members of the Cabinet shall not hold any office of profit and engage in any trade, business or profession that will cause a conflict of interest. The Prime Minister's Department (sometimes referred to as the Prime Minister's Office) is the body and ministry in which the prime minister exercises his/her functions and powers.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: In the case where a government cannot get its appropriation (budget) legislation passed by the House of Representatives, or when the House passes a vote of "no confidence" in the government, the prime minister is bound by convention to resign immediately. The Yang di-Pertuan Agong's choice of replacement prime minister will be dictated by the circumstances. All other ministers shall continue to hold office by the pleasure of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, unless if the appointment of any minister is revoked by his majesty upon the advice of the prime minister. Any minister may resign his office.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: Following a resignation in other circumstances, defeat in an election, or the death of a prime minister, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong would generally appoint as the new leader of the governing party or coalition as new Prime Minister.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: Malaysia uses first-past-the-post-voting system, which means a party or coalition who gets 112 seats in lower house will lead the government.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: The power of the prime minister is subject to a number of limitations. Prime ministers removed as leader of his or her party, or whose government loses a vote of no confidence in the House of Representatives, must advise a new election of the lower house or resign the office. The defeat of a supply bill (one that concerns the spending of money) or unable to pass important policy-related legislation is seen to require the resignation of the government or dissolution of Parliament, much like a non-confidence vote, since a government that cannot spend money is hamstrung, also called loss of supply.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: The prime minister's party will normally have a majority in the House of Representatives and party discipline is exceptionally strong in Malaysian politics, so passage of the government's legislation through the House of Representatives is mostly a formality.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: Under Article 39 of the Constitution, executive authority is vested in the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. However, Article 40(1) states that in most cases, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong is bound to exercise his powers on the advice of the Cabinet or a minister acting under the Cabinet's general authority. Thus, most of the day-to-day work of governing is actually done by the prime minister and the Cabinet.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: From time to time, prime ministers are required to leave the country on business and a deputy is appointed to take their place during that time. In the days before jet aeroplanes, such absences could be for extended periods. However, the position can be fully decided by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the King of Malaysia when the position remains empty following the sudden resignation or death of the prime minister.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: Under Article 55(3) of Constitution of Malaysia, the lower house of Parliament, unless sooner dissolved by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong with his own discretion on the advice of the prime minister, shall continue for five years from the date of its first meeting. Article 55(4) of the Constitution permits a delay of 60 days of general election to be held from the date of dissolution and Parliament shall be summoned to meet on a date not later than 120 days from the date of dissolution. Conventionally, between the dissolution of one Parliament and the convening of the next, the prime minister and the cabinet remain in office in a caretaker capacity.


title: Prime Minister of Malaysia

text: The office of interim prime minister was created by the king before the appointment of the new prime minister during the 2020 Malaysian political crisis. However, caretaker prime minister is mentioned as the cabinet tendered resignation to the king until a new prime minister is appointed.


title: Bloodhound

text: The bloodhound is a large scent hound, originally bred for hunting deer, wild boar and, since the Middle Ages, for tracking people. Believed to be descended from hounds once kept at the Abbey of Saint-Hubert, Belgium, in French it is called, "le chien de Saint-Hubert".


title: Bloodhound

text: This breed is famed for its ability to discern human scent over great distances, even days later. Its extraordinarily keen sense of smell is combined with a strong and tenacious tracking instinct, producing the ideal scent hound, and it is used by police and law enforcement all over the world to track escaped prisoners, missing people, and lost pets.


title: Bloodhound

text: Bloodhounds weigh from 36 to 72 kg (80 to 160 lbs). They are 58 to 69 cm (23 to 27 inches) tall at the withers. According to the AKC standard for the breed, larger dogs are preferred by conformation judges. Acceptable colors for bloodhounds are black, liver, and red. Bloodhounds possess an unusually large skeletal structure with most of their weight concentrated in their bones, which are very thick for their length. The coat, typical for a scent hound, is hard and composed of fur alone, with no admixture of hair.


