title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The Constitution of 1920 approved the provisional constitution of 1918 in its basic features. The Czechoslovak state was conceived as a parliamentary democracy, guided primarily by the National Assembly, consisting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, whose members were to be elected on the basis of universal suffrage. The National Assembly was responsible for legislative initiative and was given supervisory control over the executive and judiciary as well. Every seven years it elected the president and confirmed the cabinet appointed by him. Executive power was to be shared by the president and the cabinet; the latter, responsible to the National Assembly, was to prevail. The reality differed somewhat from this ideal, however, during the strong presidencies of Masaryk and his successor, Beneš. The constitution of 1920 provided for the central government to have a high degree of control over local government. From 1928 and 1940, Czechoslovakia was divided into the four "lands" (, ); Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia, and Carpathian Ruthenia. Although in 1927 assemblies were provided for Bohemia, Slovakia, and Ruthenia, their jurisdiction was limited to adjusting laws and regulations of the central government to local needs. The central government appointed one third of the members of these assemblies. The constitution identified the "Czechoslovak nation" as the creator and principal constituent of the Czechoslovak state and established Czech and Slovak as official languages. The concept of the Czechoslovak nation was necessary in order to justify the establishment of Czechoslovakia towards the world, because otherwise the statistical majority of the Czechs as compared to Germans would have been rather weak, and there were more Germans in the state than Slovaks. National minorities were assured special protection; in districts where they constituted 20% of the population, members of minority groups were granted full freedom to use their language in everyday life, in schools, and in matters dealing with authorities.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The operation of the new Czechoslovak government was distinguished by stability. Largely responsible for this were the well-organized political parties that emerged as the real centers of power. Excluding the period from March 1926 to November 1929, when the coalition did not hold, a coalition of five Czechoslovak parties constituted the backbone of the government: Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People, Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party, Czechoslovak National Social Party, Czechoslovak People's Party, and Czechoslovak National Democratic Party. The leaders of these parties became known as the "Pětka" ("pron. pyetka") (The Five). The Pětka was headed by Antonín Švehla, who held the office of prime minister for most of the 1920s and designed a pattern of coalition politics that survived until 1938. The coalition's policy was expressed in the slogan "We have agreed that we will agree." German parties also participated in the government in the beginning of 1926. Hungarian parties, influenced by irredentist propaganda from Hungary, never joined the Czechoslovak government but were not openly hostile:


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovak foreign minister from 1918 to 1935, created the system of alliances that determined the republic's international stance until 1938. A democratic statesman of Western orientation, Beneš relied heavily on the League of Nations as guarantor of the post war status quo and the security of newly formed states. He negotiated the Little Entente (an alliance with Yugoslavia and Romania) in 1921 to counter Hungarian revanchism and Habsburg restoration. He concluded a separate alliance with France. Beneš's Western policy received a serious blow as early as 1925. The Locarno Pact, which paved the way for Germany's admission to the League of Nations, guaranteed Germany's western border. French troops were thus left immobilized on the Rhine, making French assistance to Czechoslovakia difficult. In addition, the treaty stipulated that Germany's eastern frontier would remain subject to negotiation. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, fear of German aggression became widespread in eastern Central Europe. Beneš ignored the possibility of a stronger Central European alliance system, remaining faithful to his Western policy. He did, however, seek the participation of the Soviet Union in an alliance to include France. (Beneš's earlier attitude towards the Soviet regime had been one of caution.) In 1935, the Soviet Union signed treaties with France and Czechoslovakia. In essence, the treaties provided that the Soviet Union would come to Czechoslovakia's aid only if French assistance came first.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: In 1935, when Beneš succeeded Masaryk as president, the prime minister Milan Hodža took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hodža's efforts to strengthen alliances in Central Europe came too late. In February 1936, the foreign ministry came under the direction of Kamil Krofta, an adherent of Beneš's line.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The Czechoslovak Republic sold armament to Bolivia during the Chaco War (1932–35) and sent, close to the end of the war, an unofficial training mission, to support Bolivia in its Chaco war with Paraguay and advance Czechoslovak interest in Bolivia.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The new nation had a population of over 13.5 million. It had inherited 70 to 80% of all the industry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including the porcelain and glass industries and the sugar refineries; more than 40% of all its distilleries and breweries; the Škoda Works of Pilsen (Plzeň), which produced armaments, locomotives, automobiles, and machinery; and the chemical industry of northern Bohemia. Seventeen percent of all Hungarian industry that had developed in Slovakia during the late 19th century also fell to the republic. Czechoslovakia was one of the world's 10 most industrialized states.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The Czech lands were far more industrialized than Slovakia. In Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, 39% of the population was employed in industry and 31% in agriculture and forestry. Most light and heavy industry was located in the Sudetenland and was owned by Germans and controlled by German-owned banks. Czechs controlled only 20 to 30% of all industry. In Slovakia, 17.1% of the population was employed in industry, and 60.4% worked in agriculture and forestry. Only 5% of all industry in Slovakia was in Slovak hands. Carpathian Ruthenia was essentially without industry.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: In the agricultural sector, a program of reform introduced soon after the establishment of the republic was intended to rectify the unequal distribution of land. One-third of all agricultural land and forests belonged to a few aristocratic landowners—mostly Germans (or Germanized Czechs – e.g. Kinsky, Czernin or Kaunitz) and Hungarians—and the Roman Catholic Church. Half of all holdings were under 20,000 m. The Land Control Act of April 1919 called for the expropriation of all estates exceeding 1.5 square kilometres of arable land or 2.5 square kilometres of land in general (5 square kilometres to be the absolute maximum). Redistribution was to proceed on a gradual basis; owners would continue in possession in the interim, and compensation was offered.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: National disputes arose due to the fact that the more numerous Czechs dominated the central government and other national institutions, all of which had their seats in the Bohemian capital Prague. The Slovak middle class had been extremely small in 1919 because Hungarians, Germans and Jews had previously filled most administrative, professional and commercial positions in, and as a result, the Czechs had to be posted to the more backward Slovakia to take up the administrative and professional posts. The position of the Jewish community, especially in Slovakia, was ambiguous and, increasingly, a significant part looked towards Zionism.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: Furthermore, most of Czechoslovakia's industry was as well located in Bohemia and Moravia, while most of Slovakia's economy came from agriculture. In Carpatho-Ukraine, the situation was even worse, with basically no industry at all.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: Due to Czechoslovakia's centralized political structure, nationalism arose in the non-Czech nationalities, and several parties and movements were formed with the aim of broader political autonomy, like the Sudeten German Party led by Konrad Henlein and the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party led by Andrej Hlinka.


title: First Czechoslovak Republic

text: The German minority living in Sudetenland demanded autonomy from the Czechoslovak government, claiming they were suppressed and repressed. In the 1935 Parliamentary elections, the newly founded Sudeten German Party, led by Konrad Henlein and mostly financed by Nazi German money, received over two-thirds of the Sudeten German vote. As a consequence, diplomatic relations between the Germans and the Czechs deteriorated further.


title: Ayesha Jhulka

text: Ayesha Jhulka (born 28 July 1972) is an Indian actress who predominantly appears in Hindi films. She has also worked in Odia, Kannada and Telugu languages films.


title: Ayesha Jhulka

text: She has starred in films including "Kurbaan" (1991), "Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar" (1992), "Khiladi" (1992), "Meherbaan" (1993), "Dalaal" (1993), "Balmaa" (1993), "Waqt Hamara Hai" (1993), "Rang" (1993), "Sangram" (1993), "Jai Kishen" (1994), and "Masoom" (1996).


title: Ayesha Jhulka

text: Jhulka was born on 28 July 1972 to Wing Commander Inder Kumar Jhulka, an Indian Air Force officer and Sneh Jhulka. She is married to Sameer Vashi.


title: Donnie Van Zant

text: Donald Newton Van Zant (born June 11, 1952) is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for being a member of the band 38 Special, from its formation in 1974 until 2013. He is the middle of three sons; his older brother Ronnie was the original lead singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd who died in a 1977 plane crash in Mississippi, and his younger brother Johnny has been the lead singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd since 1987. Donnie and Johnny Van Zant also perform together as the group Van Zant.


title: Donnie Van Zant

text: According to a posting in March 2013 on the 38 Special website, "Donnie Van Zant has not been able to join the band's performances for the past six months. In accordance with his doctor's strict orders and due to health issues related to inner-ear nerve damage, he will not be able to join 38 Special onstage in the foreseeable future. Donnie will continue to write and record with the band." However, it was announced later in 2013 that he had officially left 38 Special, and was retiring.


title: Phonon

text: In physics, a phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. A type of quasiparticle, a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanical quantization of the modes of vibrations for elastic structures of interacting particles. Phonons can be thought of as quantized sound waves, similar to photons as quantized light waves.


title: Phonon

text: The study of phonons is an important part of condensed matter physics. They play a major role in many of the physical properties of condensed matter systems, such as thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, as well as in models of neutron scattering and related effects.


title: Phonon

text: The concept of phonons was introduced in 1932 by Soviet physicist Igor Tamm. The name "phonon" comes from the Greek word (), which translates to "sound" or "voice", because long-wavelength phonons give rise to sound. The name is analogous to the word "photon".


title: Phonon

text: A phonon is the quantum mechanical description of an elementary vibrational motion in which a lattice of atoms or molecules uniformly oscillates at a single frequency. In classical mechanics this designates a normal mode of vibration. Normal modes are important because any arbitrary lattice vibration can be considered to be a superposition of these "elementary" vibration modes (cf. Fourier analysis). While normal modes are wave-like phenomena in classical mechanics, phonons have particle-like properties too, in a way related to the wave–particle duality of quantum mechanics.


