Death is the end of a life in an organism. All biological and living activity of the living thing stop, including the mind and the senses. The usual signal for death in humans and many other animals is that the heart stops beating and cannot be restarted. This can be caused by many things. All living things have a limited lifespan, and all living things eventually die.

Living things that have died are normally described as being dead. Death of humans is often investigated for the cause, in case of crime (such as murder), accident or disease that may continue to kill other humans. About 150,000 people die every day around the world. About two thirds of these people die because of age. In addition to the physical body, some believe humans also have a soul and believe that the soul can continue without a body (afterlife), move into another body (reincarnation), or cease to exist (annihilationism). Religions have different beliefs about this issue. Many cultures have their own customs and rituals to respect the dead.

When people talk about things or events that lead to the death of a plant or animal, those things or events are usually described as being deadly, or fatal. In the case of diseases, they are described as terminal. Humans are no different from any other lifeform. Our bodies have an ability for self-repair, but that ability is limited. Finding the cause of death is a medical speciality called pathology. In medicine, death is when the heart stops beating for more than several minutes. There are special times in which people recover even though the heart has stopped for 30 minutes, such as near-drowning in very cold water. If machines are used to help the heart and lungs work, then the moment of death is more difficult to know.

Society and culture

Death is commonly a sad or unpleasant thing to people. It can make people think about their own death. People might miss or be sad for the person who has died. They might also be sad for the family and friends of the person who has died.

In any society, human death is surrounded by ritual - a wake or funeral is normal.  In some places it was common to eat the dead in a form of ritual cannibalism.  But this is no longer common, in part because disease like kuru can be passed this way. Human dead bodies are taboo in most societies and must be handled in special ways - for a combination of religious and hygiene reasons.  A human dead body must always be reported in law, to be sure it is disposed of properly. In 2021 the leading cause of death in the United States was heart disease followed by cancer and then COVID-19.

Dealing with dead bodies and their property

Finding the cause of any human death and stopping a similar death from happening to someone else are the main reasons people look into human morbidity or let dead bodies be cut open and looked at in an autopsy.  Some religions do not allow autopsies, because they feel the body is holy. Autopsies are usually required by the state if someone dies and people do not know why. The autopsy helps find out if someone killed the person on purpose, tried to hurt them, or if they died from a sickness.

To prepare for their own death, humans can write a last will and testament to be clear about who gets their property and possessions.  A person will sometimes also volunteer to be an organ donor. This might mean giving the whole body to medical research.  It can also save the lives of others by making organ transplants possible.

Religious views of death

For a long time, many people have been afraid of death and a lot of people have wondered about what may happen to people after they die.  This is one of the largest questions of philosophy and religion. Many people believe there is some form of afterlife.

Ancient rulers sometimes did insist not only that their own bodies, and much property, but even their servants and relatives be destroyed at their funeral.

Christianity has a special focus on death because of the state killing of Jesus Christ by the Romans.  In Islam this is thought to demonstrate the injustice of human systems of dealing out death, and the ability of the best people to overcome it and even forgive it.  In Christianity itself it is thought to prove that Jesus himself was really God and so could lose his body and still have the power of resurrection. In Buddhism reincarnation is believed to occur. Reincarnation is an idea taken from Hinduism.

Confucianism advises respect for parents and forms of ancestor worship to respect both dead and living ancestors.

Rituals surrounding death

Every ethical tradition including the medical view of the body has some ritual surrounding death.  Often these excuse behaviours that might be hated if they did not have the ritual.  For instance, one may say that organ transplant is like cannibalism.

Very much of what happens at a human death is ritual.  People who wish theirs to be dealt with a certain way, and who wish a particular treatment like cremation of their body, should decide in advance and set up the necessary payments and agreements.  This makes it much easier for their family after they die, since there is no longer the ability to clearly communicate the wish.

For the same reason, saying goodbye is important.  Most of the stress of death seems to come for loved ones who "did not have a chance to say goodbye".

Maybe it is to relieve this stress that rituals are created, and to bring together those that knew someone so that the personal experience a person can no longer communicate for themselves, can be exchanged by others.

Some ritual, such as seances, claim to allow people to speak to the dead. This is not claimed to be very reliable, both by scientists and even by those who do them very often.

Preparing for death

Aside from wills, goodbyes, organ donations and funerals, there is important personal experience to decide to pass on, or not, when someone knows they may soon die.  Palliative care focuses on basic decisions people make when they are very close to the end of their lives, and it ensures someone is always available to talk to them.  It is a replacement for heroic medical intervention that may keep them physically alive but with no quality of life.  Human psychology must prepare for death if it is anything other than a quick surprise:

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote that there were several stages in dying, of which denial was the first, and acceptance was the last.  Recording one's life is often something people with acceptance will do to leave a memoir or a full autobiography:

Because events leave living memory, and may only be part of oral tradition, there are projects to record everything that people remember about World War I and the Shoah.  The first of these was to record everything remembered about the U.S. Civil War.  This discipline has changed history since we have so many more first person accounts of the times, and made social history much more standard.

Other terms for death
There are other terms for death. Examples are, "to pass away", "to go to a better place", "to buy the farm" (generally used in the military), "to leave the earth", "big sleep", and "to kick the bucket". the term gone may also be a term for describing death. for example: if a person has died, they are also said to be gone, as in gone to a better place or no longer here.

Unnatural causes of death
Old age and illness are not the only things that can end a person's life. People make other people die. This is called killing or murder. Three famous murders are John Wilkes Booth killing Abraham Lincoln, James Earl Ray killing Martin Luther King Jr. and Lee Harvey Oswald killing the President of the United States John F. Kennedy. People can also die by accidents resulting in terminal trauma, hypothermia, starvation, suicide and dehydration.

References

Related pages
Funeral
Death (personification)
Will (law)
Basic English 850 words

Death


A megabyte (MB) is a large number used when talking about hard drives or computer memory. One megabyte is 1 million bytes or 1 thousand kilobytes.

Until December 1998, when the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) first defined a mebibyte as 220, or 1,048,576 bytes, megabyte also meant either 1,048,576 bytes, or 1,024,000 bytes.  Casual computer users still often use megabyte to mean one of these numbers.

One thousand megabytes make one gigabyte.

This definition is part of the International System of Quantities.

Units of information

Megabyte


The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT; known as the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, TMHT when they were introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) are a fictional group of four mutant turtles who were taught how to be ninjas by a mutant rat named Master Splinter. The TMNT were created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird and made their comic book debut in 1984. In October 2009, Nickelodeon purchased the intellectual property rights from Mirage Studios.

History
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in an American comic book published by Mirage Studios in 1984 in Dover, New Hampshire. The concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with friend Peter Laird. Using money from a tax refund, together with a loan from Eastman's uncle, the young artists self-published a single-issue comic intended to parody four of the most popular comics of the early 1980s: Marvel Comics' Daredevil and New Mutants, Dave Sim's Cerebus, and Frank Miller's Ronin. The TMNT comic series has been published in various appearances by many comic book companies since 1984.

The Turtles started their rise to mainstream success when a licensing agent, Mark Freedman, sought out Eastman and Laird to propose wider merchandising opportunities for the franchise. In 1986, Dark Horse Miniatures produced a set of 15 mm lead figurines. In January 1987, Eastman and Laird visited the offices of Playmates Toys Inc, a small California toy company that wanted to expand into the action figure market. Development was undertaken by a creative team of companies and individuals: Jerry Sachs, ad man of Sachs-Finley Agency, brought together the animators at Murakami-Wolf-Swenson headed by Fred Wolf. Wolf and his team combined concepts and ideas with the Playmates marketing crew, headed by Karl Aaronian, VP of sales Richard Sallis and President of Playmates Bill Carlson.

Aaronian brought on several designers, and concepteur and writer John C. Schulte and worked out the simple backstory that would live on toy packaging for the entire run of the product and show. Sachs called the high-concept pitch "Green Against Brick". The sense of humor was honed with the collaboration of the MWS animation firm's writers. Playmates and their team essentially served as associate producers and contributing writers to the miniseries that was first launched to sell-in the toy action figures. Phrases like "Heroes in a Half Shell" and many of the comical catch phrases and battle slogans ("Turtle Power!") came from the writing and conceptualization of this creative team. As the series developed, veteran writer Jack Mendelsohn came on board as both a story editor and scriptwriter. David Wise, Michael Charles Hill, and Michael Reaves wrote most of the scripts.

