title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: Two highly characterized sterol-regulatory element binding proteins, SrbA and SrbB, along with their processing pathways, have been shown to impact the fitness of A. fumigatus in hypoxic conditions. The transcription factor SrbA is the master regulator in the fungal response to hypoxia in vivo and is essential in many biological processes including iron homeostasis, antifungal azole drug resistance, and virulence. Consequently, the loss of SrbA results in an inability for A. fumigatus to grow in low iron conditions, a higher sensitivity to anti-fungal azole drugs, and a complete loss of virulence in IPA (invasive pulmonary aspergillosis) mouse models. SrbA knockout mutants do not show any signs of in vitro growth in low oxygen, which is thought to be associated with the attenuated virulence. SrbA functionality in hypoxia is dependent upon an upstream cleavage process carried out by the proteins RbdB, SppA, and Dsc A-E. SrbA is cleaved from an endoplasmic reticulum residing 1015 amino acid precursor protein to a 381 amino acid functional form. The loss of any of the above SrbA processing proteins results in a dysfunctional copy of SrbA and a subsequent loss of in vitro growth in hypoxia as well as attenuated virulence. Chromatin immunoprecipitation studies with the SrbA protein led to the identification of a second hypoxia regulator, SrbB. Although little is known about the processing of SrbB, this transcription factor has also shown to be a key player in virulence and the fungal hypoxia response. Similar to SrbA, a SrbB knockout mutant resulted in a loss of virulence, however, there was no heightened sensitivity towards antifungal drugs nor a complete loss of growth under hypoxic conditions (50% reduction in SrbB rather than 100% reduction in SrbA). In summary, both SrbA and SrbB have shown to be critical in the adaptation of A. fumigatus in the mammalian host.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: "Aspergillus fumigatus" must acquire nutrients from its external environment to survive and flourish within its host. Many of the genes involved in such processes have been shown to impact virulence through experiments involving genetic mutation. Examples of nutrient uptake include that of metals, nitrogen, and macromolecules such as peptides.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: Iron is a necessary cofactor for many enzymes, and can act as a catalyst in the electron transport system. "A. fumigatus" has two mechanisms for the uptake of iron, reductive iron acquisition and siderophore-mediated. Reductive iron acquisition includes conversion of iron from the ferric (Fe) to the ferrous (Fe) state and subsequent uptake via FtrA, an iron permease. Targeted mutation of the ftrA gene did not induce a decrease in virulence in the murine model of "A. fumigatus" invasion. In contrast, targeted mutation of sidA, the first gene in the siderophore biosynthesis pathway, proved siderophore-mediated iron uptake to be essential for virulence. Mutation of the downstream siderophore biosynthesis genes sidC, sidD, sidF and sidG resulted in strains of "A. fumigatus" with similar decreases in virulence. These mechanisms of iron uptake appear to work in parallel and both are upregulated in response to iron starvation.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: "Aspergillus fumigatus" can survive on a variety of different nitrogen sources, and the assimilation of nitrogen is of clinical importance, as it has been shown to affect virulence. Proteins involved in nitrogen assimilation are transcriptionally regulated by the AfareA gene in "A. fumigatus". Targeted mutation of the afareA gene showed a decrease in onset of mortality in a mouse model of invasion. The Ras regulated protein RhbA has also been implicated in nitrogen assimilation. RhbA was found to be transcriptionally upregulated following contact of "A. fumigatus" with human endothelial cells, and strains with targeted mutation of the "rhbA "gene showed decreased growth on poor nitrogen sources and reduced virulence "in vivo".


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: The human lung contains large quantities of collagen and elastin, proteins that allow for tissue flexibility. "Aspergillus fumigatus" produces and secretes elastases, proteases that cleave elastin in order to break down these macromolecular polymers for uptake. A significant correlation between the amount of elastase production and tissue invasion was first discovered in 1984. Clinical isolates have also been found to have greater elastase activity than environmental strains of "A. fumigatus". A number of elastases have been characterized, including those from the serine protease, aspartic protease, and metalloprotease families. Yet, the large redundancy of these elastases has hindered the identification of specific effects on virulence.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: A number of studies found that the unfolded protein response contributes to virulence of "A. fumigatus".


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: The lifecycle of filamentous fungi including "Aspergillus" spp. consists of two phases: a hyphal growth phase and a reproductive (sporulation) phase. The switch between growth and reproductive phases of these fungi is regulated in part by the level of secondary metabolite production. The secondary metabolites are believed to be produced to activate sporulation and pigments required for sporulation structures. G protein signaling regulates secondary metabolite production. Genome sequencing has revealed 40 potential genes involved in secondary metabolite production including mycotoxins, which are produced at the time of sporulation.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: Gliotoxin is a mycotoxin capable of altering host defenses through immunosuppression. Neutrophils are the principal targets of gliotoxin. Gliotoxin interrupts the function of leukocytes by inhibiting migration and superoxide production and causes apoptosis in macrophages. Gliotoxin disrupts the proinflammatory response through inhibition of NF-κB.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: LaeA and GliZ are transcription factors known to regulate the production of gliotoxin. LaeA is a universal regulator of secondary metabolite production in "Aspergillus" spp. LaeA influences the expression of 9.5% of the "A. fumigatus" genome, including many secondary metabolite biosynthesis genes such as nonribosomal peptide synthetases. The production of numerous secondary metabolites, including gliotoxin, were impaired in an LaeA mutant (ΔlaeA) strain. The ΔlaeA mutant showed increased susceptibility to macrophage phagocytosis and decreased ability to kill neutrophils "ex vivo". LaeA regulated toxins, besides gliotoxin, likely have a role in virulence since loss of gliotoxin production alone did not recapitulate the hypo-virulent ∆laeA pathotype.


title: Aspergillus fumigatus

text: Current noninvasive treatments used to combat fungal infections consist of a class of drugs known as azoles. Azole drugs such as voriconazole, itraconazole, and imidazole kill fungi by inhibiting the production of ergosterol—a critical element of fungal cell membranes. Mechanistically, these drugs act by inhibiting the fungal cytochrome p450 enzyme known as 14α-demethylase. However, "A. fumigatus" resistance to azoles is increasing, potentially due to the use of low levels of azoles in agriculture. The main mode of resistance is through mutations in the "cyp51a" gene. However, other modes of resistance have been observed accounting for almost 40% of resistance in clinical isolates. Along with azoles, other anti-fungal drug classes do exist such as polyenes and echinocandins.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: No Strings Attached is a 2011 American romantic comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Elizabeth Meriwether. Starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, the film is about two friends who decide to make a pact to have a "no strings attached" relationship, without falling in love with each other. The film was released in the United States on January 21, 2011.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: After first meeting at a summer camp as teenagers, Emma Kurtzman and Adam Franklin run into each other a few times as young adults but never keep in touch. Emma is a doctor in Los Angeles, and Adam is a production assistant for a musical television show.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Soon, Adam finds out that his father Alvin, the well-known star of a former hit television comedy series, has begun a romance with his ex-girlfriend, Vanessa. Devastated, a drunken Adam calls all his female contacts to hook up. The next morning, he wakes up on Emma's couch, with her friends and colleagues teasing and telling him that he was crying and passed out naked on the couch. She leads him to her room to find his pants, and they have sex.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: They have sex again at Adam's house. Before Emma leaves, they agree to engage in a "no strings attached" relationship, where they just have sex. Soon, Adam finds himself getting jealous of Emma's co-worker Sam, and being an emotional person, he doubles his romantic attempts towards her. She feels awkward and thus ends their arrangement, only to end up missing him. She drunkenly crashes at his place, and they sleep together again.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: On Adam's birthday, his father tells him he wishes to have children with Vanessa. Disgusted, Adam walks out, and Emma defends him. He asks her for one single date on Valentine's Day, and it seems perfect till she awkwardly tells him she will not engage in an emotional relationship. He says he can't continue without progressing, so they agree to not see each other.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Six weeks later, at her sister's wedding rehearsal dinner, Emma realizes she wants to be with Adam. She calls, saying that she misses him, but he shuts her down. She drives over to his place, only to see Adam and his colleague Lucy, who she thinks is his girlfriend, going inside together. She drives away, heartbroken.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Later that same night, Adam and Lucy are awkwardly starting to get intimate when Vanessa calls to tell him his father is in the hospital. Adam rushes to the hospital, only to see Emma there as well, as her colleague Shira had informed her.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: As Emma confesses her feelings to Adam, he asks her to pursue their relationship again, and she agrees. They are then shown to have breakfast, a sign of a "strings attached" relationship, as the movie ends it shows them in time for her sister's wedding.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: "No Strings Attached" is directed by Ivan Reitman based on a screenplay by Elizabeth Meriwether titled "Friends with Benefits". The title was changed to avoid confusion with a different film with a similar premise that opened on July 22, 2011. The Paramount Pictures film was first announced in March 2010 as an untitled project. Actors Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman were cast in the lead roles, and Paramount anticipated a release date of , 2011. Reitman said of casual sex, "I noticed from my own kids that with this generation in particular, young people find it easier to have a sexual relationship than an emotional one. That is how the sexes deal with each other today." Principal photography began in May 2010. By November 2010, the film was titled "No Strings Attached" with a new release date of , 2011.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Though the timing was coincidental, Portman welcomed the chance to portray a dissimilar character to her role in "Black Swan".