title: Phonon

text: The equations in this section do not use axioms of quantum mechanics but instead use relations for which there exists a direct correspondence in classical mechanics.


title: Phonon

text: For example: a rigid regular, crystalline (not amorphous) lattice is composed of "N" particles. These particles may be atoms or molecules. "N" is a large number, say of the order of 10, or on the order of the Avogadro number for a typical sample of a solid. Since the lattice is rigid, the atoms must be exerting forces on one another to keep each atom near its equilibrium position. These forces may be Van der Waals forces, covalent bonds, electrostatic attractions, and others, all of which are ultimately due to the electric force. Magnetic and gravitational forces are generally negligible. The forces between each pair of atoms may be characterized by a potential energy function "V" that depends on the distance of separation of the atoms. The potential energy of the entire lattice is the sum of all pairwise potential energies multiplied by a factor of 1/2 to compensate for double counting:


title: Phonon

text: It is difficult to solve this many-body problem explicitly in either classical or quantum mechanics. In order to simplify the task, two important approximations are usually imposed. First, the sum is only performed over neighboring atoms. Although the electric forces in real solids extend to infinity, this approximation is still valid because the fields produced by distant atoms are effectively screened. Secondly, the potentials "V" are treated as harmonic potentials. This is permissible as long as the atoms remain close to their equilibrium positions. Formally, this is accomplished by Taylor expanding "V" about its equilibrium value to quadratic order, giving "V" proportional to the displacement "x" and the elastic force simply proportional to "x". The error in ignoring higher order terms remains small if "x" remains close to the equilibrium position.


title: Phonon

text: The resulting lattice may be visualized as a system of balls connected by springs. The following figure shows a cubic lattice, which is a good model for many types of crystalline solid. Other lattices include a linear chain, which is a very simple lattice which we will shortly use for modeling phonons. (For other common lattices, see crystal structure.)


title: Phonon

text: Here, "ω" is the natural frequency of the harmonic potentials, which are assumed to be the same since the lattice is regular. "R" is the position coordinate of the "i"th atom, which we now measure from its equilibrium position. The sum over nearest neighbors is denoted (nn).


title: Phonon

text: Due to the connections between atoms, the displacement of one or more atoms from their equilibrium positions gives rise to a set of vibration waves propagating through the lattice. One such wave is shown in the figure to the right. The amplitude of the wave is given by the displacements of the atoms from their equilibrium positions. The wavelength "λ" is marked.


title: Phonon

text: There is a minimum possible wavelength, given by twice the equilibrium separation "a" between atoms. Any wavelength shorter than this can be mapped onto a wavelength longer than 2"a", due to the periodicity of the lattice. This can be thought as one consequence of Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, the lattice points being viewed as the "sampling points" of a continuous wave.


title: Phonon

text: Not every possible lattice vibration has a well-defined wavelength and frequency. However, the normal modes do possess well-defined wavelengths and frequencies.


title: Phonon

text: In order to simplify the analysis needed for a 3-dimensional lattice of atoms, it is convenient to model a 1-dimensional lattice or linear chain. This model is complex enough to display the salient features of phonons.


title: Phonon

text: The forces between the atoms are assumed to be linear and nearest-neighbour, and they are represented by an elastic spring. Each atom is assumed to be a point particle and the nucleus and electrons move in step (adiabatic theorem):


title: Phonon

text: where labels the th atom out of a total of , is the distance between atoms when the chain is in equilibrium, and the displacement of the th atom from its equilibrium position.


title: Phonon

text: If "C" is the elastic constant of the spring and the mass of the atom, then the equation of motion of the th atom is


title: Phonon

text: Since the solutions are expected to be oscillatory, new coordinates are defined by a discrete Fourier transform, in order to decouple them.


title: Phonon

text: Here, corresponds and devolves to the continuous variable of scalar field theory. The are known as the "normal coordinates", continuum field modes .


title: Phonon

text: Substitution into the equation of motion produces the following "decoupled equations" (this requires a significant manipulation using the orthonormality and completeness relations of the discrete Fourier transform),


title: Phonon

text: Each normal coordinate "Q" represents an independent vibrational mode of the lattice with wavenumber , which is known as a normal mode.


title: Phonon

text: The second equation, for , is known as the dispersion relation between the angular frequency and the wavenumber.


title: Phonon

text: In the continuum limit, →0, →∞, with held fixed, → , a scalar field, and formula_7. This amounts to classical free scalar field theory, an assembly of independent oscillators.


title: Phonon

text: A one-dimensional quantum mechanical harmonic chain consists of "N" identical atoms. This is the simplest quantum mechanical model of a lattice that allows phonons to arise from it. The formalism for this model is readily generalizable to two and three dimensions.


title: Phonon

text: In some contrast to the previous section, the positions of the masses are not denoted by "u", but, instead, by "x", "x"…, as measured from their equilibrium positions (i.e. "x" = 0 if particle "i" is at its equilibrium position.) In two or more dimensions, the "x" are vector quantities. The Hamiltonian for this system is


title: Phonon

text: where "m" is the mass of each atom (assuming it is equal for all), and "x" and "p" are the position and momentum operators, respectively, for the "i"th atom and the sum is made over the nearest neighbors (nn). However one expects that in a lattice there could also appear waves that behave like particles. It is customary to deal with waves in Fourier space which uses normal modes of the wavevector as variables instead coordinates of particles. The number of normal modes is same as the number of particles. However, the Fourier space is very useful given the periodicity of the system.


title: Phonon

text: A set of "N" "normal coordinates" "Q" may be introduced, defined as the discrete Fourier transforms of the "x" and "N" "conjugate momenta" "Π" defined as the Fourier transforms of the "p":


title: Phonon

text: The couplings between the position variables have been transformed away; if the "Q" and "Π" were Hermitian (which they are not), the transformed Hamiltonian would describe "N" uncoupled harmonic oscillators.


title: Phonon

text: The form of the quantization depends on the choice of boundary conditions; for simplicity, "periodic" boundary conditions are imposed, defining the ("N" + 1)th atom as equivalent to the first atom. Physically, this corresponds to joining the chain at its ends. The resulting quantization is


title: Phonon

text: The upper bound to "n" comes from the minimum wavelength, which is twice the lattice spacing "a", as discussed above.


title: Phonon

text: An exact amount of energy "ħω" must be supplied to the harmonic oscillator lattice to push it to the next energy level. In comparison to the photon case when the electromagnetic field is quantized, the quantum of vibrational energy is called a phonon.


title: Phonon

text: All quantum systems show wavelike and particlelike properties simultaneously. The particle-like properties of the phonon are best understood using the methods of second quantization and operator techniques described later.


title: Phonon

text: This may be generalized to a three-dimensional lattice. The wavenumber "k" is replaced by a three-dimensional wavevector k. Furthermore, each k is now associated with three normal coordinates.


title: Phonon

text: The new indices "s" = 1, 2, 3 label the polarization of the phonons. In the one-dimensional model, the atoms were restricted to moving along the line, so the phonons corresponded to longitudinal waves. In three dimensions, vibration is not restricted to the direction of propagation, and can also occur in the perpendicular planes, like transverse waves. This gives rise to the additional normal coordinates, which, as the form of the Hamiltonian indicates, we may view as independent species of phonons.


title: Phonon

text: For a one-dimensional alternating array of two types of ion or atom of mass "m", "m" repeated periodically at a distance "a", connected by springs of spring constant "K", two modes of vibration result:


title: Phonon

text: The connection between frequency and wavevector, "ω" = "ω"("k"), is known as a dispersion relation. The plus sign results in the so-called "optical" mode, and the minus sign to the "acoustic" mode. In the optical mode two adjacent different atoms move against each other, while in the acoustic mode they move together.


title: Phonon

text: The speed of propagation of an acoustic phonon, which is also the speed of sound in the lattice, is given by the slope of the acoustic dispersion relation, (see group velocity.) At low values of "k" (i.e. long wavelengths), the dispersion relation is almost linear, and the speed of sound is approximately "ωa", independent of the phonon frequency. As a result, packets of phonons with different (but long) wavelengths can propagate for large distances across the lattice without breaking apart. This is the reason that sound propagates through solids without significant distortion. This behavior fails at large values of "k", i.e. short wavelengths, due to the microscopic details of the lattice.


title: Phonon

text: For a crystal that has at least two atoms in its primitive cell, the dispersion relations exhibit two types of phonons, namely, optical and acoustic modes corresponding to the upper blue and lower red curve in the diagram, respectively. The vertical axis is the energy or frequency of phonon, while the horizontal axis is the wavevector. The boundaries at − and are those of the first Brillouin zone. A crystal with "N" ≥ 2 different atoms in the primitive cell exhibits three acoustic modes: one longitudinal acoustic mode and two transverse acoustic modes. The number of optical modes is 3"N" – 3. The lower figure shows the dispersion relations for several phonon modes in GaAs as a function of wavevector k in the principal directions of its Brillouin zone.


title: Phonon

text: The physics of sound in fluids differs from the physics of sound in solids, although both are density waves: sound waves in fluids only have longitudinal components, whereas sound waves in solids have longitudinal and transverse components. This is because fluids cannot support shear stresses (but see viscoelastic fluids, which only apply to high frequencies).


title: Phonon

text: The above-derived Hamiltonian may look like a classical Hamiltonian function, but if it is interpreted as an operator, then it describes a quantum field theory of non-interacting bosons.


