title: Lech Kaczyński

text: In his first public speech as president-elect, Kaczyński said that his presidency would pursue the task of ameliorating the Republic, a process which he said would consist of "purging various pathologies from our life, most prominently crime (...), particularly criminal corruption – that entire, great rush to obtain unjust enrichment, a rush that is poisoning society, [and preventing the state from ensuring] elementary social security, health security, basic conditions for the development of the family [and] the security of commerce and the basic conditions for economic development.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: During his inauguration he stated several goals he would pursue during his presidency. Among those concerning internal affairs were: increasing social solidarity in Poland, bringing justice to those who were responsible for, or were affected by communist crimes in the People's Republic of Poland, fighting corruption, providing security in economy, and safety for development of family. Kaczyński also stated that he would seek to abolish economic inequalities between various regions of Poland. In his speech he also emphasized combining modernization with tradition and remembering the teachings of Pope John Paul II.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: On 21 December 2008, Kaczyński became the first Polish head of state to visit a Polish synagogue and to attend religious services held there. His attendance coincided with the first night of Hanukkah.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Kaczyński supported the reintroducing the death penalty in Poland, clashing with the European Union over the issue in 2006.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: From 2005 to 2007, in accordance with article 133 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, Kaczyński pardoned 77 people and declined to pardon 550.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: In foreign policy, Kaczyński noted that many of Poland's problems were related to the lack of energy security and this issue would have to be resolved to protect Polish interests. Strengthening ties with the United States while continuing to develop relations within the European Union are two main goals of Polish foreign affairs, as well as improving relations with France and Germany despite several problems in relations with the latter.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Aside from those issues, his immediate goals were to develop a tangible strategic partnership with Ukraine and greater co-operation with the Baltic states, Azerbaijan and Georgia.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: He was greatly admired in Israel because he promoted educating Polish youth about the Holocaust. There was widespread grief in Israel over his death.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Defense Minister Radosław Sikorski compared the planned Russia to Germany gas pipeline to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga stated that the pipeline was a threat to Poland's energy security.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: In November 2006 in Helsinki, at a European Union-Russia meeting, Poland vetoed the launch of EU-Russia partnership talks due to a Russian ban on Polish meat and plant products imports.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: As a reaction to claims by a German exile group Preussische Treuhand, which represents post-1945 German expellees from Eastern Europe, the Polish Foreign Minister Fotyga mistakenly threatened to reopen a 1990 Treaty fixing the Oder and Neisse rivers as the border between the two countries instead of the Neighborhood Treaty signed in the same year.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Following the military conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Kaczyński provided the website of the President of Poland for dissemination of information for blocked by the Russian Federation Georgian internet portals. In a speech during the Russian aggression against Georgia, Kaczyński predicted: "Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the Baltic States the day after tomorrow, and then perhaps the time will come for my country, Poland!"


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: During a state visit to Serbia in 2009, Kaczyński said that the Polish government, on the basis of its constitutional competences, decided to recognize Kosovo and emphasized that he, as the President of the state, did not agree with that.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Kaczyński married economist Maria Kaczyńska in 1978. They had one daughter, Marta Kaczyńska-Dubieniecka, and two granddaughters named Ewa and Martyna. His brother is Jarosław Kaczyński, the former Prime Minister of Poland.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: On 10 April 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154M plane was carrying Lech Kaczyński, his wife Maria Kaczyńska, and other members of a Polish delegation (top public and military figures) from Warsaw to commemorate the Katyn massacre. The plane crashed while approaching Smolensk Air Base in Russia. The governor of Smolensk Oblast confirmed to the Russia 24 news channel that there were no survivors. 96 people were killed in the crash, including many of Poland's highest military and civilian leaders.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a government commission to investigate the crash. Russia's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, was placed in charge of the investigation.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: Russian politician Valeriya Novodvorskaya later claimed the Russian government had murdered Kaczyński.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: On 11 April 2010, President Kaczyński's body was returned to Poland, where he and his wife lay in state at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw. The state funeral was held in Kraków on 18 April 2010. After a Roman Catholic mass at St. Mary's Basilica, the presidential couple were laid to rest in a coffin, which was placed in the antechamber of the Crypt Under the Tower of Silver Bells beneath the Wawel Cathedral. A significant number of foreign dignitaries were unable to attend the funeral as a result of air travel disruption in Europe following the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: In June 2016, the Polish government announced it would re-open the investigation into the Smolensk jet crash with plans to exhume and autopsy all 96 of the victims. On 14 November 2016, the first of ten bodies, including Kaczyński's, were exhumed. Kaczyński and his wife were reburied on 18 November 2016 after autopsies.


title: Lech Kaczyński

text: By 1 June 2017, exhumations of 27 coffins had been completed and DNA tests confirmed that 24 of those coffins, Kaczyński's among them, showed evidence of mix-ups, including switched bodies, partial sets of remains and multiple remains in one grave.


title: Transformation matrix

text: In linear algebra, linear transformations can be represented by matrices. If formula_1 is a linear transformation mapping formula_2 to formula_3 and formula_4 is a column vector with formula_5 entries, then


title: Transformation matrix

text: for some formula_7 matrix formula_8, called the transformation matrix of formula_1. Note that formula_8 has formula_11 rows and formula_5 columns, whereas the transformation formula_1 is from formula_2 to formula_3. There are alternative expressions of transformation matrices involving row vectors that are preferred by some authors.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Matrices allow arbitrary linear transformations to be displayed in a consistent format, suitable for computation. This also allows transformations to be composed easily (by multiplying their matrices).


title: Transformation matrix

text: Linear transformations are not the only ones that can be represented by matrices. Some transformations that are non-linear on an n-dimensional Euclidean space R can be represented as linear transformations on the "n"+1-dimensional space R. These include both affine transformations (such as translation) and projective transformations. For this reason, 4×4 transformation matrices are widely used in 3D computer graphics. These "n"+1-dimensional transformation matrices are called, depending on their application, "affine transformation matrices", "projective transformation matrices", or more generally "non-linear transformation matrices". With respect to an "n"-dimensional matrix, an "n"+1-dimensional matrix can be described as an augmented matrix.


title: Transformation matrix

text: In the physical sciences, an active transformation is one which actually changes the physical position of a system, and makes sense even in the absence of a coordinate system whereas a passive transformation is a change in the coordinate description of the physical system (change of basis). The distinction between active and passive transformations is important. By default, by "transformation", mathematicians usually mean active transformations, while physicists could mean either.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Put differently, a "passive" transformation refers to description of the "same" object as viewed from two different coordinate frames.


title: Transformation matrix

text: If one has a linear transformation formula_16 in functional form, it is easy to determine the transformation matrix "A" by transforming each of the vectors of the standard basis by "T", then inserting the result into the columns of a matrix. In other words,


title: Transformation matrix

text: For example, the function formula_18 is a linear transformation. Applying the above process (suppose that "n" = 2 in this case) reveals that


title: Transformation matrix

text: The matrix representation of vectors and operators depends on the chosen basis; a similar matrix will result from an alternate basis. Nevertheless, the method to find the components remains the same.


title: Transformation matrix

text: To elaborate, vector formula_20 can be represented in basis vectors, formula_21 with coordinates formula_22:


title: Transformation matrix

text: The formula_26 elements of matrix "A" are determined for a given basis "E" by applying "A" to every formula_27, and observing the response vector


title: Transformation matrix

text: Yet, there is a special basis for an operator in which the components form a diagonal matrix and, thus, multiplication complexity reduces to . Being diagonal means that all coefficients formula_30 except formula_31 are zeros leaving only one term in the sum formula_32 above. The surviving diagonal elements, formula_31, are known as eigenvalues and designated with formula_34 in the defining equation, which reduces to formula_35. The resulting equation is known as eigenvalue equation. The eigenvectors and eigenvalues are derived from it via the characteristic polynomial.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Most common geometric transformations that keep the origin fixed are linear, including rotation, scaling, shearing, reflection, and orthogonal projection; if an affine transformation is not a pure translation it keeps some point fixed, and that point can be chosen as origin to make the transformation linear. In two dimensions, linear transformations can be represented using a 2×2 transformation matrix.


title: Transformation matrix

text: A stretch in the "xy"-plane is a linear transformation which enlarges all distances in a particular direction by a constant factor but does not affect distances in the perpendicular direction. We only consider stretches along the x-axis and y-axis. A stretch along the x-axis has the form ; for some positive constant . (Note that if , then this really is a "stretch"; if , it is technically a "compression", but we still call it a stretch. Also, if , then the transformation is an identity, i.e. it has no effect.)


title: Transformation matrix

text: Similarly, a stretch by a factor k along the y-axis has the form ; , so the matrix associated with this transformation is


title: Transformation matrix

text: If the two stretches above are combined with reciprocal values, then the transformation matrix represents a squeeze mapping:


title: Transformation matrix

text: A square with sides parallel to the axes is transformed to a rectangle that has the same area as the square. The reciprocal stretch and compression leave the area invariant.


title: Transformation matrix

text: For rotation by an angle θ counterclockwise (positive direction) about the origin the functional form is formula_39 and formula_40. Written in matrix form, this becomes:


title: Transformation matrix

text: Similarly, for a rotation clockwise (negative direction) about the origin, the functional form is formula_42 and formula_43 the matrix form is:


title: Transformation matrix

text: A shear parallel to the "x" axis has formula_45 and formula_46. Written in matrix form, this becomes:


title: Transformation matrix

text: For reflection about a line that goes through the origin, let formula_51 be a vector in the direction of the line. Then use the transformation matrix:


title: Transformation matrix

text: To project a vector orthogonally onto a line that goes through the origin, let formula_53 be a vector in the direction of the line. Then use the transformation matrix:


title: Transformation matrix

text: As with reflections, the orthogonal projection onto a line that does not pass through the origin is an affine, not linear, transformation.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Parallel projections are also linear transformations and can be represented simply by a matrix. However, perspective projections are not, and to represent these with a matrix, homogeneous coordinates can be used.


