title: John Musker

text: Musker is married to Gale. They have twin sons, Jackson and Patrick, and a daughter, Julia. He also has sisters by the names of Pat and Colleen.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: The Hotak dynasty ( ) was an Afghan monarchy founded by Ghilji Pashtuns that briefly ruled portions of Iran and Afghanistan during the 1720s. It was established in April 1709 by Mirwais Hotak, who led a successful revolution against the declining Persian Safavid empire in the region of Loy Kandahar ("Greater Kandahar") in what is now southern Afghanistan.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: In 1715, Mirwais died of natural causes and his brother Abdul Aziz succeeded him. He did not reign long as he was killed by his nephew Mahmud, who deposed the Safavid shah and proclaimed his own rule over Iran. Mahmud in turn was succeeded by his cousin Ashraf following a palace coup in 1725. Ashraf, however, did not retain his throne for long, as the Iranian conqueror Nader-Qoli Beg (later Shah), leading the resurgent Safavid banner, defeated him at the Battle of Damghan of 1729. Ashraf Hotak was banished to what is now southern Afghanistan, confining Hotak rule to a small corner of their former empire. In 1738, Hotak rule ended when Nader Shah defeated Ashraf's successor Hussain Hotak after a lengthy siege of Kandahar. Subsequently, Nader Shah began re-establishing Iranian suzerainty over regions lost decades before to Iran's archrivals—the Ottoman and Russian Empires.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: The Shi'a Safavids ruled Loy Kandahar as their easternmost territory from the 16th century until the early 18th century. At the same time, the native Afghan tribes living in the area were Sunni Muslims. Immediately to the east was the powerful Sunni Mughal Empire, who occasionally fought wars with the powerful Safavids over the territory of southern Afghanistan. The Khanate of Bukhara controlled the area to the north at the same time. By the late 17th century, the Safavids started to decline. With the death of Shah Abbas in 1629, succeeding Safavid rulers were less effective and caused the empire to decline. On 29 July 1694, Shah Suleiman died and Sultan Husayn took the throne. Under his reign the problems worsened. Husayn barely left the palace during his reign, not an uncommon aspect of many later Safavid Shahs. Later Safavid rulers were immobile and their courts were riddled with factionalism unlike their more mobile ancestors who spent more time on campaigns and had smaller courts. The government was weak and the army was ineffective. This power vacuum allowed tribal groups like the Turkmen, Baluch, Arabs, Kurds, Dagestanis, and Afghans from constantly raiding frontier provinces.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: In 1704, the Safavid Shah Husayn appointed his Georgian subject and king of Kartli George XI ("Gurgīn Khān"), a convert to Islam, as the governor of Kandahar. In early May 1704, George marched from Kerman and after a seven-week march; he crushed disturbances going on in the province at the time. He soon encountered Mirwais Hotak, the mayor ("kalantar") of Kandahar and one of the richest and most influential people among the Ghilzais. At first Mirwais had good relations with the Georgians but it began to sour when Mirwais was removed from his position as mayor in 1706 and replaced by Alam Shah Afghan.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: The Georgians were hated throughout the province. They ruled with brutality towards the local population. This would encourage the Ghilzais to revolt against Safavid rule, and Mirwais was involved in one of these revolts. Gurgin Khan found out and sent Mirwais to Isfahan. While there, he saw the weakness of the Safavid court and complained about the brutality of Gurgin Khan. He turned the shah and his court against Gurgin Khan, and then went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He managed to get a "fatwa" from the religious authorities approving Mirwais's plan to overthrow tyrannical Safavid rule. In the summer of 1708 or January 1709 he returned to Kandahar and waited for the opportunity to kill Gurgin Khan.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: That opportunity came in April 1709. The Kakar tribe refused to pay taxes and revolted, so Gurgin Khan and his men went out to campaign against them. Protected by the Ghaznavid Nasher Khans, Mirwais and his men ambushed Gurgin Khan on April 21 and killed him. They expelled the Georgian garrison from Kandahar and the surviving Georgians fled to Gereshk and waited. When the Safavid court heard of this, they sent Kaikhosro Khan with 12,000 men to recapture Kandahar. He left Isfahan for Qandahar in November 1709, and were aided by members of the Abdali tribe. The army progressed slowly as the court was unwilling to help much, and they arrived at Farah in April–May or November 1710. In the summer of 1711 Kaikhosro marched to Kandahar and besieged it. The Ghilzais sued for peace but Kaikhosro refused to accept it, so they kept fighting. The Baluchis frequently harassed the Georgians and forced them to retreat on October 26. The defenders of Kandahar emerged and pursued the Georgians, resulting in the death of Kaikhosro. Another Persian army was sent to Kandahar in 1712 but they never made it there as their commander died in Herat, leaving the Hotaks to their own devices. With this, Mirwais was able to extend his control over the entire province of Kandahar. After his peaceful passing in November 1715 from natural causes, his brother Abdul Aziz succeeded him; the latter was murdered later by Mirwais' son Mahmud after having only ruled for eighteen months.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: In 1720, Mahmud's Afghan forces crossed the deserts of Sistan and captured Kerman. He planned to conquer the Persian capital, Isfahan. After defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Gulnabad on March 8, 1722, he proceeded to besiege Isfahan. The siege lasted about six months and the people of Isfahan were in such a state of hunger that they were forced to eat rats and dogs. on October 23, 1722, Sultan Husayn abdicated and acknowledged Mahmud as the new Shah of Persia. For the next seven years until 1729, the Hotaks were the de facto rulers of most of Persia, and the southern areas of Afghanistan remained under their control until 1738.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: The Hotak dynasty was a troubled and violent one from the very start as an internecine conflict made it difficult to establish permanent control. The majority of Persians rejected the leaders as usurpers, and the dynasty lived under great turmoil due to bloody succession feuds that made their hold on power tenuous. After the massacre of thousands of civilians in Isfahan – including more than three thousand religious scholars, nobles, and members of the Safavid family – the Hotak dynasty was eventually removed from power in Persia.


title: Hotak dynasty

text: Ashraf Hotak took over the monarchy following Shah Mahmud's death in 1725. He had to deal with a Safavid loyalist movement in the south led by Sayyed Ahmad, who had taken over much of Fars, Hormozgan, and Kerman. Ashraf's army was defeated in the October 1729 at the Battle of Damghan by Nader Shah Afshar, an Iranian soldier of fortune from the Afshar tribe, and the founder of the Afsharid dynasty that replaced the Safavids in Persia. Nader Shah had driven out and banished the remaining Ghilji forces from Persia and began enlisting some of the Abdali Afghans of Farah and Kandahar in his military. Nader Shah's forces, among them Ahmad Shah Abdali and his 4,000 Abdali troops, went on to conquer Kandahar in 1738. They besieged and destroyed the last Hotak seat of power, which was held by Hussain Hotak (or Shah Hussain). Nader Shah then built a new town nearby, named "Naderabad" after himself. The Abdalis were then restored to the general area of Kandahar, with the Ghilji's being pushed back to their former stronghold of Kalat-i Ghilji. This arrangement lasts to the present day.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: The Dogger Bank incident (also known as the North Sea Incident, the Russian Outrage or the Incident of Hull) occurred on the night of 21/22 October 1904, when the Baltic Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy mistook a British trawler fleet from Kingston upon Hull in the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea for Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo boats and fired on them. Russian warships also fired on each other in the chaos of the melée. Two British fishermen died, six more were injured, one fishing vessel was sunk, and five more boats were damaged. On the Russian side, one sailor and a Russian Orthodox priest aboard the cruiser "Aurora" caught in the crossfire were killed. "Damage to the "Aurora" was concealed...and only discovered by the deciphering of a wireless message intercepted at [the British] Felixstowe station. It was also considered highly significant that no officer from that ship appeared before the Commission, nor were her logs produced." The incident almost led to war between the British Empire and the Russian Empire.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: The Russian warships involved in the incident were en route to the Far East to reinforce the 1st Pacific Squadron stationed at Port Arthur and later Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War. Because of the fleet's alleged sightings of balloons and four enemy cruisers the day previously, coupled with "the possibility that the Japanese might surreptitiously have sent ships around the world to attack" them, the Russian admiral, Zinovy Rozhestvensky, called for increased vigilance, issuing an order that "no vessel of any sort must be allowed to get in among the fleet".


