Capua ( , ) is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, in the region of Campania, southern Italy, situated  north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain.

History

Ancient era
The name of Capua comes from the Etruscan Capeva. The meaning is 'City of Marshes'. Its foundation is attributed by Cato the Elder to the Etruscans, and the date given as about 260 years before it was "taken" by Rome. If this is true it refers not to its capture in the Second Punic War (211 BC), but to its submission to Rome in 338 BC. This places the date of foundation at about 600 BC, while Etruscan power was at its highest. In the area, several settlements of the Villanovian civilization were present in prehistoric times. These were probably enlarged by the Oscans, and subsequently by the Etruscans.

Etruscan supremacy in Campania came to an end with the Samnite invasion, in the latter half of the 5th century BC.

About 424 BC Capua was captured by the Samnites, and in 343 BC sought Roman help against its conquerors. They allied for protection against the Samnite mountain tribes, along with its dependent communities Casilinum, Calatia, Atella, so that the greater part of Campania now fell under Roman supremacy. The citizens of Capua received the  (citizenship without the vote).

In the second Samnite War with Rome, Capua proved an untrustworthy Roman ally, so that after the defeat of the Samnites, the Ager Falernus on the right bank of the Volturnus was confiscated. In 318 BC the powers of the native officials () were limited by the appointment of officials with the title praefecti Capuam Cumas (taking their name from the most important towns of Campania); these were at first mere deputies of the praetor urbanus, but after 123 BC were elected Roman magistrates, four in number; they governed the whole of Campania until the time of Augustus, when they were abolished. It was the capital of Campania Felix.

In 312 BC, Capua was connected with Rome by the construction of the Via Appia, the most important of the military highways of Italy. The gate by which it left the Servian walls of Rome bore the name Porta Capena; perhaps the only case in which a gate in this line of fortifications bears the name of the place to which it led. At some time the Via Latina was extended to Casilinum. It afforded a route only  longer, and the difficulties with its construction were much less; it also avoided the troublesome journey through the Pontine Marshes.

The importance of Capua increased steadily during the 3rd century BC, and at the beginning of the Second Punic War it was considered to be only slightly behind Rome and Carthage themselves, and was able to furnish 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. Until after the defeat of Cannae it remained faithful to Rome, but, after an unsuccessful demand that one of the consuls should always be selected from it (or perhaps in order to secure regional supremacy in the event of a Carthaginian victory), it defected to Hannibal. He made it his winter quarters, and he and his army were voluntarily received by Capua. Livy and others have suggested that the luxurious conditions were Hannibal's "Cannae" because his troops became soft and demoralized by luxurious living. Historians from Reginald Bosworth Smith onwards have been skeptical of this, observing that his troops gave as good an account of themselves in battle after that winter as before. After a long siege, Capua was taken by the Romans in 211 BC and severely punished in the Second Battle of Capua; its magistrates and communal organization were abolished, the inhabitants who weren't killed lost their civic rights, and its territory was declared  (Roman state domain). Parts of it were sold in 205 BC and 199 BC, another part was divided among the citizens of the new colonies of Volturnum and Liternum, established near the coast in 194 BC, but the greater portion of it was reserved to be let by the state.

Considerable difficulties occurred in preventing illegal encroachments by private persons, and it became necessary to buy a number of them out in 162 BC. It was, after that period, let, not to large but to small proprietors. Frequent attempts were made by the democratic leaders to divide the land among new settlers. M. Junius Brutus the Elder in 83 BC actually succeeded in establishing a colony, but it was soon dissolved; and Cicero's speeches De Lege Agrania were directed against a similar attempt by Servilius Rullus in 63 BC.

In the meantime the necessary organization of the inhabitants of this thickly populated district was in a measure supplied by grouping them round important shrines. Many inscriptions testify to a  associated with the shrine to Diana Tifatina; a  is also known.

The town of Capua belonged to none of these organizations, and was entirely dependent on the . It enjoyed great prosperity, however, due to their growing of spelt, a grain that was put into groats, wine, roses, spices, unguents etc., and also owing to its manufacture, especially of bronze objects, of which both the elder Cato and the elder Pliny speak in the highest terms.

Its luxury remained proverbial, and Campania was especially spoken of as the home of gladiatorial combat. From the gladiatorial schools of Campania came Spartacus and his followers in 73 BC. Julius Caesar as consul in 59 BC succeeded in carrying out the establishment of a Roman colony under the name Julia Felix in connection with his agrarian law, and 20,000 Roman citizens were settled in this territory.

The number of colonists was increased by Mark Antony, Augustus (who constructed an aqueduct from the Mons Tifata and gave the town of Capua estates in the district of Knossos in Crete valued at 12 million sesterces) and Nero.

In the war of 69 AD Capua took the side of Vitellius. Under the later empire it is not often mentioned, but in the 4th century it was the seat of the consularis Campaniae and its chief town, though Ausonius put it behind Mediolanum (Milan) and Aquileia in his ordo nobilium urbium.

Middle Ages

Under Constantine, a Christian church was founded in Capua. In 456, it was taken and destroyed by the Vandals under Gaiseric, but was likely soon rebuilt.

During the Gothic War, Capua suffered greatly. When the Lombards invaded Italy in the second half of the 6th century, Capua was ravaged; later, it was included in the Duchy of Benevento, and ruled by an official styled gastald.

In 839, the prince of Benevento, Sicard, was assassinated by Radelchis I of Benevento, who took over the throne. Sicard's brother Siconulf was proclaimed independent prince in Salerno and the gastald of Capua declared himself independent.

In 840, ancient Capua was burned to the ground by a band of Saracen mercenaries called by Radelchis I of Benevento with only the church of Santa Maria Maggiore (founded about 497) remaining (which was purposely spared by the invading Muslims, whose policy was that to leave houses of worship alone). A new city was built in 856, but at some distance from the former site, where another town later appeared under the name of Santa Maria Capua Vetere ("Capua the Old").

Prince Atenulf I conquered Benevento in 900 and united the principalities until 981, when Pandulf Ironhead separated them in his will for his children. Capua eclipsed Benevento thereafter and became the chief rival of Salerno. Under Pandulf IV, the principality brought in the aid of the Normans and, for a while had the loyalty of Rainulf Drengot, until the latter abandoned him to aid the deposed Sergius IV of Naples take back his city, annexed by Pandulf in 1027.

Upon Pandulf's death, Capua fell to his weaker sons and, in 1058, the city itself fell in a siege to Rainulf's nephew Richard I, who took the title Prince of Aversa. For seven years (1091–1098), Richard II was exiled from his city, but with the aid of his relatives, he retook the city after a siege in 1098. His dynasty lived on as princes of Capua until the last claimant of their line died in 1156 and the principality was definitively united to the kingdom of Sicily. In the 1230s, King Frederick I built the monumental City Gate of Capua.

In the early 1500s, it was reported to Pope Alexander VI that his son, Cesare Borgia, had captured the city and promptly killed all 6,000 citizens, which included women and children, while commanding French troops during the sieges of Naples and Capua.

Modern Age
On 3 January 1799, during the French Revolutionary Wars, this community was successfully attacked by a French-controlled 1798–1799 Roman Republic Army led by Governor MacDonald.

The Battle of Volturnus (1860), at the conclusion of Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, partially took place in and around Capua. Prior to the battle, the Neapolitan army, defeated in earlier engagements, was rebuilt in Capua under marshal Giosuè Ritucci. After fighting elsewhere in which the Neapolitans were ultimately defeated, the last of them—around 3,000 troops under Colonel Perrone—were holed up in Capua. The city was attacked by the Garibaldines and one Piedmontese regular Bersaglieri battalion, and captured. In the referendum several months later, its inhabitants voted overwhelmingly to join the new Kingdom of Italy.

Main sights
 The cathedral of Santo Stefano, erected in 856, has a lofty campanile, and a renovated interior with three aisles; both it and the atrium have ancient granite columns. The Romanesque crypt, with ancient columns, has also been restored. It has a fine paschal candlestick, and the fragments of a pulpit with marble mosaic of the 13th century. There are also preserved in the cathedral a fine Exultet roll and an  of the end of the 12th century, bound in bronze decorated with gold filigree and enamels. The mosaics of the beginning of the 12th century in the apses of the cathedral and of San Benedetto, were destroyed about 1720 and 1620 respectively.
 The small church of San Marcello was also built in 856. In 1232–1240 the emperor Frederick II erected a castle to guard the Roman bridge over the Volturnus, composed of a triumphal arch with two towers. This was demolished in 1557. The statues with which it was decorated were contemporary imitations of classical sculptures. Some of them were preserved in the Museo Campano.
 The  (the Campania Provincial Museum of Capua) was founded in 1870 and opened to the public in 1874.  Since then it has become a cultural reference point for the whole territory and Campania.

Archaeological sites

Remains
No pre-Roman remains have been found within the town of Capua itself, but important cemeteries have been discovered on all sides of it, the earliest of which go back to the 7th or 6th century BC.