title: Transformation matrix

text: To reflect a point through a plane formula_56 (which goes through the origin), one can use formula_57, where formula_58 is the 3×3 identity matrix and formula_59 is the three-dimensional unit vector for the vector normal of the plane. If the "L" norm of formula_60, formula_61, and formula_62 is unity, the transformation matrix can be expressed as:


title: Transformation matrix

text: Note that these are particular cases of a Householder reflection in two and three dimensions. A reflection about a line or plane that does not go through the origin is not a linear transformation — it is an affine transformation — as a 4×4 affine transformation matrix, it can be expressed as follows (assuming the normal is a unit vector):


title: Transformation matrix

text: If the 4th component of the vector is 0 instead of 1, then only the vector's direction is reflected and its magnitude remains unchanged, as if it were mirrored through a parallel plane that passes through the origin. This is a useful property as it allows the transformation of both positional vectors and normal vectors with the same matrix. See homogeneous coordinates and affine transformations below for further explanation.


title: Transformation matrix

text: One of the main motivations for using matrices to represent linear transformations is that transformations can then be easily composed and inverted.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Composition is accomplished by matrix multiplication. Row and column vectors are operated upon by matrices, rows on the left and columns on the right. Since text reads from left to right, column vectors are preferred when transformation matrices are composed:


title: Transformation matrix

text: If A and B are the matrices of two linear transformations, then the effect of first applying A and then B to a column vector formula_68 is given by:


title: Transformation matrix

text: In other words, the matrix of the combined transformation A followed by B is simply the product of the individual matrices.


title: Transformation matrix

text: When A is an invertible matrix there is a matrix A that represents a transformation that "undoes" A since its composition with A is the identity matrix. In some practical applications, inversion can be computed using general inversion algorithms or by performing inverse operations (that have obvious geometric interpretation, like rotating in opposite direction) and then composing them in reverse order. Reflection matrices are a special case because they are their own inverses and don't need to be separately calculated.


title: Transformation matrix

text: To represent affine transformations with matrices, we can use homogeneous coordinates. This means representing a 2-vector ("x", "y") as a 3-vector ("x", "y", 1), and similarly for higher dimensions. Using this system, translation can be expressed with matrix multiplication. The functional form formula_70 becomes:


title: Transformation matrix

text: All ordinary linear transformations are included in the set of affine transformations, and can be described as a simplified form of affine transformations. Therefore, any linear transformation can also be represented by a general transformation matrix. The latter is obtained by expanding the corresponding linear transformation matrix by one row and column, filling the extra space with zeros except for the lower-right corner, which must be set to 1. For example, "the counter-clockwise rotation matrix from above" becomes:


title: Transformation matrix

text: Using transformation matrices containing homogeneous coordinates, translations become linear, and thus can be seamlessly intermixed with all other types of transformations. The reason is that the real plane is mapped to the plane in real projective space, and so translation in real Euclidean space can be represented as a shear in real projective space. Although a translation is a non-linear transformation in a 2-D or 3-D Euclidean space described by Cartesian coordinates (i.e. it can't be combined with other transformations while preserving commutativity and other properties), it becomes, in a 3-D or 4-D projective space described by homogeneous coordinates, a simple linear transformation (a shear).


title: Transformation matrix

text: More affine transformations can be obtained by composition of two or more affine transformations. For example, given a translation T' with vector formula_73 a rotation R by an angle θ counter-clockwise, a scaling S with factors formula_74 and a translation T of vector formula_75 the result M of T'RST is:


title: Transformation matrix

text: When using affine transformations, the homogeneous component of a coordinate vector (normally called "w") will never be altered. One can therefore safely assume that it is always 1 and ignore it. However, this is not true when using perspective projections.


title: Transformation matrix

text: Another type of transformation, of importance in 3D computer graphics, is the perspective projection. Whereas parallel projections are used to project points onto the image plane along parallel lines, the perspective projection projects points onto the image plane along lines that emanate from a single point, called the center of projection. This means that an object has a smaller projection when it is far away from the center of projection and a larger projection when it is closer (see also reciprocal function).


title: Transformation matrix

text: The simplest perspective projection uses the origin as the center of projection, and the plane at formula_77 as the image plane. The functional form of this transformation is then formula_78; formula_79. We can express this in homogeneous coordinates as:


title: Transformation matrix

text: After carrying out the matrix multiplication, the homogeneous component formula_81 will be equal to the value of formula_82 and the other three will not change. Therefore, to map back into the real plane we must perform the homogeneous divide or perspective divide by dividing each component by formula_81:


title: Transformation matrix

text: More complicated perspective projections can be composed by combining this one with rotations, scales, translations, and shears to move the image plane and center of projection wherever they are desired.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the UK miners' strike (1984–85), a major event in the history of the British labour movement.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Joining the NUM at the age of 19 in 1957, Scargill was one of its leading activists by the late 1960s. He led an unofficial strike in 1969, and played a key organising role during strikes of 1972 and 1974, the latter of which played a part in the downfall of Edward Heath's Conservative government.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Thereafter Scargill led the NUM through the 1984–1985 miners' strike. It turned into a confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in which the miners' union was defeated. A former Labour Party member, Scargill is now leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), founded by him in 1996.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill was born in Worsbrough Dale near Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His mother, Alice (née Pickering), was a professional cook. He did not take the Eleven-Plus exam and went to Worsbrough Dale School (now called the Elmhirst School). He left school in 1953 at fifteen years old to work as a coal miner at Woolley Colliery, where he worked for nineteen years.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill recalled how after becoming a miner, the poor working conditions and "people who should never have been working, having to work to live ... on that first day I promised myself I would try one day to get things changed". He joined the Young Communist League in 1955, becoming its Yorkshire District Chair in 1956 and shortly after a member of its National Executive Committee. In 1957 he was elected NUM Yorkshire Area Youth Delegate, and attended the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow as a representative of the Yorkshire miners. In 1958, he attended the World Federation of Trade Unions youth congress in Prague. In a 1975 interview with "New Left Review" Scargill said:


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 1961, Scargill was elected a member of the Woolley NUM Branch Committee. Scargill joined the Labour Party in 1962. He regularly attended Workers' Educational Association (WEA) classes and Co-operative Party educational programmes, and in 1962, undertook a three-year, part-time course at the University of Leeds, where he studied economics, industrial relations and social history. In 1965 he was elected Branch Delegate from Woolley to the Yorkshire NUM Area Council, and in 1969 was elected a member of the Yorkshire NUM Area Executive Committee. Although he never worked at Barrow Colliery in his home village, he was involved in the politics of the branch, where the membership was much more left-wing than in the conservative Woolley Colliery. In 1970, he was elected a member of the regional committee of the Co-operative Retail Services in Barnsley and a delegate to its national conference. He also represented the Barnsley Co-op at Cooperative congresses.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill opposed civilian nuclear power and, during the first Wilson ministry, became highly critical of the government's energy policy. After a Labour Party conference speech on energy policy by Richard Marsh in July 1967, Scargill said:


title: Arthur Scargill

text: I can honestly say that I never heard flannel like we got from the Minister... he said that we have nuclear power stations with us, whether we like it or not. I suggest to this Conference that we have coal mines with us... but they did something about this problem: they closed them down. This was a complete reversal of the policy... that was promised by the Labour Government before it was put into office... this represents a betrayal of the mining industry.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill became involved in the Yorkshire Left, a group of left-wing activists involved in the Yorkshire region of the NUM, its largest region. He played an important role in the miners' strike of 1972 and was involved in the mass picket at Saltley Gate in Birmingham.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill was a leader of the unofficial strike in 1969, which began in Yorkshire and spread across the country. He had challenged Sam Bullough, the President of the Yorkshire area NUM, to act on the working hours of surface workers, given that the union's conference had passed a resolution that their hours be shortened the previous year. When Bullough (unwell at the time) attempted to rule Scargill as "out of order", he was voted out by the area's delegates and a strike was declared across Yorkshire on the issue. Scargill saw this strike as a turning point in the union's attitude to militancy.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: His major innovation was organising "flying pickets" involving hundreds or thousands of committed strikers who could be bussed to critical strike points to shut down a target. He gained fame for using the tactic to win the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972, and made it his main tactical device in the 1984 strike. By 1984 however the police were ready and neutralized the tactic with superior force.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 1973, Scargill was elected to the full-time post of compensation agent in the Yorkshire NUM. (The Yorkshire Left had already decided to stand him as their candidate even before the strike.) Scargill won widespread applause for his response to the disaster at Lofthouse Colliery in Outwood, West Yorkshire, at which he accompanied the rescue teams underground and was on site for six days with the relatives of the seven deceased. At the subsequent enquiry, he used notebooks of underground working from the 19th century, retrieved from the Institute of Geological Sciences in Leeds, to argue that the National Coal Board could have prevented the disaster had they acted on the information available. This performance strengthened his popularity with the Yorkshire miners.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: A few months later, the president of the Yorkshire NUM died unexpectedly, and Scargill won the election for his replacement; the two posts were then combined and he held them until 1981. During this time, he earned the esteem of significant sections of the left and the British working class, who saw him as honest, hard-working and genuinely concerned with their welfare, and he was also respected for improving the administration of the compensation agent's post. In 1974, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that led Prime Minister Edward Heath to call a February general election.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill was involved in a High Court case in 1978 that set a precedent in UK labour law, known as "Roebuck v NUM (Yorkshire Area) No 2". The judge, Sir SydneyTempleman held that it was unfair that Scargill was on the appeal panel in the NUM for journalists being disciplined for appearing as witnesses against a libel action by Scargill himself.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In the 1981 election for NUM president, Scargill secured around 70% of the vote. One of the main planks of his platform was to give more power to union conferences than to executive meetings, on the grounds that the former were more democratic. This had great implications for regional relations in the NUM; the executive was described as dominated by "Gormley's rotten boroughs", since every region – even quite small ones – had one delegate, and the larger regions had only a few more (Scotland and South Wales had two delegates each, Yorkshire had three).