title: Phonon

text: The second quantization technique, similar to the ladder operator method used for quantum harmonic oscillators, is a means of extracting energy eigenvalues without directly solving the differential equations. Given the Hamiltonian, formula_20, as well as the conjugate position, formula_21, and conjugate momentum formula_22 defined in the quantum treatment section above, we can define creation and annihilation operators:


title: Phonon

text: The following commutators can be easily obtained by substituting in the canonical commutation relation:


title: Phonon

text: Using this, the operators "b" and "b" can be inverted to redefine the conjugate position and momentum as:


title: Phonon

text: Directly substituting these definitions for formula_21 and formula_29 into the wavevector space Hamiltonian, as it is defined above, and simplifying then results in the Hamiltonian taking the form:


title: Phonon

text: This is known as the second quantization technique, also known as the occupation number formulation, where "n" = "b""b" is the occupation number. This can be seen to be a sum of N independent oscillator Hamiltonians, each with a unique wave vector, and compatible with the methods used for the quantum harmonic oscillator (note that "n" is hermitian). When a Hamiltonian can be written as a sum of commuting sub-Hamiltonians, the energy eigenstates will be given by the products of eigenstates of each of the separate sub-Hamiltonians. The corresponding energy spectrum is then given by the sum of the individual eigenvalues of the sub-Hamiltonians.


title: Phonon

text: As with the quantum harmonic oscillator, one can show that "b" and "b" respectively create and destroy a single field excitation, a phonon, with an energy of "ħω".


title: Phonon

text: Three important properties of phonons may be deduced from this technique. First, phonons are bosons, since any number of identical excitations can be created by repeated application of the creation operator "b". Second, each phonon is a "collective mode" caused by the motion of every atom in the lattice. This may be seen from the fact that the creation and annihilation operators, defined here in momentum space, contains sums over the position and momentum operators of every atom when written in position space (See position and momentum space). Finally, using the "position–position correlation function", it can be shown that phonons act as waves of lattice displacement.


title: Phonon

text: Which can be interpreted as the sum of 3N independent oscillator Hamiltonians, one for each wave vector and polarization.


title: Phonon

text: Solids with more than one atom in the smallest unit cell exhibit two types of phonons: acoustic phonons and optical phonons.


title: Phonon

text: Acoustic phonons are coherent movements of atoms of the lattice out of their equilibrium positions. If the displacement is in the direction of propagation, then in some areas the atoms will be closer, in others farther apart, as in a sound wave in air (hence the name acoustic). Displacement perpendicular to the propagation direction is comparable to waves on a string. If the wavelength of acoustic phonons goes to infinity, this corresponds to a simple displacement of the whole crystal, and this costs zero deformation energy. Acoustic phonons exhibit a linear relationship between frequency and phonon wave-vector for long wavelengths. The frequencies of acoustic phonons tend to zero with longer wavelength. Longitudinal and transverse acoustic phonons are often abbreviated as LA and TA phonons, respectively.


title: Phonon

text: Optical phonons are out-of-phase movements of the atoms in the lattice, one atom moving to the left, and its neighbor to the right. This occurs if the lattice basis consists of two or more atoms. They are called "optical" because in ionic crystals, such as sodium chloride, fluctuations in displacement create an electrical polarization that couples to the electromagnetic field. Hence, they can be excited by infrared radiation, the electric field of the light will move every positive sodium ion in the direction of the field, and every negative chloride ion in the other direction, causing the crystal to vibrate.


title: Phonon

text: Optical phonons have a non-zero frequency at the Brillouin zone center and show no dispersion near that long wavelength limit. This is because they correspond to a mode of vibration where positive and negative ions at adjacent lattice sites swing against each other, creating a time-varying electrical dipole moment. Optical phonons that interact in this way with light are called "infrared active". Optical phonons that are "Raman active" can also interact indirectly with light, through Raman scattering. Optical phonons are often abbreviated as LO and TO phonons, for the longitudinal and transverse modes respectively; the splitting between LO and TO frequencies is often described accurately by the Lyddane–Sachs–Teller relation.


title: Phonon

text: When measuring optical phonon energy experimentally, optical phonon frequencies are sometimes given in spectroscopic wavenumber notation, where the symbol "ω" represents ordinary frequency (not angular frequency), and is expressed in units of cm. The value is obtained by dividing the frequency by the speed of light in vacuum. In other words, the wave-number in cm units corresponds to the inverse of the wavelength of a photon in vacuum that has the same frequency as the measured phonon.


title: Phonon

text: By analogy to photons and matter waves, phonons have been treated with wavevector "k" as though it has a momentum "ħk"; however, this is not strictly correct, because "ħk" is not actually a physical momentum; it is called the "crystal momentum" or "pseudomomentum". This is because "k" is only determined up to addition of constant vectors (the reciprocal lattice vectors and integer multiples thereof). For example, in the one-dimensional model, the normal coordinates "Q" and "Π" are defined so that


title: Phonon

text: for any integer "n". A phonon with wavenumber "k" is thus equivalent to an infinite family of phonons with wavenumbers "k" ± , "k" ± , and so forth. Physically, the reciprocal lattice vectors act as additional chunks of momentum which the lattice can impart to the phonon. Bloch electrons obey a similar set of restrictions.


title: Phonon

text: It is usually convenient to consider phonon wavevectors "k" which have the smallest magnitude |"k"| in their "family". The set of all such wavevectors defines the "first Brillouin zone". Additional Brillouin zones may be defined as copies of the first zone, shifted by some reciprocal lattice vector.


title: Phonon

text: The thermodynamic properties of a solid are directly related to its phonon structure. The entire set of all possible phonons that are described by the phonon dispersion relations combine in what is known as the phonon density of states which determines the heat capacity of a crystal. By the nature of this distribution, the heat capacity is dominated by the high-frequency part of the distribution, while thermal conductivity is primarily the result of the low-frequency region.


title: Phonon

text: At absolute zero temperature, a crystal lattice lies in its ground state, and contains no phonons. A lattice at a nonzero temperature has an energy that is not constant, but fluctuates randomly about some mean value. These energy fluctuations are caused by random lattice vibrations, which can be viewed as a gas of phonons. Because these phonons are generated by the temperature of the lattice, they are sometimes designated thermal phonons.


title: Phonon

text: Thermal phonons can be created and destroyed by random energy fluctuations. In the language of statistical mechanics this means that the chemical potential for adding a phonon is zero. This behavior is an extension of the harmonic potential into the anharmonic regime. The behavior of thermal phonons is similar to the photon gas produced by an electromagnetic cavity, wherein photons may be emitted or absorbed by the cavity walls. This similarity is not coincidental, for it turns out that the electromagnetic field behaves like a set of harmonic oscillators, giving rise to Black-body radiation. Both gases obey the Bose–Einstein statistics: in thermal equilibrium and within the harmonic regime, the probability of finding phonons or photons in a given state with a given angular frequency is:


title: Phonon

text: where "ω" is the frequency of the phonons (or photons) in the state, "k" is the Boltzmann constant, and "T" is the temperature.


title: Phonon

text: Phonons have been shown to exhibit Quantum tunneling behavior (or "phonon tunneling") where, across gaps up to a nanometer wide, heat can flow via phonons that "tunnel" between two materials. This type of heat transfer works between distances too large for conduction to occur but too small for radiation to occur and therefore cannot be explained by classical heat transfer models.


title: Phonon

text: Here, in expressing the Hamiltonian in operator formalism, we have not taken into account the "ħω" term as, given a continuum or infinite lattice, the "ħω" terms will add up yielding an infinite term. Hence, it is "renormalized" by setting the factor of "ħω" to 0, arguing that the difference in energy is what we measure and not the absolute value of it. Hence, the "ħω" factor is absent in the operator formalized expression for the Hamiltonian.


title: Phonon

text: The ground state, also called the "vacuum state", is the state composed of no phonons. Hence, the energy of the ground state is 0. When a system is in the state , we say there are "n" phonons of type "α", where "n" is the occupation number of the phonons. The energy of a single phonon of type "α" is given by "ħω" and the total energy of a general phonon system is given by "n""ħω" + "n""ħω" +…. As there are no cross terms (e.g. "n""ħω"), the phonons are said to be non-interacting. The action of the creation and annihilation operators is given by:


title: Phonon

text: The creation operator, "a" creates a phonon of type "α" while "a" annihilates one. Hence, they are respectively the creation and annihilation operators for phonons. Analogous to the quantum harmonic oscillator case, we can define particle number operator as


title: Phonon

text: The number operator commutes with a string of products of the creation and annihilation operators if and only if the number of creation operators is equal to number of annihilation operators.


title: Phonon

text: It can be shown that phonons are symmetric under exchange (i.e.  = ), so therefore they are considered bosons.


title: Phonon

text: As well as photons, phonons can interact via parametric down conversion and form squeezed coherent states.


title: Phonon

text: Recent research has shown that phonons and rotons may have a non-negligible mass and be affected by gravity just as standard particles are. In particular, phonons are predicted to have a kind of negative mass and negative gravity. This can be explained by how phonons are known to travel faster in denser materials. Because the part of a material pointing towards a gravitational source is closer to the object, it becomes denser on that end. From this, it is predicted that phonons would deflect away as it detects the difference in densities, exhibiting the qualities of a negative gravitational field. Although the effect would be too small to measure, it is possible that future equipment could lead to successful results.