The tombs are of various forms, partly chambers with frescoes on the walls, partly cubical blocks of peperino, hollowed out, with grooved lids. The objects found within them consist mainly of vases of bronze (many of them without feet, and with incised designs of Etruscan style) and of clay, some of Greek, some of local manufacture, and of paintings. On the east of the town, in the Patturelli property, a temple has been discovered with Oscan votive inscriptions originally thought to be Oscan, now recognized as Etruscan, some of them inscribed upon terracotta tablets, the most famous of which is the Tabula Capuana, conserved in Berlin, still, after more than a century of searching, the second-longest Etruscan text. Other brief inscriptions are on cippi. A group of 150 tuff statuettes represent a matron holding one or more children in her lap: three bore Latin inscriptions of the early Imperial period.

The site of the town being in a perfectly flat plain, without natural defences, it was possible to lay it out regularly. Its length from east to west is accurately determined by the fact that the Via Appia, which runs from north-west to south-east from Casilinum to Calatia, turns due east very soon after passing the so-called Arch of Hadrian (a triumphal arch of brickwork, once faced with marble, with three openings, erected in honour of some emperor unknown), and continues to run in this direction for  (6,000 ancient Oscan feet).

The west gate was the Porta Romana; remains of the east gate have also been found, although its name is unknown. This fact shows that the main street of the town was perfectly oriented, and that before the Via Appia was constructed, i.e. in all probability in pre-Roman times. The width of the town from north to south cannot be so accurately determined as the line of the north and south walls is not known, though it can be approximately fixed by the absence of tombs. Beloch fixes it at 4,000 Oscan feet = , nor is it absolutely certain (though it is in the highest degree probable, for Cicero praises its regular arrangement and fine streets) that the plan of the town was rectangular.

Within the town are remains of public baths on the north of the Via Appia and of a theatre opposite, on the south. The former consisted of a large cryptoporticus round three sides of a court, the south side being open to the road; it now lies under the prisons. Beloch (see below) attributes this to the Oscan period; but the construction as shown in Labruzzi's drawing (v. 17) 1 is partly of brick-work and opus reticulatum, which may, of course, belong to a restoration. The stage of the theatre had its back to the road; Labruzzi (v. 18) gives an interesting view of the cavea. It appears from inscriptions that it was erected after the time of Augustus.

Other inscriptions, however, prove the existence of a theatre as early as 94 BC. The Roman colony was divided into regions and possessed a capitolium, with a temple of Jupiter, within the town, and the marketplace, for unguents especially, was called Seplasia; an aedes alba is also mentioned, which is probably the original senate house, which stood in an open space known as albana. But the sites of all these are uncertain. A Mithraeum may also be seen, by appointment.

Amphitheatre

Outside the town, in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, there is the amphitheatre, built in the time of Augustus, restored by Hadrian and dedicated by Antoninus Pius, as the inscription over the main entrance recorded. The exterior was formed by 80 Doric arcades of four stories each, but only two arches now remain. The keystones were adorned with heads of divinities.

The interior is better preserved; beneath the arena are subterranean passages like those in the amphitheatre at Puteoli. It is one of the largest in existence; the longer diameter is , the shorter , and the arena measures , the corresponding dimensions in the Colosseum at Rome being 188, 155, 85, 53 metres (615, 510, 279 and 174 ft).

To the east are considerable remains of baths – a large octagonal building, an apse against which the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is built, and several heaps of debris. On the Via Appia, to the south-east of the east gate of the town, arc two large and well-preserved tombs of the Roman period, known as le Carceri vecchie and la Conocchia.

To the east of the amphitheatre an ancient road, the Via Dianae, leads north to the Pagus Dianae, on the west slopes of the Mons Tifata, a community which sprang up around the famous and ancient temple of Diana, and probably received an independent organization after the abolition of that of Capua in 211 BC. The place often served as a base for attacks on the latter, and Sulla, after his defeat of Gaius Norbanus, gave the whole of the mountain to the temple.

Within the territory of the pagus were several other temples with their magistri. After the restoration of the community of Capua, magistri of the temple of Diana are still attested, but they were probably officials of Capua itself.

The site is occupied by the Benedictine church of San Michele Arcangelo in Sant'Angelo in Formis. It dates from 944, and was reconstructed by the abbot Desiderius (afterwards Pope Victor III) of Monte Cassino. It has interesting paintings, dating from the end of the 11th century to the middle of the 12th, in which five different styles may be distinguished. They form a complete representation of all the chief episodes of the New Testament. Deposits of votive objects (favissae), removed from the ancient temple from time to time as new ones came in and occupied all the available space, have been found, and considerable remains of buildings belonging to the Vicus Dianae (among them a triumphal arch and some baths, also a hail with frescoes, representing the goddess herself ready for the chase) still exist.

The ancient road from Capua went on beyond the Vicus Dianae to the Volturnus (remains of the bridge still exist) and then turned east along the river valley to Caiatia and Telesia. Other roads ran to Puteoli and Cumae (the so-called Via Campana) and to Neapolis, and the Via Appia passed through Capua, which was thus the most important road centre of Campania.

See also
 History of Santa Maria Capua Vetere
 Archdiocese of Capua
 Battle of Capua
 Capua Leg
 Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli
 Siege of Capua (211 BC)

References

Sources

856 establishments
Cities and towns in Campania
Roman sites of Campania
9th-century establishments in Italy

Capua


Briton Hadden (February 18, 1898 – February 27, 1929) was the co-founder of Time magazine with his Yale classmate Henry Luce.  He was Times first editor and the inventor of its revolutionary writing style, known as Timestyle.  Though he died at 31, he was considered one of the most influential journalists of the twenties, a master innovator and stylist, and an iconic figure of the Jazz Age.

Early life
Born in Brooklyn, Hadden got his start in newspaper writing at Brooklyn's Poly Prep Country Day School, where he wrote for the school magazine, the Poly Prep, and distributed a hand-written, underground sheet to his classmates that was called The Daily Glonk.  Moving to the Hotchkiss School, he wrote for the Hotchkiss Record, a weekly newspaper.  After an intense competition, he was elected the chairman of the newspaper and Luce the assistant managing editor.  Hadden then turned the Record from a weekly into a bi-weekly.

At Yale, Hadden was elected to the staff of the Yale Daily News and later served as the paper's chairman twice (1917-1918 and 1919–1920).  Luce was the News' managing editor the second time. While at Yale, he was a brother of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and a member of Skull and Bones.  It was during a break from school, when Hadden and Luce traveled south to Camp Jackson, South Carolina as ROTC officer candidates, that they began seriously discussing the idea of creating a magazine that would condense all the news of the week into a brief and easily readable "digest."

Career
After receiving his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1920, Hadden wrote for the New York World, where he was mentored by one of New York's most famous and accomplished newspaper editors, Herbert Bayard Swope.  In late 1921, Hadden wrote to Luce, who had recently been let go by the Chicago Daily News, and suggested that they both go to work for the Baltimore News.  In Baltimore, they spent their nights working on the idea of a news magazine, which, at first, they planned to call Facts.

Founding Time magazine
In 1923, Hadden and Luce co-founded Time magazine along with Robert Livingston Johnson and another Yale classmate.  Hadden and Luce served alternating years as the company's president, but Hadden was the editor for four and a half of the magazine's first six years, and was considered the "presiding genius".  Johnson served as the magazine's vice president and advertising director.  In its earliest years the magazine was edited in an abandoned beer brewery, subsequently moving to Cleveland in 1925, and returning to New York in 1927.  For the next year and several months, both Time and The New Yorker were edited at 25 W. 45th Street in Manhattan.  Thus two of the major magazine editors of the 1920s—Briton Hadden and Harold Ross—worked in the same building.

Illness and death
In December 1928, Hadden became ill.  He died two months later, most likely of streptococcus viridans, which had entered his bloodstream, causing sepsis and ultimately the failure of his heart.  Before he died, Hadden signed a will, which left all of his stock in Time Inc. to his mother and forbade his family from selling those shares for 49 years.  Within a year of Hadden's death, Luce formed a syndicate, which succeeded in gaining hold of Hadden's stock.

Legacy
Luce took Hadden's name off the masthead of Time within two weeks of his death.  In the next 38 years, he delivered more than 300 speeches around the world, mentioning Hadden four times.  Luce acquired control of Hadden's papers, and he kept them at Time Inc., where no one outside the company was allowed to view the papers as long as Luce lived.  Throughout his life, Luce repeatedly claimed credit for Hadden's ideas in public speeches and in Time magazine.

Luce presided over the growth of the Time-Life empire, and donated funds towards the construction of a building at 202 York Street in New Haven, Connecticut that would eventually become the Yale Daily News' new home.  The office is today called the Briton Hadden Memorial Building.

References

External links
 Time Magazine biography
 Q & A: Isaiah Wilner Time

1898 births
1929 deaths
American magazine founders
American magazine publishers (people)
Hotchkiss School alumni
Yale University alumni
Deaths from sepsis
Time (magazine) people
Poly Prep alumni
Members of Skull and Bones

Briton Hadden


Maurice Ravel (born Ciboure, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, 7 March 1875; died Paris, 28 December 1937) was a French composer. His name is often thought of together with that of Claude Debussy, but their music is really very different. Ravel liked children and animals and his music is often about them. He liked to write about fairy tales and stories from far away lands. He wrote some lovely piano music, most of which is difficult to play. Boléro is a 17-minute piece for orchestra. A short version was used by ice-skaters Torvill and Dean for the dance that made them Olympic champions in 1984.

His life

Early years
Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure in France. His father was an engineer. Both parents were interested in culture. Soon after he was born the family moved to Paris and stayed there.