title: Bloodhound

text: This breed is gentle and is tireless when following a scent. Because of its strong tracking instinct, it can be willful and somewhat difficult to obedience train and handle on a leash. Bloodhounds have an affectionate and even-tempered nature to humans, making them excellent family pets.


title: Bloodhound

text: Up to at least the 17th century, Bloodhounds were of all colors, but in modern times the color range has become more restricted. The colors are usually listed as black and tan, liver and tan, and red. White is not uncommon on the chest and sometimes appears on the feet. Genetically, the main types are determined by the action of two genes, found in many species. One produces an alternation between black and brown (liver). If a hound inherits the black allele (variant) from either parent, it has a black nose, eye rims, and paw pads, and if it has a saddle, it is black. The other allele suppresses black pigment and is recessive, so it must be inherited from both parents. It produces liver noses, eye rims, paw pads, and saddles.


title: Bloodhound

text: The second gene determines the coat pattern. It can produce animals with no saddle (essentially all-tan, but called 'red' in Bloodhounds), ones with saddle-marking, or ones largely covered with darker (black or liver) pigment, except for tan lips, eyebrows, forechest, and lower legs. These last are sometimes referred to as 'blanket' or 'full-coat' types. In a pioneering study in 1969, Dennis Piper suggested five alleles in the pattern-marking gene, producing variants from the red or saddleless hound through three different types of progressively greater saddle marking to the 'blanket' type. However, more modern study attributes the variation to three different alleles of the agouti gene. A produces the non saddle-marked "red" hound, A produces saddle-marking, and a produces the blanket or full-coated hound. Of these A is dominant, and a is recessive to the others. The interaction of these variants of the two genes produces the six basic types shown below.


title: Bloodhound

text: Another source does not recognise a as a separate variant. Instead, it says "a includes tan point and saddle tan, both of which look tan point at birth. Modifier genes in saddle tan puppies cause a gradual reduction of the black area until the saddle tan pattern is achieved." 'Tan point' refers to the blanket type from the typical tan eyebrows, muzzle, and socks.


title: Bloodhound

text: It is likely that a third gene determines whether or not there is a melanistic mask. E, the allele for a mask, is dominant over E, the allele for no mask.


title: Bloodhound

text: Compared to other purebred dogs, Bloodhounds suffer an unusually high rate of gastrointestinal ailments, with gastric dilatation volvulus (bloat) being the most common type of gastrointestinal problem. The breed also suffers an unusually high incidence of eye, skin, and ear ailments; thus these areas should be inspected frequently for signs of developing problems. Owners should be especially aware of the signs of bloat, which is both the most common illness and the leading cause of death of Bloodhounds. The thick coat gives the breed the tendency to overheat quickly.


title: Bloodhound

text: Bloodhounds in a 2004 UK Kennel Club survey had a median longevity of 6.75 years, which makes them one of the shortest-lived dog breeds. The oldest of the 82 deceased dogs in the survey died at the age of 12.1 years. Bloat took 34% of the animals, making it the most common cause of death in Bloodhounds. The second leading cause of death in the study was cancer, at 27%; this percentage is similar to other breeds, but the median age of death was unusually young (median of about 8 years). In a 2013 survey, the average age at death for 14 Bloodhounds was 8.25 years.


title: Bloodhound

text: The St. Hubert Hound was, according to legend, first bred ca. AD 1000 by monks at the Saint-Hubert Monastery in Belgium; its likely origins are in France, home of many of modern hounds. It is held to be the ancestor of several other breeds, like the extinct Norman Hound, and Saintongeois, and the modern Grand Bleu de Gascogne, Gascon Saintongeois, Ariegeois and Artois Normande, as well as the Bloodhound. It has been suggested that it was a dog of mixed breeding, not at all uniform in type.