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: It was known that enemy intelligence had been heavily active in the region. Torpedo boats, a recent development of the major navies, had the potential to damage and sink large warships, and were very difficult to detect, causing psychological stress on sailors at war.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: While en route, Admiral Rozhestvensky received an intelligence report from the Russian transport "Bakan" in the Langeland Belt of "four torpedo-boats which only showed lights on the mizenmast-head so that at a distance, they might be taken for fishing boats". The Admiral took the report seriously and quickened his coaling and commenced sailing.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: Similar accidents and rumours affected the Russian fleet. There was a general fear of attack, with widespread rumours that a fleet of Japanese torpedo boats were stationed off the Danish coast, talk of the Japanese having mined the seas and alleged sightings of Japanese submarines. Before the Dogger Bank incident, the nervous Russian fleet had fired on fishermen carrying consular dispatches from Russia to them near the Danish coast. No damage was caused because of the poor gunnery.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: After navigating a non-existent minefield, the Russian fleet sailed into the North Sea. The disaster of 21 October began in the evening, when the captain of the supply ship "Kamchatka" (Камчатка), which was last in the Russian line, took a passing Swedish ship for a Japanese torpedo boat and radioed that he was being attacked.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: Later that night, during fog, the officers on duty sighted the British trawlers, interpreted their signals incorrectly and classified them as Japanese torpedo boats, despite being more than from Japan. The Russian warships illuminated the trawlers with their searchlights and opened fire. As the trawlers had their nets down, they were unable to flee. The British trawler "Crane" was sunk, and its captain and boatswain were killed. Four other trawlers were damaged, and six other fishermen were wounded, one of whom died a few months later.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: In the general chaos, Russian ships began to shoot at each other. The cruisers "Aurora" and "Dmitrii Donskoi" were taken for Japanese warships and bombarded by seven battleships sailing in formation, damaging both ships and killing a chaplain and at least one sailor and severely wounding another. During the pandemonium, several Russian ships signalled torpedoes had hit them, and on board the battleship "Borodino" rumours spread that the ship was being boarded by the Japanese, with some crews donning life vests and lying prone on the deck, and others drawing cutlasses. More serious losses to both sides were avoided only because of the extremely low quality of Russian gunnery, with the battleship "Oryol" reportedly firing more than 500 shells without hitting anything.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: After twenty minutes' firing, the fishermen finally saw a blue light signal on one of the warships, the order to cease firing.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: The incident led to a serious diplomatic conflict between Russia and Britain, which was particularly dangerous because of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In the aftermath, some British newspapers called the Russian fleet 'pirates', and Admiral Rozhestvensky was heavily criticised for not leaving the British fishermen lifeboats. The editorial of the morning's "Times" was particularly scathing:


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: The Royal Navy prepared for war, with 28 battleships of the Home Fleet being ordered to raise steam and prepare for action, while British cruiser squadrons shadowed the Russian fleet as it made its way through the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal. Under diplomatic pressure, the Russian government agreed to investigate the incident, and Rozhestvensky was ordered to dock in Vigo, Spain, where he left behind those officers considered responsible (as well as at least one officer who had been critical of him). From Vigo, the main Russian fleet then approached Tangiers, Morocco, and lost contact with the "Kamchatka" for several days. The "Kamchatka" eventually rejoined the fleet and claimed that she had engaged three Japanese warships and fired over 300 shells. The ships she had actually fired at were a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler, and a French schooner. As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: Concerns that the draught of the newer battleships, which had proven to be considerably greater than designed, would prevent their passage through the Suez Canal caused the fleet to separate after leaving Tangiers on 3 November 1904. The newer battleships and a few cruisers proceeded around the Cape of Good Hope under command of Admiral Rozhestvensky while the older battleships and lighter cruisers made their way through the Suez Canal under the command of Admiral von Felkerzam. They planned to rendezvous in Madagascar, and both sections of the fleet successfully completed this part of the journey. The fleet then proceeded to the Sea of Japan, where it was soundly defeated in the Battle of Tsushima.


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: On 25 November 1904, the British and the Russian governments signed a joint agreement in which they agreed to submit the issue to an international commission of inquiry whose proceedings were to be based on the Hague Convention. The International Commission met in Paris from 9 January to 25 February 1905. The report produced by the International Commission concluded that "the commissioners declare that their findings, which are therein formulated, are not, in their opinion, of a nature to cast any discredit upon the military qualities or the humanity of Admiral Rojdestvensky, or of the personnel of his squadron". It also concluded that "the commissioners take pleasure in recognising, unanimously, that Admiral Rozhestvensky personally did everything he could, from beginning to end of the incident, to prevent trawlers, recognised as such, from being fired upon by the squadron".


title: Dogger Bank incident

text: Russia voluntarily paid compensation of £66,000 to the fishermen. In 1906 the Fisherman's Memorial was unveiled in Hull to commemorate the deaths of the three British sailors. The memorial, approximately 18 feet high, shows the dead fisherman George Henry Smith and carries the following inscription:


title: Middle Chinese

text: Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the "Qieyun", a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the dictionary recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties. However, based on the more recently recovered preface of the "Qieyun", most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (early 1st millennium BC).


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "fanqie" method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century "Yunjing" and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated and convenient analysis of the "Qieyun" phonology. The rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the "Qieyun". Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the "Qieyun" as Early Middle Chinese and the variant revealed by the rime tables as Late Middle Chinese.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. Karlgren was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the sounds of Middle Chinese, comparing its categories with modern varieties of Chinese and the Sino-Xenic pronunciations used in the reading traditions of neighbouring countries. Several other scholars have produced their own reconstructions using similar methods.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The Qieyun system is often used as a framework for the study and description of various modern varieties of Chinese. With the exception of the Min dialects (including Hokkien), which show independent developments from Old Chinese, the primary branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin (including Standard Chinese, based on the speech of Beijing), Yue (including Cantonese) and Wu (including Shanghainese) can be largely treated as divergent developments from it. The study of Middle Chinese also provides for a better understanding and analysis of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the study of Tang poetry.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources. The most important of these is the "Qieyun" rime dictionary (601) and its revisions. The "Qieyun" is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the "Yunjing", "Qiyinlue", and the later "Qieyun zhizhangtu" and "Sisheng dengzi". The documentary sources are supplemented by comparison with modern Chinese varieties, pronunciation of Chinese words borrowed by other languages (particularly Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese), transcription into Chinese characters of foreign names, transcription of Chinese names in alphabetic scripts (such as Brahmi, Tibetan and Uyghur), and evidence regarding rhyme and tone patterns from classical Chinese poetry.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Qieyun" (601) was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant.


title: Middle Chinese

text: It was accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, and went through several revisions and expansions over the following centuries.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Qieyun" is thus the oldest surviving rhyme dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese (EMC). At the time of Bernhard Karlgren's seminal work on Middle Chinese in the early 20th century, only fragments of the "Qieyun" were known, and scholars relied on the "Guangyun" (1008), a much expanded edition from the Song dynasty. However, significant sections of a version of the "Qieyun" itself were subsequently discovered in the caves of Dunhuang, and a complete copy of Wang Renxu's 706 edition from the Palace Library was found in 1947.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The rhyme dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of tone, rhyme and homophony. Characters with identical pronunciations are grouped into homophone classes, whose pronunciation is described using two "fanqie" characters, the first of which has the initial sound of the characters in the homophone class and second of which has the same sound as the rest of the syllable (the final). The use of "fanqie" was an important innovation of the "Qieyun" and allowed the pronunciation of all characters to be described exactly; earlier dictionaries simply described the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters in terms of the most similar-sounding familiar character.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "fanqie" system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in a careful analysis published in his "Qièyùn kǎo" (1842). Chen's method was to equate two "fanqie" initials (or finals) whenever one was used in the "fanqie" spelling of the pronunciation of the other, and to follow chains of such equivalences to identify groups of spellers for each initial or final. For example, the pronunciation of the character was given using the "fanqie" spelling , the pronunciation of was given as , and the pronunciation of was given as , from which we can conclude that the words , and all had the same initial sound.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Qieyun" classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed within one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial (especially when it is /w/) or in so-called "chongniu" doublets.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Yunjing" (c. 1150 AD) is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the "Qieyun". The "Yunjing" was created centuries after the "Qieyun", and the authors of the "Yunjing" were attempting to interpret a phonological system that differed in significant ways from that of their own Late Middle Chinese (LMC) dialect. They were aware of this, and attempted to reconstruct "Qieyun" phonology as well as possible through a close analysis of regularities in the system and co-occurrence relationships between the initials and finals indicated by the "fanqie" characters. However, the analysis inevitably shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Yunjing" is organized into 43 tables, each covering several "Qieyun" rhyme classes, and classified as:


title: Middle Chinese

text: Each table has 23 columns, one for each initial consonant. Although the "Yunjing" distinguishes 36 initials, they are placed in 23 columns by combining palatals, retroflexes, and dentals under the same column. This does not lead to cases where two homophone classes are conflated, as the grades (rows) are arranged so that all would-be minimal pairs distinguished only by the retroflex vs. palatal vs. alveolar character of the initial end up in different rows.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Each table also has 16 rows, with a group of 4 rows for each of the 4 tones of the traditional system in which finals ending in , or are considered to be entering tone variants of finals ending in , or rather than separate finals in their own right.


title: Middle Chinese

text: These rows are usually denoted I, II, III and IV, and are thought to relate to differences in palatalization or retroflexion of the syllable's initial or medial, or differences in the quality of similar main vowels (e.g. , , ).