It soon became clear that Maurice was musically gifted, so his father arranged for him to have piano lessons with a well-known teacher. In 1889 he entered the Paris Conservatoire.

In 1889 there was a big international exhibition: the Paris World Exhibition. Ravel and Debussy both heard gamelan music from Java at this exhibition. They were both influenced by it, especially Debussy. Ravel also heard Russian music at concerts given by Rimsky-Korsakov. He also made friends with a very talented Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes who was in the same class at the Conservatoire. He heard the music of Richard Wagner and got to know the composers Chabrier and Satie.

He left the Conservatoire in 1895, but went back in 1897 to study composition with Gabriel Fauré and counterpoint and orchestration with Andreé Gédalge. At this stage Ravel was not sure of himself as a composer. His first work that was to become very well-known was the short piece for orchestra called Pavane pour une infante défunte. Fauré had been a very good teacher for Ravel, who dedicated his virtuoso piano piece Jeux d'eau (meaning "Play of water" or "Fountains") and his String Quartet to Fauré. However, Ravel never got a prize for composition, so he left Fauré's class in 1903.

Early career
Ravel was starting to live the life of a dandy. He always dressed very smartly, and got to know people with similar tastes. He tried to win the Prix de Rome in 1904 and again in 1905. However, the judges liked traditional music and did not understand Ravel's style. There was a big argument at the Conservatoire which led to the director, Dubois, resigning and Fauré taking his place. Meanwhile, Ravel left Paris for a time with some friends and started writing some of his best compositions. These included Introduction and Allegro for seven instruments including harp, the Rapsodie espagnole for orchestra, his first opera L'heure espagnole and Gaspard de la Nuit, a virtuoso piece for the piano. In Paris the music critics continued to argue about Ravel's music.

Recognition at last
In 1909 the Ballets Russes visited Paris. They were the world's most famous ballet group. Their director Diaghilev asked Ravel to write a ballet for them Ravel took about three years to compose the music for Daphnis et Chloé. Other works he completed before the war broke out include Shéhérazade for soprano and orchestra (not to be confused with the work by Rimsky-Korsakov with the same title), and the Piano Trio.

World War I
When World War I broke out Ravel felt very strongly that he wanted to do something for his country. However, he was not allowed to join the French army because he was 2 kg underweight. So he became a driver for the motor transport corps. In 1916 he became ill with dysentery. After a time in hospital he was taken back to Paris to get better, but then his mother died and this had a terrible effect on him. The war years had slowed him down as a composer. He had composed Le Tombeau de Couperin (well-known both as a piano solo piece and for orchestra) which looks back to the style of music in the Baroque period. It took him a long time to finish La Valse (The Waltz), one of his most popular pieces.

After the war
After the war had ended Debussy was dead and Ravel was seen to be the greatest living French composer. He was offered the award of Légion d'honneur but he would not accept it. He bought himself a house outside Paris. Here he could compose in peace and quiet. He wrote his opera L'enfant et les sortileges (The child and magic) and the famous virtuoso piece for solo violin called Tzigane. He toured in Europe and the United States and was welcomed everywhere as a great composer. He was given an honorary doctorate at Oxford University.

Ravel worked on several things: some ballet music which resulted in the orchestral piece Boléro, a Piano Concerto in G, and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand that could be played just with the left hand (written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in the war), and several other projects which were not finished.

His final years
In 1932 he started to become ill. For several years he had already been finding it difficult to sleep, and this may have been the beginning of the brain disease which would finally kill him. A road accident in 1932 made it worse. Soon he could no longer sign his own name, he could hardly move and hardly speak. He had a brain operation in 1937, but he died.

His music
Ravel was a very private man. We know nothing about his sexual life. His music came to him during walks on his own, in the country or in Paris, often at night, and in any weather. Then he would come home and write them down. He worked at each composition until it was perfect and never showed it to anybody until it was ready. He liked to collect little things such as toys, and these objects often became part of the music. Baroque music forms, gamelan music, Spanish music, ancient modes and unusual harmonies were all important in his musical style. He only had a few pupils, including Vaughan Williams, but no one could imitate his music because it is always so personal, full of perfection and humour.

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

1875 births
1937 deaths
20th-century French composers

Maurice Ravel


Saint Anna is the mother of Virgin Mary and the grandmother of Jesus. Her husband is Saint Joachim. Her name is a version of the Hebrew name Hanna. Anna means grace.

According to tradition, Joachim went to a temple to pray, but was not allowed in because he did not have a child. Anna heard, prayed, and sacrificed. She promised God that she would bring up a child in God's name. An angel came to Anna and Joachim and told them that God would grant her a baby. Anna had the baby soon after and named the girl Mary. Anna kept her promise. When Mary was about three years old Joachim and Anna brought her up in the Second Temple.

Once, as Anna prayed beneath a laurel tree near her home in Galilee, an angel appeared and said to her, "Anna, Anna, the Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world." Anna replied, "As the Lord my God lives, if I beget either male or female, I will bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him in holy things all the days of its life." This is how Anna became the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The feast (name) day of St. Anna and St. Joachim is July 26.

Early Christian saints

Saint Anna


The cerebral cortex is the most important part of the brain. In humans, it is by far the largest part of the brain.

Though this cannot be seen directly, different parts of the cortex have different functions (see diagram). It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness.

It is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It has up to six layers of nerve cells. The human cerebral cortex is 2–4 mm (0.08–0.16 inches) thick.

In preserved brains, it is grey, so it is often called 'grey matter'. In contrast to gray matter that is formed from neurons and their unmyelinated fibers, the white matter below them is formed predominantly by myelinated axons interconnecting neurons in different regions of the cerebral cortex with each other and neurons in other parts of the central nervous system.

The surface of the cerebral cortex is folded in large mammals, such that more than two-thirds of it in the human brain is buried in the grooves.

Neocortex
The phylogenetically most recent part of the cerebral cortex, the neocortex, has six horizontal layers; the more ancient part of the cerebral cortex, the hippocampus, has at most three cellular layers. Neurons in various layers connect vertically to form small microcircuits, called 'columns'.

The neocortex is the newest part of the cerebral cortex to evolve. The six-layer neocortex is a distinguishing feature of mammals; it has been found in the brains of all mammals, but not in any other animals. In humans, 90% of the cerebral cortex is neocortex.

Allocortex
Other parts of the cerebral cortex are:
Allocortex: fewer than six layers, more ancient phylogenetically than the mammals, evolved to handle olfaction and the memory of smells.
Archicortex (includes functions related to emotions and memory)
Olfactory cortex
Hippocampus
Paleocortex (3 three to five layers)
The cellular organization of the old cortex is different from the six-layer structure mentioned above.

Notes

Anatomy of the brain

Cerebral cortex


Modes in music are a kind of scale.

The Ancient Greeks used several modes in their music. Medieval musicians borrowed the names of these modes to describe the scales used in their music. Western music predominantly usually uses two scales: major and minor, which correspond to the Ionian and Aeolian modes. Like any other scale, a mode can start on any note.

Each mode has a different pattern of tones and semitones (or "half tones") (see semitone).
 The Western major scale (e.g. the C major scale C D E F G A B C) starts on its KEY NOTE and goes up using the following pattern of tones and semitones between each note:
tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone.
 The Western natural minor scale (e.g. the A natural minor scale A B C D E F G A) does the same, but it has a different pattern of tones and semitones between each note:
tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone.

The modes are easiest to see on a piano keyboard using the white notes only. The most common modern modes are:
 Ionian (C D E F G A B C)
 Dorian (D E F G A B C D)
 Phrygian (E F G A B C D E)
 Lydian (F G A B C D E F)
 Mixolydian (G A B C D E F G)
 Aeolian (A B C D E F G A)
 Locrian (B C D E F G A B)

It will be seen that
 The Ionian mode is the major scale.
 The Dorian is a natural minor scale with a major sixth.
 The Phrygian is a natural minor scale with a minor second.
 The Lydian is a major scale with an augmented fourth.
 The Mixolydian is a major scale with a minor seventh.
 The Aeolian is the natural minor scale.
 The Locrian sounds rather strange, and was hardly ever used in Medieval music. It is a minor scale with a minor second and a diminished fifth.

Each mode also has a version called "hypo—".
For example: A to A is Hypodorian. It is the same as Aeolian, but the D is treated as the "keynote".

The names of the modes come from cities in Ancient Greece.

In the Middle Ages these modes were widely used in church music.

Some composers in recent centuries have enjoyed using the ancient modes from time to time in their music. Folksongs are often modal. Greensleeves is an example of a well-known tune which is modal.

Music theory

Musical mode


The Wimbledon Championships is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. It is played in Wimbledon, a suburb of London in England, Great Britain. The Championships are unique because they are the only Grand Slam played on a grass court. Wimbledon is the third tennis grand slam of the year and is widely seen as the biggest event on the sport's calendar.

Wimbledon was first competed in 1877. The women's single and the mens doubles events began seven years later in 1884. It has always been played during the summer. It is played over two weeks, from late June to the beginning of July. The tournament is played after the French Open and before the U.S. Open. In 1968, the championships were opened up to both professionals and amateurs for the first time, with Rod Laver and Billie Jean King winning their respective singles titles.

The winners in 2016 were Andy Murray and Serena Williams.