title: Phonon

text: Phonons have also been predicted to play a key role in superconductivity in materials and the prediction of superconductive compounds.


title: Phonon

text: In 2019, researchers were able to isolate individual phonons without destroying them for the first time.


title: Kalanithi Maran

text: Kalanithi Murasoli Maran is an Indian billionaire media mogul who is the chairman and founder of the Sun Group. He owns television channels, newspapers, weeklies, FM radio stations, DTH services, a cricket team (Sunrisers Hyderabad), and a movie production house. He also held a major share in the Indian airline Spice Jet from 2010 to 2015.


title: Kalanithi Maran

text: In 1990, Maran started a monthly magazine in Tamil called "Poomaalai". On 14 April 1993, he founded Sun TV. Sun TV was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange on 24 April 2006 upon raising $133 million for 10% of the share capital, catapulting him into the billionaire charts. He was among the few representatives at a roundtable with the visiting then US President Bill Clinton.


title: Kalanithi Maran

text: By 2010, he was the 17th richest Indian, with a net worth of US$4 Billion, and is the highest paid business executive in India. Maran and his wife, Kavery were ranked the highest paid Business executives in the list of Indian executive pay charts with a package of each.


title: Kalanithi Maran

text: He has won Young Businessman awards from CNBC and Ernst & Young, and "Forbes" magazine named him the "Television king of southern India". He has won Young Businessman awards from CNBC and Ernst & Young, and "Forbes" magazine named him the "Television king of southern India".


title: Kalanithi Maran

text: Kalanithi Maran is the son of the former Union Minister of India Murasoli Maran and grand nephew of Former Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi. His younger brother Dayanidhi Maran was also a former minister. Kalanithi Maran married Kaveri, a native of Coorg and has a daughter named Kaviya Maran He had his schooling with Don Bosco, Egmore, Chennai. He graduated in commerce from Loyola College, Chennai. He did his MBA from University of Scranton.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa (; born 18 August 1962) is a Mexican politician who served as the 63rd president of Mexico from 1 December 2006 to 30 November 2012 and Secretary of Energy during the presidency of Vicente Fox between 2003 and 2004. He was a member of the National Action Party ("Partido Acción Nacional", PAN) for 30 years before quitting the party in November 2018.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: His father, Luis Calderón Vega, was one of the founders of the PAN and one of its most prominent members; Felipe joined the party in the 1980s. Prior to his presidency, he received two master's degrees and worked within the PAN when it was an opposition party during the PRI regime. Calderón served as National President of the party, Federal Deputy, and Secretary of Energy in Vicente Fox's cabinet. He served in the cabinet of the previous administration until he resigned to run for the presidency and secured his party's nomination. In the 2006 presidential election, he ran as the PAN candidate. After a heated campaign and a controversial electoral process, the Federal Electoral Institute's official results gave Calderón a tiny lead (0.6% of total votes) above PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. While López Obrador and the PRD disputed the results and called for a complete recount of the votes, Calderón's victory was confirmed months later by the Federal Electoral Tribunal.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón's inauguration ceremony at the Congress of the Union was tense and lasted less than five minutes, as he only recited the oath of office while PRD legislators protested the alleged electoral fraud. His presidency was marked by his declaration of war against the country's drug cartels only ten days after taking office; this was considered by most observers as a strategy to gain popular legitimacy after the convoluted elections. Calderón sanctioned Operation Michoacán, the first large-scale deployment of federal troops against the drug cartels. By the end of his administration, the official number of deaths related to the drug war was at least 60,000. The murder rate skyrocketed during his presidency parallel to the beginning of the drug war, peaking in 2010 and decreasing during his last two years in office. The main architect of the drug war, Genaro García Luna, who served as Secretary of Public Security during Calderón's presidency, was arrested in the United States in 2019 due to alleged links with the Sinaloa Cartel.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón's term was also marked by the Great Recession. As a result of a countercyclical package passed in 2009, the national debt increased from 22.2% to 35% of GDP by December 2012. The poverty rate increased from 43 to 46%. Other significant events during Calderón's presidency include the 2007 establishment of ProMéxico, a public trust fund that promotes Mexico's interests in international trade and investment, the 2008 passing of criminal justice reforms (fully implemented in 2016), the 2009 swine flu pandemic, the 2010 establishment of the Agencia Espacial Mexicana, the 2011 founding of the Pacific Alliance and the achievement of universal healthcare through Seguro Popular (passed under the Fox administration) in 2012. Under the Calderón administration sixteen new Protected Natural Areas were created. He began a one-year fellowship at John F. Kennedy School of Government in January 2013, and returned to Mexico following the end of his tenure.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: After three decades of PAN membership, Calderón left the party on 11 November 2018 to found his own party, Free Mexico ("México Libre"), which sought to debut in the 2021 legislative elections. Its registration was rejected by the INE as the "origin of cash contributions was not accredited, violating principles in terms of oversight, transparency and accountability."


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Felipe Calderón was born in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico on 18 August 1962. He is the youngest of five brothers and son of Carmen Hinojosa Calderón and the late Luis Calderón Vega.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: His father was a co-founder of the National Action Party and an important political figure. The elder Calderón occupied state posts and served a term as federal deputy. He spent most of his life working within the party and spent most of his free time promoting the PAN. The young Calderón was active in his father's campaigns. As a boy, he distributed party pamphlets and flyers, rode PAN campaign vehicles and chanted slogans at rallies.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: After growing up in Morelia, Calderón moved to Mexico City, where he received a bachelor's degree in law from the Escuela Libre de Derecho. Later, he received a master's degree in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and a Master of Public Administration degree in 2000 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Following his father's example, he joined the PAN, with the desire of one day becoming Mexico's president. It was in the National Action Party that Calderón met his wife, Margarita Zavala, who served in Congress as a federal deputy. They have three children, María, Luis Felipe and Juan Pablo.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: When asked to reveal his personal positions on abortion, Calderón responded that he is pro-life. His administration sought to maintain moderate positions on social policy and supported Mexican legislation guaranteeing abortion for rape victims, when pregnancy endangers a woman's life or in cases of significant fetal deformities; has publicly advocated the legalization of small quantities of cocaine and other drugs for addicts who agree to undergo treatment; and approved a right-to-die initiative for ill patients to refuse invasive treatment or extraordinary efforts to prolong their lives. In his economic policy views, he supports balanced fiscal policies, flat taxes, lower taxes, and free trade.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: He was a local representative in the Legislative Assembly and, on two different occasions, in the federal Chamber of Deputies. He ran for the governorship of Michoacán in 1995 and served as national president of the PAN from 1996 to 1999. During his tenure, his party maintained control of 14 state capitals, but also faced a reduced presence in the federal Chamber of Deputies.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Soon after Vicente Fox took office as president, Calderón was appointed director of Banobras, a state-owned development bank. He was accused by political opponents of committing abuse, disputing use of certain legal procedures to finance property valued between three and five million Mexican pesos (between US$300,000 and $500,000); however, once political objections arose, he used other means to formalize his transaction.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: He joined the presidential cabinet as Secretary of Energy, replacing Ernesto Martens. He left the post in May 2004 in protest of Vicente Fox's criticism of his presidential ambitions while supporting those of Santiago Creel.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Members of his party chose him as the PAN presidential candidate. In a series of three primary elections, he defeated the favored former Secretary of the Interior under President Vicente Fox, and thus the election of Calderón as party candidate surprised many analysts. The PAN pointed to his competitive primary election as a sign of internal democracy. In other major parties, there was one candidate or all strong candidates but one was eliminated.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón's campaign gained momentum after the first presidential debate. Subsequent poll numbers put him ahead of López Obrador from March to May; some polls favored him by as much as 9 percentage points. This trend in his favor was contained after the second presidential debate when López Obrador decided to start joining the debates. Final poll numbers days ahead of the results indicated that his opponent's prior lead had shrunk further; some polls gave López Obrador the lead, while others favored Calderón and still, others indicated a technical tie.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The Mexican Constitution states that the President must be inaugurated by taking the oath of office before Congress in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. The PRD opposition had threatened to not allow Calderón to take the oath of office and be inaugurated as president. Ahead of claims that the PRD would disrupt the precedings, the PAN took control of Congress's main floor three days before the inauguration was scheduled.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 30 November 2006, outgoing President Vicente Fox Quesada and still President-elect Felipe Calderón Hinojosa stood side by side on national television as Fox turned over the presidential sash to a cadet, who handed it to Calderón. Afterwards, Fox read a short speech indicating that he had concluded his mandate by receiving the flag "that had accompanied him during the last six years which he had devoted himself completely to the service of Mexico and had the utmost honor of being the president of the republic". Calderón then made a speech to the Mexican public indicating that he would still attend the inauguration ceremony at the Chamber of Deputies. He made a call to unity.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón's inauguration ceremony on 1 December at the Congress of the Union was tense and lasted less than five minutes, as he barely managed to recite the oath of office while the PRD legislators shouted in protest against the alleged electoral fraud and attempted to impede his inauguration, and afterward he quickly left the building for security reasons as some of the legislators engaged in violent brawls. Besides the claims of fraud, Calderón took office with the smallest percentage of votes for a winning presidential candidate in Mexican history (35.8%), which meant that his administration would face severe legitimacy problems. Only a month after taking office, Calderón declared war on the drug cartels and organized crime, thus beginning the Mexican Drug War. This was considered by many as an immediate strategy to gain popular legitimacy and acceptation for the new President after the convoluted elections.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: During his first months of government, President Calderón took several actions, such as introducing the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact and a cap on the salaries of public servants, described politically as "seeking to fulfill a campaign promise to incorporate the agenda of election rival Andrés Manuel López Obrador into his government."