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: No Strings Attached: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the film. It was released on February 15, 2011, by Lakeshore Records.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: "No Strings Attached" had its world premiere on , 2011, at the Fox Village Theater in Los Angeles, California. The film was released in in the United States and Canada on , 2011. Its target demographic was women between 17 and 24 years old, and its primary competition was "The Dilemma". Interest tracking reflected the target demographic's gaining interest in the film leading up to its release, and tracking also revealed "good early awareness" from Hispanic audiences. The studio predicted for the film to gross in the "mid-to-high teens" millions in its opening weekend, similar to past romantic comedies rated "R" (restricted to 17 years old and up) by the Motion Picture Association of America. With "No Strings Attached" as the only wide opener in the United States and Canada, it was uncertain if it would rank first at the box office above "The Green Hornet", which opened the previous weekend in first place with .


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Ultimately, "No Strings Attached" beat "The Green Hornet" with an opening weekend gross of . 70% of the audience were women. According to CinemaScore, audiences under the age of 25 gave the film an "A−" grade while audiences over the age of 25 gave it a "B" grade. Future grosses were expected to be dependent on the younger demographic.


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: "No Strings Attached" received mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 48%, based on 173 reviews, with an average rating of 5.30/10. The site's consensus reads: "It benefits from the presence of Natalie Portman and director Ivan Reitman's steady hand, but "No Strings Attached" doesn't have the courage or conviction to follow through on its ribald premise." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 50 out of 100, based on 36 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: Critic David Edelstein described "No Strings Attached" as a film with "a supposedly feminist veneer...(that) never makes the case for Emma's point of view. It's almost a feminist backlash movie, and it didn't have to be. There are plenty of reasons for brilliant young women, especially with the stress of a medical career, to approach time- and emotion-consuming relationships warily." He expressed disappointment on overuse of stock characters, as well as Reitman's "heavy-handed" direction and a story that is ultimately "corny and contrived and conservative." A. O. Scott called the film "not entirely terrible...high praise indeed, given that this is a film aspiring to match the achievement of "27 Dresses", "When in Rome", and "Leap Year""; according to Scott, the film is ""Love & Other Drugs" without the disease", a film whose pleasures "are to be found in the brisk, easy humor of some of Ms. Meriwether's dialogue and in the talented people scattered around Ms. Portman and Mr. Kutcher like fresh herbs strewn on a serving of overcooked fish." Scott considered "the film's great squandered opportunity—and also the source of some of its best comic moments—is that Ms. Gerwig and Mindy Kaling in effect share the role of Emma’s zany sidekick. How can this be? Why are these two entirely original and of-the-moment performers marginal players in this agreeable, lackluster picture and not stars of the year’s greatest girl-bromance?... To imagine Ms. Kaling and Ms. Gerwig in a remake of "Thelma and Louise" or the "Wedding Crashers" is to experience an equal measure of frustration and hope. Why can’t we have a few movies like that and not quite so many like this?"


title: No Strings Attached (film)

text: British newspaper "The Telegraph" named "No Strings Attached" one of the ten worst films of 2011, saying "No Strings Attached is nominally a raunchy romantic comedy, but Natalie Portman betrays so little indication of enjoying herself you’d be forgiven for thinking we were watching deleted scenes from "Black Swan"."


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The economy of Belarus is an upper-middle income mixed economy. As a post-Soviet transition economy, Belarus rejected most privatisation efforts in favour of retaining centralised political and economic controls by the state. The highly centralised Belarusian economy emphasises full employment and a dominant public sector. It can be described as a welfare state.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus is the world's 72nd-largest economy by GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which in 2019 stood at $195 billion, or $20,900 per capita.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: , Belarus ranks 53rd from 189 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index, and appeared in the group of states with "very high development". With an efficient health system, it has a very low infant-mortality rate of 2.9 (compared to 6.6 in Russia or 3.7 in the United Kingdom). The rate of doctors per capita is 40.7 per 10,000 inhabitants (the figure is 26.7 in Romania, 32 in Finland, 41.9 in Sweden) and the literacy rate is estimated at 99%. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the Gini coefficient (inequality indicator) is one of the lowest in Europe.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Before the October Revolution, Belarus was a relatively backward and underdeveloped country, heavily reliant on agriculture and with rural overpopulation. Belarus was absolutely devastated by the Second World War, it suffered the loss of about a quarter of its population and immense destruction of infrastructure. In the post-war years, Belarus industrialised and became an important trade hub between the Soviet Union and Europe. Manufacturing became a pillar of its economy emphasising tractors, heavy trucks, oil processing, metal-cutting lathes, synthetic fibres, TV sets, semi-conductors and microchips. In the 1980s, more than half of the industrial personnel of Belarus worked for enterprises with over 500 employees. Among the Soviet republics, it had an unusually high export rate of its products, about 80%, and was the most technologically advanced. Because of its role as a producer of products made from raw materials imported from the Soviet Union, Belarus was called "the Soviet assembly shop."


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and under Lukashenko's leadership, Belarus has maintained government control over key industries and eschewed the large-scale privatizations seen in other former Soviet republics.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The period between 1996 and 2000 was also characterised by significant financial distress, in particular in 1998 and 1999 as a result of the financial and economic crisis in Russia. This resulted primarily in a sharp increase in prices and the devaluation of the national currency, a decline in trade with Russia and other CIS countries, growth in inter-enterprise arrears, and overall deterioration of the country's balance of payments. Extreme tension within the foreign exchange market was the key factor that destabilized the economy in 1998 and 1999. In 1999, consumer prices grew by 294%.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Between 2001 and 2005, the national economy demonstrated steady and dynamic growth. The GDP grew at an average rate of 7.4 percent, peaking in 2005 at 9.2 percent. This growth was mainly a result of the performance of the industrial sector, which grew on average more than 8.7 percent per year, with a high of 10.4 percent in 2005. Potatoes, flax, hemp, sugarbeets, rye, oats, and wheat are the chief agricultural products. Dairy and beef cattle, pigs, and chickens are raised. Belarus has only small reserves of petroleum and natural gas and imports most of its oil and gas from Russia. The main branches of industry produce tractors and trucks, earth movers for use in construction and mining, metal-cutting machine tools, agricultural equipment, motorcycles, chemicals, fertilizer, textiles, and consumer goods. The chief trading partners are Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The Belarus GDP grew 9.9% in 2006. In the first quarter of 2007, GDP grew 8.2%. GDP further grew in 2008 by 10%.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Analysis of foreign direct investment to Belarus between 2002 and 2007 shows that nearly 80% of FDI was geared into the service sector, while industrial concerns accounted for 20%. Agricultural FDI was off-the-charts paltry.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Shortly before the 2010 presidential election, average salaries in Belarus were increased by the government to $500 per month. It is believed to be one of the main reasons for the crisis in 2011. Other reasons for the crisis were strong governmental control in the economy, a discount rate lower than inflation and the budget deficit.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In January 2011, Belarusians started to convert their savings from Belarusian rubles to dollars and euros. The situation was influenced by rumors of possible devaluation of the ruble. Exchange rates in Belarus are centralized by the government-controlled National Bank of Belarus. The National Bank was forced to spend $1 billion of the foreign reserves to balance the supply and demand of currency On March 22, it stopped the support to banks. The National Bank also didn't change the exchange rate significantly (3,000 BYR per dollar on January 1 and 3,045 BYR on April 1), so the increased demand of dollars and euro exhausted cash reserves of banks. In April and May 2011, many people had to wait for several days in queues to buy dollars in the exchange booths. In April, Belarusian banks were given informal permission of government to increase the exchange rate to 4,000 BYR for 1 dollar (later 4,500 BYR), but few people started to sell dollars and euro. On May 24, the ruble was officially devalued by 36% (from 3,155 to 4,931 BYR per 1 dollar). But the shortage of the currency retained. As a result of the shortage, a black market of currency was created. In July 2011, the black market exchange rate was nearly 6,350 BYR per 1 dollar, in August, it reached 9,000 BYR per 1 dollar.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In September 2011, National Bank of Belarus introduced a free exchange market session to determine a market value of the ruble. From November 2011 to March 2012, the exchange rate was per dollar, but it started to rise in April 2012 and reached per dollar on 10 July 2012.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Recovery from the crisis was difficult due to isolation of the Belarusian government from the EU and US.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The crisis strongly affected the economy. Inflation reached 108.7% in 2011. Average salary (counted in dollars) decreased from $530 in December 2010 to $330 in May 2011. In May 2012, the average salary reached $436 (3,559,600 with 8,165 per dollar). Refinancing rate (analogue of discount rate) rose from 10.5% in December 2010 to 45% in December 2011 and fell to 32% in June 2012. In November 2011, interest rates of several banks reached 120% in rubles.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In April 2015, Alexander Lukashenko signed a bill "On preventing freeloading practices" which introduced a fine on unemployed population. This law obliges all citizens who are paying direct taxes less than 183 days every year to pay a fee in the size of 20 basic amounts (BYN 360 ≈ $250). Mass media compared the bill with a struggle with ""тунеядцы"", or social parasites, in Soviet Union. Several groups of people are exempt from paying the fee: parents with a child under 7 years old, disabled persons, students, etc. Avoiding of payment is going to be punished by fines, administrative arrests and compulsory public works.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The Belarusian economy was relatively less impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to relatively light and delayed Covid-19 lockdown and quarantine measures due to Lukashenko's trivialization of the pandemic. Professor Victor Sayevich said in September 2020 that Belarus suffered a decline in economic figures of between 1.5% and 2%, whereas European countries sustained drops around 12%. Contemporaneous political unrest and increased state repression also negatively impacted the economy.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The Belarusian labour market is highly regulated. Important elements of the central-planning system are still in place. In principle, the decision to determine wages is left to firms, but the Government can affect the structure of wages through the so-called tariff system, a type of centrally determined wage grid. The tariff system is binding in the budget sector, including enterprises and organisations mainly financed and subsidised within the state and/or the local budgets. The private (so-called self-financing sector) sector, representing, as already noted, only a small share of employment, has little autonomy.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Official unemployment rate is lower than 1%. Methods of International Labour Organization (international standard) also include job-seekers who are not registered officially. Many unemployed people in Belarus are trying to avoid registration, because of obligatory public works.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: There are no official statistics of unemployment using the ILO methods. 6.1% Belarusians of economically active population called themselves unemployed during the 2009 census. In July 2012, World Bank concluded that the real unemployment rate is seven times higher than the official rate. Former labour minister Alexander Sosnov estimates that the unemployment rate is 10% of the economically active population According to "Charter 97" estimate, the real unemployment in Belarus may be 15% or even 24%.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 2021, International Trade Union Confederation listed Belarus among top 10 worst countries for working people in the world (Global Rights Index). Reasons for worsening of the situation included state repression of independent union activity, arbitrary arrests, and severe cases of limited or no access to justice.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: During the 2020 Belarusian protests, several companies attempted to start a strike and were met with brutal repression. In 2021, three employees of Byelorussian Steel Works were imprisoned for attempting to organize a strike.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In the Soviet period, Belarus specialized mainly in machine building and instrument building (especially tractors, large trucks, machine tools, and automation equipment), in computers and electronics industry and in agricultural production. In 1992, industry in Belarus accounted for approximately 38 percent of GDP, down from 51 percent in 1991. This figure reflects a decline in the availability of imported inputs (especially crude oil and deliveries from Russia), a drop in investments, and decreased demand from Belarus's traditional export markets among the former Soviet republics. Belarus's economy was also affected by decreased demand for military equipment, traditionally an important sector.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 1994, gross industrial output declined by 19 percent. At the beginning of 1995, every industrial sector had decreased output, including fuel and energy extracting (down by 27 percent); chemical and oil refining (18 percent); ferrous metallurgy (13 percent); machine building and metal working (17 percent); truck production (31 percent); tractor production (48 percent); light industry (33 percent); wood, paper, and pulp production (14 percent); construction materials (32 percent); and consumer goods (16 percent).