Traditions

Seedings
In every tennis competition, players are given a seed to help decide their place in the draw. At Wimbledon, they use a player's performances (whether bad or good) on grass to help decide the seed. At other tennis competitions, seeding are chosen based only on rankings.

Clothing
The umpires (referees) and linesmen all have to wear special dark green and mauve clothing. The players have to wear all white.

Etiquette
Female players used to have their names announced with "Miss" or "Mrs"; this was unlike any other Grand Slam tournament. However, this changed for the 2009 tournament. In this tournament, only the surnames were used. If The Queen is in the audience, it is normal for players to bow to her.

Records
Men - William Renshaw, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer have won the singles 7 times each
Women - Martina Navratilova has won the singles 9 times

Gallery

1877 establishments in England
Sport in London
Tennis tournaments

The Championships, Wimbledon


UNIX is a computer operating system. It was first developed in 1969 at Bell Labs. Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and others created it. They used assembly language to write it. In 1972, the Unix code was rewritten with the new C programming language. The Unix operating system is a multiuser and multiprocessing system.  This means it can run several application programs at the same time, for more than one user at the same time.  It also is able to operate well in a network of computers.  Computer security is also important in Unix, because many people can have access to it, both by using a computer directly or over a network.

Many ideas in Unix were new. Other operating systems copied them. Today, there are many operating systems that have some of the ideas of Unix in them. For this reason, some people talk about a "Unix philosophy" of doing things. Linux is one of these systems with many of the Unix ideas in it. Linux does not use code from UNIX. Linux only shares some of the ideas and the names of commands. So, Linux is not a UNIX operating system. Instead it is called "Unix-like".

There can be many different users in a Unix and Unix-like operating system. Most of them have a personal area where they can put things. This is called a user account.

One way of using a Unix system is with the command line interface. Users run commands and programs by typing text characters. This takes time to learn, but it is a very powerful and flexible way of working. It is still used by most Unix administrators. These commands are run in a shell, which can change slightly between one system and another.

A graphical user interface (GUI) is the other method. The X Window System is a very common GUI for Unix systems. The X Window System is only a shell of a graphical interface. It has many protocols. The X Window System itself does not let the user to move and resize windows. Users need a window manager or desktop manager to do that.

Some of the popular desktop and window managers are:

 Gnome
 KDE
 Windowmaker
 Xfce

Like most other graphical user interfaces, they use windows, dialog boxes, support the use of a computer mouse, and are designed to be easy to use.

There are many thousands of programs available for the X Window System. Programs like word processors and spreadsheets are available including free and open-source software.

Two types of Unix
Today, there are two kinds of operating systems that are like UNIX.

The first group is all those that share some kernel code with the original from Bell Labs at AT&T. This includes the commercial UNIX types: Solaris or AIX.

The second group includes free operating systems that usually have BSD in their name, like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. These are based on free BSD. Mac OS X is also based on BSD.

There are also free systems based on the Linux kernel. These do not share any code with the original UNIX. BSD systems share very little code with the original Unix because much of the code has been rewritten over many years. Many people use the terms Unix and Unix-like systems to be clear.

Most applications can run on any modern Unix or Unix-like system. KDE and GNOME were developed for Linux and later changed to run on commercial types of Unix.

Other websites
 Manual Pages for FreeBSD - pages saying exactly what each command does

References

Operating systems

UNIX


Transistor–Transistor Logic (TTL) is a class of digital circuits built from transistors and resistors. It is called transistor–transistor logic because the logic function (e.g., AND) and amplification is performed by transistors. Many integrated circuits have TTL technology. They are used in applications such as computers, industrial controls, test equipment and instrumentation, synthesizers, etc.

TTL gates define a voltage below 0.5V as 0, and a voltage of 4–5V as 1.

Series Type

 Bipolar
 74 - the "standard TTL" logic family (long obsolete) had no letters between the "74" and the specific part number.
 74L - Low power (compared to the original TTL logic family), very slow (rendered obsolete by the LS-series)
 H - High speed (rendered obsolete by the S-series, used in 1970s era computers)
 S - Schottky (obsolete)
 LS - Low Power Schottky
 AS - Advanced Schottky
 ALS - Advanced Low Power Schottky
 F - Fast (faster than normal Schottky, similar to AS)
 CMOS
 C - CMOS 4-15V operation similar to 4000 series
 HC - High speed CMOS, similar performance to LS, 12nS
 HCT - High speed, compatible logic levels to bipolar parts
 AC - Advanced CMOS, performance generally between S and F
 AHC - Advanced High-Speed CMOS, three times as fast as HC
 ALVC - Low voltage - 1.65 to 3.3V, tpd 2nS
 AUC - Low voltage - 0.8 to 2.7V, tpd<firstname.lastname@example.com
 FC - Fast CMOS, performance similar to F
 LCX - CMOS with 3V supply and 5V tolerant inputs
 LVC - Low voltage - 1.65 to 3.3V and 5V tolerant inputs, tpd<email@example.com, tpd<firstname.lastname@example.com
 LVQ - Low voltage - 3.3V
 LVX - Low voltage - 3.3V with 5V tolerant inputs
 VHC - Very High Speed CMOS - 'S' performance in CMOS technology and power
 G - Super high speeds at more than 1 GHz, 1.65V to 3.3V and 5V tolerant inputs, tpd 1nS (Produced by Potato Semiconductor)
 BiCMOS
 BCT - BiCMOS, TTL compatible input thresholds, used for buffers
 ABT - Advanced BiCMOS, TTL compatible input thresholds, faster than ACT and BCT

Electronics

Transistor–transistor logic


A spin-off is something new that comes from something already present. If military technology finds civilian use, for example, that is one kind of spin-off. It is often used for video games, movies, and television programmes, but it can also be used when talking about companies or organisations.  A spin-off may have the same people, places, themes or ideas as the original.

Spin-offs in television
 Frasier (spin-off from Cheers)
 Angel (spin-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
 The Facts of Life (spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes)
 She-Ra: Princess of Power (spin-off from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe)
 Daria (spin-off from Beavis and Butthead, which was a spin-off from Liquid Television)
 The Simpsons (spin-off from The Tracey Ullman Show)
 Torchwood (spin-off from Doctor Who)
Jack and the Pack and All Engines Go (spin-off from Thomas and Friends)
 A.N.T. Farm (spin-off from Kids Incorporated)
 Sam & Cat (spin-off from iCarly and Victorious)
 The Jeffersons (spin-off from All in the Family)

Entertainment

Spin-off


Leprosy is a contagious disease. It has been known for a very long time. Today, it is mostly called Hansen's disease, named after the person who discovered the bacterium, Gerhard Armauer Hansen. It is caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. A person with leprosy is called a leper.

As of 2004, the estimated number of new infections was about 400,000.

Getting the disease is hard, since it requires close contact with someone who has it, over a long period of time. In addition, about 95% of people seem to be naturally immune to it.

Most cases of leprosy occur in India, and other developing countries. It has known to have been in the US before. There are practically no cases of leprosy in the developed world. This is because there are excellent drugs and people regularly take antibiotics which will kill the leprosy bacteria.

In former times, leprosy was seen as a divine punishment for sins committed.

Symptoms
The symptoms of leprosy are irregular spots and patches on the skin. These are either lighter colored than the surrounding skin, or reddish in color. On those patches, hair will fall out, and they will feel numb to the patient. Nerves will form knots there.
With the illness progressing the sense of touch will become less and less (until the patient feels completely numb). So called leptomes and ulcers will eat away the skin, the flesh and the organs on the patches.

Usually people do not die of leprosy, but of secondary infections and diseases they get.

For many years there was a leprosy colony on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai called Kalaupapa. Tens of thousands of people from the United States that had the disease were sent there.

Gallery

Diseases caused by bacteria

Leprosy


The ancient Egyptians believed the soul was divided into five parts Ren, Ba, Ka, Sheut, and Ib.

Ib - Heart
The Egyptians believed the heart held the emotions and thoughts. Believed to be weighed on the scales of Anubis by the feather of Maat. The Ib decided what your fate would be after death.

Sheut - Shadow
Believed to be the shadow of the person. The Sheut was the essence of the person and neither could the shadow exist without the person, nor could the person exist without their shadow.

Ren - Name
Given at birth. A person was believed to live as long as their name lasted. Egyptians often went to great lengths to keep their names talked about and had them carved into monuments and surrounded by cartouche (magical rope).

Ba - Personality and Spirit
Ba is considered the spirit. Ba is believed to have a unique personality based on the person who has it. The Ba was shown as a bird that flew from the body to unite with the Ka at death.

Ka - Life Force
One of the five parts of the Egyptian idea of the soul. The Ka was thought of as the life force and left the body during death. Ka was believed to be in food and drink and was placed with the dead for offerings. Egyptian Mythology believes that at death the Ba and the Ka unite through Nehebkau before entering Duat.

Egyptian mythology

Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul


Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born 6 June (26 May, Old Style) 1799, Moscow, and died 10 February 1837 (29 January, New Style), St Petersburg. He was a Russian poet, novelist, dramatist and writer of short stories.