The miniseries was repeated three times before it found an audience. Once the product started selling, the show got syndicated and picked up and backed by Group W, which funded the next round of animation. The show then went network, on CBS. Accompanied by the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 TV series, and the subsequent action figure line, the TMNT were soon catapulted into pop culture history. At the height of the frenzy, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Turtles' likenesses could be found on a wide range of children's merchandise, from Pez dispensers to skateboards, breakfast cereal, video games, school supplies, linens, towels, cameras, and even toy shaving kits.

While the animated TV series, which lasted for 10 seasons until 1996, was more light-hearted, the comic book series continued in a much darker tone. In 1990 a live-action feature film was released, with the turtles and Splinter being portrayed by actors in partially animatronic suits created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. The film became one of the most successful independent films, and made two sequels, as well as inspiring a 3D animated film set in the same continuity, which was released in 2007 under the title TMNT. After the end of the cartoon series, a live action series in the vein of the films was created in 1997 in collaboration with Saban Entertainment. The series was called Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and introduced a fifth, female turtle called Venus De Milo, but was very unsuccessful and was canceled after one season.

The property lay inactive until in 2003 a new animated TV series also entitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began to air on Fox Box (4Kids TV). The series storyline was much closer to the original Mirage comic book series, but was still less violent. It lasted for 7 seasons and 156 episodes, ending in February 2009.

On October 21, 2009, it was announced that cable channel Nickelodeon (a subsidiary of Viacom) had bought all of Mirage's rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property. Mirage retains the rights to publish 18 issues a year, though the future involvement of Mirage with the Turtles and the future of Mirage Studios itself is unknown. Nickelodeon has developed a new CGI-animated TMNT television series and will partner with fellow Viacom company Paramount Pictures to bring a new TMNT movie to theaters. The TV show premiered on Nickelodeon on September 29, 2012. However, in June 2012, Paramount shut down their planned production due to script issues, pushing their release date out until May 2014.

Background information
The turtles are named after famous artists from the Renaissance period. Their names are Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. They live underground in a sewer under Manhattan, and try to keep themselves hidden from people mankind in general, fearing humanity would never understand. While helping their friends, they often end up in trouble fighting crime and villan. Their enemies may vary from inner town street gangs to extraterrestrials. There are a few humans who know about them, a woman named April O'Neil and a man named Casey Jones, and some other people, depending on version. Some versions also use Casey Jones' grandmother's farmhouse in Northampton in Massachussetts as a hangout for the turtles.

Splinter's origin differs between versions. In some versions (Mirage, 2003, movies), he was originally a pet rat of Hamato Yoshi, ending up mutated. In other versions (1987 carton, Archie and the 2012 cartoon), he was originally a man, Hamato Yoshi, who ended up accidentally touching the ooze, and turned into a humanoid rat.

In the 1987 cartoon, their main antagonists are a Japanese ninjutsu master, Shredder (Oroku Saki), an extraterrestrial called Krang, and two mutant punks, Bebop and Rocksteady, while in the 1984 Mirage comics, Shredder ends up killed by the turtles in the first issue. Krang's appearance is inspired by the Utroms, an extraterrestrial race in the Mirage. The Utroms, however, aren't villains.

Characters

Turtles
 Leonardo (Leo) – The leader of the group. Leonardo wears a blue mask. He uses two, long and razor-sharp katanas as weapons. They can slice through anything solid. He is the oldest of the four. Leonardo was named after Leonardo da Vinci.
 Michelangelo (Mike or Mikey) – The jokester of the group. Michelangelo wears an orange mask. He uses a pair of nunchucks. He is the youngest of the four Turtles, and often provides the comic relief. He usually speaks in a Southern Californian accent. He is named after the Italian artist Michelangelo.
 Donatello (Don or Donnie) – The scientist and genius of the group. Donatello wears a purple mask. He uses a bo staff. He is the less violent turtle, preferring to use his knowledge to solve problems. He is named after the Italian artist Donatello.
 Raphael (Raph) – The rebel of the group. Raphael wears a dark red mask. He uses a pair of sais as weapons. He speaks in a Brooklyn accent. He is named after the Italian painter Raphael.

Others
 Splinter – The Turtles' teacher (sensei) and adoptive father. Splinter is a Japanese mutant rat. He learned the ways of ninjutsu from his owner and master, Hamato Yoshi. In the 1987 TV series, Archie Comics series and the 2012 TV series, Splinter was Hamato Yoshi mutated into a human-like rat instead of being just Yoshi's pet.
 April O'Neil – A former assistant to the scientist Baxter Stockman. April is the brave human friend of the Turtles. April first met the Turtles when they saved her from Baxter's Mouser robots. She goes on many of the Turtles' adventures and helps them by doing the work in public that the Turtles cannot. In the 1987 TV series, Archie Comics series and the three movies after it, April was a television news reporter. In the 2012 cartoon series, April is a teenager who is rescued by the Turtles and later is given some basic training in being a ninja by Splinter.
 Casey Jones – A vigilante who has become one of the Turtles' closest allies. He is also the love interest to April. Casey first met the Turtles after having a fight with Raphael. Casey fights crime with a mix of sporting goods (baseball bats, golf clubs, hockey sticks, cricket bats) while wearing a hockey mask to hide his identity.
 The Shredder – A villainous ninjutsu master called Oroku Saki. He is the leader of the Foot Clan. In every version of the TMNT series, he has been the main enemy of Splinter and the Turtles. Shredder prefers to use his armor instead of weapons in some versions.
 Karai – A female high-ranking member of the Foot Clan. She has appeared in several different TMNT comics, cartoons and movies, as well as in multiple video games. In some versions of the character, she is closely related to the Shredder as his granddaughter or adopted daughter.

First appearance
They first appeared in a comic book which was made in 1984. In 1987, an animated television show was made, it was extremely popular and ran until 1996.

Merchandise
There were many items based on the show including food, video games and toys. Starting in 1990, three live-action movies were made. In 1997, there was a live-action television series called "Ninja Turtles: The Mutation", which was not very successful. In 2003, a new animated series based more on the original comic book than the other series and an animated movie came out in 2007. Finally, the 2003 season came to an end, and a new series, the "Back to the Sewers" aired in late 2008-early 2009.

In September 2012 another cartoon series began. It takes inspirations from both the Mirage comics, and the 1987 cartoon series. Michael Bay will be producing a reboot of the film coming out on August 8, 2014. The film was directed by Jonathan Liebesman.

References

Other websites

1984 establishments
American animated television series
British comic books
Fictional characters introduced in 1984
Fictional turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


Bourgeoisie  means a social class of people who own the means of production, making them in the upper or merchant class. Hence, all employers are bourgeoisie. Their status or power comes from employment, education, assets, or wealth and not from aristocratic (political) origin, as a lowly café or factory owner is bourgeoisie.
The term is widely used in many non-English speaking countries as an approximate equivalent of middle class.

As the bourgeoisie are not its opposing counterpart proletariat, they don't have to be a labourer doing menial work for money. And if they do any work that gets them money, then it's only because of the many proletariat people beneath them, who generated their wealth through their labour, of which the higher up bourgeoisie person took a cut (commission).

History
Bourgeoisie is a French word that was borrowed directly into English in the sense that is explained above.
The French word bourgeois comes from the Old French word burgeis, meaning "an inhabitant of a town". (cf. Middle English burgeis, Middle Dutch burgher and German Bürger). The Old French word burgeis comes from bourg, meaning a market town or medieval village, itself derived from Late Latin burgus, meaning "fortress"

Related pages
 French Revolution
 Elite
 Aristocracy
 Anarchism
 Capitalism
 Leninism
 Marxism

Notes

References
Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 2: The Politics of Social Classes. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
Ralph Miliband, Class and class power in contemporary capitalism, in: Stanislaw Kozyr-Kowalski and Jacek Tittenbrun, On Social Differentiation. A Contribution to the Critique of Marxist Ideology, Part 2. Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 1992, pp. 7–62.
Ernest Mandel, Social differentiation in capitalist and postcapitalist societies, in: Stanislaw Kozyr-Kowalski and Jacek Tittenbrun, On Social Differentiation. A Contribution to the Critique of Marxist Ideology, Part 2. Poznan: Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 1992, pp. 63–91.
Erik Olin Wright et al., The Debate on Classes. London: Verso, 1989.
Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced societies, 1981.