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill had, before becoming president, favoured moving the head office of the NUM out of London, which he described as a "prostituting place". A motion from the Kent area was passed by the NUM conference to move the head office to a coalfield. Scargill subsequently decided to move to Sheffield, and said that he had spoken to each member of staff to ask them to move to Sheffield. The staff at headquarters issued a press statement in January 1983 to deny this and to list twelve grievances against Scargill's treatment of his staff. The section under "staff procedures" details how Scargill monitored head office staff:


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Mr. Scargill's vendetta against Head Office staff has at times descended to the most puerile and paranoic [sic] levels. The names of all incoming telephone callers are recorded on a central log. A secret record is kept of the time at which all workers arrive and leave each day. Written authorization is required for the purchase of tea and coffee. Staff members suddenly taken ill, or with long-standing medical appointments, require his personal consent to be absent from the office.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill was a very vocal opponent of Thatcher's Conservative government, frequently appearing on television to attack it. On the appointment of Ian MacGregor as head of the NCB in 1983, Scargill stated, "The policies of this government are clear – to destroy the coal industry and the NUM". However, Scargill's statements in the years after becoming NUM president divided left-wing opinion with his support of the Soviet Union, most notably when he refused to support the TUC's positions on the Solidarity union in Poland or on the Soviet shooting down of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007. One branch of the NUM, at Annesley in Nottinghamshire, put forward a vote of no confidence in Scargill in autumn 1983 following his comments on these matters, but Scargill defeated this at a December meeting and won a vote of confidence instead.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: The government announced on 6 March 1984 its intention to close 20 coal mines, revealing as well the plan in the long-term to close over 70 pits. Scargill led the union in the 1984–1985 miners' strike. He claimed that the government had a long-term strategy to destroy the industry by closing unprofitable pits, and that it listed pits it wanted to close each year. This was denied by the government at the time, although papers released in 2014 under the thirty-year rule suggest that Scargill was right.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Miners were split between those who supported the strike and those who opposed it (see Union of Democratic Mineworkers). Scargill never balloted NUM members for a strike; this was seen as an erosion of democracy within the union, but the role of ballots in decision-making had been made very unclear after previous leader, Joe Gormley, had ignored two ballots over wage reforms, and his decisions had been upheld after appeals to court were made. The NUM had previously held three ballots on a national strike, all of which rejected the proposal: 55% voted against in January 1982, and 61% voted against in both October 1982 and March 1983.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: The media characterised the strike as "Scargill's strike" and his critics accused him of looking for an excuse for industrial action since becoming union president. There was some controversy in February 1985 when "Times" journalist Paul Routledge engaged the Queen in discussion on the strike, and the Queen said that the strike was "all about one man", which Routledge objected to. Many politicians, including the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, believed Scargill had made a huge mistake in calling the strike in the summer rather than in the winter. Scargill was often accompanied by his then wife Anne Harper to speak at picket lines and to media appearances; Harper was simultaneously involved in founding and leading the National Women Against Pit Closures movement.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: The strike ended on 3 March 1985 following an NUM vote to return to work. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the trade union movement. It was a major political victory for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. The strike became a symbolic struggle, as the NUM was one of the strongest unions in the country, viewed by many, including Conservatives in power, as having brought down the Heath government in the union's 1974 strike. Unlike the strikes in the 1970s, the later strike ended with the miners' defeat and the Thatcher government was able to consolidate its fiscally conservative programme. The political power of the NUM and of most British trade unions was severely reduced.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In January 2014, the Prime Minister, David Cameron stated, "I think if anyone needs to make an apology for their role in the miners' strike it should be Arthur Scargill for the appalling way that he led the union." This was in the Prime Minister's rejection of Labour calls for an apology for government actions during the 1984–1985 miners' strike. His comments followed a question in the Commons from Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who said the miners and their families deserved an apology for the mine closures.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill, along with veteran left-wing Labour MP Tony Benn, campaigned to free strikers Russell Shankland and Dean Hancock from prison. The two men had been convicted of the murder of David Wilkie, a taxi driver, by throwing a block of concrete from a bridge onto his car. Scargill had condemned the killing at the time. Shankland's and Hancock's life sentences for murder were reduced to eight years for manslaughter on appeal. They were released from prison in November 1989.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: After the miners' strike, Scargill was elected to lifetime presidency of the NUM by an overwhelming national majority, in a controversial election in which some of the other candidates claimed that they were given very little time to prepare. He stepped down from leadership of the NUM at the end of July 2002, to become the honorary president. He was succeeded by Ian Lavery.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 1990, Scargill was accused in a series of "Daily Mirror" articles of mishandling money donated for the striking miners during the 1984–1985 strike, with many of the sources being those who had previously worked with him in the NUM such as Kim Howells, Jim Parker and Roger Windsor. It was alleged that, of the money donated from Libya, Scargill took £29,000 for his own bridging loan and £25,000 for his home in Yorkshire, but gave only £10,000 to the striking Nottinghamshire miners. In addition, it was alleged that he had taken £1,000,000 of cash donated by the Soviet Union for the Welsh miners and placed it in a Dublin bank account for the "International Miners' Organisation", where it stayed until a year after the strike had finished. There was much criticism of Scargill within the NUM from the Welsh and Scottish areas, who briefly considered splitting from the NUM. An internal NUM report by Gavin Lightman QC found that Scargill had used some of the Libyan money to pay for improvements to his bungalow but not to pay off his mortgage (as had been alleged), and stated that Scargill's failure to make a full report on the Soviet money donated for the Welsh miners was "a remarkable breach of duty" and that he should repay the money back to the NUM. Scargill accepted Lightman's statement that many of his actions suffered from a lack of professional advice, which he was unwilling to be bound by.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In July 1990, the NUM executive voted unanimously to sue Scargill and general secretary Peter Heathfield. Negotiations between Scargill and the NUM took place in France. Airport staff at Leeds-Bradford Airport identified Scargill attempting to travel under a false name ("Arthur Fenn") wearing a disguise on 20 July, and turned him away to purchase a genuine ticket with his true identity. In September 1990, the Certification Officer brought criminal charges against Scargill and Heathfield for wilfully neglecting to perform the union's duty to keep proper accounting records. Scargill reached an agreement to repay money to the NUM shortly after this. The prosecution brought by the Certification Officer was rejected in July 1991 on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to use the material provided in confidence to Lightman's enquiry.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: The South Wales area leader, Des Dutfield, moved that Scargill should stand down and face re-election, but the motion was defeated.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Film director Ken Loach subsequently made "The Arthur Legend" as part of Channel 4's "Dispatches" series. The documentary suggests that the claims against Scargill were untrue. The editor of the "Daily Mirror" at the time, Roy Greenslade, wrote an article in "The Guardian" in May 2002 to apologise to Scargill for the false claims about paying off the mortgage and for putting too much trust in Roger Windsor, who at the time had still not repaid the £29,500 that he had taken from the Miners' Welfare Fund and that the Lightman Report had asked that he repay.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: During the media controversy, the antiperspirant Mitchum used Scargill's image, without his consent, under the slogan "Mitchum, for when you're really sweating!" Scargill complained to the Advertising Standards Authority who criticised the advertisement as "highly distasteful".


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 1993, Scargill tried to use Thatcher's flagship Right to Buy scheme to buy a flat on the Barbican estate in central London. His application was refused because the flat in the Barbican Estate's Shakespeare Tower was not Scargill's primary residence. Former Scargill loyalist Jimmy Kelly, a miner at the Edlington Main pit near Doncaster in the 1980s, said he was astonished to learn of the attempt to buy the flat. "It's so hypocritical it's unreal," he said. "It was Thatcher's legislation, actually giving council tenants the right to buy their own houses. I think if it had been made public before then there'd have been a huge outcry. I think people would be astounded if they knew that."


title: Arthur Scargill

text: On 25 August 2010, it was reported that Scargill had been told that he no longer qualified for full membership of the NUM under union rules that he had helped draw up, but was only eligible for "life", "retired" or "honorary" membership, none of which carried voting rights. In February 2012, Scargill won £13,000 in a court action against the NUM, primarily for car expenses, and for the earlier temporary denial of membership.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill admitted there was 'bad blood' between him and the NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen, who said, "I honestly do believe that Arthur, in his own world, believes that the NUM is here to afford him the lifestyle that he's become accustomed to." However, in December 2012, Scargill lost a similar case concerning rent on his flat in the Barbican, London. In 2012, the flat was valued at £1,500,000, and had 24/7 access to concierge services.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: For years the NUM had been paying £34,000 annual rent for the flat on Scargill's instructions, without the knowledge of NUM members or many senior officials; Scargill claimed the NUM should continue funding his flat for the rest of his life, and thereafter for any widow who survived him. Chris Kitchen said: "I would say it's time to walk away, Mr Scargill. You've been found out. The NUM is not your personal bank account and never will be again." Kitchen says that Scargill "has had 30 years of decent living out of the union, and he's got a pension that's second to none. Had he done the humble thing and walked away with what he were entitled to, his reputation would still be intact... I've always said that if Arthur can no longer control the NUM, he'll try and destroy it. That's what I believe".