title: Middle Chinese

text: Other scholars view them not as phonetic categories but formal devices exploiting distributional patterns in the "Qieyun" to achieve a compact presentation.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Each square in a table contains a character corresponding to a particular homophone class in the "Qieyun", if any such character exists. From this arrangement, each homophone class can be placed in the above categories.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The rime dictionaries and rime tables identify categories of phonetic distinctions, but do not indicate the actual pronunciations of these categories. The varied pronunciations of words in modern varieties of Chinese can help, but most modern varieties descend from a Late Middle Chinese koine and cannot very easily be used to determine the pronunciation of Early Middle Chinese.


title: Middle Chinese

text: During the Early Middle Chinese period, large amounts of Chinese vocabulary were systematically borrowed by Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese (collectively known as Sino-Xenic vocabularies), but many distinctions were inevitably lost in mapping Chinese phonology onto foreign phonological systems.


title: Middle Chinese

text: For example, the following table shows the pronunciation of the numerals in three modern Chinese varieties, as well as borrowed forms in Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese:


title: Middle Chinese

text: Although the evidence from Chinese transcriptions of foreign words is much more limited, and is similarly obscured by the mapping of foreign pronunciations onto Chinese phonology, it serves as direct evidence of a sort that is lacking in all the other types of data, since the pronunciation of the foreign languages borrowed from—especially Sanskrit and Gāndhārī—is known in great detail.


title: Middle Chinese

text: For example, the nasal initials were used to transcribe Sanskrit nasals in the early Tang, but later they were used for Sanskrit unaspirated voiced initials , suggesting that they had become prenasalized stops in some northwestern Chinese dialects.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The rime dictionaries and rime tables yield phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent.


title: Middle Chinese

text: At the end of the 19th century, European students of Chinese sought to solve this problem by applying the methods of historical linguistics that had been used in reconstructing Proto-Indo-European.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Volpicelli (1896) and Schaank (1897) compared the rime tables at the front of the "Kangxi dictionary" with modern pronunciations in several varieties, but had little knowledge of linguistics.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Bernhard Karlgren, trained in transcription of Swedish dialects, carried out the first systematic survey of modern varieties of Chinese.


title: Middle Chinese

text: He used the oldest known rime tables as descriptions of the sounds of the rime dictionaries, and also studied the "Guangyun", at that time the oldest known rime dictionary.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Unaware of Chen Li's study, he repeated the analysis of the "fanqie" required to identify the initials and finals of the dictionary.


title: Middle Chinese

text: He believed that the resulting categories reflected the speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties.


title: Middle Chinese

text: He interpreted the many distinctions as a narrow transcription of the precise sounds of this language, which he sought to reconstruct by treating the Sino-Xenic and modern dialect pronunciations as reflexes of the "Qieyun" categories. A small number of "Qieyun" categories were not distinguished in any of the surviving pronunciations, and Karlgren assigned them identical reconstructions.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Karlgren's transcription involved a large number of consonants and vowels, many of them very unevenly distributed.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Accepting Karlgren's reconstruction as a description of medieval speech, Chao Yuen Ren and Samuel E. Martin analysed its contrasts to extract a phonemic description.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Hugh M. Stimson used a simplified version of Martin's system as an approximate indication of the pronunciation of Tang poetry.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Older versions of the rime dictionaries and rime tables came to light over the first half of the 20th century, and were used by such linguists as Wang Li, Dong Tonghe and Li Rong in their own reconstructions.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Edwin Pulleyblank argued that the systems of the "Qieyun" and the rime tables should be reconstructed as two separate (but related) systems, which he called Early and Late Middle Chinese, respectively.


title: Middle Chinese

text: He further argued that his Late Middle Chinese reflected the standard language of the late Tang dynasty.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The preface of the "Qieyun" recovered in 1947 indicates that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period (a diasystem).


title: Middle Chinese

text: Most linguists now believe that no single dialect contained all the distinctions recorded, but that each distinction did occur somewhere.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Several scholars have compared the "Qieyun" system to cross-dialectal descriptions of English pronunciations, such as John C. Wells's lexical sets, or the notation used in some dictionaries.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Thus for example the words "trap", "bath", "palm", "lot", "cloth" and "thought" contain four different vowels in Received Pronunciation and three in General American; both these pronunciations (and many others) can be specified in terms of these six cases.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Although the "Qieyun" system is no longer viewed as describing a single form of speech, linguists argue that this enhances its value in reconstructing earlier forms of Chinese, just as a cross-dialectal description of English pronunciations contains more information about earlier forms of English than any single modern form.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The emphasis has shifted from precise sounds (phonetics) to the structure of the phonological system.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Thus Li Fang-Kuei, as a prelude to his reconstruction of Old Chinese, produced a revision of Karlgren's notation, adding new notations for the few categories not distinguished by Karlgren, without assigning them pronunciations.


title: Middle Chinese

text: This notation is still widely used, but its symbols, based on Johan August Lundell's Swedish Dialect Alphabet, differ from the familiar International Phonetic Alphabet.


title: Middle Chinese

text: To remedy this, William H. Baxter produced his own notation for the "Qieyun" and rime table categories for use in his reconstruction of Old Chinese.


title: Middle Chinese

text: All reconstructions of Middle Chinese since Karlgren have followed his approach of beginning with the categories extracted from the rime dictionaries and tables, and using dialect and Sino-Xenic data (and in some cases transcription data) in a subsidiary role to fill in sound values for these categories. Jerry Norman and Weldon South Coblin have criticized this approach, arguing that viewing the dialect data through the rime dictionaries and rime tables distorts the evidence. They argue for a full application of the comparative method to the modern varieties, supplemented by systematic use of transcription data.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The traditional analysis of the Chinese syllable, derived from the "fanqie" method, is into an initial consonant, or "initial", ( ) and a final ( ).


title: Middle Chinese

text: Modern linguists subdivide the final into an optional "medial" glide ( ), a main vowel or "nucleus" ( ) and an optional final consonant or "coda" ( ).


title: Middle Chinese

text: Most reconstructions of Middle Chinese include the glides and , as well as a combination , but many also include vocalic "glides" such as in a diphthong .


title: Middle Chinese

text: Rhyming syllables in the "Qieyun" are assumed to have the same nuclear vowel and coda, but often have different medials.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Middle Chinese reconstructions by different modern linguists vary. These differences are minor and fairly uncontroversial in terms of consonants; however, there is a more significant difference as to the vowels.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The most widely used transcriptions are Li Fang-Kuei's modification of Karlgren's reconstruction and William Baxter's typeable notation.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The preface of the "Yunjing" identifies a traditional set of 36 initials, each named with an exemplary character.


title: Middle Chinese

text: In contrast, identifying the initials of the "Qieyun" required a painstaking analysis of "fanqie" relationships across the whole dictionary, a task first undertaken by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in 1842 and refined by others since.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Moreover, most scholars believe that some distinctions among the 36 initials were no longer current at the time of the rime tables, but were retained under the influence of the earlier dictionaries.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Early Middle Chinese (EMC) had three types of stops: voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. There were five series of coronal obstruents, with a three-way distinction between dental (or alveolar), retroflex and palatal among fricatives and affricates, and a two-way dental/retroflex distinction among stop consonants.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The following table shows the initials of Early Middle Chinese, with their traditional names and approximate values:


title: Middle Chinese

text: Old Chinese had a simpler system with no palatal or retroflex consonants; the more complex system of EMC is thought to have arisen from a combination of Old Chinese obstruents with a following and/or .


title: Middle Chinese

text: Other sources from around the same time as the "Qieyun" reveal a slightly different system, which is believed to reflect southern pronunciation.


title: Middle Chinese

text: In this system, the voiced fricatives and are not distinguished from the voiced affricates and , respectively, and the retroflex stops are not distinguished from the dental stops.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The voicing distinction is retained in modern Wu and Old Xiang dialects, but has disappeared from other varieties. In Min dialects the retroflex dentals are represented with the dentals, while elsewhere they have merged with the retroflex sibilants. In the south these have also merged with the dental sibilants, but the distinction is retained in most Mandarin dialects. The palatal series of modern Mandarin dialects, resulting from a merger of palatal allophones of dental sibilants and velars, is a much more recent development, unconnected with the earlier palatal consonants.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The remainder of a syllable after the initial consonant is the final, represented in the Qieyun by several equivalent second "fanqie" spellers.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Each final is contained within a single rhyme class, but a rhyme class may contain between one and four finals.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Finals are usually analysed as consisting of an optional medial, either a semivowel, reduced vowel or some combination of these, a vowel, an optional final consonant and a tone.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Their reconstruction is much more difficult than the initials due to the combination of multiple phonemes into a single class.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Some authors also propose codas and , based on the separate treatment of certain rhyme classes in the dictionaries.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Finals with stop codas are distributed in the same way as corresponding nasal finals, and are described as their entering tone counterparts.


title: Middle Chinese

text: It is generally agreed that "closed" finals had a rounded glide or vowel , and that the vowels in "outer" finals were more open than those in "inner" finals.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Three classes of "Qieyun" finals occur exclusively in the first, second or fourth rows of the rime tables, respectively, and have thus been labelled finals of divisions I, II and IV.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The remaining finals are labelled division-III finals because they occur in the third row, but they may also occur in the second or fourth rows for some initials.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Most linguists agree that division-III finals contained a medial and that division-I finals had no such medial, but further details vary between reconstructions.