Many think he was the greatest Russian poet. He started the great tradition of Russian literature. Pushkin wrote in a way that no other Russian had done before: he used the Russian language as it was spoken instead of writing in a style based on old church books. His influence on other Russian writers was enormous and several Russian composers set his stories and poems to music. His poetry is very hard to translate well into other languages because the words are full of special meanings in Russian culture. His novels, especially Eugene Onegin, are widely read.

Pushkin's great-grandfather was an African slave who was set free by Tzar Peter the Great. Pushkin was killed in a duel in 1837 at the age of 37.

Early years
Pushkin's father came from an old aristocratic family. On his mother's side Pushkin had African ancestors. His great-grandfather Abram Gannibal was an Abyssinian who was living in a palace of the Turkish sultan in Istanbul. The Russian ambassador bought him as a present for Peter the Great, the tsar of Russia. Gannibal became a favourite of Peter the Great and he was sent to Paris to study. He became very rich. Pushkin was proud of his great-grandfather and wrote about him in a novel called The Negro of Peter the Great.

In 19th century Russia all aristocratic families learned to speak French, so Pushkin and his brother and sister spoke and wrote in French more than in Russian. The children were cared for by a nurse, Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva. It was the nurse who taught them to love the Russian language. She told the children Russian folktales. Pushkin also spoke Russian to the peasants and he read many books in his father's library.

When he was 12 he went to a new school called the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo. Years later this school was renamed Pushkin after their famous pupil. He soon started writing romantic poems in Russian using Russian tales of heroes and adventures. Ruslan and Ludmila was a poem that was later to be made into an opera by Mikhael Glinka.

Adulthood
In 1817, Pushkin got a job in the foreign office at St. Petersburg. He soon became interested in politics and supported the Decembrist revolt of 1825 when a group of noblemen and army officers tried to put another tsar in power and make him less powerful. Pushkin wrote some political poems. The result was that he was told he had to leave St. Petersburg. He had to spend six years in exile in the south of the country: in the Caucasus and the Crimea. He wrote about his experiences in the south in several romantic narrative poems (long poems which tell a story). He started work on a novel in verse called Yevgeny Onegin (or Eugene Onegin). He did not finish it until 1833. This was to be his most famous work. It was used by many musicians including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who made it into an opera. The poem shows typical Russian people in the society of his day.

Pushkin was angry that he was still in exile and he wrote many letters to his friends. Many of these letters were later published. He spent a lot of time drinking, gaming and fighting with swords. He fell in love with the daughter of a Count for whom he was working. The Count managed to get Pushkin exiled to his mother's estate near Pskov at the other end of Russia. Pushkin spent two years here. He was lonely, but he studied Russian history and talked to the peasants. The poems he wrote were full of ideas from Russian culture. He wrote one of his major works: Boris Godunov, a drama about a story from Russian history. The composer Modest Mussorgsky later made an opera from it. Boris Godunov was a cruel tsar in the 17th century. Pushkin's play shows that the ordinary people had a lot of power. This made it difficult for Pushkin to get it published.

Return from exile
After the revolt in 1825 the new tsar Nicholas I realized that Pushkin was by now very famous. He also realized that he had not taken part in the revolt, so he allowed him to return. The tsar said that he himself would censor Pushkin's works before they were allowed to be published. He said that he was going to be a good tsar and help the poor people (the serfs) to become free. Pushkin was in a difficult position because he could not write anything that the tsar would not like.

He had to be very careful not to say bad things about the rulers of the country. The police watched him very carefully. Yet at this time Pushkin wrote a large number of great works, almost each one of them being the first of their kind in Russian literature. One example is the short story The Queen of Spades, which Tchaikovsky made into an opera and which was to be a great influence on the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Last years
In his last years, Pushkin was again in government service in St. Petersburg. He married in 1831 and had to spend a lot of time in society at court. He wrote more and more prose. He wrote a history of Peter the Great and a historical novel The Captain's Daughter. He kept asking the tsar to let him resign from his job and go to the country to spend his time writing. The tsar would not allow that. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel. He had been forced to fight the duel in order to defend his wife's honour.

Pushkin's achievements
The Russian language today would be very different if it had not been for Pushkin. Using the language as it was spoken by the people he made it into a language which was simple but which could also express deep feelings. His works were a great influence on later writers like Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and Leo Tolstoy. Yevgeny Onegin was the first Russian novel which told a story about the society of the time. His works have been translated into all the major languages

Related pages
List of Russian language poets
List of Russian-language novelists

Other websites
 Eugene Onegin
 Pushkin works available from archive.org (various languanges)
 Pushkin poetical works
  Alexander Pushkin Fairy Tales: Russian Text

Deaths by firearm in Russia
Russian writers
Russian poets
1799 births
1837 deaths

Alexander Pushkin


The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied art (decorative arts and design). Named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, it was founded in 1852.

The V&A has a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. It covers  and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, in virtually every medium, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The museum is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

The museum possesses the world's largest collection of post-classical sculpture, the holdings of Italian Renaissance items are the largest outside Italy. The departments of Asia include art from South Asia, China, Japan, Korea and the Islamic world. The East Asian collections are among the best in Europe, with particular strengths in ceramics and metalwork, while the Islamic collection, with the Musée du Louvre and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is amongst the largest in the world.

The V&A is in what is called London's "Albertopolis", an area of immense cultural, scientific and educational importance. Near it are the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, Imperial College, the Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial.

Since 2001, the Museum has embarked on a major £150m renovation program which has seen a major overhaul of the departments including the introduction of newer galleries, gardens, shops and visitor facilities. As with other national UK museums, admission to the museum is free.

References

Museums in London
Art museums in the United Kingdom

Victoria and Albert Museum


Vibration means quickly moving back and forth (or up and down) about a point of equilibrium. The vibration may be periodic (having a pattern) or random. Something that is vibrating may shake at the same time.  If it vibrates in a regular way, it may produce a musical note because it can make the air vibrate. This vibration will send sound waves to the ear and to the brain.

In structural engineering including earthquake engineering, vibrations may be bad. They may cause the structure to fail.

The time it takes a vibrating object to go back and forth completely is the period. The number of back-and-forth movements in one second is its frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz). The farthest possible distance from the equilibrium point is the amplitude.

Types of vibration
Free vibration occurs when vibration is set off with a push and allowed to vibrate freely.  Examples of this type of vibration are pulling a child back on a swing and then letting go or hitting a tuning fork and letting it ring. The mechanical system will then vibrate at a 'Natural frequency' and gradually wind down.

Forced  vibration is when an alternating force or motion is applied to a mechanical system.  Examples of this type of vibration include
a shaking washing machine due to an imbalance.
transportation vibration (caused by a combination of truck engine, springs, road).
vibration of a building during an earthquake.
In forced vibration the frequency of the vibration is the frequency of the force or motion applied. The size of the effect depends on the actual mechanical system.

Related pages
Acoustics
Oscillation
Wave (physics)
Vibration isolation
Vibration control
Vibrato

References

Mechanics
Mechanical vibrations
Sound
Earthquake engineering

Vibration


Surrealism was an art and cultural movement which began in the early 1920s.

The name was first used in 1917. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the program notes for the ballet Parade, which was created for the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. This was a collaborative work by Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso and Léonide Massine. The program notes ran:
"From this new alliance... there has come about, in Parade, a kind of super-realism ('sur-réalisme'), in which I see the starting point of a series of manifestations of this new spirit".

The movement grew out of Dadaism. This was, amid the horrors of World War I, a protest at the meaninglessness of civilised life.

At the same time, the work of Sigmund Freud began to filter through, and affect the literary and art worlds. André Breton was trained in psychiatry, and during the war, he worked in a hospital where he used Freud's methods on shell-shock patients. Not surprisingly, Breton influenced many writers and artists after the war.

Freud's work placed emphasis on the subconscious mind, and its role in steering behaviour and emotion. His way of using free association, and dream analysis to get a clue to the subconscious was picked up by the surrealists. They painted dreamlike fantasies, and practised automatic drawing without sight: 'automatism'.

In 1924, Breton wrote a Surrealist Manifesto, which defined surrealism as:
"Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern".

Breton discussed his first encounter with the surreal, in a description of a hypnagogic state, in which a strange phrase inexplicably appeared in his mind: There is a man cut in two by the window. This phrase illustrates Breton's view of Surrealism as two distant realities brought together to create a new, uncanny union.

Surrealist works have an element of surprise: unexpected items are placed next to each other for no clear reason. Many Surrealist artists and writers see their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost. The works are an artifact, and André Breton said that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. From the 1920s in Paris it spread around the globe. It influenced films such as the Angel's Egg and El Topo.

TRANSCENDENTAL SURREALISM Is a new artistic approach, that stands as  the evolution and redefinition of Surrealism in its classical form, as it became internationally known by Andre Bretton's Manifest in the early 20th century. Transcendental Surrealism in Visual Arts, presented in 2018 by the greek visual artist - architect Giorgios (Gio) Vassiliou (b. 1970). It is based on a completely new theory and philosophy that is summarized in  three new foundamental  elements, that follow the evolution of ideas, that have emerged so far during the 21st century, in Visual Arts, Psychology, Physics, and the visual perception of the physical world. These three new foundamental elements are:

a) Transcendental perception

b) Creative imagination

c) Slow current of thought

Artists
Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, André Masson, Joan Miró and Marcel Duchamp were some of the best-known surrealist artists.