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 1996, a Free Economic Zone (FEZ) area was set up in Brest. The programme has been expanded to Minsk, Gomel, Vitebsk, Grodno, and Mogilev. As of 2020, more than 270 foreign organizations have benefited from the opportunity. Membership in a FEZ confers substantial benefits:


title: Economy of Belarus

text: As of 2013, some of Belarusian industry was inflicted with overproduction: its unsold goods stocks were estimated to be worth at least US$3.8 billion, including 20,000 unsold "Belarus"-brand tractors.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Land ownership is tightly regulated in Belarus. The Land Code and Presidential Decree 667 was issued in 2007, and follows strict guidelines according to its "targetted use". Approximately 90% of the land is dedicated by this means to agricultural or forestry use.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The cumulative decline of value-added reached 30 percent since 1991, and 15 percent since 1995. The share of agriculture in GDP declined by over 10-percentage point to 14 percent in 1997. This happened, irrespective to the president's economic strategy of self-sufficiency in food production in 2001. The decline in overall agriculture production partly could be attributed to unfavorable weather conditions (like floods), but declines in the harvests of potatoes, vegetables, and other crops that grow mostly in private plots were smaller than in produce grown by collective farms. Also, animal breeding has been in decline and it is concentrated in the state sector. Subsidization of agricultural sector in Belarus amounted to 1–2 percent of GDP in the form of direct government credits, advanced payments for the realization of state orders of major crops, at strongly negative interest rates. Additionally, a state budget fund, Agriculture Support Fund provides funds to compensate food producers for the costs of inputs (fertilizers and equipment) that amounted to another 1–2 percent of GDP in 1996–1997. Finally, the Central Bank of Belarus issued subsidized credits to the agriculture sector at an interest rate of half the refinance rate. However, in spite of the fact that state-owned and collective farms cultivate about 83 percent of agricultural land and benefited the most from the government subsidies, privately run farms and private plots produce more than 40 percent of gross output.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus can be divided into three agricultural regions: north (flax, fodder, grasses, and cattle), central (potatoes and pigs), and south (pastureland, hemp, and cattle). Belarus' cool climate and dense soil are well suited to fodder crops, which support herds of cattle and pigs, and temperate-zone crops (wheat, barley, oats, buckwheat, potatoes, flax, and sugar beets). Belarus' soils are generally fertile, especially in the river valleys, except in the southern marshy regions.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The greatest changes in agriculture in the first half of the 1990s were a decline in the amount of land under cultivation and a significant shift from livestock to crop production because crops had become a great deal more profitable than before. The sales price for crops generally increased more than production costs, while inputs for livestock (such as imported fodder) have increased in price beyond livestock sales prices.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The food processing industry in the country is led primarily by state concern Belgospischeprom and local municipal or regional owned production facilities.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The Orsha Linen Mill, which is a part of the Belarusian State Concern Bellegprom, processes from flax a number of linen fabrics, which necessitates "spinning, weaving, dyeing, mechanical, chemical softening, shrinkage and other textile processings." The linen mill was projected from 1928; the first factory was completed in 1930, the second in 1961 and the third in 1972. In 2008, the plant supplied 8% of the global market for linen fabrics, when 5,000 workers processed 25,000 tonnes of flax fiber.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The OJSC Slavianka plant in Babruisk houses modern textile equipment. The first trousers were commissioned in 1930, and today the firm produces of the most modern fabrics:


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus is a partner country of the EU INOGATE energy programme, which has four key topics: enhancing energy security, convergence of member state energy markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, supporting sustainable energy development, and attracting investment for energy projects of common and regional interest.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Beneficial terms of Russian oil and gas deliveries are behind a degree of economic dependence on Russia, Belarus' EAEU neighbour. According to some estimates, profits stemming from the low prices the country pays for Russian gas and oil -either consumed locally or processed and then re-exported- has occasionally accounted to up to 10% of national GDP. Besides, the main export market for the Belarusian agricultural and industrial produce lies in its Russian neighbour.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 2008, the Belarusian government decided to build a nuclear power plant. The help of Power Machines Company, Atomstroyexport, Rosatom and Atommash was enlisted to erect in Shulniki, Hrodna Voblast two pressurized water reactors of the AES-2006 type. The first unit was commissioned not long after December 2019.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The electric power sector of the country is amalgamated into the state-owned production union of the power sector “Belenergo”, which consists, apart from the central dispatch unit ODU, of six republican unitary regional power system enterprises (RUP-Oblenergo) and of entities of all kinds of ownership that carry out repair, maintenance and rehabilitation of facilities, research and development, service activities, and construction of new power sector facilities. RUP-Oblenergo are set up on particular territory (the regional power systems cover the relevant geographic administrative units of Belarus). RUP-Oblenergo are vertically integrated companies that perform generation, transmission, distribution and supply of electricity.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: All the activities related to prospecting, exploration and production of oil and associated gas in the country are carried out by the government-controlled concern “Belneftekhim” via its subsidiary, the unitary republic enterprise “Belorusneft”. Belorusneft exports about 50% of its oil output. Oil deposits on the territory of Belarus are located in a single oil and gas basin, the Pripyat depression, which covers approximately . About 50 out of total of 70 known fields are currently under production. Belarus' own production covers only about 30% of domestic oil consumption. For this reason, the Government is seeking ways to access oil and gas resources on the territory of the Russia and other countries, so that oil produced there could be delivered to refineries in Belarus and refined products would be sold domestically and on export markets.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus has two state-owned oil pipeline operating companies, both inherited from Glavtransneft in 1991. Gomel Oil Transportation Enterprise (RUP Gomeltransneft Druzhba) operates pipelines to the west and southwest directions, and Novopolotsk Oil Transportation Enterprise (NRUPTN “Druzhba”) for the north (Belarus-Lithuania) direction. All decisions concerning plans to increase capacity or build new capacity are taken by these two state-owned companies.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The activities of oil pipeline operating companies are regulated in accordance with the Law on Natural Monopolies, which explicitly prescribes a mechanism for their regulation by a state regulator. The Law on Natural Monopolies considers oil pipeline transport operators to be natural monopolies (Article 3). The Law also has certain requirements for transparency of their activities. Domestic oil transportation via pipelines is primarily regulated by the Law on Trunk Pipelines (2002), n 87–3. Article 27 of the Law regulates pipeline transport service in accordance with the capacity of the pipelines and actual throughput, based on the principle of equal access and non-discrimination.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Almost all of the natural gas used in Belarus is imported from Russia (about 99% of consumption). Domestic gas prices continue to be regulated by the government and in many instances cover only a fraction of the actual cost. Belarus has a well-developed gas transportation and gas distribution networks that ensure reliable supplies of natural gas to the consumers in the country. Beltransgaz, 100% state-owned joint stock company, owns and operates the system of main natural gas pipelines. In November 2002, the Belarusian parliament passed a law allowing for the privatization of Beltransgaz. An agreement was reached in 2006 with Gazprom about the acquisition of a 50% plus a share stake in Beltransgaz at a price of $2.5 billion.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus contains large, but undeveloped reserves of oil shale, estimated at 8.8 billion tonnes. As of 2010, Belarus seeks to start exploiting the reserves to reduce its dependence on the Russian hydrocarbons.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Slonim in the Grodno oblast has been the site of a paper mill since 1806. In 1995, the plant was renamed 'Slonim Cardboard and Paper Plant "Albertin"' and now produces cardboard, paper and tissue paper. Interpaper LLC produces much of Belarus' toilet paper, paper napkins and paper towels. Svetlogorsk Pulp&Board Mill produces paper bags and paper boxes.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The OJSC Spartak (paper mill) is located in Škloŭ and produces 20 kinds of paper. In 2017, the state-owned timber and paper industries concern, Bellesbumprom, put up for sale an 85.14% stake in Spartak for $7.393m.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Although not rich in minerals, Belarus has been found to have small deposits of iron ore, nonferrous metal ores, dolomite, potash (for fertilizer production), rock salt, phosphorites, refractory clay, molding sand, sand for glass production, and various building materials.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus also has deposits of industrial diamonds, titanium, copper ore, lead, mercury, bauxite, nickel, vanadium, and amber.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 2019, the country was the 2nd largest world producer of potash, and the 20th largest world producer of salt.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 1982, the Soviet Union decreed a steel works should be erected and the Byelorussian Steel Works was born two years later in order primarily to process local scrap steel. The major items of production consist of rebar, billet, channel, wire rod and cold heading wire rod. More than 50 alloyed and low-alloyed structural and carbon steel grades are produced by the plant. Two BSW shops produce steel cord, brass bead wire and hose wire.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Tsvetmet casts as many as 5,000 tons per annum of non-ferrous metal like copper, bronze and brass; while cast iron and steel parts as large as 8,000 kg are produced by the Universal-Lit company. The latter company is a part of Sergey Romanovich's Niva-Holding empire of integrated engineering solutions for the mining industry, which employs 2,100 people in Soligorsk, Minsk, Mogilev and Urechye across several subsidiary organizations.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus is home to several domestic automotive manufacturers such as BelAZ, which makes haulage and earthmoving equipment, MZKT, which makes heavy off-road vehicles, especially military trucks, Neman, which makes public transport buses, and MoAZ, which makes anything else industrial with wheels. Most vehicles manufactured in Belarus are commercial vehicles. Belarus has been seeing foreign automotive companies setting up partnerships and automotive factories in the country. Belarusian company MAZ and German company MAN have been in partnership since 1997. Belkommunmash makes electric urban transit vehicles.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The most recent partnership has been between American company General Motors and Belarusian company Unison SP ZAO to produce the Cadillac Escalade for Russian and CIS markets.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The plant was located in the city of Minsk between 1945 and 2018, but beginning in 2013, the government started to question the will of ATEK Holdings, who had managed the company for a number of years. ATEK was not fulfilling its investment programme, and eventually declared bankruptcy in 2017. The premises have become a sort of multi-tenant light industrial facility.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The government has been supportive of China's Belt and Road Initiative global infrastructure development strategy, leading to the inception in 2012 of the associated low-tax China–Belarus Industrial Park near Minsk National Airport planned to grow to by the 2060s. This is intended to be a manufacturing centre for the Eurasian Economic Union, with good transport links to the European Union.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The Belarusian chemical industry specializes in extracting value from the Russian oil products which transit through the country's pipelines to Germany and the west. Synthetic polymers like nylon, viscose, acrylic, polyester and polyethylene are produced from this stream as well as household chemical products. Oil refineries are located in Navapolacak (Naftan) and in Mazyr (Mozyr Oil Refinery).


title: Economy of Belarus

text: More than 500 kinds of chemical and petrochemical products are produced in Belarus by one firm: the Belneftekhim Concern, which is "among the largest and most strategically important" businesses in the country, and was created in 1997, unites most important chemical industries under one umbrella. It provides about 30 percent of all industrial output in Belarus and half of exports, which go to over 120 countries worldwide. More than 70 percent of petrochemical products are sold abroad.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Mineral fertilizers in the nitrogen phosphorus and potassium complex are produced by Belaruskali at the Starobin plant. Belarusian Grodno Azot is one of major players in global UAN fertilizer market.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: During Soviet times, Belarus’ radio-electronic industry was primarily oriented towards military applications. With the break-up of the Soviet military and the reduction in size of the new state's military establishments, the Belarus defense sector desperately needs to export to survive. Currently, under Belarusian law, its weapons exports are required to be carried out through one of four licensed weapons trade exporters: Belspetsvneshtekhnika, Beltekhexport, Belvneshpromservis and Belorusintorg. Certain other enterprises are permitted to sell products that they developed or control.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Six commercial banks, four formerly state-owned specialized banks Belagroprombank (agricultural sector), Promstroibank (industrial sector), Vneshekonombank (foreign trade), and Belarusbank (savings bank) and two universal banks (Priorbank and Belbusinessbank) dominated the banking system. These former state-owned specialized banks accounts for over 80 percent of the banking system outstanding loans, over 70 percent of domestic currency deposits, and all the NBB's refinancing credit. Many commercial banks are subject to direct and personal influence of the government since many officials at the ministerial level participate in chairing and managing banks. Commercial banks act as agents of the central bank distributing state financial resources. Therefore, also the Central Bank of Belarus fulfills mostly technical functions as the president and government are permanently interfering in the operation of the whole banking sector by decrees and resolutions.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Spirits and liquors are produced at the eight distilleries of the Joint Stock Company «Minsk kristall», which in turn is managed by the state-run Belgospishcheprom concern.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belyuvelirtorg, which was organized in 1948, is a chain of 64 jewelry stores present all over Belarus. The chain retails items made of gold, silver and natural stones as well as watches and the like. The chain produces precious metal decorative chain and its own line of rings, bracelets and earrings in its Gomel factory.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Information technology was a growing sector of Belarus economy. In the early 2000s, a propitious climate was created in the country: IT companies received a 0% rate on taxes and state subsidies, income tax for tech workers was also reduced. Launched in 2006, the Hi-Tech Park on the northeastern outskirts of Minsk was meant to become Belarusian Silicon Valley. In 2019 Lukashenko visited the HTP and called it his favorite project. By 2020, it hosted more than 750 start-ups and outsourcing companies that employed 58,000 workers. Overall, more than 100,000 citizens worked in IT.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In the last two decades Belarusian IT turned into a major tech hub in Europe, it made up 5.5% of the country's GDP and exported up to $2 billion (€1.69bn) worth of software.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The nation-wide opposition crackdown led by the authorities after 2020 protests resulted in significant decline of the previously booming IT sector because most tech specialists fled the country. Most Minsk-born start-ups relocated to other European countries, only in 2021 more than 15,000 IT workers left the country. More than 3000 tech workers had gone to Ukraine, 1800 employees of 30 companies with total investments of $76.8 million moved to Poland, at least 41 companies went to Lithuania. Such giants as Viber and Wargaming joined the exodus.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine provoked the second wave of IT brain drain in Belarus. According to Dev.by, it was even bigger than the first one. Almost 40% of companies faced refuses in new contracts due to sanctions, imposed on Belarus.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In August 2021 Lukashenko accused HTP companies of working 'for the USA for half prices'. On April 4, 2022, he commanded to 'deal with the tech workers' and return the IT sector into equal terms with other industries. In March 2022 taxes for IT companies were raised.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Because of its position, Belarus is actively visited with transit purposes: about 1,500,000 arrivals per year.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Russian people are greater part of the inbound tourist flow, but there is no proper number of their arrivals as the border between Russia and Belarus is crossed without any border control as a part of the Union State policy.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarusian health resorts and sanatoriums are popular with Russian tourists because of relatively lower prices. In 2010, Belarus had 334 sanatoria, health resorts and health-improving organizations and other specialized accommodation facilities.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The number of arrivals of foreign visitors to Belarus in 2000 was 2,029,800. Since 2005, this number fluctuates between 4,737,800 and 5,673,800. Private arrivals are the most popular purpose of the travel. In all these indicators, crossings of Russian-Belarusian border are excluded, though they are likely to be significant.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: As in 2010, the number of tourist departures abroad was 7,464,200. There were 783 travel agencies (in 2010) in the country and they serve small part of all arrivals of foreign citizens and departures of Belarusians. This also leads to the widespread opinion that tourism in Belarus is negligible. Most of the travel agencies are private, more than 50% of them are situated in Minsk.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The main partners in the field of international tourism are countries of the former Soviet Union, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Turkey, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Sweden, and the Netherlands.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The profit from foreign tourism amounts to less than US$200 per each tourist. The volume of tourism in total export makes up 1%. The most popular among the visitors are: Minsk City (40% of visitors), Grodno Oblast (32%), Brest Oblast (22%), Vitebsk Oblast (5%).