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 1996, Scargill founded the Socialist Labour Party after the Labour Party abandoned the original wording of Clause IV – advocating the public democratic ownership of key industries and utilities – from their constitution. He has contested two parliamentary elections. In the 1997 general election, he ran against Alan Howarth, a defector from the Conservative Party to Labour, who had been given the safe seat of Newport East to contest. In the 2001 general election, he ran against Peter Mandelson in Hartlepool. He lost on both occasions, winning 2.4% of the vote in Hartlepool at the 2001 general election. In May 2009, he was a candidate for the Socialist Labour Party for one of London's seats in the European Parliament.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: After stepping down from leadership of the NUM, Scargill became active in the UK's Stalin Society saying that the "ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin explain the real world". Scargill criticised Poland's Solidarity calling it an "anti-socialist organisation which desires the overthrow of a socialist state", which Scargill saw as deformed but reformable.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: "The Guardian" in February 2014 said that Scargill had become a recluse. He was not attending any of the events to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984 strike at the NUM. Following Margaret Thatcher's death in April 2013, ITN made Scargill several offers for a five-minute interview, with the final offer reaching £16,000, but Scargill refused all the offers and did not speak to any media organisation.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: Scargill still occasionally gives interviews and makes appearances. An article published in "The Times" in August 2015 stated that Scargill had spoken to the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union conference in June 2015, and that he was due to appear alongside Jeremy Corbyn at the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign in September 2015. He gave a rare television interview to ITV News at that time.


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In 2017, Scargill spoke at an event in Cardiff setting out how British manufacturing could be rebuilt after Britain had left the European Union. He called for the cotton mills, steel plants and mines to be re-opened and that under EU rules, the government had not been able to subsidise the coal mines. He also stated regarding Brexit that "we should just invoke the first clause of Article 50 – and that means we could leave the EU tomorrow".


title: Arthur Scargill

text: In July 2021 he spoke at the Rebel Town Festival in Jarrow. Scargill supported the 2022 United Kingdom railway strike, joining an RMT picket line in Wakefield on 21 June 2022. Scargill's appearance on the picket line was alluded to by Prime Minister Boris Johnson the next day at Prime Minister's Questions, accusing the Labour Party of "literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill".


title: Alex Song

text: Alexandre Dimitri Song Billong (born 9 September 1987), better known as Alex Song, is a Cameroonian professional footballer who plays for Djiboutian side Arta/Solar7 as a central or defensive midfielder. He can also play as a central defender.


title: Alex Song

text: Originally a utility player on the fringes of the first team, Song quickly became an integral part of Arsenal's starting 11 during the 2008–09 pre-season, eventually leading to a €15 million transfer to Barcelona in 2012.


title: Alex Song

text: Song played for the Cameroon national team in the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups. He was called up for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations and was the only Cameroonian named in the Team of the Tournament. Song also possesses a French passport. He is the nephew of former footballer Rigobert Song.


title: Alex Song

text: Song was born in Douala, Cameroon, and lost his father at the age of three. Since then, his uncle Rigobert Song has been like a second father and was a major influence in choosing football as a career. Unable to find a club or academy where he could hone his skills, Petit Song (as he is known in the Cameroon side) opted to move to France, joining Bastia at age 16. One of the players who inspired Song the most when he was young was Michael Essien.


title: Alex Song

text: In 2011, Song became an ambassador for Grassroot Soccer, an international non-profit organisation working through football to stop the spread of HIV.


title: Alex Song

text: Song joined the Bastia youth team in 2003–04 and became a part of the first team the following season with 31 appearances. Bastia were playing in Ligue 1 during the time Song had a stint there. Song was noted for his high versatility


title: Alex Song

text: While playing for Bastia, he was selected as a part of France under-16 national team. He later chose to represent Cameroon, his country of birth. He played as a centre-back but later made several appearances as a defensive midfielder. He was highly regarded in this position by numerous coaches and supporters of Bastia. During his time at Bastia, he attracted attention from numerous clubs, including Internazionale, Juventus, Manchester United, Lyon and Middlesbrough. Unwilling to sell their prized asset, Bastia agreed to loan him to the Gunners for one season only in 2005. Despite being linked heavily with Lyon, he was sold to Arsenal for a £1 million transfer fee. During his time at Bastia, Song made a total of 32 league appearances.


title: Alex Song

text: Song impressed Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger as a trialist during Arsenal's pre-season training camp in Austria, and Arsenal secured his services on loan for the 2005–06 season on 11 August 2005. Arsenal agreed to a £1 million fee in June 2006 and signed him to a four-year contract. Song made his Premier League debut during Arsenal's 2–0 win against Everton on 19 September 2005 as a substitute. He played in several UEFA Champions League matches and made several Premier League starts near the end of the season, when first team players were injured or being rested.


title: Alex Song

text: Song scored his first goal for Arsenal against Liverpool in Arsenal's 6–3 win at Anfield in the League Cup quarterfinals on 9 January 2007.


title: Alex Song

text: On 30 January 2007, it was confirmed that Charlton Athletic had signed Song on loan until the end of the 2006–07 season. Although he impressed, Charlton were relegated and Song returned to Arsenal.


title: Alex Song

text: Over the 2007–08 season, Song started at centre back for Arsenal's League Cup matches, but missed their semi-final elimination by Tottenham Hotspur while away with Cameroon at the Africa Cup of Nations. He also started at centre-back in Premier League matches towards the end of the season, most notably in Arsenal's crucial visit to Old Trafford against Manchester United, while regular starter Kolo Touré filled in for Bacary Sagna at right-back.


title: Alex Song

text: The 2008–09 season was Song's breakthrough year with Arsenal. The then 21-year-old established himself as a key member of Arsène Wenger's squad, making 48 appearances in all competitions. He enjoyed his most productive and eye-catching campaign yet as he emerged as a forte and powerhouse of Arsenal's midfield being the perfect partner for Cesc Fàbregas in Arsenal's centre. Of the Cameroonian, Wenger remarked, "I brought him here aged 17 and worked very hard with him, we worked hard because I felt he had the talent to become a good player. I know that the opinions are changing about him now."


title: Alex Song

text: On 21 October 2008, Song scored his first goal in European competition for Arsenal against Fenerbahçe in the UEFA Champions League. Song's first league goal, and third in all competitions for the Gunners, was scored against Wigan Athletic on 11 April 2009 in which he took on several players and then coolly finished in the bottom corner. Arsenal won the match 4–1.


title: Alex Song

text: Song began the season well, playing in all but one of Arsenal's first 12 league games. He was voted third in the Arsenal.com player of the month award for October, behind winner Cesc Fàbregas and runner-up Robin van Persie. After putting in consistently commanding performances at the heart of midfield, allowing Arsenal's creative attackers to operate effectively, Song established himself as one of the first names on the team sheet. On 25 November 2009, Song signed a new long-term contract with Arsenal, lasting until 2014. On 30 December 2009, he scored his second goal in the league for Arsenal when he completed the scoring in a 4–1 win over Portsmouth at Fratton Park.


title: Alex Song

text: Song continued to be one of the first names on the team sheet, as he made a superb start to the 2010–11 season, establishing himself in front of the back four. He scored the 1,000th Arsenal Premier League goal under Arsène Wenger in a 4–1 win against Bolton Wanderers on 11 September 2010. On the downside, the following game he was sent off for two bookable offences. The strong midfielder has become a more adventurous element in the Arsenal midfield, helping the forward line with his movement. On 28 August 2010, Song completed the full 90 minutes in the game against Blackburn Rovers in a 2–1 win at Ewood Park. On 19 October 2010, he scored the first goal of the match for Arsenal against the Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in a 5–1 win for Arsenal.


title: Alex Song

text: On 24 October 2010, Song scored his third goal of the season, the second goal at Eastlands against Manchester City in a 3–0 Arsenal victory. On 30 October 2010, he scored a vital 88th minute diving header for Arsenal from a cross by Gaël Clichy at the Emirates Stadium against West Ham United in the league, leading to an important 1–0 victory for Arsenal. On 27 December 2010, Song scored the first goal in a 3–1 victory over Chelsea at the Emirates. In February 2011, Song had his car impounded by Hertfordshire Police after he was caught speeding and failed to provide relevant documentation. During the 2010–11 season, he made 42 appearances in total, scored five goals and contributed three assists in all competitions for the Gunners.


title: Alex Song

text: With the departure of Cesc Fàbregas to Barcelona, Song was assigned to provide the assists for the club alongside Aaron Ramsey. During a league match at Newcastle United, Song stamped on Joey Barton, resulting in him being charged with improper conduct and given a three-match ban. On 24 September 2011, Song scored his first goal of the season in a 3–0 home victory against Bolton. He provided an assist to Robin van Persie following a dribble for the first goal in a Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund on 23 November to secure a place for Arsenal in the last 16. Wenger said in November:


title: Alex Song

text: I thought about that Fulham game recently, It shows that players need to be given time and confidence. Unfortunately at the big clubs you cannot always do it. He is one of the players who surprised everybody. You wouldn't expect what he delivers at the moment.


title: Alex Song

text: Song again assisted Van Persie – who scored a volley – during a match against Everton which also proved to be the only goal as the 125th anniversary game ended 1–0 to Arsenal. Song also showed his assisting skills in the following matches: in an FA Cup match against Leeds United, Song played a through ball past four Leeds players to the returning legend, Thierry Henry. The game ended 1–0, sending Arsenal into the fourth round of the FA Cup. He then provided two assists in back to back matches against Tottenham at home for Theo Walcott and also the winning goal for Van Persie against Liverpool at Anfield with a delightful long-ball in the dying minutes of the match. The matches ended in 5–2 and 2–1 victories respectively, highlighting the importance of Song's presence in the team not only as an anchorman in the middle but as a playmaking midfielder. Song played an overhead pass to Theo Walcott and claimed an assist against Aston Villa on 24 March 2012. Arsenal went on to win the game 3–0. His partnership with striker Van Persie was enhanced in a match on 5 May 2012 as he performed his seemingly trademark chip to assist the Dutchman in netting the equaliser against Norwich City. The game ended 3–3 and it was his 12th assist of the season. He was voted in second place as the Arsenal player of the season by the fans.