title: Middle Chinese

text: To account for the many rhyme classes distinguished by the "Qieyun", Karlgren proposed 16 vowels and 4 medials.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The first three, the "even" or "level", "rising" and "departing" tones, occur in open syllables and syllables ending with nasal consonants.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The remaining syllables, ending in stop consonants, were described as the "entering" tone counterparts of syllables ending with the corresponding nasals.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The "Qieyun" and its successors were organized around these categories, with two volumes for the even tone, which had the most words, and one volume each for the other tones.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Karlgren interpreted the names of the first three tones literally as level, rising and falling pitch contours, respectively.


title: Middle Chinese

text: However, the pitch contours of modern reflexes of these categories vary so widely that it is impossible to reconstruct Middle Chinese contours.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The oldest known description of the tones is found in a Song dynasty quotation from the early 9th century "Yuanhe Yunpu" (no longer extant): "Level tone is sad and stable. Rising tone is strident and rising. Departing tone is clear and distant. Entering tone is straight and abrupt."


title: Middle Chinese

text: In 880, the Japanese monk Annen described the even tone as "straight and low", the rising tone as "straight and high", and the departing tone as "slightly drawn out".


title: Middle Chinese

text: The tone system of Middle Chinese is strikingly similar to those of its neighbours in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area—proto-Hmong–Mien, proto-Tai and early Vietnamese—none of which is genetically related to Chinese. Moreover, the earliest strata of loans display a regular correspondence between tonal categories in the different languages. In 1954, André-Georges Haudricourt showed that Vietnamese counterparts of the rising and departing tones corresponded to final and , respectively, in other (atonal) Austroasiatic languages. He thus argued that the Austroasiatic proto-language had been atonal, and that the development of tones in Vietnamese had been conditioned by these consonants, which had subsequently disappeared, a process now known as tonogenesis. Haudricourt further proposed that tone in the other languages, including Middle Chinese, had a similar origin. Other scholars have since uncovered transcriptional and other evidence for these consonants in early forms of Chinese, and many linguists now believe that Old Chinese was atonal.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Around the end of the first millennium AD, Middle Chinese and the southeast Asian languages experienced a phonemic split of their tone categories.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang Dynasty, each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials, known as the "upper" and "lower".


title: Middle Chinese

text: When voicing was lost in most varieties (except in the Wu and Old Xiang groups and some Gan dialects), this distinction became phonemic, yielding up to eight tonal categories, with a six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Cantonese maintains these tones and has developed an additional distinction in checked syllables, resulting in a total of nine tonal categories. However, most varieties have fewer tonal distinctions. For example, in Mandarin dialects the lower rising category merged with the departing category to form the modern falling tone, leaving a system of four tones. Furthermore, final stop consonants disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, and such syllables were reassigned to one of the other four tones.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Middle Chinese had a structure much like many modern varieties (especially conservative ones such as Cantonese), with largely monosyllabic words, little or no derivational morphology, three tones, and a syllable structure consisting of initial consonant, glide, main vowel and final consonant, with a large number of initial consonants and a fairly small number of final consonants. Without counting the glide, no clusters could occur at the beginning or end of a syllable.


title: Middle Chinese

text: Old Chinese, on the other hand, had a significantly different structure. There were no tones, a smaller imbalance between possible initial and final consonants, and many initial and final clusters. There was a well-developed system of derivational and possibly inflectional morphology, formed using consonants added onto the beginning or end of a syllable. The system is similar to the system reconstructed for proto-Sino-Tibetan and still visible, for example, in Classical Tibetan; it is also largely similar to the system that occurs in the more conservative Austroasiatic languages, such as modern Khmer (Cambodian).


title: Middle Chinese

text: The main changes leading to the modern varieties have been a reduction in the number of consonants and vowels and a corresponding increase in the number of tones (typically through a pan-East-Asiatic tone split that doubled the number of tones and eliminated the distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants). That has led to a gradual decrease in the number of possible syllables. Standard Mandarin has only about 1,300 possible syllables, and many other varieties of Chinese even fewer (for example, modern Shanghainese has been reported to have only about 700 syllables). The result in Mandarin, for example, has been the proliferation of the number of two-syllable compound words, which have steadily replaced former monosyllabic words; most words in Standard Mandarin now have two syllables.


title: Middle Chinese

text: The extensive surviving body of Middle Chinese (MC) literature of various types provides much source material for the study of MC grammar. Due to the lack of morphological development, grammatical analysis of MC tends to focus on the nature and meanings of the individual words themselves and the syntactic rules by which their arrangement together in sentences communicates meaning.


title: Antithesis

text: Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together for contrasting effect. This is based on the logical phrase or term.


title: Antithesis

text: Antithesis can be defined as "a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences within a balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves to emphasize opposition of ideas".


title: Antithesis

text: An antithesis must always contain two ideas within one statement. The ideas may not be structurally opposite, but they serve to be functionally opposite when comparing two ideas for emphasis.


title: Antithesis

text: According to Aristotle, the use of an antithesis makes the audience better understand the point the speaker is trying to make. Further explained, the comparison of two situations or ideas makes choosing the correct one simpler. Aristotle states that antithesis in rhetoric is similar to syllogism due to the presentation of two conclusions within a statement.


title: Antithesis

text: Antitheses are used to strengthen an argument by using either exact opposites or simply contrasting ideas, but can also include both. They typically make a sentence more memorable for the reader or listener through balance and emphasis of the words.


title: Antithesis

text: In rhetoric, antithesis is a figure of speech involving the bringing out of a contrast in the ideas by an obvious contrast in the words, clauses, or sentences, within a parallel grammatical structure.


title: Antithesis

text: The term "antithesis" in rhetoric goes back to the 4th century BC, for example Aristotle, "Rhetoric", 1410a, in which he gives a series of examples.


title: Antithesis

text: Often there is a double antithesis, as in the following proverb, where "man" is opposed to "God", and "proposes" is contrasted with "disposes":


title: Antithesis

text: Another type is of the form "not A, but B" (negative-positive), in which the point made is emphasised by first being contrasted with its negative:


title: Antithesis

text: Another type involves a antimetabole (AB, BA word order), in which the contrasted words switch places:


title: Antithesis

text: The negative-positive antithesis and the antimetabole-antithesis can be combined, as in the following sentence:


title: Antithesis

text: An antithesis can also be combined with synonymous parallelism. In the following example, the first (A, A') and second couplet (B, B') are parallel synonymously with the same adverb and verb combination distinguishing the couplets: “still do”/”still be”//”still do”/”still be.” An antithesis is formed with line A contrasting “evil” with “right” in line B. Line A' contrasts the “filthy” with the “holy” in line B'.


title: Antithesis

text: "Matthew's Antitheses" is the traditional name given to a section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus takes six well known prescriptions of the Mosaic Law and calls his followers to do more than the Law requires. Protestant scholars since the Reformation have generally believed that Jesus was setting his teaching over against false interpretations of the Law current at the time. "Antithesis" was the name given by Marcion of Sinope to a manifesto in which he contrasted the Old Testament with the New Testament and defined what came to be known as Marcionism.


title: Antithesis

text: In dialectics (any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments) antithesis is the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, usually in a balanced way. The logical arguments are said to be stated in the order thesis, antithesis, synthesis.


title: Antithesis

text: Although this style of philosophical discussion (stating a point of view, then its opposite, and finally drawing a conclusion) was commonly used by ancient philosophers, the use of the trio "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" itself to describe it goes back only to the 18th century, to a work published in 1794 by the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte.


title: Antithesis

text: The phrase is sometimes incorrectly stated to originate from the German philosopher Hegel. However, Hegel never actually used the trio of terms except once in a lecture, in which he reproached Immanuel Kant for having "everywhere posited thesis, antithesis, synthesis".