Books
 Baznani, Achraf. History of Surrealism. Edilivre, France 2018.
 Hughes, Robert.  The shock of the new: art and the century of change. London: Thames & Hudson. Chapter 5 The threshold of liberty.

Surrealist films
Man Ray made the first surrealist film: Return to reason (1923). Luis Buñuel and Dali made two well-known surrealist films: Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'or (1930). Jean Cocteau made three films, known as the Orphic Trilogy: Le Sang d'un poète (1930), Orphée (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960), which includes a cameo appearance by Pablo Picasso.

References

Art movements

Surrealism


A DNA polymerase is an enzyme which makes DNA molecules from its nucleotide building blocks. DNA polymerases are essential for DNA replication. They usually work in pairs as they copy one double-stranded DNA molecule into two double-stranded DNAs. In DNA replication DNA polymerase "reads" a piece of DNA that's already there and uses it to make a new piece that is exactly the same as the old piece.The primary role of DNA polymerases is to accurately and efficiently replicate the genome in order to ensure the maintenance of the genetic information and its faithful transmission through generations.

DNA polymerases also play key roles in other processes within cells, including DNA repair, genetic recombination, reverse transcription, and antibody production. DNA polymerases are widely used in molecular biology laboratories, notably for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA sequencing, and molecular cloning.

DNA polymerase can only connect deoxyribonucleotides to a 3'-OH group that is already there, so DNA is always made in the 5'3' direction.

DNA
Enzymes

DNA polymerase


Robert Schumann (b. Zwickau in Saxony, June 8, 1810; died July 29, 1856) was a famous German composer. He lived in the time called the Romantic period. He had to give up his plans for being a concert pianist because he injured his hand. He published a music magazine and wrote a lot of articles about music that had just been composed. His music is full of things that are typical of Romantic music: it is full of emotion, the pieces often have titles that describe things, and they are often inspired by literature. He wrote a great deal of piano music. Some of this music is hard to play, but other pieces are quite easy. Many children learn to play some of the pieces in his Album for the Young. His songs (Lieder) are among the best ever written. He also wrote larger works like symphonies and concertos and chamber music. Sometimes he felt very happy but at other times he was very depressed. These changes of mood can be heard in a lot of his music.

Life
Robert Schumann was the fifth and youngest child of a bookseller and publisher. As a boy he liked reading the books in his father's shop. He began to compose when he was seven. At school he was extremely good at music and literature. He passed his school-leaving examination with very high marks. His family wanted him to be a lawyer, so he went to Leipzig to study law but he hardly ever went to any lectures. He was much more interested in music and literature, but also in women and drinking. He took piano lessons from a teacher called Friedrich Wieck. Wieck had a 9-year-old daughter Clara. Many years later she was to become his wife. Clara was a brilliant pianist. Her father took her on concert tours because she was a prodigy.

Schumann started to compose short piano pieces and songs. He loved the music of Schubert and when he heard that Schubert had died he cried all night. He often practised the piano for seven hours a day. However, he started to have problems with his fingers. It has often been said that he hurt his hands because he made something to stretch his fingers, but people now think it was more likely due to mercury poisoning because doctors had used mercury to try to cure his syphilis. Whatever the reason, he could not continue to be a pianist and he spent the rest of his life composing and writing about music. Many of his articles appeared in a journal called Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music) which he started.

In 1834 he became engaged to a girl of sixteen called Ernestine, but then Schumann broke off the engagement because he loved Clara Wieck. Clara's parents did not want her to marry him. Her father did everything he could to stop the marriage. Maybe he guessed that Schumann had syphilis, maybe he knew that he was often drunk. In the end, after many arguments, court cases and secret meetings between Robert and Clara, they were married in 1840.

Schumann suffered from manic depression. When he was depressed he hardly wrote anything, but 1840 was a happy year for him and he wrote lots of songs as well as orchestral music. In 1841 he wrote four symphonies. In 1842 they went on a concert tour together, but Schumann found it difficult because Clara was more famous than he was. He returned alone to Leipzig to work at his publishing. He felt depressed again at this time and drank a lot of beer and champagne. He was happy again when Clara returned, and composed some chamber music. In 1844 they toured Russia and played to the Tsar. By August he had a complete nervous breakdown and could not bear to listen to his own music. It took him some time to recover.

By now he was good at writing all kinds of music. He wrote music for the famous play Faust by Goethe. He wrote one opera, Genoveva, in 1849. His fame spread slowly. For many years Dresden and Leipzig were the only towns where he was famous. In 1850 he became musical director at Düsseldorf. In 1853 he met Brahms. Brahms became a great friend of the Schumann family. Schumann published an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik with the heading "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in which he said that Brahms (who was 20 at the time) was going to be a very great composer. He was right.

Schumann had often thought of trying to kill himself. On 27 February 1854 he threw himself into the river Rhine. He was rescued by some boatmen, but when they brought him to land he seemed to have gone quite mad. He was taken to an asylum where he spent the last two years of his life. He died on 29 July 1856.

Schumann's music

Schumann's piano music is very well known. Although he had to give up his career as a pianist his wife Clara played his pieces and helped them to become famous. Many of his piano works are collections of short pieces, each with a title e.g. Papillons (Butterflies), Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval. Schumann was thinking of carnival celebrations when he wrote these pieces. The Davidsbündler was a group of people Schumann belonged to who did not like the "Philistines" (people who did not enjoy good music, named after the Philistines in the Bible) In Carnaval the two sides of Schumann's personality are represented by Florestan and Eusebius. Schumann's manic depression (the happy and the tragic moods that he had) are heard side by side in his music. Other piano works include, Kreisleriana,Album for the Young which has some quite easy pieces like Soldier's March and the popular Scenes from Childhood with its famous Träumerei (Dreaming). There are also longer works for piano: 3 sonatas, a Toccata and a Phantasie.

His chamber music includes string quartets and a famous piano quintet.

Schumann was one of the great composers of Lieder (German songs). He chose poetry by famous German poets and set them to music in very imaginative ways. The piano has very interesting accompaniments which help to bring out the meaning of the words. He wrote a song-cycle called Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) which is a setting of some poems by Heinrich Heine. Another song-cycle is called Frauenliebe und -leben (Woman's Love and Life) to words by Adalbert von Chamisso.

Although the young Schumann seemed to prefer writing short pieces, he became more interested in long works after meeting Mendelssohn. He was also inspired to write symphonies after he discovered Schubert's Symphony no 9 which no one knew that Schubert had written. He found it in a box in Vienna at the house of Schubert's brother. Schumann wrote four symphonies. One of his best is the Third which is often called the Rhenish Symphony (after the river Rhine). The Fourth in d minor is also a great work. Using only a few musical ideas he develops them in many ways and writes a long, four-movement work. His piano concerto is a great favourite. Clara Schumann played it with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at its first performance on New Year's Day 1846.

For writing music and performing at home Robert Schumann was using a grand piano by Conrad Graf - a present from the piano maker on the occasion of Robert and Clara's marriage in 1839. This instrument was later given by Clara Schumann to Johannes Brahms.

After Schumann's death Clara devoted herself to playing her husband's music and helping it to become well known. She visited England regularly where she played at concerts. She also edited a lot of Schumann's works for the publisher Breitkopf und Härtel.

References
 New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (1980)

Recordings
 Allegro op 8 of Schumann

19th-century German composers
Romantic composers
Music critics
1810 births
1856 deaths
People from Saxony

Robert Schumann


A textbook is a book used for the study of a subject. People use a textbook to learn facts and methods about a certain subject. Textbooks sometimes have questions to test the knowledge and understanding of the learner.

A workbook is a type of textbook that has only practice questions and exercises. Workbooks are designed not to teach but to provide practice and to highlight areas which need more learning. A revision guide is a type of textbook that is used to remind the learner about the subject and give him/her extra practice, especially before an examination.

A textbook is usually lent to students by a school to accompany a course the school is teaching. Sometimes, especially at university, students have to buy the textbooks they need themselves or borrow them from a library.

Most textbooks are only published in printed format. However, some are now available online as electronic books.

Learning

Textbook


The Élysée Palace (, ) is the official residence of the President of the French Republic. Completed in 1722, it was built for nobleman and army officer Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, who had been appointed Governor of Île-de-France in 1719. It is located on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré near the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the name Élysée deriving from the Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. Important foreign visitors are hosted at the nearby Hôtel de Marigny, a palatial residence.

The palace has been the home of personalities such as Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), Nicolas Beaujon (1718–1786), Bathilde d'Orléans (1750–1822), Joachim Murat (1767–1815), and Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry (1778–1820). On 12 December 1848 under the Second Republic the French Parliament passed a law declaring the building the official residence of the President of France. The Élysée Palace, which contains the presidential office and residency, is also the meeting place of the Council of Ministers, the weekly meeting of the Government of France presided over by the President of the Republic.

History

Hôtel d'Évreux

The architect Armand-Claude Mollet possessed a property fronting on the road to the village of Roule, west of Paris (now the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), and backing onto royal property, the Grand Cours through the Champs-Élysées. He sold this in 1718 to Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Évreux (families: Dukes and Princes of Bouillon and Sedan: La Marck | von der Marck), with the agreement that Mollet would construct an hôtel particulier for the count, fronted by an entrance court and backed by a garden. The Hôtel d'Évreux was finished and decorated by 1722, and though it has undergone many modifications since, it remains a fine example of the French neo-classical style. At the time of his death in 1753, Évreux was the owner of one of the most widely admired houses in Paris, and it was bought by the Marquise de Pompadour, on the 24th December 1753 for 730,000 livres. Opponents showed their distaste for the regime by hanging signs on the gates that read: "Home of the King's whore". After her death, it was left in her will to the crown.