title: Alex Song

text: On 20 August 2012, Song signed a five-year contract with Barcelona for a £15 million transfer fee. He made his Barcelona debut against Real Madrid in the 2012 Supercopa de España on 29 August 2012 as a substitute for the last 15 minutes, finishing the match with a perfect passing statistic. He played 20 matches in Barcelona's La Liga-winning campaign in his first season, and scored one goal, in a 3–1 home win against Real Zaragoza on 17 November 2012.


title: Alex Song

text: Song was an unused substitute in the 2014 Copa del Rey Final, which Barcelona lost 2–1 to Real Madrid at the Mestalla Stadium.


title: Alex Song

text: In August 2014, Song was subject to transfer speculation linking him with a season long loan deal to Liverpool.


title: Alex Song

text: On 30 August 2014, Song joined West Ham United on a season-long loan. He was unveiled to the fans on the same day before their home game against Southampton. Song made his debut against Hull City as a second-half substitute on 15 September 2014 in a 2–2 draw. He played 31 games for West Ham including three in the FA Cup. Praised for his early season form, his performances deteriorated towards the end of the season as West Ham's form also slumped. In August 2015, West Ham co-chairman David Sullivan, announced an agreement with Barcelona to sign Song on a three-year permanent contract subject to a medical. His season-long loan to West Ham was confirmed on 1 September with West Ham having the option to extend the loan for a further season.


title: Alex Song

text: On 21 July 2016, Rubin Kazan reached an agreement to sign Song from Barcelona, subject to a medical. On 1 August 2016, Song officially joined the Russian side on a free transfer after his contract with Barcelona had been terminated.


title: Alex Song

text: In January 2018, Song trained with his old club Arsenal after being allowed to find a new club by Rubin, but was still registered with Rubin when the Russian Premier League continued on 2 March 2018 after their winter break. He was removed from their league registration list on 13 March 2018. It was reported on 2 April 2018 that Rubin sent a complaint to the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber, demanding 40 million euros from Song for breach of contract.


title: Alex Song

text: Song signed with Swiss Super League club Sion on a free transfer on 14 August 2018. In March 2020, Song was one of nine players sacked by Sion for refusing to take a pay cut during the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Alex Song

text: In November 2020, Song joined Djiboutian club Arta/Solar7 on a permanent deal. Along with playing for the first team, Song will supervise youth development at Solar over the course of that period.


title: Alex Song

text: Song was first capped by Cameroon in 2005. He was named in the Cameroon squad for the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations. He played for Cameroon in their first group match, a 4–2 defeat against holders Egypt; he replaced Stéphane Mbia at half time, joining his uncle Rigobert on the pitch. For the duration of the tournament he was a revelation in defence for Cameroon, earning a Man of the Match award in Cameroon's semi-final, but then going off injured in the final against Egypt. He was nonetheless named in the Tournament Best XI, alongside compatriot Geremi.


title: Alex Song

text: Song was called up for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations and was the only Cameroonian named in the Team of the Tournament.


title: Alex Song

text: Song was included in the Cameroon squad for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. He did not appear in his side's opening loss to Japan, but played the full 90 in Cameroon's disappointing 2–1 loss to Denmark. The result ensured that "Les Lions Indomptables" were the first country eliminated from the World Cup. He was an unused substitute in Cameroon's final group stage match against the Netherlands, a 2–1 loss, but his uncle Rigobert made his final national team appearance in the match.


title: Alex Song

text: Song participated in his second FIFA World Cup at the 2014 tournament in Brazil. In the team's second group match, Song was sent off for violent conduct after striking Mario Mandžukić as Cameroon were knocked out, losing 4–0 to Croatia. Song later apologized to Mandžukić, and to the people of Cameroon for being sent off. FIFA punished Song with a three-match ban from competitive internationals, as well as fining him US$22,300. The match is being investigated for possible match-fixing after allegations in a German newspaper. In December 2014, despite being in-form for his club West Ham United, he was omitted by Cameroon coach Volker Finke from the squad for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.


title: Alex Song

text: On 6 January 2015, Song announced his international retirement, aged 27 and earning 49 caps, citing his wish to focus on rebuilding his domestic career with West Ham.


title: Alex Song

text: A versatile player, Song is capable of playing as a central midfielder, in a holding role, or even as a centre-back, and is primarily known for his energy, physicality, ball-winning abilities, and ability to cover ground quickly, although he is also comfortable on the ball and a strong passer. In 2012, former Barcelona goalkeeper and sports director Andoni Zubizarreta described Song as "a player who is good in the air, is physically powerful and tactically astute." Despite his defensive playing role, Song has been described by former Cameroon coach Javier Clemente as a "much better player in attack than he is defensively". Indeed, in addition to his defensive and physical qualities, he is also capable of pushing forward, carrying the ball himself, or starting attacking plays with his passing after winning back possession, thus allowing him to transition quickly between the defensive and offensive phases of the game.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (born March 5, 1952), better known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer. Her work spans the speculative fiction genre, ranging from secondary-world fantasy as Hobb, to urban fantasy and science fiction as Lindholm. She is best known for her novels set in the "Realm of the Elderlings" – comprising the "Farseer", "Liveship Traders" and "Tawny Man" trilogies, the "Rain Wild" chronicles, and the "Fitz and the Fool" trilogy – that are regarded as works of character-driven fantasy and have sold more than a million copies.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Lindholm grew up in Alaska and the Pacific Northwestern United States, a setting that has influenced her work. She began writing novels at age thirty, in the midst of raising children. The first work to bring her wider attention was the 1986 novel "Wizard of the Pigeons", a liminal fantasy set in Seattle. Often cited as a forerunner of the urban fantasy genre, it received praise for Lindholm's depiction of understated magic and poverty. Science fiction short stories followed, garnering nominations for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. While critically well-received, Lindholm's work did not do well commercially. In 1995, she shifted to writing secondary-world fantasy and adopted a pen name, Robin Hobb.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb achieved commercial success with her debut work under this pseudonym, the "Farseer" trilogy. An epic fantasy told as a first-person retrospective, it has drawn praise from critics for its characterization and introspective narrative. Hobb went on to write four further series set in the "Realm of the Elderlings", for which "The Times" described her as "one of the great modern fantasy writers". Through her writing, Hobb explores otherness, queerness, and gender as themes. The "Elderlings" series concluded in 2017 with the "Fitz and the Fool" trilogy, which received praise for Hobb's depiction of older characters; a review in "The Telegraph" argued that her novels transcended the fantasy genre. In 2021, Hobb won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Margaret Astrid Lindholm was born in Berkeley, California, in 1952, but from the age of ten, she grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. She recalls growing up in the middle of an oil boom in Alaska, which led to a rapid growth in population of the rural town she lived in. A shortage of classroom space caused some of her high school classes to be held in staircases. Lindholm did not like how the town's urbanization intruded on the nature trails around her house, which she had enjoyed exploring, but said her childhood was overall a happy one and described herself as more of a solitary than social child. Her family raised a half wolf called Bruno and hunted caribou and moose; this would later inspire the wolf character Nighteyes and the descriptions of wilderness survival in Lindholm's writing. After graduating from Austin E. Lathrop High School, she studied at the University of Denver for a year and then returned to Alaska.


title: Robin Hobb

text: At eighteen, Lindholm married Fred Ogden, a merchant mariner whom she had been dating for the past year. The couple moved to Hawaii, where they lived for more than a year, but found it too hot to acclimate to and returned to Fred's hometown of Kodiak, located at the tip of Kodiak Island in south-central Alaska. Margaret enjoyed journeying on Fred's ships and said the sea was a prominent aspect of her life, inspiring the maritime focus of her "Liveship" books. She published her first novel at age thirty, balancing between writing and caring for her four children while her husband worked offshore as a commercial fisherman. The family experienced financial difficulties at the time and said their income "depended entirely on fish and editors". Margaret described her writing process as: "writing fits into odd corners. It's during the naptime, it's sitting by the bath tub writing, it's writing after the children are in bed". She also worked part-time, including in waitressing and mail delivery, early in her career.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb's work has appeared under several pen names: as M. Lindholm and Megan Lindholm from 1979, and as Robin Hobb from 1995. The change from Margaret, her first name, to Megan was due to a misunderstanding with her first editor. Megan Lindholm's writing received critical praise, including Hugo and Nebula award nominations for her short fiction, but did not sell well. In 1995, the author shifted to writing secondary-world fantasy. She deliberately chose an androgynous pen name, Robin Hobb, for her new work written as a first-person male narrator. Her writing as Hobb was commercially successful, and has appeared on New York Times bestseller lists. She continues to write under both Hobb and Lindholm bylines.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Lindholm sold her first short story to a children's magazine, leading to an early career writing for children. Her short fiction for children appeared in magazines such as "Humpty Dumpty", "Jack and Jill", and "Highlights for Children". She also composed educational material, short works of fiction created to a very specific vocabulary list, which were used in SRA's programmed reading material.