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Squamous-cell skin cancer, also known as cutaneous squamous-cell carcinoma (cSCC), is one of the main types of skin cancer along with basal cell cancer and melanoma. It usually presents as a hard lump with a scaly top but can also form an ulcer. Onset is often over months. Squamous-cell skin cancer is more likely to spread to distant areas than basal cell cancer. When confined to the outermost layer of the skin, a precancerous or "in situ" form of cSCC is known as Bowen's disease.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: The greatest risk factor is high total exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Other risks include prior scars, chronic wounds, actinic keratosis, lighter skin, Bowen's disease, arsenic exposure, radiation therapy, tobacco smoking, poor immune system function, previous basal cell carcinoma, and HPV infection. Risk from UV radiation is related to total exposure, rather than early exposure. Tanning beds are becoming another common source of ultraviolet radiation. Risk is also elevated in certain genetic skin disorders, such as xeroderma pigmentosum and certain forms of epidermolysis bullosa. It begins from squamous cells found within the skin. Diagnosis is often based on skin examination and confirmed by tissue biopsy.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: New in vivo and in vitro studies have proven that the upregulation of FGFR2, a subset of the fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) immunoglobin family, has a critical role to play in the progression of cSCC cells. Mutation in the TPL2 gene causes overexpression of FGFR2, which activates mTORC1 and AKT pathways in both primary and metastatic cSCC cell lines. Only by using FGFR pan-inhibitor, AZD4547, could cell migration and cell proliferation on cSCC be attenuated Additionally, research has identified common driver mutations in cSCC, with alterations in the NOTCH and p53 pathways occurring at high frequency and mutations in the Hippo and Ras/MAPK/PI3K occurring at lower frequency


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Decreasing exposure to ultraviolet radiation and the use of sunscreen appear to be effective methods of preventing squamous-cell skin cancer. Treatment is typically by surgical removal. This can be by simple excision if the cancer is small otherwise Mohs surgery is generally recommended. Other options may include application of cold and radiation therapy. In the cases in which distant spread has occurred chemotherapy or biologic therapy may be used.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: As of 2015, about 2.2 million people have cSCC at any given time. It makes up about 20% of all skin cancer cases. About 12% of males and 7% of females in the United States developed cSCC at some point in time. While prognosis is usually good, if distant spread occurs five-year survival is ~34%. In 2015 it resulted in about 51,900 deaths globally. The usual age at diagnosis is around 66. Following the successful treatment of one case of cSCC people are at high risk of developing further cases.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: SCC of the skin begins as a small nodule and as it enlarges the center becomes necrotic and sloughs and the nodule turns into an ulcer, and generally are developed from an actinic keratosis. Once keratinocytes begin to grow uncontrollably, they have the potential to become cancerous and produce squamous cell carcinoma.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Squamous cell carcinoma is the second-most common cancer of the skin (after basal-cell carcinoma but more common than melanoma). It usually occurs in areas exposed to the sun. Sunlight exposure and immunosuppression are risk factors for SCC of the skin, with chronic sun exposure being the strongest environmental risk factor. There is a risk of metastasis starting more than 10 years after diagnosable appearance of squamous cell carcinoma, but the risk is low, though much higher than with basal-cell carcinoma. Squamous cell cancers of the lip and ears have high rates of local recurrence and distant metastasis. In a recent study, it has also been shown that the deletion or severe down-regulation of a gene titled Tpl2 (tumor progression locus 2) may be involved in the progression of normal keratinocytes into becoming squamous cell carcinoma.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: SCCs represent about 20% of the non-melanoma skin cancers, but 80-90% of those with metastatic potential are located on the head and neck.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: The vast majority of SCCs are those of the skin, and are often the result of ultraviolet exposure. SCCs usually occur on portions of the body commonly exposed to the Sun; the face, ears, neck, hands, or arm. The main symptom is a growing bump that may have a rough, scaly surface and flat reddish patches.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Unlike basal-cell carcinomas, SCCs carry a higher risk of metastasis, and may spread to the regional lymph nodes,


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: "Erythroplasia of Queyrat" (SCC in situ of the glans or prepuce in males, M or the vulvae in females.) may be induced by human papilloma virus. It is reported to occur in the corneoscleral limbus. Erythroplasia of Queyrat may also occur on the anal mucosa or the oral mucosa. Some sources state that this condition is synonymous with Bowen's disease, however generally speaking Bowen's disease refers to carcinoma in situ of any location on the skin such as the lower leg.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Genetically, SCC tumors harbor high frequencies of NOTCH and p53 mutations as well as less frequent alterations in histone acetyltransferase EP300, subunit of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex PBRM1, DNA-repair deubiquitinase USP28, and NF-κB signaling regulator CHUK.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: People who have received solid organ transplants are at a significantly increased risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma due to the use of chronic immunosuppressive medication. While the risk of developing all skin cancers increases with these medications, this effect is particularly severe for SCC, with hazard ratios as high as 250 being reported, versus 40 for basal cell carcinoma. The incidence of SCC development increases with time posttransplant. Heart and lung transplant recipients are at the highest risk of developing SCC due to more intensive immunosuppressive medications used.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Squamous cell cancers of the skin in individuals on immunotherapy or who have lymphoproliferative disorders (e.g. leukemia) tend to be much more aggressive, regardless of their location. The risk of SCC, and non-melanoma skin cancers generally, varies with the immunosuppressive drug regimen chosen. The risk is greatest with calcineurin inhibitors like cyclosporine and tacrolimus, and least with mTOR inhibitors, such as sirolimus and everolimus. The antimetabolites azathioprine and mycophenolic acid have an intermediate risk profile.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Diagnosis is confirmed via biopsy of the tissue or tissues suspected to be affected by SCC. For the skin, look under skin biopsy.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: The pathological appearance of a squamous cell cancer varies with the depth of the biopsy. For that reason, a biopsy including the subcutaneous tissue and basilar epithelium, to the surface is necessary for correct diagnosis. The performance of a shave biopsy (see skin biopsy) might not acquire enough information for a diagnosis. An inadequate biopsy might be read as actinic keratosis with follicular involvement. A deeper biopsy down to the dermis or subcutaneous tissue might reveal the true cancer. An excision biopsy is ideal, but not practical in most cases. An incisional or punch biopsy is preferred. A shave biopsy is least ideal, especially if only the superficial portion is acquired.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Histopathologically, the epidermis in SCC "in situ" (Bowen's disease) will show hyperkeratosis and parakeratosis. There will also be marked acanthosis with elongation and thickening of the rete ridges. These changes will overly keratinocytic cells which are often highly atypical and may in fact have a more unusual appearance than invasive SCC. The atypia spans the full thickness of the epidermis, with the keratinocytes demonstrating intense mitotic activity, pleomorphism, and greatly enlarged nuclei. They will also show a loss of maturity and polarity, giving the epidermis a disordered or "windblown" appearance.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Two types of multinucleated cells may be seen: the first will present as a multinucleated giant cell, and the second will appear as a dyskeratotic cell engulfed in the cytoplasm of a keratinocyte. Occasionally, cells of the upper epidermis will undergo vacuolization, demonstrating an abundant and strongly eosinophilic cytoplasm. There may be a mild to moderate lymphohistiocytic infiltrate detected in the upper dermis.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Bowen's disease is essentially equivalent to and used interchangeably with SCC "in situ", when not having invaded through the basement membrane. Depending on source, it is classified as precancerous or SCC "in situ" (technically cancerous but non-invasive). In SCC "in situ" (Bowen's disease), atypical squamous cells proliferate through the whole thickness of the epidermis. The entire tumor is confined to the epidermis and does not invade into the dermis. The cells are often highly atypical under the microscope, and may in fact look more unusual than the cells of some invasive squamous cell carcinomas.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Erythroplasia of Queyrat is a particular type of Bowen's disease that can arise on the glans or prepuce in males, and the vulvae in females. It mainly occurs in uncircumcised males, over the age of 40. It is named for French dermatologist Louis Queyrat (1856–1933), who was head of the dermatology service of l'Hôpital Ricord, a venereal hospital in Paris, now Hôpital Cochin.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: In invasive SCC, tumor cells infiltrate through the basement membrane. The infiltrate can be somewhat difficult to detect in the early stages of invasion: however, additional indicators such as full thickness epidermal atypia and the involvement of hair follicles can be used to facilitate the diagnosis. Later stages of invasion are characterized by the formation of nests of atypical tumor cells in the dermis, often with a corresponding inflammatory infiltrate.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Appropriate sun-protective clothing, use of broad-spectrum (UVA/UVB) sunscreen with at least SPF 50, and avoidance of intense sun exposure may prevent skin cancer. A 2016 review of sunscreen for preventing squamous cell skin cancer found insufficient evidence to demonstrate whether it was effective.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Most squamous cell carcinomas are removed with surgery. A few selected cases are treated with topical medication. Surgical excision with a free margin of healthy tissue is a frequent treatment modality. Radiotherapy, given as external beam radiotherapy or as brachytherapy (internal radiotherapy), can also be used to treat squamous cell carcinomas. There is little evidence comparing the effectiveness of different treatments for non-metastatic SCC of the skin.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Mohs surgery is frequently utilized; considered the treatment of choice for squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, physicians have also utilized the method for the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, throat, and neck. An equivalent method of the CCPDMA standards can be utilized by a pathologist in the absence of a Mohs-trained physician. Radiation therapy is often used afterward in high risk cancer or patient types. Radiation or radiotherapy can also be a standalone option in treating SCCs. As a non invasive option brachytherapy serves a painless possibility to treat in particular but not only difficult to operate areas like the earlobes or genitals. An example of this kind of therapy is the High dose brachytherapy Rhenium-SCT which makes use of the beta rays emitting property of Rhenium-188. The radiation source is enclosed in a compound which is applied to a thin protection foile directly over the lesion. This way the radiation source can be applied to complex locations and minimize radiation to healthy tissue.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: After removal of the cancer, closure of the skin for patients with a decreased amount of skin laxity involves a split-thickness skin graft. A donor site is chosen and enough skin is removed so that the donor site can heal on its own. Only the epidermis and a partial amount of dermis is taken from the donor site which allows the donor site to heal. Skin can be harvested using either a mechanical dermatome or Humby knife.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Electrodessication and curettage (EDC) can be done on selected squamous cell carcinoma of the skin. In areas where SCC's are known to be non-aggressive, and where the patient is not immunosuppressed, EDC can be performed with good to adequate cure rate.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Treatment options for SCC "in situ" (Bowen's disease) include photodynamic therapy with 5-aminolevulinic acid, cryotherapy, topical 5-fluorouracil or imiquimod, and excision. A meta-analysis showed evidence that PDT is more effective than cryotherapy and has better cosmetic outcomes. There is generally a lack of evidence comparing the effectiveness of all treatment options.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: High-risk squamous cell carcinoma, as defined by those occurring around the eye, ear, or nose, is of large size, is poorly differentiated, and grows rapidly, requires more aggressive, multidisciplinary management.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: In general, squamous cell carcinomas have a high risk of local recurrence, and up to 50% do recur. Frequent skin exams with a dermatologist is recommended after treatment.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: The long-term outcome of squamous cell carcinomas is dependent upon several factors: the sub-type of the carcinoma, available treatments, location and severity, and various patient health-related variables (accompanying diseases, age, etc.). Generally, the long-term outcome is positive, as less than 4% of Squamous cell carcinoma cases are at risk of metastasis. When it does metastasize, the most common involved organs are the lungs, brain, bone and other skin locations.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: One study found squamous cell carcinoma of the penis had a much greater rate of mortality than some other forms of squamous cell carcinoma, that is, about 23%, although this relatively high mortality rate may be associated with possibly latent diagnosis of the disease due to patients avoiding genital exams until the symptoms are debilitating, or refusal to submit to a possibly scarring operation upon the genitalia. Squamous cell carcinoma occurring in the organ transplant population is also associated with a higher risk of mortality.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma continues to rise around the world. A recent study estimated that there are between 180,000 and 400,000 cases of SCC in the United States in 2013. Risk factors for squamous cell carcinoma varies with age, gender, race, geography, and genetics. The incidence of SCC increases with age and the peak incidence is usually around 60 years old. Males are affected with SCC at a ratio of 2:1 in comparison to females. Caucasians are more likely to be affected, especially those with fair skin or those chronically exposed to UV radiation.