In 1773, it was purchased by Nicolas Beaujon, banker to the court and one of the richest men in France, who needed a suitably sumptuous "country house" (for the city of Paris did not yet extend this far) to house his fabulous collection of great masters paintings. To this end, he hired the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée to make substantial alterations to the buildings (as well as design an English-style garden). Soon on display there were such well-known masterpieces as Holbein's The Ambassadors (now in the National Gallery in London), and Frans Hals' Bohemian (now at the Louvre). His architectural alterations and art galleries gave this residence international renown as "one of the premier houses of Paris".

Royal and imperial palace

The palace and gardens were purchased from Beaujon by Bathilde d'Orléans, Duchess of Bourbon in 1787 for 1,300,000 livres. It was the Duchess who named it the Élysée.  She also built a group of cottages in the gardens which she named the Hameau de Chantilly, after the Hameau at her father-in-law's Château de Chantilly.  With the French Revolution, the Duchess fled the country and the Élysée was confiscated and leased out. The gardens were used for eating, drinking, and dancing, under the name Hameau de Chantilly, and the rooms became gambling houses.

The Élysée was sold in 1805 to Joachim and Caroline Murat, who administered major renovations that made the building more grand and "imperial". Later, the house was transferred to Caroline's brother, Emperor Napoleon, in 1808; it became known as the Élysée-Napoléon. After the Battle of Waterloo, Napoléon returned to the Élysée and signed his abdication there on 22 June 1815. He left the Élysée three days later.

Russian Cossacks camped at the Élysée when they occupied Paris in 1814. The property was then returned to its previous owner, the Duchesse de Bourbon, who then sold it to her royal cousin, Louis XVIII, in 1816. Between 1820 and 1848, the palace was primarily used to host guests of the royal family.

Presidential residence

Following the French Revolution of 1848 and the abdication of Louis Philippe I, the provisional government of the Second Republic took over the palace. It was initially used to host musical performances and lectures before being renamed the Élysée National and designated as the official residence of the President of the Republic under the administration of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. The President also has the use of other official residences, including the Château de Rambouillet, forty-five kilometres southwest of Paris, as well as the Fort de Brégançon near Toulon.

In 1853, following his coup d'état that ended the Second Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, now Napoleon III, tasked architect  with renovations; meanwhile he moved to the nearby Tuileries Palace, but kept the Élysée as a discreet place to meet his mistresses, moving between the two palaces through a secret underground passage that has since been demolished. Since Lacroix completed his work in 1867, the essential look of the Palais de l'Élysée has remained the same.

In 1873, under the Third Republic, the Élysée became the official presidential residence. In 1899, Félix Faure became the only officeholder to die in the palace.

In 1917, a chimpanzee escaped from a nearby ménagerie, entered the palace and was said to have tried to haul the wife of President Raymond Poincaré into a tree only to be foiled by Élysée guards. President Paul Deschanel, who resigned in 1920 because of mental illness, was said to have been so impressed by the chimpanzee's feat that, to the alarm of his guests, he took to jumping into trees during state receptions.

The Élysée Palace was closed in June 1940 and remained empty during World War II. It was reoccupied only in 1946 by Vincent Auriol, President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, then first President of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954. From 1959 to 1969, the Élysée was occupied by Charles de Gaulle, the first President of the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle did not like its lack of privacy and oversaw the purchase of the luxurious Hôtel de Marigny to lodge foreign state officials in visits to France, saying, "I do not like the idea of meeting Kings walking around my corridors in their pyjamas."

In the 1970s, President Georges Pompidou had some of the original rooms in the palace redesigned by Pierre Paulin in the modern style, of which only the Salle à Manger Paulin survives.

Socialist President François Mitterrand, who governed from 1981 to 1995, is said to have seldom used its private apartments, preferring the privacy of his own home on the more bohemian Rive Gauche. A discreet flat in the nearby presidential annexe Palais de l'Alma housed his mistress Anne Pingeot, mother of his illegitimate daughter Mazarine Pingeot.

By contrast, his successor Jacques Chirac lived throughout his two terms in office (1995–2007) in the Élysée apartments with his wife Bernadette. Chirac increased the Palace's budget by 105% to 90 million euros per year, according to the book L'argent caché de l'Élysée. One million euros per year is spent on drinks alone for the guests invited to the Élysée Palace, 6.9 million euros per year on bonuses for presidential staff and 6.1 million euros per year on the 145 extra employees Chirac hired after he was elected in 1995.

The Élysée has gardens, in which presidents hosted parties on the afternoon of Bastille Day until 2010. That year, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy decided to stop organising this event because of France's high debt and the economic crisis.

Emmanuel Macron, the President of France since 2017, currently resides at the palace.

Description

The heavily guarded mansion and grounds are situated at 55 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré at its intersection with . A monumental gate with four Ionic order columns, flanked by walls topped by a balustrade, opens onto a large rounded courtyard. The majestic ceremonial courtyard imparts a degree of grandeur to the house. The main residence is constructed in the French neo-classical style.  An entrance vestibule is aligned with the ceremonial courtyard and gardens. There is a long central building, a great – or state – apartment divided in the middle by a large salon that opens into the garden. This building also has a central three-storey section, and two single-floor wings: the Appartement des Bains to the right, and the Petit Appartement (private apartments) to the left. The French-style garden has a central path aligned with the central building, patterned flowerbeds and alleys of chestnut trees edged with hedgerows.

Ground floor

The Vestibule d'Honneur (Hall of Honour) is the room which the main entrance to the palace leads into.  In this room the President of France meets visiting officials, world leaders and spiritual leaders.

The Salon d'Argent (Silver Room), in the east wing of the palace, was decorated by Caroline Murat, wife of Joachim Murat and sister of Napoleon I. The room is so called because of the silver coloured edges to the wall features, mantelpieces, tables, sofas, and armchairs, of which the last have swan sculptures at the sides. Three notable historical events happened in this room. On 22 June 1815, Napoleon formally signed his abdication warrant after losing the Battle of Waterloo that year; on 2 December 1851 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte launched his coup d'état; and in 1899, President Félix Faure met his mistress, Marguerite Steinheil.

The Salle à Manger Paulin (Paulin Dining Room), named after its architect, Pierre Paulin, is a complete contrast to most of the other rooms in the palace.  It was designed as a private dining room for President Georges Pompidou and his wife Claude, and the interior and furniture date from the 1970s.  The walls are made of 22 polyester panels, the chairs have a single leg attached to a round base, and the round table is made of glass.  The room is lit by roof panels decorated with glass balls and rods.

The Salon des Portraits (Portrait Room) was used by the Emperor Napoleon III for portrait medallions of the most important sovereigns of the time, replacing earlier portraits of the Bonaparte family installed by Joachim Murat. The portraits are of: Pope Pius IX, Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, Queen Isabel II of Spain, and King William I of Württemberg.  Previously a dining room, President Nicolas Sarkozy used the room as his second office.

The Salle des Fêtes (Hall of Festivities) dominates the west wing of the palace. It was designed by  and opened on 10 May 1889 by the then President, Sadi Carnot, to coincide with the Exposition Universelle that year. The room has paintings on the ceiling called "La République sauvegarde la Paix" (The Republic Safeguards Peace), painted by Guillaume Dubufe in 1894. There are also six Gobelins tapestries in the room, which is predominantly laid out in red and gold decor. In 1984 President François Mitterrand added ten windows to the room to let in more light. It is in this room that all French Presidents are inaugurated, and where they host official conferences and banquets.

The Jardins d'Hiver (Winter Gardens) was built in 1883 as a greenhouse for growing plants. Today it is no longer used for this purpose, being instead an extension of the Salon des Fêtes, and used for official banquets. There is a Gobelins tapestry on the wall, and three chandeliers hang from the ceiling.

The Salon Murat (Murat Room) is used every Wednesday by the President for meetings with the Prime Minister and the rest of the Government of France, along with the presidential secretary, known as the "Secretary-General of the Élysée". It was also in this room that Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany, signed the Élysée Treaty in 1963.

The Salon Cléopâtre (Cleopatra Room) gets its name from a Gobelins tapestry on the wall, installed during the presidency of Sadi Carnot, which depicts Antony and Cleopatra meeting at Tarsus. Also in the room is a portrait of Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma, painted by Alexandre Roslin.

The Salon des Ambassadeurs (Ambassadors' Room) is where the French President officially receives ambassadors from abroad.

The Salon Bleu (Blue Room) is used as the office of the First Lady of France.

The Escalier Murat (Murat Staircase) is the main staircase in the palace, linking the ground and first floors.

First floor
The Salon Doré (Golden Room) is named after the gold coloured edges to the wall features, doors, tables, and chairs. All the French Presidents have used this room as their main study except Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Emmanuel Macron.

The Salon Vert (Green Room) is named after the green curtains and chair covers (the doors, chairs, tables, and wall features have gold edges). The room is used for reunions, and it was here that Nicolas Sarkozy married his second wife, Carla Bruni, during his presidency.