title: Robin Hobb

text: In the 1970s, Lindholm also began to write short fantasy, publishing short stories in fanzines such as "Space and Time" (edited by Gordon Linzner). Her first professional sale as a fantasy writer was the short story "Bones for Dulath", which appeared in the 1979 "Amazons!" anthology, and which introduced her recurring characters Ki and Vandien. The anthology, published by DAW Books, won a World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology. A second story featuring Ki and Vandien, "The Small One," was published in "Fantastic Stories" in 1980.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Until 1995, she continued to publish exclusively under the name Megan Lindholm. Her fiction under that name spans several slices of the fantasy genre, from fantasy adventure (the Ki and Vandien tales) to urban fantasy. Her 1986 novel "Wizard of the Pigeons" was one of the precursors of the urban fantasy genre, and was the first work to bring her wider attention.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Lindholm's first novel, "Harpy's Flight", was published by Ace in 1983. It was the first of four novels about the characters Ki and Vandien, the last of which was published in 1989. She contributed short stories to a shared world anthology entitled "Liavek" from 1985 to 1988, and co-wrote a novel, "The Gypsy", with Steven Brust. "The Gypsy" was released both as a traditional paper book and as part of an enhanced multimedia CD which included the text of the novel as well as the Boiled in Lead album "Songs From the Gypsy", which was considered the soundtrack to the novel and featured songs written by Brust and his Cats Laughing bandmate Adam Stemple which had inspired the creation of both the novel and the album.


title: Robin Hobb

text: She has continued to publish short stories as Megan Lindholm, including an appearance in the 2013 anthology "Year's Best SF 18".


title: Robin Hobb

text: Robin Hobb, a pseudonym that Lindholm has used for writing works of epic traditional fantasy, first appeared in 1995. Her writing has mainly focused on the "Realm of the Elderlings", a series of 16 books written in five parts. The series comprises four trilogies and one tetralogythe "Farseer", the "Liveship Traders", the "Tawny Man", the "Rain Wild", and the "Fitz and the Fool" set in the same world.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb's first work was the "Farseer" trilogy, narrated in first person by FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of a prince, and featuring an enigmatic character called the Fool. The first volume of the trilogy, "Assassin's Apprentice", was published in 1995, followed by "Royal Assassin" in 1996 and "Assassin's Quest" in 1997. Hobb next wrote a nautical fantasy series, the "Liveship Traders", set in a different part of the "Elderlings" world and featuring pirates, sea serpents, a family of traders and their living ships. The books of the trilogy, "Ship of Magic", "The Mad Ship" and "Ship of Destiny", were published between 1998 and 2000. Over the following three years, Hobb returned to the first-person narrative of Fitz in the "Tawny Man" trilogy, set after the events of the "Liveship" novels and comprising "Fool's Errand", "The Golden Fool", and "Fool's Fate". As of 2003, Robin Hobb had sold over one million copies of her first nine novels, which formed three trilogies set in the "Realm of the Elderlings".


title: Robin Hobb

text: The three books of the "Soldier Son" trilogy ("Shaman's Crossing", "Forest Mage", and "Renegade's Magic") are Hobb's only works to be set outside of the "Elderlings" world, and were published between 2005 and 2009. In addition, "The Inheritance", published in 2011, was a collection of short stories written both as Robin Hobb and as Megan Lindholm.


title: Robin Hobb

text: From 2009 to 2013, Hobb released the four novels of the "Rain Wild Chronicles" ("Dragon Keeper", "Dragon Haven", "City of Dragons" and "Blood of Dragons"). This series is set in the same world, the "Realm of the Elderlings", as Hobb's earlier trilogies. In 2014, Hobb resumed the story, decades later in life, of her two most popular characters in the "Fitz and the Fool" trilogy, with its three volumes, "Fool's Assassin", "Fool's Quest" and "Assassin's Fate", published from 2014 to 2017. The last novel, "Assassin's Fate", concludes not only her earlier books featuring Fitz, but also the "Liveship" and "Rain Wild" books.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb's writing spans the speculative fiction genre. Her most famous work, the "Realm of the Elderlings", is secondary-world fantasy, with the "Farseer" novels narrated as first-person retrospective. This has been described as an unusual approach in fantasy, with greater focus on the characters' internal conflicts over the external. Her earlier writing as Megan Lindholm comprises short-form science fiction and urban fantasy. Her 1986 novel "Wizard of the Pigeons" has been cited as a forerunner of the urban fantasy genre, with scholar Farah Mendlesohn describing it as liminal fantasy that pairs "plain descriptions of the fantastic [...] with baroque descriptions of the real". Hobb herself has said that she employs different voices for the two pseudonyms, with Lindholm's voice "a little more snarky, a little more sarcastic, a little less optimistic, less emotional", and more attuned to dark, urban fantasy.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb's novels have sometimes been compared to fellow author George R. R. Martin, with both their best-known works published during the 1990s. While Martin and Hobb's series are considered more realistic than most epic fantasy, they differ in how they depict said realism. According to scholar Sylvia Borowska-Szerszun, Martin's work focuses on the brutality and violence of its realism, while Hobb's narrative focuses more on the individual, and is interested in exploring psychological aspects of trauma.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Critic Amanda Craig describes Hobb's writing as having a Shakespearean flavor, and calls the mood "nothing like as bleak as George R R Martin's, nor as Manichean as Tolkien's, but close to Ursula Le Guin's redemptive humanism".


title: Robin Hobb

text: Literary allusions to the works of Robert Louis Stevenson and R. M. Ballantyne have been identified in Hobb's "Liveship Traders" series, which academics Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher described as an immersive portrayal of a world that is water-centric, aided by unique perspectives such as a serpent's-eye view of the ocean (the serpents view the sea as "the Plenty", while the air above is termed "the Lack"). The larger map of the "Realm of the Elderlings" has been recognized as resembling the U.S. state of Alaska, where Hobb grew up. Scholar Geoffrey B. Elliott views the setting of the "Tawny Man" trilogy as drawing from the geography and indigenous culture of the Pacific Northwest, noting the glacier-filled isles and matrilineal culture of Hobb's Out Islands.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Tolerance for otherness is a theme that runs through the fantasy elements of Hobb's "Elderlings" series. The books feature two kinds of magic: the socially acceptable Skill, practised by the ruling class, and the despised Wit, relegated with the lower classes. The Wit, the ability to bond with animals, is viewed as an unnatural inclination, as emasculating and shameful, with its practitioners publicly hanged and forced into hiding. Scholars have described it as an allegory for queerness and homophobia. The protagonist Fitz, who is both Skilled and Witted, leads conflicting identities. His bond with his Witted partner, a wolf, is portrayed as central to his life as his human relationships, but is forced to operate in secret due to social prejudice. This personal struggle, as well as the larger struggle for de-ostracization of the Witted, form a key theme of the series.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb explores gender as a theme in the "Liveship Traders", which focuses on the lives of three generations of women in a patriarchal society. The women of the series often defy stereotypical expectations of their femininity: Althea, a rebellious sailor who dresses as a man to work on a ship, re-kindles her sensitive side; Keffria, a submissive housewife, discovers her independence; and Ronica, a conservative, traditional matriarch adapts to social change. The Fool, an enigmatic character whose gender identity shifts through the series, appears as a young woman in some sections and as a man in others. Scholars have described this depiction of gender as subversive, and as challenging the notion of a rigid boundary between genders.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Ecological themes have also been identified in Hobb's work. The resurgence of dragons in the "Elderlings" series poses a challenge to anthropocentrism, or the supremacy of man's place in the world, with humans forced to re-adjust in relation to a stronger, more intelligent predator. The Wit, an ill-regarded ability associated with the animal world, is shown through Fitz's perspective as a natural extension of the senses and as an interconnectedness to all living things. Scholar Mariah Larsson view the series as ecocentric in nature, questioning the intrinsic value of human over other forms of life.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Other themes in Hobb's writing include critiques of colonialism and examination of culture-specific honor systems in the "Soldier Son" trilogy, a series set in a post-colonial secondary world that has drawn resemblance to the nineteenth century American frontier.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Hobb has received recognition for her characterization. In a column for "The Times", critic Amanda Craig called Hobb "one of the great modern fantasy writers". She described Hobb's characters as believable people who "age, change, waver and suffer lasting scars", and highlighted the portrayal of Fitz, the protagonist of the "Farseer" trilogy. The "New Statesman" remarked on the "striking portraits of three generations of women" in the sequel "Liveship Traders" trilogy, and stated that though Hobb's works had a medieval setting, her themes resonated in the modern world. "The Telegraph" likewise said of her characters that "their longings and failings are our own, and we find our view of the world indelibly changed by their experiences". Comparing her writing with that of literary novelists, "The Telegraph" described Hobb's novels as transcending the fantasy genre. A similar description in "The Guardian" called Hobb "the writer to press on those who turn up their noses at fantasy", with her storylines portrayed as both "exciting and deeply introspective".


title: Robin Hobb

text: The "Realm of the Elderlings" novels have been commercially successful, with the first three seriesthe "Farseer", "Liveship Traders" and "Tawny Man" trilogies having sold more than a million copies as of 2003. Reviewing one of its final volumes, the "Los Angeles Review of Books" found Hobb's characters interesting even in middle age, writing that traumas experienced in childhood "linger and take on new shapes" as her characters aged. The "LARB" described the psychological complexity of Hobb's characters, along with the layered interactions between them, as central to the appeal of her writing. In a similar view, "Library Journal" described the series as "masterworks of character-based epic fantasy".


title: Robin Hobb

text: Some of Hobb's works have received less positive a reception: "The Guardian" criticized the "Soldier Son" books as lacking the "heart and page-turning spark" of her Fitz novels, and viewed the "Rain Wild" novels as "flimsy in comparison". Scholar Lenise Prater positively viewed how Hobb's "Elderlings" novels blurred gender boundaries; she however critiqued Hobb's emphasis on "monogamous, romantic love", viewing it as heteronormative and as a conservative representation of queer relationships. A different view was offered by scholar Peter Melville, who described the final "Elderlings" trilogy as "confirm[ing] the series' place within the larger history of queerness in the fantasy genre".


title: Robin Hobb

text: As Megan Lindholm, she has received praise for the depiction of understated magic, poverty and mental illness in the novel "Wizard of the Pigeons" and other themes such as aging in her short fiction. Other aspects of Hobb's writing that have drawn commentary include her prose, described by "The Times" as having "a sinewy simplicity close to that of myths and fairytales", her portrayal of gender, in particular the gender-fluid character known as the Fool, and her depiction of psychological aspects of trauma, including that arising from violence and rape.