title: Squamous cell skin cancer

text: Squamous cell carcinoma of the skin can be found on all areas of the body but is most common on frequently sun-exposed areas, such as the face, legs and arms. Solid organ transplant recipients (heart, lung, liver, pancreas, among others) are also at a heightened risk of developing aggressive, high-risk SCC. There are also a few rare congenital diseases predisposed to cutaneous malignancy. In certain geographic locations, exposure to arsenic in well water or from industrial sources may significantly increase the risk of SCC.


title: Megan Suri

text: Megan Suri is an American actress, known for her role in "The MisEducation of Bindu" (2019), as well as for playing Aneesa in the Netflix teen comedy series "Never Have I Ever" (2020).


title: Megan Suri

text: Suri debuted in the lead role with the award-winning "The MisEducation of Bindu" (2019). A critic noted that "Megan Suri is perfectly cast as Bindu". She was later cast as Aneesa, another Indian student who goes to Devi's high school, in the second season of "Never Have I Ever". One critic opined that "Megan Suri is outstanding as Aneesa".


title: Social environment

text: The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact. The interaction may be in person or through communication media, even anonymous or one-way, and may not imply equality of social status. The social environment is a broader concept than that of social class or social circle.


title: Social environment

text: The physical and social environment is a determining factor in active and healthy aging in place, being a central factor in the study of environmental gerontology.


title: Social environment

text: People with the same social environment often develop a sense of social solidarity; people often tend to trust and help one another, and to congregate in social groups. They will often think in similar styles and patterns, even though the conclusions which they reach may differ.


title: Social environment

text: In order to enrich their lives, people have used natural resources, and in the process have brought about many changes in the natural environment. Human settlements, roads, farmlands, dams, and many other elements have all developed through the process. All these man-made components are included in human cultural environment, Erving Goffman in particular emphasising the deeply social nature of the individual environment.


title: Social environment

text: C. Wright Mills contrasted the immediate milieu of jobs/family/neighborhood with the wider formations of the social structure, highlighting in particular a distinction between "the personal troubles of milieu" and the "public crises of social structure".


title: Social environment

text: Emile Durkheim took a wider view of the social environment ("milieu social"), arguing that it contained internalized expectations and representations of social forces/social facts: "Our whole social environment seems to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds" – collective representations.


title: Social environment

text: Phenomenologists contrast two alternative visions of society, as a deterministic constraint ("milieu") and as a nurturing shell ("ambiance").


title: Social environment

text: Max Scheler distinguishes between milieu as an experienced value-world, and the objective social environment on which we draw to create the former, noting that the social environment can either foster or restrain our creation of a personal milieu.


title: Social environment

text: Pierre Janet saw neurosis in part as the product of the identified patient's social environment – family, social network, work etc. – and considered that in some instances what he termed "social surgery" to create a healthier environment could be a beneficial measure.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: In mathematics, the upper and lower incomplete gamma functions are types of special functions which arise as solutions to various mathematical problems such as certain integrals.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Their respective names stem from their integral definitions, which are defined similarly to the gamma function but with different or "incomplete" integral limits. The gamma function is defined as an integral from zero to infinity. This contrasts with the lower incomplete gamma function, which is defined as an integral from zero to a variable upper limit. Similarly, the upper incomplete gamma function is defined as an integral from a variable lower limit to infinity.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The lower incomplete gamma and the upper incomplete gamma function, as defined above for real positive and , can be developed into holomorphic functions, with respect both to and , defined for almost all combinations of complex and . Complex analysis shows how properties of the real incomplete gamma functions extend to their holomorphic counterparts.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Repeated application of the recurrence relation for the lower incomplete gamma function leads to the power series expansion:


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Given the rapid growth in absolute value of when , and the fact that the reciprocal of is an entire function, the coefficients in the rightmost sum are well-defined, and locally the sum converges uniformly for all complex and . By a theorem of Weierstraß, the limiting function, sometimes denoted as formula_9,


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: is entire with respect to both (for fixed ) and (for fixed ) , and, thus, holomorphic on by Hartog's theorem. Hence, the following "decomposition"


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: extends the real lower incomplete gamma function as a holomorphic function, both jointly and separately in and . It follows from the properties of formula_12 and the Γ-function, that the first two factors capture the singularities of formula_13 (at or a non-positive integer), whereas the last factor contributes to its zeros.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The complex logarithm is determined up to a multiple of only, which renders it multi-valued. Functions involving the complex logarithm typically inherit this property. Among these are the complex power, and, since appears in its decomposition, the -function, too.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The indeterminacy of multi-valued functions introduces complications, since it must be stated how to select a value. Strategies to handle this are:


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The following set of rules can be used to interpret formulas in this section correctly. If not mentioned otherwise, the following is assumed:


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Sectors in having their vertex at often prove to be appropriate domains for complex expressions. A sector consists of all complex fulfilling and with some and . Often, can be arbitrarily chosen and is not specified then. If is not given, it is assumed to be , and the sector is in fact the whole plane , with the exception of a half-line originating at and pointing into the direction of , usually serving as a branch cut. Note: In many applications and texts, is silently taken to be 0, which centers the sector around the positive real axis.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: In particular, a single-valued and holomorphic logarithm exists on any such sector D having its imaginary part bound to the range . Based on such a restricted logarithm, and the incomplete gamma functions in turn collapse to single-valued, holomorphic functions on (or ), called branches of their multi-valued counterparts on D. Adding a multiple of to yields a different set of correlated branches on the same set . However, in any given context here, is assumed fixed and all branches involved are associated to it. If , the branches are called principal, because they equal their real analogues on the positive real axis. Note: In many applications and texts, formulas hold only for principal branches.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The values of different branches of both the complex power function and the lower incomplete gamma function can be derived from each other by multiplication of formula_14, for a suitable integer.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: For positive real , and , , when . This seems to justify setting for real . However, matters are somewhat different in the complex realm. Only if (a) the real part of is positive, and (b) values are taken from just a finite set of branches, they are guaranteed to converge to zero as , and so does . On a single branch of is naturally fulfilled, so there for with positive real part is a continuous limit. Also note that such a continuation is by no means an analytic one.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: All algebraic relations and differential equations observed by the real hold for its holomorphic counterpart as well. This is a consequence of the identity theorem , stating that equations between holomorphic functions valid on a real interval, hold everywhere. In particular, the recurrence relation and are preserved on corresponding branches.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The last relation tells us, that, for fixed , is a primitive or antiderivative of the holomorphic function . Consequently, , for any complex ,


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: holds, as long as the path of integration is entirely contained in the domain of a branch of the integrand. If, additionally, the real part of is positive, then the limit for applies, finally arriving at the complex integral definition of


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Any path of integration containing 0 only at its beginning, otherwise restricted to the domain of a branch of the integrand, is valid here, for example, the straight line connecting and .