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón created the largest number of universities (96) in the history of Mexico. He was also the only president who granted full coverage and a secure spot in elementary schools to children from 6 to 11 years old. The Office of Social Aid for Victims of Violence (in Spanish: "Procuraduría Social para Víctimas de la Violencia") was created by him in 2011. During Calderón's administration, more than 1,000 hospitals were created, and more than 2,000 were reconstructed and amplified. During Vicente Fox's administration, only 40 million people had access to a public health care system. Currently, more than 100 million Mexicans have access to their country's health care system due to Calderón's effort to implement a universal health care system. Moreover, Calderón created more than 16,500 kilometers of interstate highways. Calderón also dispatched military forces all over Mexico since the beginning of his presidency to put down the drug cartels and the increasing violence generated by the criminal organizations that fight with rival groups for territory.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The administration's move towards universal healthcare coverage remains one of the most popular policies of the administration. He launched Seguro Popular to make this policy a reality. Through his policies, significant health infrastructure has been built and access expanded in many areas of the country, while the costs have been lowered significantly for many people to the point that many medicines have already been distributed free of charge.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The 2009 Swine Flu epidemic struck Mexico and was labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The administration declared a state of emergency and acted firmly in giving open information to the world about the swine flu epidemic, and it acted with tough measures to contain its spread by shutting down many public services including schools. President Calderón appeared on television explaining the situation and demonstrating basic precautionary measures to take during the epidemic such as coughing into one's elbow rather than into the air. Tamiflu and vaccines were used in 2009 and in 2010 during flu season, and some deaths were undoubtedly prevented by the strong measures that were taken as well as due to a reduction in the spread and severity of the disease. Policies keeping people home and awareness of effective strategies may have helped prevent virulent forms of the virus from spreading as easily as minor forms that were harder to detect and identify. Criticism of Calderón's handling varied from early claims that his administration was not doing enough to later claims that the administration had exaggerated the measures that it had taken.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The Mexican Genome Project was initiated by Calderón's administration in part as a response to the swine flu outbreak and to safeguard the discovering of genetic markers that will better target and assist Mexico's 100+ million people in regards to prevention and treatment of diseases and other health concerns such as diabetes. A study on the efficacy of the project confirmed, according to Dr. Jiménez-Sánchez, that "It is not possible today to say genetic variation is responsible for the unique H1N1 Influenza A mortality rate in Mexico. However, knowledge of genomic variability in the Mexican population can allow the identification of genetic variations that confer susceptibility to common diseases, including infections such as the flu." "It will also help develop pharmacogenomics to help produce medicines tailored to people of a specific genetic group, to the creation of drugs that are both safer and more effective." Calderón commended the achievement: "The genomic map of the Mexican population is an essential contribution of Mexico to science and public health. This study represents an important landmark to develop genomic medicine in Mexico to improve healthcare of its population. I commend our National Institute of Genomic Medicine, INMEGEN, for such a significant milestone."


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Felipe Calderón's administration raised awareness of environment issues including deforestation and climate change through various policy measures such as planting over 8 million trees and attracting green-technology companies to Mexico. Mexico also achieved a significant reduction in deforestation. This includes $2.5 billion investment in wind farms.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The country's total GDP on a purchasing-power-parity basis is the 11th largest in the world and public policy now seeks to create quality jobs, reduce poverty and protect the standard of living of all classes. The administration has worked to attract investment, diversify the economy away from over-reliance on oil and the US market, upgrade infrastructure that has not kept up with the demands of the large economy, add jobs, reduce poverty, provide for a large middle class and reduce inequality. In keeping with its protection of the purchasing power of those least able to shield themselves through the use of financial instruments, the administration has succeeded in keeping prices and interest rates relatively low and stable even during the Great Recession and European debt crisis, while also avoiding the currency crashes of the 1980s and 1990s. The Mexican economy has been growing more quickly than the US economy during all but one year of the administration, even as US growth has been sluggish.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The administration has accelerated the building of public works projects and allocated federal funds towards infrastructure such as roads and bridges as an investment in the country's future growth.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: In 2012, the massive Baluarte Bridge was inaugurated, which speeds travel between Mazatlán and Durango and allows for faster access between Mexico's coasts. The Baluarte Bridge is so high that the Eiffel Tower could fit under its central span.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Through investments in infrastructure and free trade agreements, the administration won investments from many auto companies that decided to build factories in Mexico and expand existing facilities and models produced in Mexico. Mexico has become one of the top auto manufacturers in the world and for two years in a row far exceeded the previous records of auto production and export. The total foreign direct investment during Calderón's presidency was US$70.494 billion.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Mexico also has a nascent aeronautics and aviation industry and large electronics and consumer goods industries, all of which have been attracting significant investment capital and higher-value manufacturing for a skilled workforce. Heineken made significant investments in Mexico's beverage industry during this administration.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: In a move to expand new export opportunities that attract employment and diversify Mexico's crucial export sector away from excessive dependence on the US market, Mexico also expanded its trade accords beyond the US borders and sought to increase trade with the European Union, East Asia and Latin America. It was hoped that new infrastructure would help diversify Mexico's economy and improve stability in years to come. One new cooperative accord between major Latin American nations on the Pacific coast, called PaCiFiCa by "the Economist", has helped to isolate the participating nations from some of the fluctuations stemming from the European debt crisis as it looks towards greater trade with Asian nations. Mexico maintains positive trading relationships and trade discussions throughout the world so as to make Mexico an open economy with a growing number of trade opportunities for all regions of Mexico and aided by new infrastructure.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The international price of corn rose dramatically throughout 2006, leading to the inflation of tortilla prices in the first month of Calderón's term. Because tortillas are the main food product consumed by the country's poorest, national concerns over the rising prices immediately generated political pressure on Calderón's administration.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The president opted to use price ceilings on tortillas that protected local consumers of corn. This price control came in the form of the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact between the government and many of the main tortilla producing companies, including Grupo Maseca and Bimbo, to put a price ceiling at 8.50 pesos per kilogram of tortilla. The hope was that a ceiling on corn prices would provide incentive for the market to lower all prices nationally.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Critics argue that the pact was both nonbinding and a de facto acceptance of a maximum 30% increase in the price of that product (from 5.95 pesos per kilogram to 8.50 pesos per kilogram). Some tortillerías ignored the agreement, leading to price increases well in excess of the 8.50 pesos. Government opposition argued that this was an indication of the failure to protect the interests of its poor citizens. However, several major supermarkets, such as Soriana and Comercial Mexicana, sell the tortillas at a lower price than the one in the agreement – as low as 5.10 pesos per kilogram – which is interpreted opponents to price controls as clear evidence that price controls and the Tortilla Price Stabilization Pact were unnecessary. Additionally, PROFECO, a consumer protection government organization, has also threatened with jail those tortilla producers who charge "excessive" prices.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Guillermo Ortiz, governor of the Bank of Mexico, labeled the agreement "a success" for consumers and urged for it to continue as means to combat rising inflation.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Fulfilling an electoral promise, President Calderón launched the First Employment Program, which aims to create new opportunities for people entering the job market. The program will give cash incentives to companies for hiring first-time job holders, including young people graduating from higher education and millions of women who have never worked.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The program has been interpreted as an effort to stop immigration into the United States. Immigration to the United States has been reduced, but many complex factors are involved including the US slowdown since 2008.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Reactions to this program have been mixed. The president of the Mexican Association of Directors in Human Relations, Luis García, has anticipated a positive effect and even showed Nextel's subsidiary in Mexico as an example for hiring 14% of its new workforce in 2006 as people in their "first employment". Secretary of Labor Javier Lozano Alarcón has admitted that the program by itself will be insufficient to create as many new jobs as needed and has called for deeper reforms to allow for further investment.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: President Calderón introduced, on his first day as president, a presidential decree limiting the president's salary and that of cabinet ministers. The measure excludes much of the bureaucracy and public servants in the legislative or judicial branches. According to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by "Reforma", the decree will affect 546 high-level government officials and save the government about US$13 million. The opposition has stated that the 10% reduction in salary as not being comprehensive enough.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Like his opponent in the 2006 election, Calderón also proposed laws that, if passed, would lower salaries for public servants in all three branches of government and impose a cap on compensation. The proposal also includes measures to make the remuneration of public servants more transparent and subject to fiscalization.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Despite imposing a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants, Calderón ordered a raise on the salaries of the Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces on his first day as president.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón's government also ordered massive raids on drug cartels upon assuming office in December 2006 in response to an increasingly deadly spate of violence in his home state of Michoacán. The decision to intensify drug enforcement operations has led to an ongoing conflict between the federal government and the Mexican drug cartels.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 19 January 2007, five weeks into an army crackdown on narco gangs, Mexican soldiers and federal police captured Pedro Diaz Parada, the leader of one of Mexico's seven major drug cartels, the Diaz Parada gang.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The next day, in a controversial move, the government extradited several drug gang leaders to the United States.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The Mexican government has also ordered Mexican soldiers and federal police into several cities, most notably Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. In Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, the army ordered that all local police officers surrender their weapons, as it was suspected that many officers had ties with drug cartels. Other states where actions were taken include Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Tabasco, and Guerrero.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: In a January 2007 interview with the "Financial Times", Calderón said, "We have received very encouraging results. In the state of Michoacán, for example, the murder rate has fallen almost 40 percent compared with the average over the last six months. People's support in the regions where we are operating has grown, and that has been very important. Opinion polls have confirmed that, and I think we have made it clear to everyone that this issue is a priority for us".