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The number of hotels has grown from 256 to 359 in 2010. The intensive construction of new hotels is organized in Minsk because of the planned Ice Hockey World Championships in 2014. But the average rate of use of the hotels does not exceed 40%.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: A World Heritage Committee session, held in Durban (South Africa) approved the addition of the Architectural, Residential and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh into the World Heritage List. The castle in Mir was also included in this list.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus became a member of ICSID in 1992 and UNCITRAL in 2004. As of 2009, there had been no cases involving Belarus in ICSID arbitration. As of June 2008, Belarus had concluded 54 Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs); of these BITs more than 20 were with first-world countries. As of April 2009, Belarus had signed Double Taxation Treaties (DTTs) with 61 countries. As of 2009, the corporate tax rate was 24%. In 2009, a flat tax rate of 12% was imposed on personal incomes, and the standard rate of VAT was 18%. Import and export duties are mostly ad valorem. An environmental tax is imposed on the release of contaminants and the extraction of natural resources. Belarus is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. Belarus accepted in 2001 the IMF Agreement that the foreign exchange rate be free of restrictions on payments and transfers. Residents of Belarus need a permit from the National Bank of Belarus to open bank accounts in foreign countries. As of 2009, the social insurance rate payable by the employer was 35%. In 2009, the average monthly wage was $500, and "a rigid wage determination process" was in place. The labour market, which is governed by the Republican Labour Arbitration body, is inflexible and strict limitations apply to severance and termination. The right to strike is allowed for all employees except those of the state, and succeeds on a two-thirds majority. Corporations which wish to hire a foreign labourer are subject to a permit process determined by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Entrepreneurship "is subject to prolific legislative activity" and "very high number of administrative controls", and although the country signed on to the UN Convention against Corruption in 1995, the Corruption Perception Index had Belarus ranked high in the league tables.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: Belarus has established ministries of energy, forestry, land reclamation, and water resources and state committees to deal with ecology and safety procedures in the nuclear power industry.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: The most serious environmental issue in Belarus results from the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant across the border in the Ukrainian SSR, had a devastating effect on Belarus. As a result of the radioactivity release, many villages were abandoned. About 70% of the nuclear fallout from the plant landed on Belarusian territory, and about 25% of that land is considered uninhabitable. Resettlement and medical costs were substantial and long-term. Government restrictions on residence and use of contaminated land are not strictly enforced.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: A number of state-owned Belarusian companies were sanctioned by the EU, USA, UK, Canada following 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2020 elections. In 2020 and 2021, the EU imposed sanctions on several companies, including MAZ, MZKT, BelAZ (automotive industry), Dana Holdings real estate company, trading companies Bremino Group, Sohra, Logex, Globalcastcom Management, NNK, and other companies. On 24 June 2021, the EU introduced the sectoral sanctions that affected petroleum and fertilizer production, tobacco industry, supply of dual-purpose equipment, and access to the EU financial markets by the Belarusian government. In 2007, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Belneftekhim concern and its subordinated companies. They were later suspended, but not cancelled. In 2021, USA renewed them and imposed new sanctions on several companies. In 2021, UK and Canada imposed similar sanctions on several companies.


title: Economy of Belarus

text: In 2020–2021, Belarusian authorities made different efforts to circumvent the Western sanctions. They also hid the statistics to prevent revealing the ways used to circumvent them and track their effects. In particular, access to data regarding production and exports of the sanctioned goods became restricted to public. In October 2021, Belstat started to hide data regarding exports of tractors and trucks. Overall classified exports in January–August 2021 is estimated at US$8.2 billion. In September 2021, Alexander Lukashenko mentioned minister of industry and vice prime minister as the people who organized the circumvention of sanctions. He also accused several workers of state factories of gathering information about the ways used to circumvent the sanctions, and he threatened them with imprisonment. 13 workers from Grodno Azot fertilizer factory, Naftan oil refinery, BMZ steel mill and Belarusian Railway were arrested by the Belarusian KGB in a possible connection with this statement. It was reported that some of them were accused of state treason. At least two of them were later released. In June 2021, Belorusneft was removed from subordination of Belneftekhim. This move was believed to be connected with the sanctions.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro (), originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The most populous municipality abutting Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River, Brattleboro is located about north of the Massachusetts state line, at the confluence of Vermont's West River and the Connecticut. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 12,184.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: There are satellite campuses of two colleges in Brattleboro: Community College of Vermont, and Vermont Technical College. Located in Brattleboro are the New England Center for Circus Arts, Vermont Jazz Center, and the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental health and addictions hospital.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: This place was called "Wantastiquet" by the Abenaki people, which meant "lost river", "river that leads to the west", or "river of the lonely way". The Abenaki would transit this area annually between their summer hunting grounds near Swanton, and their winter settlement near Northfield, Massachusetts. The specific Abenaki band who lived here and traversed this place were called "Sokoki", meaning "people who go their own way" or "people of the lonely way".