title: Bloodhound

text: Whether they originated there, or what their ancestry was, is uncertain, but from ca. 1200, the monks of the Abbey of St. Hubert annually sent several pairs of black hounds as a gift to the King of France. They were not always highly thought of in the royal pack. Charles IX 1550–74, preferred his white hounds and the larger Chiens-gris, and wrote that the St. Huberts were suitable for people with gout to follow, but not for those who wished to shorten the life of the hunted animal. He described them as pack hounds of medium stature, long in the body, not well sprung in the ribs, and of no great strength. Writing in 1561, Jaques du Fouilloux describes them as strong of body, but with low, short legs. He says they have become mixed in breeding so that they are now of all colors and widely distributed. Charles described the 'true race' of St. Hubert as black, with red/tawny marks above the eyes and legs usually of the same color, suggesting a 'blanket' black and tan (see the section on colour types above). To De Fouilloux, the 'pure black' was the best of this mixed breed. Both writers thought them only useful as leash hounds. They both refer to a white hound, also a St. Hubert, which by their time had disappeared, having been interbred with another white hound, the greffier, to produce the king's preferred pack hound, sometimes called "le chien blanc du roi", "the white dog of the king".


title: Bloodhound

text: They appear to have been more highly thought of during the reign of Henry IV (1553–1610), who presented a pack to James I of England. By the end of the reign of Louis XIV (1715), they were already rare. In 1788, D'Yauville, who was master of the Royal hounds, says those sent by the St. Hubert monks, once much prized, had degenerated, and scarcely one of the annual gift of six or eight was kept.


title: Bloodhound

text: Upon the French Revolution of 1789, the gifts ceased, and hunting in France went into a decline until the end of the Napoleonic wars. When it recovered during the 19th century, huntsmen, with many breeds to choose from, seem to have had little interest in the St. Hubert. An exception was Baron Le Couteulx de Canteleu, who tried to find them. He reported that there were hardly any in France, and those in the Ardennes were so crossbred that they had lost the characteristics of the breed.


title: Bloodhound

text: Writers on the Bloodhound in the last two centuries generally agreed that the original St. Hubert strain died out in the 19th century, and that the European St. Hubert owes its present existence to the development of the Bloodhound.


title: Bloodhound

text: References to Bloodhounds first appear in English writing in the early to mid-14th century, in contexts that suggest the breed was well established by then. It is often claimed that its ancestors were brought over from Normandy by William the Conqueror, but there is no actual evidence for this. That the Normans brought hounds from Europe during the post-Conquest period is virtually certain, but whether they included the Bloodhound itself, rather than merely its ancestors, is a matter of dispute that probably cannot be resolved on the basis of surviving evidence.


title: Bloodhound

text: In Medieval hunting, the typical use of the Bloodhound was as a 'limer', or 'lyam hound', that is a dog handled on a leash or 'lyam', to find the hart or boar before it was hunted by the pack hounds (raches). It was prized for its ability to hunt the cold scent of an individual animal, and, though it did not usually take part in the kill, it was given a special reward from the carcass.


title: Bloodhound

text: It also seems that from the earliest times the Bloodhound was used to track people. There are stories written in medieval Scotland of Robert the Bruce (in 1307), and William Wallace (1270–1305) being followed by 'sleuth hounds'. Whether true or not, these stories show that the sleuth hound was already known as a man-trailer, and it later becomes clear that the sleuth hound and the Bloodhound were the same animal.


title: Bloodhound

text: In the 16th century, John Caius, in the most important single source in the history of the Bloodhound, describes its hanging ears and lips, its use in game parks to follow the scent of blood, which gives it its name, its ability to track thieves and poachers by their foot scent, how it casts if it has lost the scent when thieves cross water, and its use on the Scottish borders to track cross-border raiders, known as Border Reivers. This links it to the sleuth hound, and from Caius also comes the information that the English Bloodhound and the sleuth hound were essentially the same, though the Bloodhound was slightly bigger, with more variation in coat color.


title: Bloodhound

text: The adjacent picture was published in Zurich in 1563, in Conrad Gesner's "Thierbuch" (a compendium of animals) with the captions: 'Englischen Blüthund' and 'Canis Sagax Sanguinarius apud Anglos' (English scent hound with associations of blood). It was drawn by, or under the supervision of, John Caius, and sent to Gesner with other drawings to illustrate his descriptions of British dogs for European readers. It is thus the earliest known picture published specifically to demonstrate the appearance of the Bloodhound. We are told it was done from life, and detail such as the soft hang of the ear indicates it was carefully observed. Fully accurate or not, it suggests changes between the Bloodhound of then and today. The collar and long coiled rope reflect the Bloodhound's typical functions as a limer or leashed man-trailer in that period.