Other websites

The Democratic State – A Critique of Bourgeois Sovereignty

Social classes

Bourgeoisie


A  Duke is someone part of nobility.  In monarchies, like the UK, the title has legal status, and is inherited in the male line.

The first English dukes were created by Edward III in 1337, when he gave his eldest son, Edward, the Black Prince, the title of Duke of Cornwall.

Dukes are formally referred to as 'The Duke of (place name)', and addressed as "Your Grace". On State occasions, dukes rank below Royal Dukes, and above Earls. This is called the order of precedence, because in procession to the opening Parliament, or on other state occasions, they walk in order of their rank.

The office or position of a duke is called a dukedom.

The wife of a duke is a Duchess. This is an honorary title, given for life to the lawfully wedded wife of a Duke. If she divorces and remarries a commoner, (person with no title) their children have no title. The children of a duke, on the other hand, do have honorary titles (so long as they are born in lawful wedlock). The eldest son may bear what is called a junior title which an ancestor was given before the dukedom was created. Other children would be called 'Lady' Jane (or other Christian name) and 'Lord' James (or other Christian name). Children use the family surname, not the Dukedom.

Historically, the land that is ruled by a duke is a duchy. The eldest son of a duke inherits the duchy when the duke dies. The word comes from the Latin word "dux", which means leader.

References

Peerages

Duke


CONMEBOL or CSF (CONfederación SudaMEricana de FútBOL in Spanish, CONfederação Sul-AMEricana de FuteBOL in Portuguese; South American Football Confederation) is the governing body of football in most of South America.

Three countries or territories on the South American mainland—the independent countries of Guyana and Suriname, plus the French overseas department of French Guiana—are not CONMEBOL members. Instead, for cultural and competitive reasons, they are members of CONCACAF, the governing body for the rest of the Americas.

Related pages
 Copa América, the CONMEBOL championship for men's national teams
 Copa Libertadores, the main CONMEBOL club championship
 Copa Sudamericana, second major CONMEBOL club championship

Other websites
 CONMEBOL homepage

Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol


A duel is a fight of the two people who have similar deadly weapons and have agreed to a set of rules before the fight takes place. The fight is usually about a matter of honor. The goal of a duel is not usually to kill the opponent but to restore the honor of the man who declared the duel. Duels are not official laws, they are carried out by individuals.

Duels were practiced from the 15th to 20th century in Western societies. For example, in 1804 in the United States the politicians Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had a duel. Since the American Civil War, all U.S. states have criminalized dueling, with punishments for dueling ranging from not being allowed to run for public office to the death penalty. Dueling was outlawed because groups against dueling formed and were successful. The dueling with the guns would usually only last 3 shots.

Rules
Duels could be fought with swords or pistols.

The person who felt offended or dishonored had to "challenge" his opponent to a duel. This was usually done by throwing his glove down in front of the opponent or by hitting him in the face with a glove. Each person had to then find a person to be his "second". The job of the seconds was to choose a place to duel and to decide whether or not the weapons were equal.

The person who declared the duel got to choose when the duel would be finished. Common endings to duels were:
until one person was injured, even if the injury was minor
until one person could no longer fight because he was too hurt
until one person was killed or injured so badly that he would soon die
duels with pistols could be ended after the first shot, even if no one was hit. Most pistol duels did not go longer than 3 shots

References

Scholarly Studies: US and Canada
 Clayton Cramer. Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform
 Joanne B. Freeman. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (2002)
 James Kelly. That Damn'd Thing Called Honour: Duelling in Ireland 1570-1860" (1995)
 Kevin McAleer. Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Germany (1994)
 Cecilia Morgan. "'In Search of the Phantom Misnamed Honour': Duelling in Upper Canada."  Canadian Historical Review1995 76(4): 529-562.
 Dick Steward, Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri (2000),
 Jack K. Williams. Dueling in the Old South: Vignettes of Social History (1980) (1999)
 Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Honor and Violence in the Old South (1986)
 Bertram Wyatt-Brown  Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (1982)

Popular works
 The Code of Honor; or, Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Duelling (1838)
 Robert Baldick. The Duel: A History (1965, 1996)
 Thomas Gamble.  Savannah Duels & Duellists (1923)
 Harnett C. Kane. Gentlemen, Swords and Pistols (1951)
 Paul Kirchner. Dueling With the Sword and Pistol: 400 Years of One-on-One Combat (2004)
 William Oliver Stevens. Pistols at Ten Paces: The Story of the Code of Honor in America (1940)
 Ben Truman.The Field of Honor (1884); reissued as Duelling in America (1993)

 Other websites
 The dishonor of dueling.
 Allen, Douglas, W., and Reed, Clyde, G., 2006, "The Duel of Honor: Screening for Unobservable Social Capital," American Law and Economics Review'': 1-35.

Human behavior
Dispute resolution
Violence

Duel


Giacomo Meyerbeer  (born near Berlin, 5 September 1791; died Paris,  2 May 1864) was a famous German-born opera composer.  He was the most important composer of French Grand opera during the 1830s and 1840s.  Although he was tremendously popular in his day, his music is not often played now.

Life

Early years

Meyerbeer was born into a rich Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin.  His father owned large sugar refineries in Berlin and in Italy.  His mother also came from a rich family.  Her father had been important in Germany's struggle to be free of the French in 1812 when Napoleon was trying to conquer much of Europe. Giacomo's mother did a lot of good work trying to help people who were wounded during the Napoleonic wars.

Many famous people came to the house where Giacomo's family lived.  Some of the visitors were from the royal Prussian court,  including the future King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.  The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt also visited them quite often.

The first piano teacher the boy had was Franz Lauska, who also taught the royal princes.  He also had lessons in composition.  Meyerbeer first played in public in 1801 playing Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor in Berlin. He wrote his first opera in 1810.  In the same year he went to Darmstadt to study with the well-known music theorist Abbé Vogler.  There he met the young Carl Maria von Weber who was also a pupil of Vogler.  He left Vogler in 1811 and tried to get some work in Munich.  In 1813 he found he had been offered a job as court composer to the Grand Duke of Hessen.  Vogler had probably recommended him for the job.  At this time Meyerbeer was better known as a pianist than as a composer.  He travelled to London to hear an important pianist based there, namely J.B.Cramer.  There he met other famous pianists such as Kalkbrenner and Ferdinand Ries.

Italy

In 1816 Meyerbeer went to Italy.  He wanted to learn about Italian opera and collect Italian folksongs.  While he intended at first to stay only three months, he stayed most of the next nine years.  He made some trips back to Germany and Austria during this time.  He composed several operas which became very popular.  People started to compare him with the famous Rossini.  However, in Germany people were not interested in his music.  He took his opera Il crociato in Egitto  to  London and then to Paris, where it was a success.  The opera is remembered now for being the last opera ever to have a part for a castrato singer.

He was becoming well-known now.  Spontini asked him to compose an opera for Berlin.  He became friends, in Paris, with the librettist  Eugène Scribe who had a lot of influence in the French theatre.

The Grand Operas

From 1825 onwards Meyerbeer spent his life travelling about Europe.  He was often in Paris and in Berlin, but did not live in either of these places.  He stayed in hotels or private houses wherever he went.  One reason why he travelled was because of his health.  His wife also had bad health, so they often went to spa towns to try to get better.  He also travelled about to watch productions of his operas, and to hear young singers.

When Carl Maria von Weber died, he left an opera, Die drei Pintos, unfinished.  It was sent to Meyerbeer in the hope that he would finish it, but he did not seem interested.  In the end Mahler finished it many years later.

Meyerbeer made changes to Il crociato in Egitto and turned it into a grand opera for the Opéra in Paris.  He changed it from an Italian to a French opera, composing extra dance music and a new overture.  He was determined to be famous in Paris.

In 1826 he married his cousin.  They had two children, but they both died when they were very small.

In 1828 Daniel Auber, a famous French composer of the time, had composed a very popular opera called  La muette de Portici. It was the first French  grand opera. Meyerbeer realized he could not become really popular by turning his Italian operas into French grand opera, so he took his comic opera Robert le Diable and changed it into a grand opera.  Audiences loved it. Within three years it had been performed in 77 theatres in 10 different countries.  Many composers made their own arrangements of some of the tunes from the opera.   He was given many honours: the Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur, the title of Prussian Hof Kapellmeister (Director of Music at the Royal Court), and was made a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and a member of the French Institute.