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: To defend the Massachusetts Bay Colony against Chief Gray Lock and others during Dummer's War, the Massachusetts General Court voted on December 27, 1723, to build a blockhouse and stockade on the Connecticut River near the site of what would later become known as Brattleboro. Lieutenant-governor William Dummer signed the measure, and construction of Fort Dummer began on February 3, 1724. It was completed before summer. On October 11 of that year, the French attacked the fort and killed some soldiers. In 1725, Dummer's War ended.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: By 1728, and in subsequent peaceful periods, the fort served as a trading post for commerce among the colonial settlers and the Indians. But violence flared up from time to time throughout the first half of the 18th century. In 1744, what became known as King George's War broke out, lasting until 1748. During this period a small body of British colonial troops were posted at the fort, but after 1750 this was considered unnecessary.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Although the area was originally part of the Equivalent Lands, the township became one of the New Hampshire grants, and was chartered (founded) as such on December 26, 1753, by Governor Benning Wentworth. It was named Brattleborough, after Colonel William Brattle, Jr. of Boston, a military officer, cleric, slaveholder as well as a principal proprietor. Ironically there is no record that Brattle ever visited the locality, and settlement activities remained tentative until after the 1763 Treaty of Paris, when France abandoned their claims to Vermont, part of the region which they had called New France.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Hostilities having ceased, Brattleboro developed quickly in peacetime, and soon was second to no other settlement in the state for business and wealth. In 1771, Stephen Greenleaf opened Vermont's first store in the east village, and in 1784, a post office was established. A bridge was built across the Connecticut River to Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1804.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: In 1834, the Brattleboro Retreat, then called the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, was established through a generous bequest by Anna Marsh of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In 1844, the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment was opened by Robert Wesselhoeft; this was the third "water cure" establishment in the country, utilizing waters from a spring near the current downtown fire station. Until the water cure closed in 1871, the town was widely known as a curative health resort.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Other industries began to appear in the town under the initiation of the businessman John Holbrook, who initiated firms like the Brattleboro Typographic Company. These businesses initiated a decade of very successful printing industry in the town.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Whetstone Falls, very close to where Brattleboro's Whetstone Brook flows into the Connecticut River, was a handy source of water power for watermills, initially a sawmill and a gristmill. By 1859, when the population had reached 3,816, Brattleboro had a woolen textile mill, a paper mill, a manufacturer of papermaking machinery, a factory making melodeons, two machine shops, a flour mill, a carriage factory, and four printing establishments. Connected by the Vermont & Massachusetts Railroad and the Vermont Valley Railroad, the town prospered as a regional center for trade in commodities including grain, lumber, turpentine, tallow and pork. In 1888, the spelling of the town's name was shortened to Brattleboro.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The Estey Organ company, the largest organ manufacturer in the United States, operated in Brattleboro for about a century beginning in 1852. The company's main factory was located southwest of downtown Brattleboro, on the south side of Whetstone Brook between Birge and Organ Streets. At its height, the complex had more than 20 buildings, many of which were interconnected by raised walkways and covered bridges. One of the buildings now houses the Estey Organ Museum. The entire surviving complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, both for its architecture, and for having been a major economic force in Brattleboro for many years.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: In 1871, T. P. James, "The Spirit Pen of Dickens", a printer by trade, moved to Brattleboro, where he took a job at The Vermont Farmer and Record. James claimed that the departed spirit of Charles Dickens had given him a communication during at a seance on Oak Street. According to James, Dickens' spirit conveyed that he had chosen James to write down the end of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", which Dickens had not completed before he died. Dickens' spirit also supposedly told James that it was fine if James made a profit from the book. The book was printed by the same company that owned the Springfield Union, which was the paper that published the first news about James' claims, as well as excerpts from the new chapters of the novel. Newspaper editors from papers around New England who had employed James denounced the entire affair as a well-planned advertising hoax. The book became a sensation, being reviewed in the New York Times and widely promoted in spiritualist magazines of the day. James published the novel on October 31, 1873, and reported that he sold 30,000 copies of it. James left Brattleboro in 1879, abandoning his third wife and moving to Watertown, Massachusetts, with Lizzie Plummer, a member of the wealthy Salisbury family with ties to Brattleboro's printing and paper making industries.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: British author Rudyard Kipling settled in Brattleboro after marrying a young Brattleboro woman, Carrie Balestier, in 1892. The couple built a home called Naulakha, just over the town line to the north in neighboring Dummerston. Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" and other works there. He also wrote about local life in the early 1890s: heavy snowfalls, ox-teams drawing sledges, and people in the small towns beset with what he called a "terrifying intimacy" about each other's lives. He recorded the death of men who had left, going to seek their fortunes in the cities or out west, and the consequent loneliness and depression in the lives of local women; the long length of the workday for farmers, even in winter, often for lack of help; and the abandonment of farms.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The first person ever to receive a U.S. Social Security benefit check, issued on January 31, 1940, was Ida May Fuller from Brattleboro.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: On May 12, 1950, auctioneer Emma Bailey held her first auction in Brattleboro, selling a rocking chair for $2.50. She was the first American woman auctioneer, and later became the first woman admitted to the National Auctioneers Association.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 32.5 square miles (84.0 km), of which 32.0 square miles (82.9 km) is land and 0.5 square mile (1.2 km, 1.42%) is water. Brattleboro is drained by the West River, Ames Hill Brook and Whetstone Brook. The town is in the Connecticut River Valley, and its eastern boundary (and the Vermont state line) is the western bank of the Connecticut River. Hills and mountains surround the town.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro experiences a humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfa") with cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. The town can experience snowfall as early as November and as late as April, and in the adjacent mountains and high country as late as May. Nor'easters often come with the potential of dumping a foot or more of snow on Brattleboro when they move through; such storms are not uncommon during the winter months. Summers are warm to hot and generally humid, with abundant sunshine and heavy showers and thunderstorms associated with passing cold fronts. Tornadoes are rare.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The record high is , set in 1955, and the record low is , set in 1958. In terms of average annual precipitation, May is typically the wettest month, and February is the driest. Brattleboro averages of snow annually.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 12,046 people, 5,364 households, and 2,880 families residing in the town. Almost all of the population is concentrated in two census-designated places identified in the town: Brattleboro and West Brattleboro. The results of recent censuses indicate very little change in the overall number of people living in the town. Despite this, Brattleboro remains the most populous town along Vermont's eastern border.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The population density of the town was 375.3 people per square mile (144.9/km). There were 5,686 housing units at an average density of 177.7 per square mile (68.6/km). The racial makeup of the town was 92.1% White, 1.9% Black or African American, 0.3% Native American, 2.2% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.6% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.7% of the population.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: There were 5,364 households, out of which 27.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.8% were married couples living together, 12.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 46.3% were non-families. 37.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.15 and the average family size was 2.84.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: In the town, the population was spread out, with 22.3% under the age of 18, 6.6% from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 25.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 79.9 males.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The median income for a household in the town was $31,997, and the median income for a family was $44,267. Males had a median income of $31,001 versus $25,329 for females. The per capita income for the town was $19,554. About 9.2% of families and 13.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.0% of those under age 18 and 9.2% of those age 65 or over.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Both a commercial and touristic gateway for the state of Vermont, Brattleboro is the first major town one encounters crossing northward by automobile from Massachusetts on Interstate 91, and is accessed via Vermont exits 1, 2, and 3 from that thoroughfare. It offers a mix of a rural atmosphere and urban amenities including a number of lodging establishments. Brattleboro also hosts art galleries, stores, and performance spaces, mostly located in the downtown area.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: In 2007, after meeting qualifying criteria, the local Selectboard passed a resolution designating Brattleboro a Fair Trade Town, becoming the second Fair Trade certified town in the nation after Media, Pennsylvania.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: C&S Wholesale Grocers, the northeast's largest regional food distributor, made its headquarters here until 2005, when they moved their administrative offices to Keene, New Hampshire; however, because of close proximity to Interstate 91, C&S still operates a large shipping and warehouse facility in Brattleboro near I-91's Exit 3.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Ehrmann Commonwealth Dairy is headquartered in Brattleboro and operates a dairy processing facility in the town that opened in 2011.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The town's densely populated center is located near Vermont's lowest elevation point in the Connecticut river valley. Because of the surrounding steep hills there is very little flat land, and many of its buildings and houses are situated on steep hillsides, necessarily closely bunched together. This concentrated topography and population density have helped to create a semi-urban, cosmopolitan atmosphere in the downtown.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Since the 1950s, additional construction and development have expanded outside the concentrated downtown area; in the west, south, and north of the township. The southeast quarter of the town, near to and abutting the riverbank, is where its population has historically been the densest, and is composed largely of one- or two-family houses, with apartment buildings such as "triple deckers" interspersed among them. Commercial and industrial operations are concentrated along the north-south Canal Street (Route 5) artery. The town's high school and the Regional Career Center are also located in this section, as is Fort Dummer State Park, which is named after the first European settlers' 1724 stockade. The original Fort's site, however, was flooded in the early 20th century by a flood-control and hydro-electric dam built just downstream in Vernon, Vermont. An historical marker is located near the Fort's now-underwater site, on the west bank of the Connecticut River on Vernon Road (VT Route 142), at the corner of Cotton Mill Hill.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The western section of town, built up around Vermont's east-west Route 9, was formally designated a village in 2005. It is mostly lower-density residential in character, and features the state's largest mobile home park and several planned housing developments and subdivisions. Away from the Route 9 conduit, other parts of western Brattleboro and some areas north of the West River have a decidedly rural character, with dirt roads, sparse housing, wooded Green Mountains foothills, and the last few farms left in the town following the 1970s' decline of the dairy industry. At its peak, the immediate Brattleboro area had over 170 farms; there are now less than a dozen remaining.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The section of Brattleboro north of the West River, formerly farmland, was mostly subdivided and developed during the 1960s and 1970s following the construction of Interstate 91, which runs north-south through the town. The area has little residential development and is dominated by larger commercial and industrial establishments and suburban-style shopping areas along Putney Road, including seven chain hotels and motels located within a short distance of each other.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro is also the headquarters of the Holstein/Friesian Cattle Association, which houses and maintains the worldwide registries for those two breeds.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro has a thriving arts community. It was listed in John Villani's book "The 100 Best Small Art Towns in America", in which it was ranked #9 among 'arts towns' with a population of 30,000 or less.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: On the first Friday of every month, an event known as "Gallery Walk" is held, during which galleries, artists, arts organizations, and stores display new art works or hold performances. Included in the organizations that participate are the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, the Hooker-Dunham Theater and Gallery, the In-Sight Photography Project, River Gallery School, Through the Music, and the Windham Art Gallery. Gallery Walk is a mid-1990s creation of, and continues to be sponsored by, the Arts Council of Windham County.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Other arts organizations in Brattleboro include the Brattleboro Music Center, the Vermont Theatre Company, the New England Youth Theater, the Brattleboro Women's Chorus, the New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA), the Vermont Performance Lab, and the Vermont Jazz Center.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The town operates and maintains the Gibson-Aiken Center, a large recreation and community activities facility, located downtown on Main Street, along with a number of parks and outdoor recreation centers, including Living Memorial Park, whose features include an outdoor swimming pool and a municipal skiing facility. There are bicycle lanes on Putney Road in the northern portion of town, on Guilford Street near Living Memorial Park, and on a short segment of Western Avenue in West Brattleboro. Open during the summer months, Fort Dummer State Park is named for, and located near, the original site of a Dummer's War-era stockade. The state park consists of 218 acres of protected forest, featuring hiking trails and a State campground, just south of the population center on wooded hills overlooking the Connecticut River.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro sees a substantial seasonal influx of recreational skiers and snowboarders, many of them bound for the resorts at nearby Mount Snow and Stratton, but it is also a winter sports destination in and of itself. The town played an important role in the development and popularization of the skiing industry as a winter sport, with pioneering Brattleboro native and Dartmouth College alumnus Fred Harris, founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club (1909–1910), also establishing the Brattleboro Outing Club (in 1922), contributing to the first North American use of motor-driven ski lifts, and building the Harris Hill olympic-scale ski jumping facility, the site of international competitions every February that still attract daring ski-jumping athletes from all over the world.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro employs a representative town meeting local government, wherein its citizens are represented at-large by a Selectboard of five members, and by several dozen town representatives elected from three municipal districts. The Selectboard, meeting on average every week or two, is considered part of the 'executive branch' of town government; its five members being elected to fill three one-year positions and two three-year positions. In turn, the Selectboard hires and supervises a full-time town manager. The town's three districts also each elect a representative to the Vermont State Legislature.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro is represented at the national level by U.S. senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, and by Congressman Peter Welch, who also represents Vermont's entire at-large federal congressional district.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro has a diverse mix of public and private primary, secondary and post-secondary schools and career centers. Sub-campuses of the Community College of Vermont and Vermont Technical College are located in Brattleboro; in the downtown's newly renovated Brooks House. Brattleboro is also home to the New England Academic Center of Union Institute and University, housed in the Marlboro College Graduate Center building.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: SIT Graduate Institute, formerly known as the School for International Training, is a private higher education institution in northern Brattleboro. An outgrowth of The Experiment in International Living, which was founded in 1932 in nearby Putney, Vermont, the Graduate Institute offers master's degrees in several internationally-oriented concentrations. Its students and faculty hail from all regions of the globe, giving Brattleboro a decidedly eclectic and international flair, and its notable alumni include native Vermonter and 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: There is one public middle school, the Brattleboro Area Middle School (BAMS), and one public high school, the Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS). The Windham Southeast Supervisory Union, which oversees the public school system in the southeastern corner of Windham County, also administers a dedicated vocational education unit, the Windham Regional Career Center. Oak Meadow, a K–12 homeschool curriculum provider and distance learning school is also based out of downtown Brattleboro.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The town is home to the "Brattleboro Reformer" (est. 1876 as the 'Windham County Democrat'), a daily newspaper with a weekday circulation of just over 10,000, and "The Commons", a non-profit community weekly newspaper. The "Parent Express", a community newspaper, circulates in Brattleboro; Keene, New Hampshire; and throughout Windham County, Vermont, and Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Local news is also carried in the "Keene Sentinel" and "Rutland Herald".