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 9 April 2007, the Secretariat of Defense reported the following accomplishments in the first four months of Calderón's presidency: the capture of 1,102 drug dealers, the seizure of about 500 million pesos, 556 kilograms of marijuana, 1,419 military grade weapons, two airplanes, 630 automobiles, and 15 sea ships that transported drugs, and the destruction of 285 clandestine runways, 777 drug camps, 52,842 marijuana farms and 33,019 opium poppy farms.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 16 December 2009, the Mexican Navy killed Arturo Beltrán-Leyva, a once important drug trafficker. During Calderón's term, 25 of the 37 most wanted drug lords were either captured or killed.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The government was relatively successful in detaining drug lords; however, drug-related violence remained high in contested areas along the U.S. border such as Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, and Matamoros. Some analysts, like U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual, argued that this rise in violence was a direct result of Felipe Calderón's military measures. Although homicide rates in Mexico from 2000 to 2007 showed a general decline, now Mexico is considered to be among the top ten countries with the highest homicide rates. Since Calderón launched his military strategy against organized crime in 2006, there has been an alarming increase in violent deaths related to organized crime, "more than 15,000 people have died in suspected drug attacks since it was launched at the end of 2006." More than 5,000 people were murdered in Mexico in 2008, followed by 9600 murders in 2009, 2010 was violent, with over 15,000 homicides across the country.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Not all those killed by the police and armed forces were criminals. Javier Francisco Arredondo Verdugo, 23, and Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso, 24, students at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Nuevo León, were killed by the Mexican Army on 19 March 2010 in Mexico. First the army denied having anything to do with the killings, and then they falsely accused the young men of being drug dealers who were "armed to the teeth".


title: Felipe Calderón

text: 2011 showed higher homicides and 2012 showed a similar rate as 2011, with 2012 also being a presidential transition year and a year with high security spending nationwide. Homicides in 2020 and 2011 were in the 20,000 to 27,000 range.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: It was expected that Calderón would continue with the foreign policy started during Fox's term, known as the Castañeda Doctrine, abandoning of the Estrada Doctrine. He was expected to mediate with 'free market' Latin American countries.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Calderón had been a proponent of the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project which was now merged with a similar funding and infrastructure project, the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), started during the Fox administration. Calderón expanded the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project / PPP, now including Colombia, and an agreement of cooperation against organized crime. Jorge G. Castañeda, Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the first half of Fox's administration and proponent of the "Castañeda Doctrine", suggested that Calderón's leadership and the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project / PPP should be used as a counterpart to Hugo Chávez's leadership of left-wing policies in Latin America. Calderón has stated that "the challenge (of the PPP) is to foster democratic practices with solid foundation in the region".


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Another landmark was the proposed Mérida Initiative, a security cooperation initiative between the United States, the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking and transnational crime.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: The Cancún Accord was a widely praised triumph credited to the deft handling by the Calderón and his team and received a standing ovation. Along with hosting and chairing the Cancún climate accord that reached agreements on targets and reaffirmed the agreement on compensating developing nations for damage from climate change, Mexico earned the G-20's trust and confidence to preside over the group during 2012, including a summit in Los Cabos.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Felipe Calderón made immigration reform one of his main priorities, and in 2008 he and the Mexican Congress passed a bill decriminalizing undocumented immigration into Mexico. He expressed his hopes that something be done to clear up the status of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Before meeting with President Bush in March 2007, Calderón openly expressed his disapproval of building a wall between the two nations. After the U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Immigration bill, President Calderón called the decision a "grave error".


title: Felipe Calderón

text: According to a poll by Grupo Reforma taken from 16 to 18 February 2007, Calderón's approval rating was 58%. In this poll, Mexicans interviewed give President Calderón and his actions a score of 6.6 out of 10. He is best rated in his actions on issues related to health and reducing drug trafficking (60% and 59% approval respectively), and worst rated on domestic and foreign policy (33% approval each).


title: Felipe Calderón

text: According to a March 2010 poll by GEA-ISA, 45% of respondents approved of their president's performance, down seven points since November 2009 polling at 52%.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Polling firm Buendia & Laredo released a survey showing President Calderón's approval rating at 54% on 9 May 2011.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 27 February 2012, a poll by "El Universal" showed a 58% approval rating with only 11% disapproval, a decrease in concern for security from 48% to 33% polled listing security as the top concern facing the government, 42% say things have improved in Mexico since Felipe Calderón's administration, 21% said things have stayed the same, while 34% said things have gotten worse.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Grupo Reforma's poll published between 22 and 26 March 2012 noted that Calderón had an approval rate of 66% among 1,515 people.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Consulta Mitofsky published a study on 23 August 2012 which concluded that after 22 trimesters the approval of Felipe Calderón fell to 46%. He ended his presidency with high approval ratings with 64% approving his administration, while 25% disapproved his administration.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 2 July 2006, the day of the election, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) called the race was too close to call and chose not to publish a large and well-designed exit poll. The IFE called on the candidates to abstain from pronouncing themselves as winner, president-elect, or president. Both candidates disobeyed this call. First PRD candidate López Obrador declared that he had won the election, and soon thereafter Calderón proclaimed victory as well, pointing to the initial figures released by the IFE.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 3 July, the preliminary results of the unofficial PREP database gave Calderón a small lead of 1.04%. On 6 July, the IFE published the official vote count, resulting in a narrow margin of 0.58% for Calderón over López Obrador. However, López Obrador and his coalition alleged irregularities in a number of polling stations and demanded a national recount. Ultimately, the Federal Electoral Tribunal, in a unanimous vote, declared such a recount to be groundless and unfeasible and ordered a recount of those with supportable allegations, or about 9.07% of the 130,477 polling stations.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 5 September 2006, even when the Federal Electoral Tribunal acknowledged the existence of irregularities in the election, Calderón was, after the change of the votes of two of the magistrates, unanimously declared president-elect by the tribunal with a lead of 233,831 votes, or 0.56%, over López Obrador. The electoral court concluded that minor irregularities without proof were insufficient to invalidate the election. The ruling was mandatory, final and could not be appealed.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 1 December 2006, despite the PRD's plans to prevent Calderón from taking office, the inauguration in front of Congress was able to proceed. Hours before Calderón's arrival, lawmakers from the PRD and PAN parties began a brawl, in which several representatives threw punches and pushed, while others shouted at each other. PRD representatives shouted "Fuera Fox" ("Out with President Fox") and blew whistles, while PAN representatives responded with "Mexico, Mexico". Minutes before Calderón and Fox walked into Congress, the president of the Chamber of Deputies declared that a legal quorum was present, thus enabling Calderón to legally take the oath of office. At 9:45 am CST, all Mexican media cut to the official national broadcast, where commentators discussed the situation and showed scenes inside the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies, Palacio de San Lázaro. At 9:50 am CST, Calderón entered the chamber through the back door of the palace and approached the podium, where he took the oath as required by the Constitution. After the anthem, opposition continued to yell in Spanish "Felipe will fall". PAN representatives shouted back, "Sí se pudo" (Yes, we could do it!).


title: Felipe Calderón

text: As the inaugural ceremony was transpiring in Congress, López Obrador led a rally of supporters in the Zócalo. Many supporters marched down Reforma Avenue toward the Auditorio Nacional, where Calderón would address an audience of supporters after his inauguration. The rally was stopped by a wall erected by the Federal Police.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: During his tenure as president, there were numerous reports in the Mexican media alleging that Calderón was an alcoholic, based on speeches and public appearances in which the President seemed to be drunk, slurring his words or making bizarre statements. On 2 February 2011, opposition lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies displayed a banner reading: "Would you let a drunk drive your car? No, right? So why let one run your country?". The next day, journalist Carmen Aristegui reported on the incident, and commented that while she didn't "have any specific information" as to whether the president had problems with alcohol, she added that "this is a delicate topic" and suggested that President Calderón had an obligation to reply to the accusations. This led to Aristegui being fired from MVS, the news company that hosted her radio show, "for violating the ethical code" of the firm. The termination resulted in widespread public protests, and Aristegui was reinstated a few days later. Neither she nor MVS Radio issued an official statement about her return to the air.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: A CNN report in August 2012 revealed the behind-the-scenes story of the firing and rehiring. On 4 February, shortly after Aristegui's on-air comments about President's Calderón's possible alcoholism, MVS president Joaquin Vargas received a phone call from Calderón's spokeswoman, Alejandra Sota. Vargas apologized for Aristegui's comment, and later that day was told by a cabinet official that the government would not be taking action on a matter involving MVS's broadcast frequencies until Aristegui herself offered a public apology. On 5 February, Sota handed Vargas a statement of apology and told him to instruct Aristegui to read it on the air. On 6 February, Aristegui refused; Vargas fired her immediately. Within hours Sota told Vargas she was alarmed by the intense reaction on social networks to the news of Aristegui's dismissal. After several days of public outcry and of extensive communication between Vargas and various representatives of Calderón, Aristegui returned to the air on 21 February.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: In 2012, journalist Julio Scherer García published a book entitled "Calderón de cuerpo entero", based on interviews with former president of the National Action Party, Manuel Espino Barrientos. The book details many instances of Calderón's alleged alcoholism, before and during his tenure as President.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: In March 2017, five years after the end of his Presidency, Felipe Calderón attended a rally to support the candidacy of Josefina Vázquez Mota as governor of the State of Mexico. Many media outlets reported that Calderón appeared to be drunk during the event, with visible difficulties to hold his balance.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: However, in October 2019, the journalist Federico Arreola claimed that this allegation was false and that he had invented it. He stated that although he helped to spread this rumor, he is convinced Calderón is not an alcoholic. Mr. Arreola stated that he invented the rumour about Calderón's alcoholism after being slandered by him when Arreola was a candidate for the presidency in 2006.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: On 10 July 2013, Mexican newspaper "Excélsior" ran an article on its website revealing that the Calderón administration authorized in February 2007 the installation of an interception system by the United States Department of State to analyse, process and store phone calls, e-mails and other internet services with the purpose of helping Calderón administration to fight organized crime and narcotraffic, in the context of the Mérida Initiative. The scandal remained largely ignored by the Peña administration even though several newspapers and news websites revealed in September 2013 that the president himself, Enrique Peña Nieto, was spied by the National Security Agency while he was presidential candidate. On 21 October 2013, it was revealed by "Der Spiegel" that the NSA had spied Calderón and other cabinet member e-mails. That same day Mr. Calderón tweeted that he had personally spoken with the actual Secretary of Foreign Affairs, José Antonio Meade Kuribeña, to "help him" transmit his most energic protest to the espionage he was subject, and later that day, Calderón tweeted that far more of a personal damage, it was a grievance to the Mexican institutions and that he would not make further statements on the theme.