Meyerbeer realized that anything else he wrote would have to be really good.  In  1836 he produced another opera Les Huguenots.  This too was extremely popular.

In 1842 he went to Boulogne to improve his health.  There he met Wagner who asked him for financial help to stage his operas Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman.  Meyerbeer lent him money, but stopped giving him money when he heard that Wagner was secretly criticizing him.

Berlin years

When Spontini died Meyerbeer was made Generalmusikdirektor in Berlin.  His opera  Les Huguenots had at first been forbidden in Germany, but now it was allowed to be performed.  As court composer he wrote a grand opera called Ein Feldschlag in Schlesien (A  Battle in Silesia), but it never became internationally famous.  The main part in the opera was sung by Jenny Lind.

Return to Paris

In 1849 he returned to Paris. He wrote several works together with Scribe, whom Meyerbeer described as the best living librettist, and who was one of his closest friends.  His opera Le prophète (for which Scribe again wrote the words) earned him a lot of money.  The great contralto Pauline Viardot-Garcia sang the main part.

Scribe died in 1861.  Meyerbeer worked very hard to try to finish his last opera,  L'Africaine.  Napoleon III said he wanted the opera to be ready by the winter of 1862-63, but it was not ready until 1864.  The work was being rehearsed for its first performance when Meyerbeer suddenly died, without having had the chance to revise it, the way he revised most of his other pieces.

Meyerbeer's body was taken to Berlin where it was buried in the Jewish cemetery in a vault that belonged to his family.

Meyerbeer's music
Meyerbeer was always more popular in France than in Germany.  His operas are about the society of wealthy people.  The sounds he made with his orchestra are often deliberately harsh.  In this he is like Beethoven in his final years, and Berlioz. Sometimes he used new instruments such as the bass clarinet and the saxophone.  He always thought carefully about what his singers were capable of when writing his music.  He enjoyed working with different singers, among them Velluti, who was the last of the great operatic castrati.  He took great trouble to give his singers rests during the opera so that they would still be in good voice for the climax of the story.  He liked scenes with large crowds.  He composed his dance music, in particular, very carefully. Often he would throw it away and start again if the dancers were not happy with it.

Besides his operas he also wrote orchestral pieces for special occasions.  He also wrote some songs for performance in the salon.

Meyerbeer was one of the richest men in Europe.  This is why some people hated him.

Meyerbeer's reputation after his death
Meyerbeer's operas were very popular in the middle of the 19th century, but by the end of the century they had gone out of fashion.  From 1933 to 1945 his music was banned in Germany by the Nazis because he was  Jewish.  Today there is some interest again, but nothing like the huge popularity he had in his lifetime.

Bibliography
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980; ; article "Meyerbeer" vol 12 p. 246ff

Romantic composers
19th-century German composers
1791 births
1864 deaths

Giacomo Meyerbeer


Electronic mail (or e-mail or email) is an Internet service that allows people who have an e-mail address (accounts) to send and receive electronic letters. Those are much like postal letters, except that they are delivered much faster than snail mail when sending over long distances, and are usually free.

Like with regular mail, users may get a lot of unwanted mail. With e-mail, this is called spam. Some programs used for sending and receiving mail can detect spam and filter it out nearly completely.

To send or receive an email in the traditional way, one needs a device (computer, phone etc.) connected to the Internet and an e-mail program (simply called mailer). Several formats exist for email addresses. The most common, called RFC 2822, looks like firstname.lastname@example.com. E-mail messages are sent mostly by text, and sometimes by HTML style.

Some companies let people send and receive emails for free from a remote website. Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! are among the many that do this kind of "web mail".  Webmail does not follow the pattern below exactly because the webpage is a web application and takes care of many details by itself.  The traditional way uses a mailer, as is usual with smartphones.

Microsoft invented its own "communication protocol" (or set of rules) for sending and receiving mail, called "Exchange". Exchange protocol works entirely differently from the traditional method and is not explained here.

Traditional method

This diagram gives an example of what happens when email is sent from one person to another using the traditional method. In this example, Alice is sending email to Bob.

 First, Alice writes a message to Bob in her e-mail program. Her e-mail program puts the message together along with some other information, such as her email address, the address of the person she is writing to, the time at which she is sending her message, and so on. When it is ready, Alice's mail program sends the message to a central computer called a mail server (or a Mail Transfer Agent) using some rules called the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
 The mail server that Alice is using to send her message (smtp.a.org) takes Alice's message and looks at the address to see where the message is being sent. The mail server then goes out on the internet and tries to find the mail server that Bob is using. It does this by talking to a Domain Name System (DNS) server, which keeps records about how to find different computers on the internet, including mail servers.
 The DNS server gives Alice's mail server the proper address for the server that Bob is using to receive his email (mx.b.org).
 Alice's mail server sends the message to Bob's email server, which puts it into Bob's mailbox.
 Bob opens his e-mail program and downloads his messages using one of two sets of rules—either the Post Office Protocol (POP) or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). His messages include the new message from Alice.

Other Features
 You can send files along with your emails by using the Attachment feature. This is a common way of sending longer documents, spreadsheets, photographs etc. to other people
 The CC (Carbon Copy) function lets you send a copy of the email to other people
 the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) function also lets you send a copy of the email to other people. This function hides the names of the recipients from each other

Other websites
 RFC 2822 Internet Message Format. April 2001

Messaging

E-mail


A tuple space is an implementation of the  associative memory paradigm for parallel/distributed computing. It provides a repository of tuples that can be accessed concurrently. As an illustrative example, consider that there are a group of processors that produce pieces of data and a group of processors that use the data. Producers post their data as tuples in the space, and the consumers then retrieve data from the space that match a certain pattern. This is also known as the blackboard metaphor. Tuple space may be thought as a form of distributed shared memory.

Tuple spaces were the theoretical underpinning of the Linda language developed by David Gelernter and Nicholas Carriero at Yale University in 1986.

Implementations of tuple spaces have also been developed for Java (JavaSpaces), Lisp, Lua, Prolog, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, Tcl, and the .NET Framework.

Object Spaces
Object Spaces is a paradigm for development of distributed computing applications. It is  characterized by the existence of logical entities, called Object Spaces. All the participants of the distributed  application share an Object Space. A provider of a service encapsulates the service as an Object, and puts it in the Object Space. Clients of a service then access the Object Space, find out which object provides the needed service, and have the request serviced by the object.

Object Spaces, as a computing paradigm, was put forward in the 1980s by David Gelernter at Yale University. Gelernter developed a language called Linda to support the concept of global object coordination.

Object Space can be thought of as a virtual repository, shared amongst providers and accessors of network services, which  are themselves abstracted as objects. Processes communicate among each other using these shared objects — by updating the state of the objects as and when needed.

An object, when deposited into a space, needs to be registered with an Object Directory in the Object Space. Any  processes can then identify the object from the Object Directory, using properties lookup, where the property specifying  the criteria for the lookup of the object is its name or some other property which uniquely identifies it. A process may choose to wait for an object to be placed in the Object Space, if the needed object is not already present.

Objects, when deposited in an Object Space are passive, i.e., their methods cannot be invoked while the objects are in the Object Space. Instead, the accessing process must retrieve it from the Object Space into its local memory, use the service provided by the object, update the state of the object and place it back into the Object Space.

This paradigm inherently provides mutual exclusion. Because once an object is accessed, it has to be removed from the  Object Space, and is placed back only after it has been released. This means that no other process can access an object while it is being used by one process, thereby ensuring mutual exclusion.

JavaSpaces
JavaSpaces is a service specification providing a distributed object exchange and coordination mechanism (which may or may not be persistent) for Java objects. It is used to store the distributed system state and implement distributed algorithms. In a JavaSpace, all communication partners (peers) communicate and coordinate by sharing state.

JavaSpaces can be used to achieve scalability through parallel processing, it can also be used to provide reliable storage of objects through distributed replication, although this won't survive a total power failure like a disk; it is regarded by many to be reliable as long as the power is reliable. Distribution can also be to remote locations; however, this is rare as JavaSpaces are usually used for low-latency, high-performance applications rather than reliable object caching.