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro is not reached by terrestrial broadcast television due to the surrounding mountains, in addition to being just far enough away from major cities like Boston, Springfield, and Albany. However, it is considered part of the television market. Comcast is the major supplier of cable television programming for Brattleboro. Local stations offered on Comcast include most major Boston-area stations, as well as WMUR-TV (ABC) and WEKW-TV (NHPTV) from New Hampshire; WCAX-TV (CBS), WNNE (The CW) and WVTA (Vermont PBS) from the market, and WGBY-TV from Springfield, Massachusetts.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Vermont Route 9 runs from the New York border with Vermont, west of Bennington, traverses the southern backbone of the Green Mountains well west of Brattleboro, and eventually arrives in the heart of Brattleboro's downtown as High Street. Its other local names are The Molly Stark Trail, "Marlboro Road", "Western Avenue", "Main Street", and "Putney Road". It meets I-91 at a partial cloverleaf interchange (from where it is Exit 2 from the Interstate), then as it advances eastward into downtown, it overlaps U.S. Route 5 at the intersection of Main and High Streets. The road then runs north with "Main Street" into "Putney Road" then to the traffic circle at Interstate 91's Exit 3 (connected to that highway via a trumpet interchange westward from this roundabout), where it diverges from Route 5 and runs eastward into New Hampshire, becoming New Hampshire Route 9.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: U.S. Route 5 enters Brattleboro at its border with the town of Guilford and runs north-south, through downtown, eventually exiting Brattleboro at its northern border with the town of Dummerston. Route 5's local names are "Canal Street", "Main Street", and "Putney Road". Southbound, Route 5 detours along Park Place and part of Linden Street, as part of a one-way 'traffic triangle' at the north end of Main Street. Route 5, designated throughout Vermont as the Connecticut River Byway, is the only scenic byway in Vermont to receive national byway status.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Scenic Vermont Route 30 has its southern terminus in Brattleboro at the intersection of Park Place and Linden Street. From this point, it runs for about 12 miles on a very gently graded roadbed along the West River's southern bank, affording a stunning vista and connecting Brattleboro with picturesque New England towns and recreational areas elsewhere in Windham County and Vermont. Its wide riverside paved shoulder makes it a favorite cycling route. Route 30 exits Brattleboro at its border with Dummerston and continues northwest along the West River. Its local names within Brattleboro are "Linden Street" and "West River Road".


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Interstate 91, originating in Connecticut and terminating at the Canada–U.S. border, runs north-south through town, arcing westward around the town center. Its first three Vermont exits are in Brattleboro: Exit 1 serves the southern part of town, Exit 2 serves the western section of town connecting to local ski areas via Route 9, and Exit 3 serves the northern section of town and neighboring southwest New Hampshire. I-91's majestic twin-structure West River Bridge is, as of 2015, being rebuilt with a completely new design.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Vermont Route 119 begins at a 5-way intersection, four road directions and one parking lot entrance, with U.S. Route 5 and VT Route 142. Route 119's local name within Brattleboro is "Bridge Street". It continues east with an at-grade crossing of the New England Central Railroad just before crossing into New Hampshire over the Connecticut River, whose border lies just from the road's western end.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Vermont Route 142 begins at the same junction with Route 5 and Route 119 mentioned above, continuing southward, closely paralleling the New England Central Railroad for much of its length within town. Its local names are "Vernon Street" and "Vernon Road", as it continues southward into the town of Vernon and eventually into Massachusetts.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, operates its "Vermonter" service daily through Brattleboro, connecting the town by rail with Washington, D.C., and St. Albans, Vermont, and many stations in between. Brattleboro was recently part of a $70 million re-alignment of the "Vermonter"'s route to the old "Montrealer" route, restoring passenger rail service between Brattleboro and the western Massachusetts cities of Northampton and Greenfield. Recent upgrades to railroad tracks in Massachusetts and Connecticut, to the south, have significantly reduced rail travel time to New York and points south.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Southeast Vermont Transit, doing business as the MOOver and consisting of the former Current and Brattleboro BeeLine bus operations, operates 3 local bus routes around Brattleboro that also serve Guilford and Hinsdale, New Hampshire on weekdays and Saturday non-holidays. They also operated commuter bus routes between Brattleboro, Bellows Falls (weekdays) and Wilmington (everyday).


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The closest small-craft airports to Brattleboro are the Deerfield Valley Regional Airport in West Dover to the west, and Dillant-Hopkins Airport in Keene, New Hampshire, to the east. The closest airports (both within north of the town) offering regularly-scheduled domestic commercial flights include Lebanon Municipal Airport in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and the Rutland – Southern Vermont Regional Airport, close to Rutland. Both airports feature daily Cape Air flights to and from Boston and White Plains, New York. The closest airports with regularly-scheduled domestic and international flights are Bradley International Airport to the south, Manchester-Boston Regional Airport to the east, and Albany International Airport to the west, all of them less than two hours' driving distance from the town.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The town of Brattleboro is protected by the Brattleboro Fire Department, founded in 1831 and located on Elliot Street in the downtown business district. There is also a sub-station in West Brattleboro. The Department's current Chief is Michael Bucossi.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: The Windham County Sheriff's Department provides prisoner transport and serves civil documents across Brattleboro and the rest of Windham County.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Brattleboro's electricity is supplied by Green Mountain Power. Brattleboro's surface water supply is the Pleasant Valley Reservoir, which the Pleasant Valley Water Plant siphons through Brattleboro at a daily average of 1.0 to 1.5 million gallons per day. Also, backup water pumps are adjacent to West River Road just north of the Brattleboro Retreat.


title: Brattleboro, Vermont

text: Cable television in Brattleboro is provided by Comcast. Comcast and Consolidated Communications also provide the town with landline phone and high speed Internet service.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years between about 1955 and 1975.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magnetic material (usually a semi-hard ferrite) as transformer cores, where each wire threaded through the core serves as a transformer winding. Two or more wires pass through each core. Magnetic hysteresis allows each of the cores to "remember", or store a state.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Each core stores one bit of information. A core can be magnetized in either the clockwise or counter-clockwise direction. The value of the bit stored in a core is zero or one according to the direction of that core's magnetization. Electric current pulses in some of the wires through a core allow the direction of the magnetization in that core to be set in either direction, thus storing a one or a zero. Another wire through each core, the sense wire, is used to detect whether the core changed state.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The process of reading the core causes the core to be reset to a zero, thus erasing it. This is called "destructive readout". When not being read or written, the cores maintain the last value they had, even if the power is turned off. Therefore, they are a type of "non-volatile" memory.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Using smaller cores and wires, the memory density of core slowly increased, and by the late 1960s a density of about 32 kilobits per cubic foot (about 0.9 kilobits per litre) was typical. However, reaching this density required extremely careful manufacture, which was almost always carried out by hand in spite of repeated major efforts to automate the process. The cost declined over this period from about $1 per bit to about 1 cent per bit. The introduction of the first semiconductor memory chips in the late 1960s, which initially created static random-access memory (SRAM), began to erode the market for core memory. The first successful dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the Intel 1103, followed in 1970. Its availability in quantity at 1 cent per bit marked the beginning of the end for core memory.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Improvements in semiconductor manufacturing led to rapid increases in storage capacity and decreases in price per kilobyte, while the costs and specs of core memory changed little. Core memory was driven from the market gradually between 1973 and 1978.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Depending on how it was wired, core memory could be exceptionally reliable. Read-only core rope memory, for example, was used on the mission-critical Apollo Guidance Computer essential to NASA's successful Moon landings.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Although core memory is obsolete, computer memory is still sometimes called "core" even though it is made of semiconductors, particularly by people who had worked with machines having actual core memory. The files that result from saving the entire contents of memory to disk for inspection, which is nowadays commonly performed automatically when a major error occurs in a computer program, are still called "core dumps".