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Given the integral representation of a principal branch of , the following equation holds for all positive real , :


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: has been used in the middle. Since the final integral becomes arbitrarily small if only is large enough, converges uniformly for on the strip towards a holomorphic function, which must be Γ(s) because of the identity theorem . Taking the limit in the recurrence relation and noting, that lim for and all , shows, that converges outside the strip, too, towards a function obeying the recurrence relation of the Γ-function. It follows


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: As shown above, the first difference can be made arbitrarily small, if is sufficiently large. The second difference allows for following estimation:


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: where we made use of the integral representation of and the formula about above. If we integrate along the arc with radius around 0 connecting and , then the last integral is


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: where is a constant independent of or . Again referring to the behavior of for large , we see that the last expression approaches 0 as increases towards .


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: if is not a non-negative integer, is arbitrarily small, but fixed, and denotes the principal branch on this domain.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: As for the upper incomplete gamma function, a holomorphic extension, with respect to or , is given by


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: at points , where the right hand side exists. Since formula_28 is multi-valued, the same holds for formula_29, but a restriction to principal values only yields the single-valued principal branch of formula_29.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: When is a non-positive integer in the above equation, neither part of the difference is defined, and a limiting process, here developed for , fills in the missing values. Complex analysis guarantees holomorphicity, because formula_31 proves to be bounded in a neighbourhood of that limit for a fixed .


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: To determine the limit, the power series of formula_9 at is useful. When replacing formula_33 by its power series in the integral definition of formula_28, one obtains (assume , positive reals for now):


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: which, as a series representation of the entire formula_9 function, converges for all complex (and all complex not a non-positive integer).


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: is the limiting function to the upper incomplete gamma function as , also known as the exponential integral formula_42.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: By way of the recurrence relation, values of formula_43 for positive integers can be derived from this result,


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: so the upper incomplete gamma function proves to exist and be holomorphic, with respect both to and , for all and .


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Here, formula_58 is the exponential integral, formula_59 is the generalized exponential integral, formula_60 is the error function, and formula_61 is the complementary error function, formula_62.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: For the actual computation of numerical values, Gauss's continued fraction provides a useful expansion:


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Even if unavailable directly, however, incomplete function values can be calculated using functions commonly included in spreadsheets (and computer algebra packages). In Excel, for example, these can be calculated using the gamma function combined with the gamma distribution function.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: formula_97 is the cumulative distribution function for gamma random variables with shape parameter formula_98 and scale parameter 1.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: When formula_98 is an integer, formula_100 is the cumulative distribution function for Poisson random variables: If formula_101 is a formula_102 random variable then


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: Using the integral representation above, the derivative of the upper incomplete gamma function formula_110 with respect to is


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: This particular special case has internal "closure" properties of its own because it can be used to express "all" successive derivatives. In general,


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: with the understanding that is not a negative integer or zero. In such a case, one must use a limit. Results for formula_125 can be obtained by analytic continuation. Some special cases of this function can be simplified. For example, formula_126, formula_127, where formula_128 is the Exponential integral. These derivatives and the function formula_115 provide exact solutions to a number of integrals by repeated differentiation of the integral definition of the upper incomplete gamma function.


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: This formula can be further "inflated" or generalized to a huge class of Laplace transforms and Mellin transforms. When combined with a computer algebra system, the exploitation of special functions provides a powerful method for solving definite integrals, in particular those encountered by practical engineering applications (see Symbolic integration for more details).


title: Incomplete gamma function

text: The following indefinite integrals are readily obtained using integration by parts (with the constant of integration omitted in both cases):


title: Barbara Orbison

text: Barbara Orbison (January 10, 1950 – December 6, 2011) was a German-born United States-based entrepreneur, music producer and publisher, and the second wife of American musician Roy Orbison.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: Barbara Anne Marie Wellhöner Jakobs was born in Bielefeld, Germany on January 10, 1950. Her mother was Friedel Hitz. Aged 18, she met the 32-year-old Orbison when he asked friends to introduce him to her at Batley Variety Club, West Yorkshire, England, during Orbison's UK tour. A few weeks later, two of Orbison's three sons died in a house fire. Barbara and Orbison married on March 25, 1969, in Hendersonville, Tennessee. They divided their time between Nashville, Tennessee and Malibu, California, bringing up their two sons, Roy Kelton Orbison, Jr. (born 1970) and Alexander Orbi Orbison (born 1975).


title: Barbara Orbison

text: During the 1980s, she managed her husband's career and was the executive producer of his 1987 album, "", plus his January 1988 televised music special, "". Following her husband's death on December 6, 1988, she took charge of his business affairs and dedicated herself to promoting his music to subsequent generations.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: She worked with friend and fellow artist Jeff Lynne to put together the posthumous release of the "King of Hearts" album in 1992 (an album which was re-issued in 2007 by Sony BMG after they took charge of Virgin's catalog in 2005) as well as other record projects. She co-produced "Only the Lonely: The Roy Orbison Story", a European stage musical.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: In late 1993, the family home in Malibu was destroyed by brush fires. Although she maintained a residence on the West Coast, she returned to Nashville where she purchased a home as well as a commercial property to house her music publishing business. Her company, Still Working Music employs songwriters such as Tommy Lee James and Chase Bryant.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: Orbison was also involved with charitable causes in aid of the homeless. For Showtime, in 1990, she produced a Roy Orbison tribute at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles that raised in excess of $1 million for the city's homeless. She personally funded "Orbison House", a 21-unit residence for the mentally impaired homeless of Los Angeles.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: She produced Damien Leith's album, "", which was released by Sony BMG in Australia on 15 April 2011 to coincide with Roy Orbison's 75th birthday.


title: Barbara Orbison

text: Orbison was hospitalized from May 2011 until her death from pancreatic cancer on December 6, 2011 (Roy Orbison also died on December 6, in 1988). She was buried next to her husband at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. This was followed by a celebration of her life in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: The Missouri Tigers football program represents the University of Missouri (often referred to as Mizzou) in college football and competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri's football program dates back to 1890, and has appeared in 33 bowl games (including 10 major bowl appearances: four Orange Bowls, three Cotton Bowls, two Sugar Bowls, and one Fiesta Bowl). Missouri has won 15 conference titles and four division titles, and has two national-championship selections recognized by the NCAA. Entering the 2021 season, Missouri's all-time record is 701–585–52 ().


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Since 2012, Missouri has been a member of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and competes in the Eastern Division, since joining the Tigers have a losing record at 38-44 in conference play. Home games are played at Faurot Field ("The Zou") in Columbia, Missouri.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: The team was coached by Gary Pinkel (2001–2015), who has the highest winning percentage of any coach in Missouri football history (setting that mark with his 102nd win at the AT&T Cotton Bowl on January 3, 2014). Pinkel's record with Mizzou after his final game on November 27, 2015, is 118–73 ().


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Neither championship is claimed by the school, nor is either recognized by the NCAA. The Tigers have never finished a season ranked number one in either the AP Poll or Coaches' Poll.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: <nowiki>†</nowiki> The 1960 record was officially recorded as 10–1, but was later changed to 11–0 due to Kansas' subsequent forfeit.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri has won 15 conference championships, but has never outright won the Big 12 or the SEC championship.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: ‡ The 1960 Big Eight title was retroactively awarded after a loss to Kansas was reversed due to Kansas' use of a player who was later ruled to be ineligible.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: The Tigers were previously members of the Big 12 North division between its inception in 1996 and the dissolution of conference divisions within the Big 12 in 2011. The Tigers joined the SEC as members of the SEC East starting in 2012. Missouri has won five division championships.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri has appeared in 33 bowl games, including 10 major bowl appearances: 4 Orange Bowls, 3 Cotton Bowls, 2 Sugar Bowls, and 1 Fiesta Bowl, with an all-time bowl record of 15–19. The team also accepted a bid to the 2020 Music City Bowl against Iowa, which was subsequently canceled due to an outbreak of COVID-19 on the Tigers.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri and Arkansas first met in 1906 in Columbia, Missouri, and played each other five times prior to Missouri joining the SEC in 2012, and then becoming Arkansas' permanent cross-division rival in 2014. The annual meeting was dubbed the Battle Line Rivalry. On November 23, 2015, a new rivalry trophy was unveiled for the annual game. Missouri leads the series 10-4 as of the conclusion of the 2022 season, which saw the Tigers win 29-27.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: A new rivalry was started in 2012 when Missouri joined the SEC East. With both schools located in cities named Columbia (Columbia, Missouri, and Columbia, South Carolina), the mayors of the cities commemorate the winner with the "Mayor's Cup" trophy for the annual game.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri leads the series with Kansas 57–54–9 through the 2021 season. With history dating back to Bleeding Kansas in the 1850s, the "Border War" rivalry was well-known as one of the longest-lasting and fiercest rivalries in college sports. The teams met annually, traditionally for the final game of the regular season, from 1891 through 2011 when Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: The rivalry between Missouri and Illinois is modeled after the two schools' longstanding basketball rivalry, and it garners the most interest around St. Louis, with both schools having alumni and fans in the area. It has not been played annually, with 24 matchups occurring from 1896 to 2010, with Missouri leading the series 17–7. Between 2000 and 2010, the schools met in St. Louis six times, with Missouri winning each time. In 2026, the series will be renewed for a four-year period, to be played on campus sites.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri and Iowa State first met in 1896 and the regional rivalry was born. Before the 1959 match-up between the two schools, which took place in Ames, Iowa, field testing showed that the telephones the two schools used to communicate with their coaches in the coaches' box were wired so that either school could hear what was happening on the other sideline. The problem was fixed before the game, but neither of the two coaches knew that. Northwestern Bell Telephone Company of Ames then decided to have a trophy made to commemorate the incident, thus the Telephone Trophy was born. When Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC, the rivalry was essentially ended.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Oklahoma leads the series 67–24–5 through the 2021 season. From 1940 through 1974, the teams played for the Tiger-Sooner Peace Pipe trophy.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Nebraska leads the series 65–36–3 through the 2021 season. From 1892 through 2010, the teams played for the Victory Bell trophy.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Truman the Tiger was introduced as the school's mascot against the Utah State Aggies in 1986, receiving his name from former president Harry S Truman. Truman has been named the "Nation's Best Mascot" three times since 1986, most recently in 2014.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: The NCAA as well as "Jeopardy!" and "Trivial Pursuit" recognize the University of Missouri as the birthplace of Homecoming, an event which became a national tradition in college football. The history of the University of Missouri Homecoming can be traced back to the 1911 Kansas vs. Missouri football game, when the Missouri Tigers faced off against the Kansas Jayhawks in the first installment of the Border War rivalry series.