The most common software pattern used in JavaSpaces is the Master-Worker pattern. The Master hands out units of work to the "space", and these are read, processed and written back to the space by the workers. In a typical environment there are several "spaces", several masters and many workers; the workers are usually designed to be generic, i.e. they can take any unit of work from the space and process the task.

JavaSpaces is part of the Java Jini technology, which on its own has not been a commercial success.  The technology has found and kept new users over the years and some vendors are offering JavaSpaces-based products. JavaSpaces remains a niche technology mostly used in the financial services and telco industries where it continues to maintain a faithful following. The announcement of Jini/JavaSpaces created quite some hype although Sun co-founder and chief Jini architect Bill Joy put it straight that this distributed systems dream will take "a quantum leap in thinking".

Example usage
The following example shows an application made using JavaSpaces. First, an object to be shared in the Object Space is made. Such an object is called an Entry in JavaSpace terminology. Here, the Entry is used to encapsulate a service which returns a Hello World! string, and keeps track of how many times it was used. The server which provides this service will create an Object Space, or JavaSpace. The Entry is then written into the JavaSpace. The client reads the entry from the JavaSpace and invokes its method to access the service, updating its usage count by doing so. The updated Entry is written back to the JavaSpace.

// An Entry class
public class SpaceEntry implements Entry {
     public final String message = "Hello World!";
     public Integer count = 0;

     public String service() {
         ++count;
         return message;
     }

     public String toString() {
         return "Count: " + count;
     }
}

// Hello World! server
public class Server {
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         SpaceEntry entry = new SpaceEntry();            // Create the Entry object
         JavaSpace space = (JavaSpace)space();           // Create an Object Space
         // Register and write the Entry into the Space
         space.write(entry, null, Lease.FOREVER);
         // Pause for 10 seconds and then retrieve the Entry and check its state.
         Thread.sleep(10 * 1000);
         SpaceEntry e = space.read(entry, null, Long.MAX_VALUE);
         System.out.println(e);
     }
}

// Client
public class Client {
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         JavaSpace space = (JavaSpace) space();
         SpaceEntry e = space.take(new SpaceEntry(), null, Long.MAX_VALUE);
         System.out.println(e.service());
         space.write(e, null, Lease.FOREVER);
     }
}

Books
 Eric Freeman, Susanne Hupfer, Ken Arnold: JavaSpaces Principles, Patterns, and Practice. Addison-Wesley Professional, 1. June 1999,
Phil Bishop, Nigel Warren: JavaSpaces in Practice. Addison Wesley, 2002,
Max K. Goff: Network Distributed Computing: Fitscapes and Fallacies, 2004, Prentice Hall,
Sing Li, et al.: Professional Java Server Programming, 1999, Wrox Press,
Steven Halter: JavaSpaces Example by Example, 2002, Prentice Hall PTR,

Interviews

Articles

See also
Space-based architecture
Linda (coordination language)
Ken Arnold, lead engineer on JavaSpaces at Sun Microsystems
Rinda, a JavaSpaces analog for Ruby

References

Sources
Gelernter, David. "Generative communication in Linda". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, volume 7, number 1, January 1985
Distributed Computing (First Indian reprint, 2004), M. L. Liu

External links
"TupleSpace" at c2.com
"JavaSpace Specification" at jini.org

Parallel computing
Distributed computing architecture
Programming languages
Java platform
Articles with example Java code

Tuple space


The scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that uses a focused beam of high-energy electrons in producing a variety of signals at the surface of a solid specimen. The signals produced by the interacting electrons contain useful information such as the shape, atomic structure and conductivity.

Introduction
When an electron hits the surface, it may be reflected (backscattered), absorbed, or conducted away. Electrons that are absorbed can cause the atom that they hit to become unstable, forcing it to give off another electron (a secondary electron), or to give off light in order to stabilize. Different detectors, for the different types of reactions, may be fitted to an electron microscope, depending on what is being looked for.

The magnification that can be achieved in a scanning electron microscope depends on how narrow the beam of electrons that strikes the surface can be, and can reach 1 nanometer, about the size of 3 to 5 atoms. The control of the beam is achieved using magnetic fields, with other magnetic fields being used to shape the beam, and to move it across the sample. The range of magnification may range from 30x to as high as 500,000x.

Sample
The electron beam is affected by air and water molecules, so the sample must be placed in a vacuum. The sample must also be conductive to allow the electrons not reflected or absorbed to be conducted away. This gives some limits on the type of sample that can be used. In the case of samples from plants or animals, it often means that they must first be coated in gold before they can be placed in the microscope. This is done in order to preserve the sample and keep it from changing or decaying throughout the scanning process.

Components
The scanning electron microscope is made up of several components:

1. The electron gun is located at the very top or bottom of an SEM and is used to fire a beam of electrons at the object that we are looking at under SEM.

2. The lenses are used to focus electron beams so that we can get clear and detailed images of the examined object. They are not made of glass, but they are made of magnets that change the path of electrons created from the electron gun.

3. The sample chamber is the area where the specimen of interest is examined under SEM. As the technique is very sensitive, the chamber must be very sturdy and have no vibrations happen. This is to allow for the specimen to be kept very still in order for the SEM to produce good images.

4. The detector is the "eyes" of the microscope. It is able to produce the most detailed images of a specimen's surface. Many different detectors can be used depending upon the information wanted from the sample used.

5. The vacuum chamber is used to keep the electron beam from constant interference from air. The air particles are bad for electron beams in that the electrons would be knocked out of the air and onto the specimen, which will produce bad distorted surfaces of the specimen.

Microscopes

Scanning electron microscope


Animals with nervous systems are born with instincts. An instinct is a part of the behaviour of an organism. It is inherited (innate), not learned. However, the term does not include the operation of sense organs, and does not include the normal working of the autonomic nervous system. Instincts are to do with visible muscular action in response to releasers. Releasers are triggers which set off chains of instinctive behaviour. Although instincts are not learned, in some cases their performance can be improved by experience and practice.

There are some problems with the term 'instinct'. It can be used loosely to mean a general tendency, such as "a man's instinct is to protect his family". It can be used to describe chains of behaviour of mixed origin. Properly, it is used only of well-defined acts whose causation is inherited, and which are triggered by  specific stimuli called releasers.

Other terms for instinct are fixed action patterns (FAP) and innate behaviour chains.

Overview

Instinctive behaviours can be variable and responsive to the environment. Any behaviour is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience, that is, in the absence of learning. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean, and automatically swim when they are in the water. A joey climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born. Honeybees communicate by dance the direction of a food source without formal instruction. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behaviour, internal escape functions, and building of nests.

Reflexes as instincts
Reflex actions are a special case. A true reflex is distinguished from other behaviours by mechanism; they do not go through the brain. Rather, the stimulus travels to the spinal cord and the message is then transmitted back through the body, tracing a path called the reflex arc. Reflexes are similar to fixed action patterns, but a fixed action pattern can be processed in the brain as well. A male stickleback's instinctive aggression towards anything red during his mating season is such an example.  Examples of instinctive behaviours in humans include many of the primitive reflexes, such as rooting and suckling, behaviours which are present in most mammals.

Maturational instincts
Some instinctive behaviors depend on maturational processes to appear. For instance, we commonly refer to birds "learning" to fly, because they cannot fly at first, but can a week or two later. However, young birds have been experimentally reared in devices that prevent them from moving their wings until they reached the age at which their cohorts were flying. These birds flew immediately and normally when released, showing that their improvement resulted from neuromuscular maturation and not true learning.

Components of instincts
While fixed action patterns and reflexes are clear examples of almost entirely instinctive behaviours, most behaviours are complex and consist of both instinctive and learned components. For instance, in imprinting a bird has a sensitive period during which it learns who its mother is. Konrad Lorenz famously had a goose imprint on his boots.  Thereafter the goose would follow whomever wore the boots.  The identity of the goose's mother was learned, but the goose's behavior towards the boots was instinctive. Similarly, sleeping in humans is instinctive, but how much and when one sleeps is clearly subject to environmental factors. Whether a behaviour is instinctive or learned is common subject of nature versus nurture debates.

Displacement activities
In a situation when two instincts contradict each other, an animal may resort to a displacement activity.