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The basic concept of using the square hysteresis loop of certain magnetic materials as a storage or switching device was known from the earliest days of computer development. Much of this knowledge had developed due to an understanding of transformers, which allowed amplification and switch-like performance when built using certain materials. The stable switching behavior was well known in the electrical engineering field, and its application in computer systems was immediate. For example, J. Presper Eckert and Jeffrey Chuan Chu had done some development work on the concept in 1945 at the Moore School during the ENIAC efforts.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Robotics pioneer George Devol filed a patent for the first static (non-moving) magnetic memory on 3 April 1946. Devol's magnetic memory was further refined via 5 additional patents and ultimately used in the first Industrial Robot. Frederick Viehe applied for various patents on the use of transformers for building digital logic circuits in place of relay logic beginning in 1947. A fully developed core system was patented in 1947, and later purchased by IBM in 1956. This development was little-known, however, and the mainstream development of core is normally associated with three independent teams.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Substantial work in the field was carried out by the Shanghai-born American physicists An Wang and Way-Dong Woo, who created the "pulse transfer controlling device" in 1949. The name referred to the way that the magnetic field of the cores could be used to control the switching of current; his patent focused on using cores to create delay-line or shift-register memory systems. Wang and Woo were working at Harvard University's Computation Laboratory at the time, and the university was not interested in promoting inventions created in their labs. Wang was able to patent the system on his own.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The MIT Project Whirlwind computer required a fast memory system for real-time aircraft tracking. At first, an array of Williams tubes—a storage system based on cathode ray tubes—was used, but proved temperamental and unreliable. Several researchers in the late 1940s conceived the idea of using magnetic cores for computer memory, but MIT computer engineer Jay Forrester received the principal patent for his invention of the coincident-current core memory that enabled the 3D storage of information. William Papian of Project Whirlwind cited one of these efforts, Harvard's "Static Magnetic Delay Line", in an internal memo. The first core memory of was installed on Whirlwind in the summer of 1953. Papian stated: "Magnetic-Core Storage has two big advantages: (1) greater reliability with a consequent reduction in maintenance time devoted to storage; (2) shorter access time (core access time is 9 microseconds: tube access time is approximately 25 microseconds) thus increasing the speed of computer operation."


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: In April 2011, Forrester recalled, "the Wang use of cores did not have any influence on my development of random-access memory. The Wang memory was expensive and complicated. As I recall, which may not be entirely correct, it used two cores per binary bit and was essentially a delay line that moved a bit forward. To the extent that I may have focused on it, the approach was not suitable for our purposes." He describes the invention and associated events, in 1975. Forrester has since observed, "It took us about seven years to convince the industry that random-access magnetic-core memory was the solution to a missing link in computer technology. Then we spent the following seven years in the patent courts convincing them that they had not all thought of it first."


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: A third developer involved in the early development of core was Jan A. Rajchman at RCA. A prolific inventor, Rajchman designed a unique core system using ferrite bands wrapped around thin metal tubes, building his first examples using a converted aspirin press in 1949. Rajchman later developed versions of the Williams tube and led development of the Selectron.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Two key inventions led to the development of magnetic core memory in 1951. The first, An Wang's, was the write-after-read cycle, which solved the problem of how to use a storage medium in which the act of reading erased the data read, enabling the construction of a serial, one-dimensional shift register (of 50 bits), using two cores to store a bit. A Wang core shift register is in the Revolution exhibit at the Computer History Museum. The second, Forrester's, was the coincident-current system, which enabled a small number of wires to control a large number of cores enabling 3D memory arrays of several million bits. The first use of core was in the Whirlwind computer, and Project Whirlwind's "most famous contribution was the random-access, magnetic core storage feature." Commercialization followed quickly. Magnetic core was used in peripherals of the ENIAC in 1953, the IBM 702 delivered in July 1955, and later in the 702 itself. The IBM 704 (1954) and the Ferranti Mercury (1957) used magnetic-core memory.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: It was during the early 1950s that Seeburg Corporation developed one of the first commercial applications of coincident-current core memory storage in the "Tormat" memory of its new range of jukeboxes, starting with the V200 developed in 1953 and released in 1955. Numerous uses in computing, telephony and industrial process control followed.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Wang's patent was not granted until 1955, and by that time magnetic-core memory was already in use. This started a long series of lawsuits, which eventually ended when IBM bought the patent outright from Wang for . Wang used the funds to greatly expand Wang Laboratories, which he had co-founded with Dr. Ge-Yao Chu, a schoolmate from China.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: MIT wanted to charge IBM $0.02 per bit royalty on core memory. In 1964, after years of legal wrangling, IBM paid MIT $13 million for rights to Forrester's patent—the largest patent settlement to that date.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: In 1953, tested but not-yet-strung cores cost each. As manufacturing volume increased, by 1970 IBM was producing 20 billion cores per year, and the price per core fell to . Core sizes shrank over the same period from around diameter in the 1950s to in 1966. The power required to flip the magnetization of one core is proportional to the volume, so this represents a drop in power consumption by a factor of 125.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The cost of complete core memory systems was dominated by the cost of stringing the wires through the cores. Forrester's coincident-current system required one of the wires to be run at 45 degrees to the cores, which proved difficult to wire by machine, so that core arrays had to be assembled under microscopes by workers with fine motor control.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: In 1956, a group at IBM filed for a patent on a machine to automatically thread the first few wires through each core. This machine held the full plane of cores in a "nest" and then pushed an array of hollow needles through the cores to guide the wires. Use of this machine reduced the time taken to thread the straight X and Y select lines from 25 hours to 12 minutes on a 128 by 128 core array.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Smaller cores made the use of hollow needles impractical, but there were numerous advances in semi-automatic core threading. Support nests with guide channels were developed. Cores were permanently bonded to a backing sheet "patch" that supported them during manufacture and later use. Threading needles were butt welded to the wires, so the needle and wire diameters were the same, and efforts were made to entirely eliminate the use of needles.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The most important change, from the point of view of automation, was the combination of the sense and inhibit wires, eliminating the need for a circuitous diagonal sense wire. With small changes in layout, this also allowed much tighter packing of the cores in each patch.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: By the early 1960s, the cost of core fell to the point that it became nearly universal as main memory, replacing both inexpensive low-performance drum memory and costly high-performance systems using vacuum tubes, and later discrete transistors as memory. The cost of core memory declined sharply over the lifetime of the technology: costs began at roughly per bit and dropped to roughly per bit. Core was replaced with integrated semiconductor RAM chips in the 1970s.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: An example of the scale, economics, and technology of core memory in the 1960s was the 256K 36-bit word (1.2 MiB) core memory unit installed on the PDP-6 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by 1967. This was considered "unimaginably huge" at the time, and nicknamed the "Moby Memory". It cost $380,000 ($0.04/bit) and was 69 inches wide, 50 inches tall, and 25 inches deep with its supporting circuitry (189 kilobits/cubic foot = 6.7 kilobits/litre). Its cycle time was 2.75 μs.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The term "core" comes from conventional transformers whose windings surround a magnetic core. In core memory, the wires pass once through any given core—they are single-turn devices. The properties of materials used for memory cores are dramatically different from those used in power transformers. The magnetic material for a core memory requires a high degree of magnetic remanence, the ability to stay highly magnetized, and a low coercivity so that less energy is required to change the magnetization direction. The core can take two states, encoding one bit. The core memory contents are retained even when the memory system is powered down (non-volatile memory). However, when the core is read, it is reset to a "zero" value. Circuits in the computer memory system then restore the information in an immediate re-write cycle.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The most common form of core memory, "X/Y line coincident-current", used for the main memory of a computer, consists of a large number of small toroidal ferrimagnetic ceramic ferrites ("cores") held together in a grid structure (organized as a "stack" of layers called "planes"), with wires woven through the holes in the cores' centers. In early systems there were four wires: "X", "Y", "Sense", and "Inhibit", but later cores combined the latter two wires into one "Sense/Inhibit" line. Each toroid stored one bit (0 or 1). One bit in each plane could be accessed in one cycle, so each machine word in an array of words was spread over a "stack" of planes. Each plane would manipulate one bit of a word in parallel, allowing the full word to be read or written in one cycle.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Core relies on the "square loop" properties of the ferrite material used to make the toroids. An electric current in a wire that passes through a core creates a magnetic field. Only a magnetic field greater than a certain intensity ("select") can cause the core to change its magnetic polarity. To select a memory location, one of the X and one of the Y lines are driven with half the current ("half-select") required to cause this change. Only the combined magnetic field generated where the X and Y lines cross (a logical AND function) is sufficient to change the state; other cores will see only half the needed field ("half-selected"), or none at all. By driving the current through the wires in a particular direction, the resulting induced field forces the selected core's magnetic flux to circulate in one direction or the other (clockwise or counterclockwise). One direction is a stored "1", while the other is a stored "0".


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The toroidal shape of a core is preferred since the magnetic path is closed, there are no magnetic poles and thus very little external flux. This allows the cores to be packed closely together without allowing their magnetic fields to interact. The alternating 45-degree positioning used in early core arrays was necessitated by the diagonal sense wires. With the elimination of these diagonal wires, tighter packing was possible.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: To read a bit of core memory, the circuitry tries to flip the bit to the polarity assigned to the 0 state, by driving the selected X and Y lines that intersect at that core.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The detection of such a pulse means that the bit had most recently contained a 1. Absence of the pulse means that the bit had contained a 0. The delay in sensing the voltage pulse is called the access time of the core memory.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: Following any such read, the bit contains a 0. This illustrates why a core memory access is called a "destructive read": Any operation that reads the contents of a core erases those contents, and they must immediately be recreated.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: To write a bit of core memory, the circuitry assumes there has been a read operation and the bit is in the 0 state.


title: Magnetic-core memory

text: The Sense wire is used only during the read, and the Inhibit wire is used only during the write. For this reason, later core systems combined the two into a single wire, and used circuitry in the memory controller to switch the function of the wire. However, when Sense wire crosses too many cores, the half select current can also induce a considerable voltage across the whole line due to the superposition of the voltage at each single core. This potential risk of "misread" limits the minimum number of the Sense wire. Increasing Sense wires requires more decode circuits.