title: Felipe Calderón

text: Mexican journalist Raymundo Riva-Palacio criticized (on his columns of 21 and 23 October) the privileges given by the Calderón administration to American intelligences agencies and bilateral cooperation in general, and wrote: "It can be argued that Washington mocked him and betrayed him". Mr. Riva-Palacio wrote that American intelligence agencies coordinated field operations and even interrogated the detainees before Mexican authorities could do their own. According to Mr. Riva, this privileges led to the illegal spying which enabled American intelligence agencies to make a map of the Mexican political world, which (according to him) is demonstrated in many documents where the main concern is the political stability and future of Mexico, and the subsequent spying carried on Mr. Peña while he was running for office. He then criticized Mr. Calderón request to Mr. Peña to investigate the spying carried on his e-mail and his cabinet members e-mails and declared that Calderón should have done that when the first allegations of illegal spying came out in 2009–2010. On 22 October 2013, CNNMéxico published on its website that Calderón avoided sending sensitive information through his e-mail, to outsmart spies, and when realized phone calls with other cabinet members, spoke in code. On 23 October 2013, the Secretary of the Interior, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, stated that, by presidential mandate, an exhaustive investigation would be carried out on the illegal spying done towards Calderón.<ref name="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2013/10/23/924773"></ref>


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Atracidae is a family of mygalomorph spiders, commonly known as Australian funnel-web spiders or atracids. It has been included as a subfamily of the Hexathelidae, but is now recognized as a separate family. All members of the family are native to Australia. Atracidae consists of three genera: "Atrax", "Hadronyche", and "Illawarra", comprising 35 species. Some members of the family produce venom that is dangerous to humans, and bites by spiders of six of the species have caused severe injuries to victims. The bites of the Sydney funnel-web spider ("Atrax robustus") and northern tree-dwelling funnel-web spider ("Hadronyche formidabilis") are potentially deadly, but no fatalities have occurred since the introduction of modern first-aid techniques and antivenom.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Spiders in the family Atracidae are medium to large in size, with body lengths ranging from 1 to 5 cm (0.4 to 2.0 in), with one exceptional specimen reaching 8 cm (3.1 in). They have a hairless carapace covering the front part of their bodies. Some atracids have relatively long spinnerets; this is especially true of the Sydney funnel-web spider ("A. robustus"). Males have a large mating spur projecting from the middle of their second pair of legs.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Like other Mygalomorphae – an infraorder of spiders that includes the tropical tarantulas – these spiders have fangs that point straight down the body and do not point towards each other (cf. Araneomorphae). They have ample venom glands that lie entirely within their chelicerae. Their fangs are large and powerful, capable of penetrating fingernails and soft shoes.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Australian funnel-web spiders make their burrows in moist, cool, sheltered habitats – under rocks, in and under rotting logs, and some in rough-barked trees (occasionally meters above ground). They are commonly found in suburban rockeries and shrubberies, rarely in lawns or other open terrain. A burrow characteristically has irregular silk trip-lines radiating from the entrance. Unlike some related trapdoor spiders, they do not build lids to their burrows.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: The primary range of the Australian funnel-web spiders is the eastern coast of Australia, with specimens found in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland. The only Australian states or territories without members of this family are Western Australia and the Northern Territory.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: The first atracid spider to be described was "Hadronyche cerberea", by Carl Ludwig Koch in 1873. Octavius Pickard-Cambridge described another atracid species, "A. robustus", four years later. For a considerable time, confusion existed as to the limits of the genera "Hadronyche" and "Atrax", not helped by the destruction of the type specimens of "Hadronyche cerberea" during World War II. In 1980, Robert J. Raven merged the two genera under "Atrax". In 1988, Michael R. Gray separated them again, and in 2010, added a third genus, "Illawarra".


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: The family placement of the group has varied. In 1892, Eugène Simon placed "Atrax" and "Hadronyche" in the family Dipluridae. In 1901, Henry R. Hogg considered them to be sufficiently distinctive to form a separate group, which he called "Atraceae" – the basis of the modern family name Atracidae. When in the 1980s, Raven elevated part of Simon's Dipluridae to the family Hexathelidae, he included the atracine group. Molecular phylogenetic studies consistently threw doubt on the monophyly of the Hexathelidae. In 2018, the group was restored to a full family as Atracidae. The following cladogram shows the relationship found between Atracidae and related taxa. Its sister taxon is Actinopodidae.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Australian funnel-web spiders are one of the most medically significant groups of spiders in the world and are regarded by some to be the most deadly, both in terms of clinical cases and venom toxicity. Six species have caused severe injuries to human victims: the Sydney funnel-web spider ("Atrax robustus"), the northern tree-dwelling funnel-web spider ("H. formidabilis"), the southern tree-dwelling funnel-web spider ("H. cerberea"), the Blue Mountains funnel-web spider ("H. versuta"), the Darling Downs funnel-web spider ("H. infensa"), and the Port Macquarie funnel-web spider ("H. macquariensis").


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Examination of bite records has implicated wandering males in most, if not all, fatal Australian funnel-web spider bites to humans. Adult males, recognised by the modified terminal segment of the palp, tend to wander during the warmer months of the year, looking for receptive females for mating. They are attracted to water, hence are often found in swimming pools, into which they often fall while wandering. The spiders can survive immersion in water for several hours and can deliver a bite when removed from the water. They also show up in garages and yards in suburban Sydney. Contrary to a commonly held belief, Australian funnel-web spiders are not able to jump, although they can run quickly.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: While some very venomous spiders do not always inject venom when they bite, these spiders most often do. The volume of venom delivered to large animals is often small, possibly due to the angle of the fangs, which are not horizontally opposed, and because contact is often brief before the spider is brushed off. About 10 to 25% of bites are claimed to produce significant toxicity, but the likelihood cannot be predicted and all bites should be treated as potentially life-threatening.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Bites from Sydney funnel-web spiders have caused 13 documented deaths (seven in children). In all cases where the sex of the biting spider could be determined, it was found to be the male of the species. One member of the genus "Hadronyche", the northern tree-dwelling funnel-web spider, has also been claimed to cause fatal envenomation, but to date, this lacks the support of a specific medical report. Assays of venom from several "Hadronyche" species have shown it to be similar to "Atrax" venom.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: In 2021 researchers from the University of Queensland announced that the poison from funnel-web spiders found on Fraser Island contains the molecule Hi1a that could block the cell death message after a heart attack, protecting the heart after major injury and potentially preventing or minimising muscle damage.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Many different toxins are found in the venom of "Atrax" and "Hadronyche" spiders. Collectively, these spider toxins are given the name atracotoxins (ACTX), as all these spiders belong to the family Atracidae. The first toxins isolated were the δ-ACTX toxins present in the venom of both "A. robustus" (δ-ACTX-Ar1, formerly known as robustoxin or atracotoxin) and "H. versuta" (δ-ACTX-Hv1a, formerly known as versutoxin). Both of these toxins produce the same effects in monkeys as those seen in humans, suggesting that they are responsible for the physiological effects seen with crude venom.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: These toxins are thought to induce spontaneous, repetitive firing and prolongation of action potentials, resulting in continuous acetylcholine neurotransmitter release from somatic and autonomic presynaptic nerve endings. This leads to slower voltage-gated sodium channel inactivation and a hyperpolarizing shift in the voltage-dependence of activation. This in turn inhibits neurally mediated transmitter release, resulting in a surge of endogenous acetylcholine, noradrenaline, and adrenaline.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Although extremely toxic to primates, the venom appears to be fairly harmless to many other animals. These animals may be resistant to the venom's effects due to the presence of IgG, and possibly cross-linked IgG and IgM inactivating factors in their blood plasma that bind to the toxins responsible and neutralise them.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: The female's venom was thought to be only about a sixth as potent to humans as that of the male's. The bite of a female or juvenile may still be serious, but considerable variability occurs in venom toxicity between species, together with assumed degrees of inefficiency in the method of venom delivery.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Envenomation symptoms observed following bites by these spiders are very similar. The bite is initially very painful, due to the size of the fangs penetrating the skin. Puncture marks and local bleeding are also usually visible. If substantial envenomation occurs, symptoms generally occur within minutes and progress rapidly.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Early symptoms of systemic envenomation include goose bumps, sweating, tingling around the mouth and tongue, twitching (initially facial and intercostal), salivation, watery eyes, elevated heart rate, and elevated blood pressure. As systemic envenomation progresses, symptoms include nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath (caused by airway obstruction), agitation, confusion, writhing, grimacing, muscle spasms, pulmonary oedema (of neurogenic or hypertensive origin), metabolic acidosis, and extreme hypertension. The final stages of severe envenomation include dilation of the pupils (often fixed), uncontrolled generalised muscle twitching, unconsciousness, elevated intracranial pressure, and death. Death generally is a result of progressive hypotension or possibly elevated intracranial pressure consequent on cerebral oedema.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: The onset of severe envenomation can be rapid. In one prospective study, the median time to onset of envenomation was 28 minutes, with only two cases having onset after two hours (both had pressure immobilisation bandages applied). Death may occur within a period ranging from 15 minutes (this occurred when a small child was bitten) to three days.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Owing to the severity of symptoms, and the speed with which they progress, in areas where these spiders are known to live, all bites from large, black spiders should be treated as though they were caused by Australian funnel-web spiders. First-aid treatment for a suspected Australian funnel-web spider bite consists of immediately applying a pressure immobilization bandage; a technique which consists of wrapping the bitten limb with a crepe bandage, as well as applying a splint to limit movement of the limb. This technique was originally developed for snakebites, but has also been shown to be effective at slowing venom movement and preventing systemic envenomation in case of an Australian funnel-web spider bite. Some evidence suggests that periods of prolonged localisation may slowly inactivate the venom.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Further supportive care may be necessary, but the mainstay of treatment is antivenom. Venom from the male Sydney funnel-web spider ("A. robustus") is used in producing the antivenom, but it appears to be effective against the venom of all species of atracids. Australian funnel-web spider antivenom has also been shown, "in vitro", to reverse the effects of eastern mouse spider ("Missulena bradleyi") venom.