title: Robin Hobb

text: Fellow authors of speculative fiction have praised Hobb's work. Orson Scott Card stated that she "arguably set the standard for the modern serious fantasy novel", and cited the "Liveship Traders" as his favorite work of Hobb's. George R.R. Martin has praised her work, writing that her books are like "diamonds in a sea of zircons". In 2014, Hobb was a Guest of Honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London.


title: Robin Hobb

text: In 1981, Megan Lindholm was awarded an Alaska State Council of the Arts prize for her short story "The Poaching". As Megan Lindholm, her short fiction works have been finalists for both the Nebula and the Hugo awards, and winner of the Asimov's Readers Award. In 2021, she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, presented to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.


title: Salah times

text: Salah times are prayer times when Muslims perform "salah". The term is primarily used for the five daily prayers including the Friday prayer, which takes the place of the Dhuhr prayer and must be performed in a group of worshippers. Muslims believe the salah times were taught by Allah to Muhammad.


title: Salah times

text: Prayer times are standard for Muslims in the world, especially the fard prayer times. They depend on the condition of the Sun and geography. There are varying opinions regarding the exact salah times, the schools of Islamic thought differing in minor details. All schools of thought agree that any given prayer cannot be performed before its stipulated time.


title: Salah times

text: Muslims pray five times a day, with their prayers being known as Fajr (before dawn), Dhuhr (afternoon), Asr (late afternoon), Maghrib (after sunset), and Isha (nighttime), always facing towards the Kaaba. The direction of prayer is called the qibla; the early Muslims initially prayed in the direction of Jerusalem before this was changed to Mecca in 624 CE, about a year after Muhammad's migration to Medina.


title: Salah times

text: The timing of the five prayers are fixed intervals defined by daily astronomical phenomena. For example, the Maghrib prayer can be performed at any time after sunset and before the disappearance of the red twilight from the west. In a mosque, the muezzin broadcasts the call to prayer at the beginning of each interval. Because the start and end times for prayers are related to the solar diurnal motion, they vary throughout the year and depend on the local latitude and longitude when expressed in local time. In modern times, various religious or scientific agencies in Muslim countries produce annual prayer timetables for each locality, and electronic clocks capable of calculating local prayer times have been created. In the past, some mosques employed astronomers called the "muwaqqit"s who were responsible for regulating the prayer time using mathematical astronomy.


title: Salah times

text: The five intervals were defined by Muslim authorities in the decades after the death of Muhammad in 632, based on the hadith (the reported sayings and actions) of the Islamic prophet.


title: Salah times

text: The five daily prayers are obligatory () and they are performed at times determined essentially by the position of the Sun in the sky. Hence, salat times vary at different locations on the Earth. Wudu is needed for all of the prayers.


title: Salah times

text: Fajr begins at —true dawn or the beginning of twilight, when the morning light appears across the full width of the sky—and ends at sunrise.


title: Salah times

text: The time interval for offering the Zuhr or Dhuhr salah timing starts after the sun passes its zenith and lasts until call for the Asr prayer is given. This prayer needs to be given in the middle of the work-day, and people normally make their prayers during their lunch break.


title: Salah times

text: Shia differs regarding the end of zuhr time. Per all major Jafari jurists, the end of dhuhr time is about 10 minutes before sunset, the time that belongs exclusively to asr prayer. Dhuhr and asr time overlap, apart from the first 5 minutes of dhuhr, which is exclusively delegated for it. Asr prayer cannot be offered before zuhr in the zuhr time.


title: Salah times

text: The Asr prayer starts when the shadow of an object is the same length as the object itself (or, according to Hanafi school, twice its length) plus the shadow length at zuhr, and lasts till sunset. Asr can be split into two sections; the preferred time is before the sun starts to turn orange, while the time of necessity is from when the sun turns orange until sunset.


title: Salah times

text: Shia (Jafari madhab) differs regarding start of asr time. Per all major Jafari jurists, start of asr time is about 5 minutes after the time of sun passing through zenith, that time belongs exclusively to dhuhr prayer. Time for dhuhr and asr prayers overlap, but the zuhr prayer must be offered before asr, except the time about 10 minutes before sunset, which is delegated exclusively to asr. In the case that the mentioned time is reached, asr prayer should be offered first (ada - on time) and dhuhr (kada - make up, late) prayer should be offered after asr.


title: Salah times

text: The Maghrib prayer begins when the sun sets, and lasts until the red light has left the sky in the west.


title: Salah times

text: The Isha'a or isha prayer starts when the red light is gone from the western sky, and lasts until the rise of the "white light" () in the east. The preferred time for Isha is before midnight, meaning halfway between sunset and sunrise.


title: Salah times

text: To calculate prayer times two astronomical measures are necessary, the declination of the sun and the difference between clock time and sundial clock. This difference being the result of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the inclination of its axis, it is called the equation of time. The declination of the sun is the angle between sun's rays and the equator plan.


title: Salah times

text: In addition to the above measures, to calculate prayer times for a specific location we need its spherical coordinates.


title: Salah times

text: In the following formula_1 is the time zone. formula_2 and formula_3 are the longitude and the latitude of the considered point, respectively. formula_4 and formula_5 denotes the equation of time term and the declination of the Sun for a given date, respectively.


title: Salah times

text: We first give the midday (Dhuhr) time. The midday time is simply when the local true solar time reaches noon:


title: Salah times

text: The first term is the 12 o'clock noon, the second term accounts for the difference between true and mean solar times, and the third term accounts for the difference between the local mean solar time and the timezone.


title: Salah times

text: The other times require converting the Sun's altitude to time. We use a variant of the generalized sunrise equation:


title: Salah times

text: This gives, in hours, the difference between Dhuhr time and when the sun is at altitude formula_8. Now we calculate three of the other prayer times:


title: Salah times

text: Muslims use readily available apps on their phone to find daily prayer times in their locality. Technological advances have allowed for products such as software-enhanced azan clocks that use a combination of GPS and microchips to calculate these formulas. This allows Muslims to live further away from mosques than previously possible, as they no longer need to rely solely on a muezzin in order to keep an accurate prayer schedule.


title: Salah times

text: The Friday prayer replaces the dhuhr prayer performed on the other six days of the week. The precise time for this congregational prayer varies with the mosque, but in all cases it must be performed after dhuhr and before asr times. If one is unable to join the congregation, then they must pray the dhuhr prayer instead. This salat is compulsory to be done with ja'maat for men. Women have the option to perform Jumm'ah in the mosque or to pray zuhr.


title: Salah times

text: Also known as , this salat is considered a (Arabic: meaning 'voluntary/optional salah (formal worship)') and is performed during the month of Ramadan. The prayer is performed after Isha prayer, in congregation. 20 rakaat are typically performed; a short rest is taken after every four "s". The word comes from , which means one time rahat (rest); the two time rahat (rest) is known as tarvihatain, which comes to eight rakaats; the three or more times rahat is called taraveh as it comes to 12 or more rakaats.


title: Salah times

text: The Muslims of the community gather to offer their collective prayers for forgiveness for the dead. This prayer has been generally termed as the . The prayer is offered in a particular way with extra (four) takbirs but there is no ruku and sujud. It becomes obligatory for every Muslim adult male to perform the funeral prayer upon the death of any Muslim, however when it is performed by the few it will not be obligation for all. Women also can attend the prayer.


title: Luffa

text: In everyday non-technical usage, the luffa, also spelled loofah, usually refers to the fruits of the species "Luffa aegyptiaca" and "Luffa acutangula". It is cultivated and eaten as a vegetable, but must be harvested at a young stage of development to be edible. The vegetable is popular in India, China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. When the fruit is fully ripened, it is very fibrous. The fully developed fruit is the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge which is used in bathrooms and kitchens.


title: Luffa

text: The name "luffa" was taken by European botanists in the 17th century from the Egyptian-Arabic name "lūf".


title: Luffa

text: The fruit section of "L. aegyptiaca" may be allowed to mature and used as a bath or kitchen sponge after being processed to remove everything except the network of xylem fibers. If the loofah is allowed to fully ripen and then dried on the vine, the flesh disappears, leaving only the fibrous skeleton and seeds, which can be easily shaken out. Marketed as "luffa" or "loofah", the sponge is used as a body scrub in the shower.


title: Luffa

text: In Paraguay, panels are made out of luffa combined with other vegetable matter and recycled plastic. These can be used to create furniture and construct houses.


title: Luffa

text: In Hindi-speaking North Indian states, it is called "torai" (), and cooked as vegetable. In eastern-UP it is also called "nenua". But in central/Western India, specially in Madhya Pradesh, it is called "gilki" (). "Torai" is reserved for ridge gourd and is less popular than "gilki" in central western India.


title: Luffa

text: In Bhojpuri speaking regions it is called "ghiura". Apart from fruit of the vegetable, flowers are also used as vegetable as "chokha", "tarua", "pakoda", etc.


title: Luffa

text: In Nepal and Nepali language speaking Indian states, it is called "ghiraula" (घिरौंला). It is popular vegetable usually cooked with tomato and potatoes and served with rice.


title: Luffa

text: In Gujarat it is known as "turia" or "turya" (તુરીયા) as well as or "ghissora" in the Kutchi language. It is a simple but very popular vegetable usually made with a plentiful tomato gravy and garnished with green chillies and fresh coriander. When cooked roti is shredded by hand and mixed into it, it is colloquially known as "rotli shaak ma bhuseli". Alternatively this dish is also eaten mixed with plain cooked rice.


title: Luffa

text: In Bengali-speaking Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, it is known as "dhudhul" () and a popular vegetable. It is eaten fried or cooked with shrimp, fish, or meat.