Biological function
Instinct is a built-in need to do something. It's not something an animal thinks about; it's something it does automatically. A baby bird automatically throws its head back, opens its mouth wide, and screams for food. It is an instinct. Baby bats automatically cling to the cave wall. Grasshoppers naturally spit out the things in their stomach on predators that try to eat them. Bees naturally work to take care of the hive and make honey. Butterflies inherit preferences for laying their eggs on certain plants.plant their young need to eat, and that's where they lay their eggs. Animals are born with these instincts, and they follow their instincts without conscious thought.

Organisms have two ways they can get behaviours. One way is learn, by observation, and by repeating things which have a pleasant outcome. The other way is to inherit the behaviour pattern by heredity.

Definitions of 'instinct'
a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus. Karl Lorenz.
a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instructions. William Paley.
a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads. Whately.
an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge. Sir W. Hamilton.
The resemblance between what originally was a habit, and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished. Charles Darwin.
a natural, unreasoning, impulse by which an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without improvement in the method.

References

Other page
Libido

Psychology
Ethology

Instinct


The Concertmaster (American English) or leader (British English) is the most important violinist in an orchestra.  He or she will sit in the front seat, by the conductor's left.  The word concertmaster comes from the German Konzertmeister.

The leader will be the highest paid member of the orchestra.  He has to decide how the violins will play the music and write in the bowing.  He will decide where each member of the violins should sit.  He will probably also interview them and offer them the job in the orchestra.  He will talk to the conductor about anything the orchestra are not happy about (he may have to remind the conductor when it is time to stop the rehearsal!).  If part of the music is marked "solo" then he will play it as a solo while the other violins stop playing.

In the United States it is usual for the concertmaster to be on the platform before the concert and to tell the orchestra to tune their instruments, playing on his A string to give them the correct pitch.  In European orchestras it is usually the oboe that gives an A for tuning.  In Britain the leader usually comes on stage after the orchestra have tuned, and gets an applause.

Some famous orchestral leaders
of the past:
Arnold Rosé (Vienna Philharmonic)

of today:
Gordan Nikolitch (London Symphony Orchestra)
Glenn Dicterow (New York Philharmonic Orchestra)
Peter Manning ( Royal Opera House Orchestra Covent Garden  )

Entertainment occupations

Concertmaster


The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a graph of many stars. It shows the relation between stars' luminosity (how bright they are) and their temperature (how hot they are).

These diagrams are not pictures or maps of where the stars are. Rather, Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams plot each star on a scatter graph showing the star's brightness versus its temperature. Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams are also called H-R diagrams or HRDs.

You can see an example of a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram to the right. This diagram is based on measurements from 23,000 stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is named after its creators, astronomers Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell.

Drawing a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
The vertical axis of a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram shows the luminosity or brightness of the stars, as if they were all measured from the same distance. Another term for this is absolute magnitude. The brighter a star is, the higher its plot will be on this chart.

The horizontal axis shows the surface temperature of the stars. However, the temperatures go down, not up, as you move to the right. That is, the left of the diagram contains stars with the highest temperature plots (greater than 30,000 Kelvins) while the right shows stars with temperatures of only 3000K.

In general, the temperature of a star relates to its color. At the top of the chart, along with the temperatures, are the spectral classes. The hottest stars are blue-white (class O), those in the middle temperatures are yellow (class G) and the coolest ones are red (class M). When we say "coolest" about stars, the lowest temperature for a star is almost 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a matter of fact, when Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams were developed in the early 1900's, astronomers did not know how to find out the temperature of a star. The first diagrams plotted stars' absolute magnitude against color, represented by the spectral classes from blue-white to red.

Regions with many stars
As you can see, stars tend to fall only into certain regions of the diagram when graphed in this way. All stars in a given area of a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram share similar luminosities and temperatures. The main region where stars appear is the diagonal curved line, going from the upper-left (hot and bright) to the lower-right (cooler and less bright). This is called the Main Sequence. Above the main sequence is another region containing the red giants and supergiants. Below is a curved line representing the white dwarfs.

These collections of stars by brightness and temperature are important when talking about stellar evolution. In general, stars are created in the main sequence. (Of course, when we say "in the main sequence" we really mean "having a brightness and a temperature that causes them to be plotted within the main sequence on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.") After billions of years, they expand into red giants. Then, after another one or two billion years, they shrink into white dwarfs.

It was only in the 1930's and 1940's that scientists began to understand the role of nuclear fusion in creating and keeping stars like our sun. These days Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams are used to present stellar evolution in pictures to students. They're not used much any more for developing new scientific theories.

On a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, our Sun is plotted very close to the middle of the main sequence at the intersection of luminosity 1 and temperature 5780K. Therefore, the Sun is class G or a "yellow star").

Historical sources
 A.C. Maury & E.C. Pickering 1897. Spectra of bright stars photographed with the 11-inch Draper Telescope as part of the Henry Draper Memorial. Annals of Harvard College Observatory. 28: 1–128.
Hertzprung, Ejnar 1908. Über die Sterne der Unterabteilung c und ac nach der Spektralklassifikation von Antonia C. Maury. Astronomische Nachrichten. 179 (24): 373–380.
Russell, Henry Norris 1914. Relations between the spectra and other characteristics of the stars. Popular Astronomy. 22: 275–294.

Astrophysics
Diagrams

Hertzsprung–Russell diagram


セルフアーカイブ(英: 、公開保存)とは、デジタル文書の無料のコピーをオープンアクセスに供するためにウェブ上に置くことである。

通常セルフアーカイブと呼ばれるのは学位論文や査読付きの学術雑誌や国際会議において刊行された学術論文をその著者が所属する機関のリポジトリやオープンアーカイブに登録することで論文のアクセス性と入手可能性を高め、引用利用を増す目的で行われる。

計算機科学者は少なくとも1980年代には公開FTPサーバーですでにセルフアーカイブを自然発生的に行っていた(CiteSeerを参照)。

物理学者は1990年代のはじめにweb上で行っていた(arXivを参照)。

セルフアーカイブは、Stevan Harnad による1994年の投稿 "Subversive Proposal" において普遍的な実践方法として初めて明示的に提唱された。

セルフアーカイブはオープンアクセス雑誌でのオープンアクセス出版に次ぐオープンアクセスを提供する一般的な方法である。

この両者の方法を対比してセルフアーカイブをオープンアクセスへの"green road"と呼び、オープンアクセス出版は"golden road"と呼ばれている。

eprintによる調査では、約91%の査読付き雑誌が論文の著者にプレプリントやポストプリントをセルフアーカイブすることを認めている。

ポストプリントをセルフアーカイブする権利が著作権に関する法律上の問題であるのに対し、プレプリントをセルフアーカイブする権利は単に雑誌の方針の問題である。

参考文献
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 Harnad, Stevan (1992). "Interactive Publication: Extending the American Physical Society's Discipline-Specific Model for Electronic Publishing." Serials Review 18, no. 1/2: 58-61. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad92.interactivpub.html
 Harnad, Stevan (1995). "The Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: How to Get There from Here." The Information Society 11, no. 4: 285-291. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001689/00/thes.html
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 Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/impact.html
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 Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2004) ISC/OSI JOURNAL AUTHORS SURVEY Report. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11002/
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脚注

関連項目
 Berlin Declaration
 Budapest Open Access Initiative
 Subversive Proposal

外部リンク
 A Subversive Proposal by S. Harnad, (1995), in Okerson, A. and O'Donnell, J., Eds. Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing Association of Research Libraries
 Self Archiving FAQ: Answers to most of the questions you might have about self-archiving. There is also a Glossary of Terms in case you find yourself wading in jargon.
 Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving
 SelfArchive.org: a self-archiving wiki - DEAD LINK
 Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policy (ROARMAP)
 Open Access News by Peter Suber
 science-advisor.net
 Openarchives.eu - The European Guide to OAI-PMH Digital Repositories in the World

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The mole salamanders (genus Ambystoma) are a group of advanced salamanders endemic to North America. The group has become famous due to the presence of the axolotl (A. mexicanum), widely used in research due to its paedomorphosis, and the tiger salamander (A. tigrinum, A. mavortium) which is the official amphibian of many US states, and often sold as a pet.

General description

Terrestrial mole salamanders are identified by having wide, protruding eyes, prominent costal grooves, and thick arms. Most have vivid patterning on dark backgrounds, with marks ranging from deep blue spots to large yellow bars depending on the species. Terrestrial adults spend most of their lives underground in burrows, either of their own making or abandoned by other animals. Some northern species may hibernate in these burrows throughout the winter. They live alone and feed on any available invertebrate. Adults spend little time in the water, only returning to the ponds of their birth to breed.