title: Australian funnel-web spider

text: Before the introduction of antivenom, envenomation resulted in significant morbidity and mortality. The purified rabbit IgG antivenom was developed in 1981 through a team effort led by Dr. Struan Sutherland, head of immunology at the Australian Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne. The antivenom is fast-acting and highly and globally effective. Antivenom therapy has shortened the course of envenomation effects; prior to its availability, the average length of hospital treatment for severe bites was about 14 days. Today, antivenom-treated patients are commonly discharged from hospital within one to three days. No deaths are known since it became available.


title: Liturgical year

text: The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons in Christian churches that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and which portions of Scripture are to be read either in an annual cycle or in a cycle of several years.


title: Liturgical year

text: Distinct liturgical colours may be used in connection with different seasons of the liturgical year. The dates of the festivals vary somewhat among the different churches, although the sequence and logic is largely the same.


title: Liturgical year

text: The liturgical cycle divides the year into a series of seasons, each with their own mood, theological emphases, and modes of prayer, which can be signified by different ways of decorating churches, colours of paraments and vestments for clergy, scriptural readings, themes for preaching and even different traditions and practices often observed personally or in the home. In churches that follow the liturgical year, the scripture passages for each Sunday (and even each day of the year in some traditions) are specified in a lectionary. After the Protestant Reformation, Anglicans and Lutherans continued to follow the lectionary of the Roman Rite. Following a decision of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church revised that lectionary in 1969, adopting a three-year cycle of readings for Sundays and a two-year cycle for weekdays.


title: Liturgical year

text: Adaptations of the revised Roman Rite lectionary were adopted by Protestants, leading to the publication in 1994 of the Revised Common Lectionary for Sundays and major feasts, which is now used by many Protestant denominations, including also Methodists, United, some Reformed, etc. This has led to a greater awareness of the traditional Christian year among Protestants, especially among mainline denominations.


title: Liturgical year

text: Scholars are not in agreement about whether the calendars used by the Jews before the Babylonian exile were solar (based on the return of the same relative position between the sun and the earth), lunisolar (based on months that corresponded to the cycle of the moon, with periodic additional months to bring the calendar back into agreement with the solar cycle) like the present-day Jewish calendar of Hillel II, or lunar, such as the Hijri calendar.


title: Liturgical year

text: The first month of the Hebrew year was called אביב (Aviv), evidently adopted by Moses from Ipip as the eleventh month of the non-lunar Egyptian calendar (that is also the origin of Abib as the tenth month of the non-lunar Ethiopian calendar), meaning the month of green ears of grain. Having to occur at the appropriate time in the spring, it thus was originally part of a tropical calendar. At about the time of the Babylonian exile, when using the Babylonian civil calendar, the Jews adopted the term ניסן (Nisan) as the name for the month, based on the Babylonian name Nisanu. Thomas J Talley says that the adoption of the Babylonian term occurred even before the exile.


title: Liturgical year

text: In the earlier calendar, most of the months were simply called by a number (such as "the fifth month"). The Babylonian-derived names of the month that are used by Jews are:


title: Liturgical year

text: The Liturgical Calendar of the East Syriac Rite is fixed according to the flow of salvation history. With a focus upon the historical life of Jesus Christ, believers are led to the eschatological fulfillment (i.e. the heavenly bliss) through this special arrangement of liturgical seasons. The liturgical year is divided into 8 seasons of approximately 7 weeks each but adjusted to fit the solar calendar. The arrangement of the Seasons in the Liturgical Year is based on seven central events on celebrations of the Salvation History. They are:


title: Liturgical year

text: One of the oldest available records mentioning the liturgical cycle of east-syriac rite is handwritten manuscript named 'Preface to Hudra' written by Rabban Brick-Iso in 14th century. The manuscript mentions that the liturgical year is divided into nine seasons starting from Subara and ends with Qudas Edta. Catholic churches of east-syriac rite maintains the same liturgical calendar till date except that many consider 7th and 8th seasons as a single one. The biblical reading and prayers during Mass and Liturgy of the Hours vary according to different seasons in the liturgical calendar.


title: Liturgical year

text: The various seasons of the liturgical calendar of Syro-Malabar Church and Chaldean Catholic Church are given below.


title: Liturgical year

text: Weeks of Annunciation (Subara) is the first season of the liturgical year. The liturgical year begins with the commemoration of biblical events leading to the annunciation and birth of Jesus as expected savior in the old testament. The season begins on the Sunday just before the first of December and ends with the feast of Epiphany that is the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. The faithful practice abstinence during December 1–25 in preparation for Christmas; this period is called "25 days Lent".


title: Liturgical year

text: Weeks of Epiphany begins on the Sunday closest to the feast of Epiphany and runs to the beginning of Great Fast. The word "denha" in Syriac means sunrise. Church considers the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan as the first historical event in which the Trinity was revealed to humankind in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus the season commemorates the manifestation or revelation of Jesus and Trinity to the world. During the season the church celebrates the feasts of Saints in connection with the manifestation of the Lord.


title: Liturgical year

text: During these weeks the faithful meditate over the 40-day fast of Jesus and the culmination of his public life in passion, death and burial. The season begins 50 days before Easter on Peturta Sunday and comprises the whole period of Great Lent and culminates on Resurrection Sunday. Word Peturta in Syriac means "looking back" or "reconciliation".


title: Liturgical year

text: Faithful enter the weeks of Great Fast, celebrating the memory of all the Faithful Departed on the last Friday of Denha. According to the ecclesial tradition, the weeks of Great Fast is also an occasion to keep up the memory of the beloved Departed through special prayers, renunciation, almsgiving, and so on and thus prepare oneself for a good death and resurrection in Jesus Christ. During the fast faithful of Syro Malabar Church do not use meat, fish, egg, many dairy products, and most favorite food items, and also avoid sexual contacts on all days including Sundays and Feast days. Before European colonization, Indian Nasranis used to have food only once a day (after 3:00 pm) on all days during Great Fast.


title: Liturgical year

text: The weeks of Great Resurrection begin on the Resurrection Sunday and run to the feast of Pentecost. The Church celebrates the Resurrection of our Lord during these seven weeks: Jesus’ victory over death, sin, suffering and Satan. The church also commemorates various events that occurred after the resurrection of Christ, such as the visits of Jesus to the Apostles and the ascension of Jesus. According to eastern Christianity, the Feast of Resurrection is the most important and the greatest feast in a liturgical year. Therefore, the season commemorating the resurrection of Christ is also of prime importance in the church liturgy. The first week of the season is celebrated as the 'Week of weeks' as it is the week of the resurrection of Christ.


title: Liturgical year

text: Weeks of apostles (Slihe) starts on the feast of Pentecost, fiftieth day of the Resurrection Sunday. During these days the church commemorates the inauguration of church and the acts of apostles and church fathers through which the foundation of the church was laid. Church meditates on the virtues of the early church: fellowship, breaking of bread and sharing of wealth, and the fruits and gifts of Holy Spirit. The spread of the church all over the world as well as her growth is also remembered during this season.


title: Liturgical year

text: Along the weeks of Qaita maturity and fruitfulness of church are commemorated. The Syriac word Qaita means “summer” and it is a time of harvest for the Church. The fruits of the Church are those of holiness and martyrdom. While the sprouting and infancy of the Church were celebrated in 'the Weeks of the Apostles,' her development in different parts of the world by reflecting the image of the heavenly Kingdom and giving birth to many saints and martyrs are proclaimed during this season. Fridays of this Season are set apart for honoring saints and martyrs.