title: Luffa

text: In Tamil Nadu, "Luffa acutangula" (ridged gourd) is called "peerkangai" (பீர்க்கங்காய்) and "Luffa aegyptiaca" / "Luffa cylindrica" (sponge gourd) is called "nurai peerkankai" (நுரை பீர்க்கங்காய்) and are used as vegetables to make "peerkangai kootu", "poriyal", and "thogayal". Even the skin is used to make chutney.


title: Luffa

text: In Karnataka's Malenadu (Western Ghats) it is known as "tuppadahirekayi", which literally translates as "buttersquash", also known as Hirekayi in Kannada. It grows naturally in this region and is consumed when it is still tender and green. It is used as a vegetable in curries, but also as a snack, "bhajji", dipped in chickpea batter and deep fried. In Tulu language it is known as Peere and is used to prepare chutney and ajethna.


title: Luffa

text: In Andhra Pradesh, it is called "nethi beerakaya" or "beerakaya". And in Assam it is called "jika" (জিকা, Luffa acutangula) and "bhula" (ভোল, Luffa aegyptiaca). It is used as a vegetable in a curry, chutney and stir fry.


title: Luffa

text: In Kerala, it is called "peechinga"; in the Palakkad area it is particularly called "poththanga" and used in while bathing. It is also used as a vegetable, cooked with dal or stir fried. Fully matured fruit is used as a natural scrub in rural Kerala. In some places such as Wayanad, it grows as a creeper on fences.


title: Luffa

text: In Maharashtra, India, (ridge gourd luffa) and "ghosavala" (smooth luffa) are common vegetables prepared with either crushed dried peanuts or with beans.


title: Luffa

text: In Manipur, India, is cooked with other ingredients like potato, dried fish, fermented fish and served. It is also steamed and consumed or crushed () with other ingredients and served with steamed rice ("chaak"). Fried ones () are also favorites for many. "Sebot" is also eaten as a green vegetable


title: Luffa

text: In Vietnamese cuisine, the gourd is called """" and is a common ingredient in soups and stir-fried dishes.


title: Luffa

text: In China and Taiwan (where it is called , or in English, "silk melon"), Indonesia (where it is called "oyong"), and the Philippines (where it is called "patola" in Tagalog and "kabatiti" in Ilokano), in Timor-Leste it is also called "patola" or "batola" in Tetum and in Manipur, India, (where it is called ) the luffa is eaten as a green vegetable in various dishes.


title: Luffa

text: In Japan it is called "hechima" () and is cultivated all over the country during summer. It is commonly used as a green vegetable in traditional dishes of the Ryukyu Islands (where it is called "naabeeraa"). In other regions it is also grown for uses other than food.


title: Luffa

text: In Nepal it is called "ghiraula" and consumed as a vegetable at a young age. When it becomes ripe and dried, it is used as a body scrubbing material during bathing.


title: Luffa

text: In Japan, in regions other than the Ryukyu Islands and Kyushu, it is predominantly grown for use as a sponge or for applying soap, shampoo, and lotion. As with bitter melon, many people grow it outside building windows as a natural sunscreen in summer.


title: Luffa

text: Luffa species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including "Hypercompe albicornis".


title: Luffa

text: The luffa sponge is a biological cellular material. These materials often exhibit exceptional mechanical properties at low densities. While their mechanical performance tends to fall behind manmade materials, such as alloys, ceramics, plastics, and composites, as a structural material, they have long term sustainability for the natural environment. When compressed longitudinally, a luffa sponge is able to absorb comparable energy per unit mass as aluminum foam. Luffa sponges are composed of a complex network of fiber bundles connected to form a 3-dimensional, highly-porous network.


title: Luffa

text: The hierarchical structure of luffa sponges results in mechanical properties that vary with the component of sponge tested. Specifically, the mechanical properties of fiber bundles differ from those of blocks from the bulk of the sponge, which differ from those of the cross sections of the entire sponge.


title: Luffa

text: Uniaxial tensile tests of fiber bundles isolated from the inner surface provide insight this basic strut element of the luffa sponges. These fibers bundles vary in diameter from 0.3 to 0.5 mm. Each fiber bundle has a low density core region not occupied by fibers. The stress-strain response of the fiber bundles is nearly linear elastic all the way until fracture, suggesting the absence of work hardening. The slope of the linear region of the stress-strain curve, or Young’s modulus, is 236* MPa. The highest stress achieved before fracture, or ultimate tensile strength, is 103 MPa. The strain at which failure occurs, or failure strain, is small at only 5%. The mechanical properties of fiber bundles decrease dramatically when the size of the hollow region inside the bundle increases. Despite their low tensile strength, the fiber bundles have a high specific modulus of 2.07– 4.05 MPa⋅m/kg, and their overall properties are improved when a high ratio of their cross sectional area is occupied by fibers, the fibers are evenly distributed, and there is strong adhesion between fibers.


title: Luffa

text: Block samples (height: 12.69 ± 2.35mm, width: 11.30 ± 2.88mm, length: 13.10 ± 2.64mm) cut from the core region and hoop region of the luffa sponge exhibit different mechanical behaviors under compression depending on both the orientation they are loaded in as well as the location in the sponge they are sampled from. The hoop region consists of the section of sponge located around the outside between the inner and outer surfaces, while the core region is from the sponge center. Samples from both the hoop and core regions exhibited yielding when compressed in the longitudinal direction due to the buckling of fibers. With the highly aligned fibers from the inner surface removed from the hoop region block samples, this yield behavior disappears. In general, the inner surface fibers most significant impact the longitudinal properties of the luffa sponge column followed by the circumferential properties. There is no noticeable contribution to the radial properties. Additionally, the core region exhibits lower yield stress and energy absorption (as determined by the area under the stress-strain curve) compared to the hoop region due to its greater porosity.


title: Luffa

text: Overall, the stress-strain curves of block samples exhibit three stages of mechanical behavior common to porous materials. Namely, the samples follow linear elasticity for strains less than 10%, followed by a plateau for strains from 10% to 60%, and finally a stress increase associated with densification at strains greater than 60%. Segment samples created from cross sections of the entire luffa sponge (diameter: 92.51 ± 6.15mm, height: 19.76 ± 4.95mm) when tested in compression exhibit this same characteristic behavior. The three stages can be described by the equations:


title: Luffa

text: In the above equations, formula_7 and formula_8 are the Young's modulus and the yield strength of the sponge material. These are chosen to best fit experimental data. The strain at the elastic limit, where the plateau region begins, is denoted as formula_9, while the strain at the onset of the densification region is formula_10.


title: Luffa

text: Here formula_12 is the density of the bulk sponge formula_13 is the density of its constituent, the fiber bundle. The constant D defines the strain at the onset of densification as well as the stress relationship in the densification region. It is determined by fitting experimental data.


title: Luffa

text: The mechanical properties of Luffa sponges change under different strain rates. Specifically, energy adsorption, compressive stress, and plateau stress (which is in the case of foam materials corresponds to the yield stress) are enhanced by increasing the strain rate. One explanation for this is that the luffa fibers undergo more axial deformation when dynamically loaded (high strain rates) then when quasi-statically loaded (low strain rates).


title: Gay bomb

text: The "gay bomb" and "halitosis bomb" are informal names for two non-lethal psychochemical weapons that a United States Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing. The theories involve discharging sex pheromones over enemy forces in order to make them sexually attracted to each other.


title: Gay bomb

text: In 1994 the Wright Laboratory in Ohio, a predecessor to today's United States Air Force Research Laboratory, produced a three-page proposal on a variety of possible nonlethal chemical weapons, which was later obtained by the Sunshine Project through a Freedom of Information Act request.


title: Gay bomb

text: No well-controlled scientific studies have ever been published suggesting the possibility of pheromones causing rapid behavioral changes in humans.


title: Gay bomb

text: Some body spray advertisers claim that their products contain human sexual pheromones which act as an aphrodisiac. In the 1970s, "copulins" were patented as products which release human pheromones, based on research on rhesus monkeys. Subsequently, androstenone, axillary sweat, and "vomodors" have been claimed to act as human pheromones.


title: Gay bomb

text: Despite these claims, no pheromonal substance has ever been demonstrated to directly influence human behavior in a peer reviewed study.


title: Gay bomb

text: Using a brain imaging technique, Swedish researchers have shown that when homosexual and heterosexual males are presented with two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal their brains tend to respond differently, and that the homosexual men tend to respond in the same way as heterosexual women, though it could not be determined whether this was cause or effect. The study was expanded to include homosexual women; the results were consistent with previous findings meaning that homosexual women were not as responsive to male identified odors, while their response to female cues was similar to that of heterosexual males. According to the researchers, this research suggests a possible role for human pheromones in the biological basis of sexual orientation.


title: Gay bomb

text: In both of the documents, the possibility was canvassed that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause "homosexual behavior". The documents described the aphrodisiac weapon as "distasteful but completely non-lethal".


title: Gay bomb

text: Body odor remote-engineering, involving compounds found in halitosis and hyperhidrosis, was another possibility discussed. Again, these effects would be produced by a non-lethal chemical weapon—possibly one that would affect the hormonal and digestive systems. It appears that a 'heavy sweating bomb', 'flatulence bomb' and 'halitosis bomb' were also considered by a committee at the time. The plan was to make an enemy so smelly they could be quite literally sniffed out of hiding by their opponents.


title: Gay bomb

text: Wright Laboratory won the satiric 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "instigating research & development on a chemical weapon—the so-called 'gay bomb' / 'poof bomb'—that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other."


title: Frank Vogel

text: Frank Paul Vogel (born June 21, 1973) is an American professional basketball coach. He previously served as the head coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, Orlando Magic and Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Vogel also previously served as an assistant coach of the Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics. He coached the Lakers to an NBA championship in 2020.