All mole salamanders are oviparous and lay large eggs in clumps in the water. Their fully aquatic larvae are branchiate, with three pairs of external gills behind their heads and above their gill slits. Larvae have large caudal fins, which extend from the back of their heads to their tails and to their cloacae. Larvae grow limbs soon after hatching, with four toes on the fore arms, and five toes on the hind legs. Their eyes are wide-set and lack true eyelids.

The larvae of some species (especially those in the south, and tiger salamanders) can reach their adult size before undergoing metamorphosis. During metamorphosis, the gills of the larvae disappear, as do the fins. Their tails, skin, and limbs become thicker, and the eyes develop lids. Their lungs become fully developed, allowing for a fully terrestrial existence.

Some species of mole salamanders (as well as populations of normally terrestrial species) are neotenic (retaining their larval form into adulthood). The most famous example is the axolotl. They cannot produce thyroxine, so their only means of metamorphosis is mainly through the outside injection of it. This usually shortens the lifespan of the salamander.

Tiger salamander complex

The presence of neotenic populations near those with large larvae has made it difficult to identify mole salamander species. The tiger salamander complex was previously considered a single species ranging from Canada to Mexico, falling under the name A. tigrinum. Despite differences in coloration and larvae, tiger salamanders were found throughout their unbroken range, which made it difficult to delineate subspecies, let alone elevate any populations to species status. In morphological terms, tiger salamanders are all very similar, with large heads, small eyes, and thick bodies. This is probably because tiger salamanders have the primitive morphology of mole salamanders. They are also the largest of the mole salamanders, and have very large larvae. All populations have similar lifestyles, and their lifecycles are identical. However, when one looks at tiger salamander populations distant from each other, different species within this complex become apparent. The ranges of these potential species overlap, and hybridization occurs, blurring the lines between species.

Several subspecies of A. tigrinum were named to deal with this problem. Recently, the barred tiger salamander (A. mavortium) was elevated to species status—covering the tiger salamander populations in the western and central United States. Several distinct subspecies still exist in A. mavortium, which may be elevated to species status at some point in the future. The California tiger salamander (A. californiense) has also been elevated out of A. tigrinum, and is actually very distantly related to all other mole salamander species. The Plateau tiger salamander (A. velasci) was elevated out of A. tigrinum through genetic analysis in 1997. All accounts referring to the axolotl (A. mexicanum) as a close relative of A. tigrinum are now considered wrong, as they are now separated by both geography and many species between. Instead, it is A. velasci, which shares the axolotl's habitat, and is probably closely related to it. The Plateau tiger salamander was probably the parent of most of the neotenic species, which raises the possibility that A. velasci is paraphyletic, and may be broken up into more species in the future.

Hybrid all-female populations
Unisexual (all-female) populations of ambystomatid salamanders are widely distributed across the Great Lakes region and northeastern North America.  The females require sperm from a co‑occurring, related species to fertilize their eggs and initiate development. Usually the eggs  then discard the sperm genome and develop asexually (i.e., gynogenesis, with premeiotic doubling); however, they may incorporate the genome from the sperm into the resulting offspring. Sperm incorporation commonly takes the form of genome addition (resulting in ploidy elevation in the offspring), or genome replacement, wherein one of the maternal genomes is discarded. This unique mode of reproduction has been termed kleptogenesis by Bogart and colleagues. This is in contrast to hybridogenesis, where the maternal genomes are passed hemiclonally and the paternal genome is discarded every generation before the egg matures and reacquired from the sperm of another species.

The nuclear DNA of the unisexuals generally comprises genomes from up to five species: the blue-spotted salamander (A. laterale), Jefferson salamander (A. jeffersonianum), small-mouthed salamander (A. texanum), streamside salamander (A. barbouri), and tiger salamander (A. tigrinum), denoted respectively as L, J, Tx, B, and Ti. This flexibility results in a large number of possible nuclear biotypes (genome combinations) in the unisexuals. For example, an LJJ individual would be a triploid with one A. laterale genome and two A. jeffersonianum genomes, while an LTxJTi individual would be a tetraploid with genomes from four species. Because they have hybrid genomes, unisexual salamanders are a cryptic species with morphology similar to coexisting species. For example, LLJs look like blue-spotted salamanders and LJJs look like Jefferson salamanders.  Silvery salamanders LJJ (A. platineum), Tremblay's salamanders LLJ (A. tremblayi), and Kelly's Island salamanders LTxTx and LTxTi (A. nothagenes) were initially described as species. Species names were later dropped for all unisexual salamanders because of the complexity of their genomes. The offspring of a single mother may have different genome complements; for example, a single egg mass may have both LLJJ and LJJ larvae.

Despite the complexity of the nuclear genome, all unisexuals form a monophyletic group based on their mitochondrial DNA. The maternal ancestor of the unisexual ambystomatids was most closely related to the streamside salamander, with the original hybridization likely occurring 2.4~3.9 million years ago, making it the oldest known lineage of all-female vertebrates. The hybridization was most probably with an A. laterale. All known unisexuals have at least one A. laterale genome and this is thought to be essential for unisexuality. However, the A. laterale genome has been replaced several times, independently, in each of the lineages by matings with A. laterale.

Limb Regeneration

Ambystoma mexicanum, a neotenic salamander with exceptional regenerative capabilities is one of the principal models for studying limb regeneration.  Limb regeneration involves the propagation of a mass of low differentiated and highly proliferative cells termed the blastema.  During limb regeneration, blastema cells experience DNA double-strand breaks and thus require homologous recombination, a form of DNA repair that deals with double-strand breaks.

Taxonomy

Rhyacosiredon was previously considered a separate genus within the family Ambystomatidae. However, cladistic analysis of the mole salamanders found the existence of Rhyacosiredon makes Ambystoma paraphyletic, since the species are more closely related to some Ambystoma species than those species are to others in Ambystoma. The stream-type morphology of these salamanders (which includes larvae and neotenes with short gills and thicker gular folds) may have led to their misclassification as a different genus.

The genus name Ambystoma was given by Johann Jakob von Tschudi in 1839, and is traditionally translated as "cup-mouth",.  Tschudi did not provide a derivation for the name, and many thought that he intended the name Amblystoma, "blunt-mouth."  Occasionally, old specimens and documents use the name Amblystoma.  Writing in 1907, Leonhard Stejneger offered a derivation of Ambystoma based on the contraction of a Greek phrase meaning "to cram into the mouth," but others have not found this explanation convincing.  In the absence of clear evidence that Tschudi committed a lapsus, the name given in 1839 stands.

Species
This genus contains 32 species, listed below, the newest being A. bishopi. Some Ambystoma species are Terrestrial, others are neotenic, and some species have established populations of both neotenic and terrestrial forms.

In addition, two groups of unisexual hybrid populations are sometimes named under their own species:

 Silvery salamander (A. platineum)
 Tremblay's salamander (A. tremblayi)

See also
Oophila amblystomatis

References

http://amphibiaweb.org/lists/Ambystomatidae.shtml

External links

Tree of Life: Ambystomatidae
Herpseeker.dk
IUCN redlist of threatened Ambystomatidae

Salamandroidea

Vertebrate parthenogenesis

Mole salamander


Gustav Mahler (born Kalischt (now Kalište), Bohemia, July 7 1860; died Vienna, May 18 1911) was a Czech-Austrian composer and conductor. He was one of the last great composers of the Romantic period. He wrote ten symphonies (he left the tenth symphony unfinished) and several collections of songs with orchestral accompaniment. He was very interested in German folk song and he found new ways to use folk song in large orchestral symphonies. His work Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) is one of his greatest works, combining song with the sonata form of a symphony. He was also a great conductor and helped to make the Vienna Opera world famous.

Life

Childhood
Gustav Mahler was born on 7 July 1860 into a Jewish family. He was the second of 12 children and the first one of the six who were to survive childhood and grow up to adults. His father worked hard to build up his business. He owned a distillery and seven taverns in Iglau to where the family moved in the autumn of 1860. There he heard a lot of music: military music, folk music and different kinds of art music. He learned the piano and performed in public in 1870 and started to compose.