title: Missouri Tigers football

text: Missouri plays Arkansas as a permanent non-division opponent annually and rotates around the "West" division among the other six schools.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The Delimitation commission or Boundary commission of India is a commission established by the Government of India under the provisions of the Delimitation Commission Act. The main task of the commission is redrawing the boundaries of the various assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies based on a recent census. The representation from each State is not changed during this exercise. However, the number of SC and ST seats in a state are changed in accordance with the census. The present delimitation of constituencies has been done on the basis of 2001 census under the provisions of Delimitation Act, 2002.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The Commission is a powerful and independent body whose orders cannot be challenged in any court of law. The orders are laid before the Lok Sabha and the respective State Legislative Assemblies. However, modifications are not permitted.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: Delimitation commissions have been set up four times in the past — 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002 — under Delimitation Commission Acts of 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The union government had suspended delimitation in 1976 until after the 2001 census so that states' family planning programs would not affect their political representation in the Lok Sabha. This had led to wide discrepancies in the size of constituencies, with the largest having over three million electors, and the smallest less than 50,000.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The Delimitation Commission of 1952 was created due to the "Delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies Order, 1951". Justice N Chandrasekhara Aiyar, a retired justice of the Supreme Court, was its chairman in 1953.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The delimitaiton commission of 1973 was chaired by Justice J L Kapur, a retired justice of the Supreme Court. The commission recommended the increase of the seats in the Lok Sabha from 522 to 542 (later increased to 543 with the addition of one more seat for the new state of Sikkim). It also recommended increase the total number of assembly seats across all states and Union Territories in the country from 3771 to 3997 (including 32 for Sikkim's legislative assembly).


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The most recent delimitation commission was set up on 12 July 2002 after the 2001 census with Justice Kuldip Singh, a retired Judge of the Supreme Court as its Chairperson. The Commission has submitted its recommendations. In December 2007, the Supreme Court on a petition issued notice to the central government asking reasons for non implementation. On 4 January 2008, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) decided to implement the order from the Delimitation Commission. The recommendations of the Commission was approved by President Pratibha Patil on 19 February. This means that all future elections in India for states covered by the commission will be held under the newly formed constituencies.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The present delimitation of parliamentary constituencies has been done on the basis of 2001 census figures under the provisions of Delimitation Act, 2002. The assembly election in Karnataka, conducted in three phases in May 2008, was the first to use the new boundaries as drawn by the 2002 delimitation commission.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The tenure of the Delimitation Commission lasted until 31 May 2008. The delimitation orders issued by the Commission were given effect from 19 February 2008 for most states and union territories and 20 March 2008 for Tripura and Meghalaya, by a presidential order. The orders regarding Jharkhand were nullified till 2026 by inserting section 10B into the Delimitation Act, 2002.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The delimitation of four north-eastern states was deferred due to security risks, by four separate presidential orders, all issued on 8 February 2008, for Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur. The order regarding Assam was rescinded on 28 February 2020. Subsequently, the Government of India has reconstituted the Delimitation Commission for these four states as well as the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir on 6 March 2020, under the chairpersonship of former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai. In March 2021, the four north-eastern states were removed from the purview of the reconstituted Commission.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: The present delimitation of parliamentary constituencies within states, has been done on the basis of the 2001 census, under the provisions of Delimitation Act, 2002. However, the Constitution of India was specifically amended (84th amendment) in 2002, not to have interstate delimitation of constituencies till 2026. Thus, the present constituencies carved out on the basis of the 2001 census shall continue to be in operation till 2026 and later it can be done on the basis of population 2021.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: Up until 1976, after every Indian Census the seats of Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State legislative assemblies of India were re-distributed respectively throughout the country so as to have equal population representation from every seat. The apportionment was done thrice as per 1951, 1961 and 1971 population census. However, during The Emergency, through Forty-second Amendment the government froze the total Parliamentary and Assembly seats in each state till 2001 Census. This was done, mainly, due to wide discrepancies in family planning among the states. Thus, it gives time to states with higher fertility rates to implement family planning to bring the fertility rates down.


title: Delimitation Commission of India

text: Even though the boundaries of constituencies were altered in 2001 to equate population among the parliamentary and assembly seats; the number of Lok Sabha seats that each state has and those of legislative assemblies has remained unaltered since 1971 census and may only be changed after 2026 as the constitution was again amended (84th amendment to Indian Constitution) in 2002 to continue the freeze on the total number of seats in each state till 2026. This was mainly done as states which had implemented family planning widely like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab would stand to lose many parliamentary seats representation and states with poor family planning programs and higher fertility rates like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan would adversely gain many of the seats transferred from better-performing states.


title: Turrón

text: Turrón (), or torrone (), is a southwestern European nougat confection, typically made of honey, sugar, and egg white, with toasted almonds or other nuts, and usually shaped into either a rectangular tablet or a round cake. It is frequently consumed as a traditional Christmas dessert in Spain, Portugal, and Italy as well as countries formerly under the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire, particularly in Latin America.


title: Turrón

text: This nougat confection is known by similar names in different languages. In Spanish it is (). In Catalan, ( or ). In Italian, (). In Portuguese, () and () in Brazilian Portuguese. In Sardinian, (). In Tagalog, ().


title: Turrón

text: The 16th-century "Manual de Mujeres" (Women's handbook), a handbook of recipes for cosmetics and some foodstuffs, has what is probably the oldest extant Spanish turrón recipe. It calls for honey and some egg whites, cooked until it becomes breakable once cooled. Once the honey is caramelized the recipe suggests adding pine nuts, almonds or hazelnuts, peeled and roasted. The mix is then cooked a bit further, and finally removed from the heat and cut into slices.


title: Turrón

text: All versions of the name appear to have been derived from Latin "torrere" (to toast). The modern confection might be derived from the Muslim recipe prevalent in parts of Islamic Spain known as "turun", or even from an ancient Greek recipe. One may also point to a similar confection named "cupedia" or "cupeto" that was marketed in Ancient Rome and noted by Roman poets.


title: Turrón

text: Turrón or "Torró" has been known at least since the 15th century in the city of Jijona/Xixona (formerly Sexona), north of Alicante. Turrón is commonly consumed in most of Spain, some countries of Latin America, and in Roussillon (France). The similar "Torrone" is typical of Cremona and Benevento in Italy. There are similar confections made in the Philippines.


title: Turrón

text: Turrón itself can take on a variety of consistencies and appearances, however, they traditionally consisted of the same ingredients; the final product may be either hard and crunchy, or soft and chewy. Thirty years ago almost all turrón recipes followed the same specifications, but since the diversification of products there are currently dozens of varieties: chocolate with puffed rice or whole almonds; all kinds of chocolate pralines, with or without liquor, candied fruits or whole nuts; fruit pralines; and even sugarless variations (sweetened with fructose or artificial sweeteners).


title: Turrón

text: This variation in ingredients and resulting dryness reflects a continuum that exists also in amaretto (almond-flavored) cookies, from a meringue to a macaroon.


title: Turrón

text: Other varieties include "Torró d'Agramunt" from near Lleida, "Torró de Xerta" from near Tortosa and "torró de Casinos".


title: Turrón

text: In modern times, the name "turrón" has widened its meaning in Spain to include many other sweet preparations that, in common with traditional turrón, are sold in bars of around 20 x 10 x 3 cm. These bars can have chocolate, marzipan, coconut, caramel, candied fruit, etc.