title: Bloodhound

text: The earliest known report of a trial of the Bloodhound's trailing abilities comes from the scientist Robert Boyle, who described how a Bloodhound tracked a man seven miles along a route frequented by people, and found him in an upstairs room of a house.


title: Bloodhound

text: With the rise of fox hunting, the decline of deer hunting, and the extinction of the wild boar in Great Britain, as well as a more settled state of society, the use of the Bloodhound diminished. It was kept by the aristocratic owners of a few deer parks and by a few enthusiasts, with some variation in type, until its popularity began to increase again with the rise of dog shows in the 19th century. Numbers, however, have remained low in Britain. Very few survived the Second World War, but the gene pool has gradually been replenished with imports from America. Nevertheless, because of UK quarantine restrictions, importing was expensive and difficult throughout the 20th century, and in the post-war period exports to the US, and to Europe where the population had also been affected by the war, considerably exceeded imports.


title: Bloodhound

text: During the later 19th century, numbers of Bloodhounds were imported from Britain by French enthusiasts, who regretted the extinction of the ancient St. Hubert. They wished to re-establish it, using the Bloodhound, which, despite its developments in Britain, they regarded as the St. Hubert preserved unchanged. Many of the finest specimens were bought and exhibited and bred in France as Chiens de Saint-Hubert, especially by Le Couteulx de Canteleu, who himself bred over 300. Whatever few original St. Huberts remained either died out or were absorbed into the new population. As a result, the Bloodhound became known on parts of the Continent as the Chien de Saint-Hubert. In the mid-20th century, the Brussels-based FCI accepted the claim of Belgium to be the country of origin. There are now annual celebrations in the town of Saint-Hubert, in which handlers in period dress parade their hounds. In Britain, the Bloodhound has continued to be seen as a native breed, with European St. Huberts being accepted by the UK KC as Bloodhounds.


title: Bloodhound

text: In Le Couteulx' book of 1890, we read that 'Le Chien de St Hubert actuel' is very big, from 69 cm to 80 cm (27½–31½in) high. This does not accord with the 16th century descriptions of the St. Hubert given above, nor with the FCI standard, but the idea that the St. Hubert is much bigger (up to 91.5 cm, 36 in) than the Bloodhound persisted well into the 20th century, even among some St. Hubert enthusiasts.


title: Bloodhound

text: When the first Bloodhounds were exported to the US is not known. Bloodhounds were used to track runaway slaves before the American Civil War, but it has been questioned whether the dogs used were genuine Bloodhounds. However, in the later part of the 19th century, and in the next, more pure Bloodhounds were introduced from Britain and bred in America, especially after 1888, when the English breeder, Edwin Brough, brought three of his hounds to exhibit at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City. He went into partnership with Mr. J. L. Winchell who, with other Americans, imported more stock from Britain. Bloodhounds in America have been more widely used in tracking lost people and criminals – often with brilliant success – than in Britain, and the history of the Bloodhound in America is full of the man-trailing exploits of outstanding Bloodhounds and their expert handlers, the most famous hound being Nick Carter. Law enforcement agencies have been much involved in the use of Bloodhounds, and there is a National Police Bloodhound Association, originating in 1962.


title: Bloodhound

text: In Britain, there have been instances from time to time of the successful use of the Bloodhound to track criminals or missing people. However, man-trailing is enjoyed as a sport by British Bloodhound owners, through national working trials, and this enthusiasm has spread to Europe. In addition, while the pure Bloodhound is used to hunt singly, Bloodhound packs use Bloodhounds crossed with foxhounds to hunt the human scent.


title: Bloodhound

text: Meanwhile, the Bloodhound has become widely distributed internationally, though numbers are small in most countries, with more in the US than anywhere else. Following the spread of the Bloodhound from Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, imports and exports and, increasingly, artificial insemination, are maintaining the world population as a common breeding stock, without a great deal of divergence in type in different countries.