In 1875 he went to study at the Vienna Conservatory. After a while he gave up studying the piano and concentrated on composition and conducting. He was very interested in Wagner's ideas about philosophy and politics, and he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. He started to earn some money by teaching. His first important composition was a cantata called Das klagende Lied.

Early career
Mahler's first job as a conductor was at Bad Hall in Upper Austria. The small opera company there was not very good and the music they sang was just light operetta. Mahler soon found another job at Laibach (now called Ljubljana). They sang better music there, but he only stayed one year. His next job was in Olmütz (now called Olomouc). The standard of singing was not very good, but Mahler was very strict. Although the singers did not like him at first he helped them to become better. Then he got a job in Kassel, but he had to conduct a lot of operettas. He had an unhappy love affair with one of the singers. This inspired him to write a collection of orchestral songs Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and he started his first symphony.

In 1885 he got a conducting job in Prague. For the first time he was able to conduct works for which he was to become famous: operas by Mozart, Wagner, and music by Beethoven. However, Mahler had arguments with the people he worked with and so he left Prague.

Mahler's next job was in Leipzig. The orchestra of the Neues Stadttheater was larger and much better than any he had worked for until then. One of the conductors who worked there was Arthur Nikisch. He was very famous, and the young Mahler was often criticized because he was very different to Nikisch and the way he conducted. When Nikisch was ill Mahler conducted Die Walküre and Siegfried. This helped him to show that he was a great conductor. He met the grandson of the composer Carl Maria von Weber who gave him sketches for an opera Die Drei Pintos which Weber had left unfinished. The sketches were very difficult to read, but Mahler completed the opera and performed it. He also worked at his own compositions and he met Richard Strauss who was to remain a close friend until his death.

Rising fame: Budapest and Hamburg

In 1888 Mahler got a job at the Royal Opera in Budapest. Although it was a good theatre they were in financial problems. The Hungarians wanted Mahler to make it a Hungarian national opera using Hungarian singers as much as possible. However, there were not many good Hungarian singers. The opera company did not like German operas, preferring light opera and ballet. He did not have much time to compose because he was too busy with administrative jobs. So he left Budapest. By this time both his parents had died.

From 1891 to 1897 Mahler had a conducting post at Hamburg. Here there was an opera company of international standard. Mahler soon became world famous. He conducted many operas as well as orchestral concerts. He conducted in London in 1892 and was invited back again but he did not accept because he wanted time to compose. He spent the summer months composing, writing his music down in short score (not showing the orchestration) and during the theatre season he would revise and orchestrate them. The performance of his Second Symphony in Berlin in 1895 was a huge success.

Since the death of his parents Mahler had supported his two sisters. He had encouraged his brother Otto to become a musician, but Otto committed suicide. Mahler continued to support his two sisters until they married two famous brothers: Eduard and Arnold Rosé in 1898 and 1902.

Mahler was becoming very famous. In 1897 he went on tour to Moscow, Munich and Budapest. However, he really wanted a job in Vienna, but because he was Jewish it was going to be very hard for him to find work there, so he became a Roman Catholic. Soon afterwards he became Kapellmeister in Vienna.

Vienna
In Vienna Mahler soon became famous for his conducting of Wagner and Mozart. His friend Guido Adler paid for the publication of his First and Third Symphonies. Mahler replaced Hans Richter as conductor of the Philharmonic Concerts. Mahler attracted bigger audiences, but he had disagreements with the players. They did not like some of his unusual ideas and he was very strict. After an illness in 1901 he resigned. He bought a house in Maiernigg in Carinthia where he spent his summers composing. In 1901 he fell in love with Alma Schindler whose father Anton Schindler was a famous landscape painter. She was nearly twenty years younger than Mahler. She was studying composition, but Mahler made her give up composing so that she could devote herself to being a good wife. This made the relationship between them rather difficult. In 1910 Mahler went to see the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Freud helped him to understand not only his marriage problems but also his creative nature. He now felt a deeper love for Alma than he ever had before.

At the Hofoper Mahler conducted many of the great operas, but not many new ones. He wanted to conduct Richard Strauss's new opera Salomé, but the censors did not allow it to be performed. Nevertheless, Mahler's years conducting in Vienna were very important because he had many new ideas. Through his wife he met many artists, especially those connected with the Sezession movement. One of them, Alfred Roller, designed the sets for a new production of Tristan und Isolde. He became Mahler's chief stage designer. At last Mahler could work closely with someone who shared his views. They staged many operas together: Fideleo, Don Giovanni , Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte and Iphigénie en Aulide.

Mahler felt much more secure now that he was married. This made him more creative. He composed his Eighth Symphony very quickly. It needs a huge orchestra and choir, which is why it is often called "Symphony of a Thousand". Mahler thought it was his best work.

Mahler never became a teacher, but he gave a lot of encouragement to young composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Alexander Zemlinsky. However, there were music critics in Vienna who were anti-Jewish and made things difficult for him. In 1907 his elder daughter Maria died from scarlet fever. More bad news followed when Mahler was found to have a bad heart. The doctor said he must give up his favourite pastimes: going for walks, cycling and swimming. Mahler had done a tremendous amount for the cultural life of Vienna, but he decided it was time to leave. The last thing he conducted in Vienna was his Second Symphony.

Final years: New York and Europe
Mahler was invited to go to America to conduct the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was very different from what he had been used to in Europe. Instead of working with a group of singers who worked together as a team, the operas at the Metropolitan Opera were sung by great operatic stars. Mahler did not try to change this. He even agreed to make cuts to Wagner operas. Then he was invited to be the conductor of the New York Philharmonic so he resigned from the Metropolitan. The last time he conducted there was as a guest artist.

In 1909 he finished his Ninth Symphony. He was very busy conducting in Europe. In January 1911 he conducted his Fourth Symphony in New York. Then he became ill and decided to go to Vienna. He arrived there on 12 May but he died a few weeks later at the age of 50.

His music
Mahler was one of the last composers who belonged to the great musical tradition of Germany and Austria. Although many German composers had written great symphonies (e.g. Beethoven), Mahler found something new to say in his music. His symphonies often have long melodies and he uses folk song as well as new sounds in the orchestra. Mahler worked most of his life in the theatre, and this influences his musical language. A good example is Symphony No.4 which starts in the happy key of G major where the music describes the early life, but finishes in E major where the soprano soloist sings about the heavenly pleasures.

Mahler became very interested in German folksong and he composed several sets of orchestral songs. He took poems from the collection called Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn). These songs were originally medieval, but Mahler made them feel very different by interpreting them through his own personality. The language of his songs is heard in his symphonies, four of which use singing (nos 2, 3, 4 and 8). He wrote nine symphonies and started a tenth, but died before it was finished.

Mahler was a great orchestrator. Some of his later works need a very large orchestra. He often used unusual effects, e.g. in his First Symphony there is a double bass solo playing very high notes, accompanied by timpani.

His set of orchestral songs Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) are like a symphony, but he did not call it a symphony. This was for superstitious reasons: several great composers, including Beethoven, had written nine symphonies and then died.

His conducting
As a conductor Mahler had a tremendous influence on musical life in Europe. He often conducted his own works. When he conducted works by other composers he played it according to his own ideas. He even made changes to the orchestration of some works by Beethoven. He was not the sort of conductor who tried to make the music as close as possible to what the composer had wanted. He always wanted the music to sound very clear.

References
 The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 1980;

1860 births
1911 deaths
Austrian composers
Austrian conductors
Austrian Jews
Jewish musicians
Jews who converted to Christianity
Romantic composers

Gustav Mahler


The melting point of a substance is the temperature at which this substance goes from the solid  state to the liquid one, at a normal pressure. For water, this is 0° Celsius (32 Fahrenheit, 273,15 Kelvin). The chemical element with the highest melting point is tungsten. Some chemical compounds have a higher melting point.

When looking at when a liquid substance becomes solid, most people call this the freezing point. For most substances, like water, this is the same as the melting point. There are substances, where this is not the case (they melt at one temperature, and freeze at another). Agar seems to melt at 85° Celsius, but freeze at between 35°C and 40°C.  This phenomenon is a kind of hysteresis.

Adding certain substances or impurities will change the melting point of the resulting mixture. For example, sugar or salt will lower the melting point, and alcohol will raise it.

Thermodynamics
Chemistry

Melting point