The Salon Angle (Angle Room) is a former dining room that has been the office of the Secretary-General of the Élysée since 2007.

The Salon de Fougères (Flower Room) is named because it has floral patterned wallpaper. In the room is a portrait of King Louis XV, painted by Charles-André van Loo.

The Ancienne Chambre de la Reine and the Ancienne Chambre du Roi were the bedrooms of the former Kings and Queens of France. The latter room was formerly used as the office of the Secretary-General before he moved it to the Salon Angle.

Six other rooms on the first floor, in the east wing, are the President's private living quarters.

See also
Hôtel Matignon (official residence of the Prime Minister of France)

References

Bibliography
 René Dosière, L'argent caché de l'Élysée, Seuil, 2007

External links

 Official website

Buildings and structures in the 8th arrondissement of Paris
Government of France
Official residences in France
Elysée
Palaces in Paris
Presidential residences
Houses completed in 1722
1722 establishments in France
Joachim Murat
Madame de Pompadour
Louis XVIII

Élysée Palace


There are different definitions of price. Perhaps the simplest definition is to say "price is the value of a product (good) or service". A price is expressed in other goods, services, or in money.

Here is an example about price: Peter raises sheep for their wool. Sally raises chickens for their eggs. Winter is coming, so Sally wants to make a warm wool coat.
She first measures how much wool she needs for a coat. She thinks she needs the wool from 2 sheep for the coat. She then goes to Peter and asks him what he wants for the wool she needs. Peter then tells her the price he is asking for his wool. Sally might trade some of her chicken eggs for the wool.

Sometimes trading eggs for wool is difficult. So people invented something they called money. This is cash or currency used for trading.

If Peter does not need eggs, he will not trade his wool for eggs. The price for his wool in eggs is zero, but Peter does need something else. So Sally goes to a market and sells some of her eggs for money. Then she goes to Peter and gives him money for the wool. How much money Peter wants for his wool is the price.

Basic English 850 words
Commerce

Price


A talk show is a radio or television program where one or more hosts discuss current issues or other topics with guests. Many talk shows (especially those on radio) allow members of the public to join in, through telephone calls, letters, e-mail and Internet chat. Talk shows are often meant to entertain, and many feature comedy or  performing. Many shows, though, do a , by informing the public and discussing issues openly. While some are locally based, and serve only one station's audience, others become  and play on many stations, or are broadcast by a regional or national network.

The host of a talk show may already be a celebrity, or may become one as their show becomes popular. Some are professionals or experts in a field of knowledge, such as psychology or business. Others are well-known performers who can converse well with others. Guests on a talk show may also be experts in a field of knowledge or work, longtime professionals, or new and familiar celebrities, performers or athletes. Sometimes guests are members of the public who do something that interests others, such as inventors and authors, or someone who comes to public attention through a disaster or mishap.

Television
Johnny Carson hosted NBC's The Tonight Show for thirty years, with guests from every walk of life, including many old and new celebrities. (Comedian Jay Leno took over The Tonight Show when Carson retired.) Singer Mike Douglas hosted a popular, long-running show, co-hosted by weekly guests. Merv Griffin, David Frost and Dick Cavett also had long-running talk shows. Dr. Joyce Brothers was one of the first women to host a national talk show. Other women followed as hosts, including Oprah Winfrey, Joan Rivers, Ricki Lake, Rosie O'Donnell, and Ellen DeGeneres.

Many celebrities host a talk show after they finish work on a television series, to change the direction of their career or to promote things they think are important. Many such series last only a season or two, and some even less. Actresses Gabrielle Carteris, Caroline Rhea and Megan Mullally each hosted short-lived talk shows, after leaving successful series. Nearly every show aired at the same time as The Tonight Show has been cancelled after a short run, including shows hosted by Chevy Chase and Dennis Miller. Arsenio Hall came close, with a show lasting five seasons. Late Show with David Letterman has been the most successful, and is still airing. (Ironically, David Letterman was a hopeful to take over The Tonight Show from Carson when he retired in 1992.)

Radio
Talk shows became more and more popular on  from the 1970s onward, as AM stations began to play less music. Today talk shows are heard on AM, FM, and also  radio stations, , and the Internet. Larry King began his career on radio, and "crossed over" to television after many years as a popular host. Howard Stern led the trend of "", using profanity and personal topics to make his show more exciting. Art Bell talked about controversial topics, like UFOs and possible government conspiracies.

Call-in shows are meant especially for members of the public to join in, by telephone. Callers may wish to talk about current topics in politics, economics or social trends, or to seek advice, or help with a personal problem. Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Dr. Joy Browne, and Bruce Williams help callers with problems, while Michael Savage and many other hosts discuss current issues, on their radio shows.

Television programs
Radio

Talk show


A diocese is an area of land under the charge of a bishop. He looks after the religious needs of the Christians who live there. The bishop organises the work of the Church in the area, and is responsible for all the ministers (priests) in his area. Another word for diocese is see, or even 'episcopal see'.

The diocese is the key geographical unit of religious authority in the church. Archbishops have an archdiocese. Inside each diocese are a number of parishes. Each parish is the area supervised by a local priest, and is part of the diocese.

History
As the Western Roman Empire fell during the 5th and 6th centuries the bishops of the Church took over many of the administrative roles of the former Roman prefects. The areas of ecclesiastical administration always coincided with those of the Roman civil administration.

A thousand years later, the Ottoman Empire conquered the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire. The eastern bishops then continued as the Roman civil structure was stripped away. Many an ancient diocese, though later divided among several dioceses, preserved the boundaries of a long-vanished Roman administrative division.

Other websites

Christian terminology
Church organization

Diocese


The Missouri River is a river in the western United States. It is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is longer than the Mississippi River. It is, in fact, the longest river in North America.

Geography

For most of its course, the Missouri flows across the Great Plains, one of the driest parts of North America.

The source of the Missouri River is in the Rocky Mountains, in the state of Montana. The Missouri flows eastward, across Montana, south of the border with Canada. It enters the state of North Dakota and then it turns south. It flows through South Dakota. Then it flows past Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas.

Near the city of Kansas City, Missouri, the Missouri turns eastward into the state of Missouri. It flows eastward across the state of Missouri. It joins the Mississippi just north of the city of Saint Louis, Missouri.

The Missouri has many important tributaries, including the Yellowstone River, the Platte River, and the Kansas River.

History

The Missouri was very important for the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains. It was also very important in the history of the United States. The Missouri was used as the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804-1806. In the 19th century, the Missouri was very important in the North American fur trade and for transportation of army troops and supplies as well as general transportation and trade as the West was settled.

Nicknames

The nickname of the Missouri is "Big Muddy", because it has a lot of silt.

Rivers of Montana
Rivers of Missouri
Rivers of Iowa
Rivers of Kansas
Rivers of Nebraska
Rivers of South Dakota
Rivers of North Dakota

Missouri River


The Eastern Catholic Churches are autocephalous Christian churches. They recognize the Bishop of Rome as their spiritual leader, like other Catholics.They differ on ideas as how a mass should be organised, or which prayers are more important than others.

In total there are 23 such churches, the probably best known are listed below:

 Coptic Catholic Church
 Maronite Church
 Armenian Catholic Church
 Chaldean Catholic Church
 Syro-Malabar Catholic Church
 Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

Related pages

 Eastern Christianity

Other websites

General
 Orientale Lumen - Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II on the Eastern Churches
 Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium - original text of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, with concordance
 Code of canons of the Oriental Churchs - defective English translation, with concordance
 Instruction for Applying the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches  - Instruction by Congregation for the Eastern Churches
 What All Catholics Should Know About Eastern Catholic Churches
 Eastern Catholics in the United States of America - adapted from a similar publication by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference

Individual Churches
 Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate —Official Website
 Maronite Patriarchate —Official Website
 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church —Official Website
 Syro Malankara Catholic Church International Homepage —Official Website
 Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
 Byzantine Catholic Church in America—Information and Messageboards
 Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh—Official Website

Eastern Catholic churches


Plankton are drifting organisms that live in the surface layers of the ocean. They live in the top layer of the ocean, called the epipelagic zone. They are not strong enough to swim against ocean currents. The term is in contrast to nekton, who can control their movements. There are three groups:
 Phytoplankton: which live at the surface of the ocean and photosynthesise (use light to make sugars and other molecules).
 Eukaryote algae: diatoms, coccolithophores, some dinoflagellates.
 Bacteria: cyanobacteria.
 Zooplankton: small protozoans or metazoans: Ctenophores; jellyfish; rotifers; foraminifera; tiny crustacea and other animals. Some eggs and larvae of larger animals such as fish, crustaceans, and annelids. Apart from the eggs, they all feed on other plankton.
 Some groups fall into both categories. Dinoflagellates can be either photosynthetic producers or heterotroph consumers; many species are mixotrophic depending upon their circumstances. It is also hard to fit viruses into this scheme; yet they are present in great numbers.

Plankton are important in the ocean's food chain. They are the main source of food for almost all fish larvae as they switch from their yolk sacs to catching prey. Basking sharks and blue whales feed on them directly; other large fish feed on them indirectly, by eating fish of smaller size, such as herrings.

The distribution of plankton is governed more by nutrients than by temperature. Large tracts of ocean are blue and sterile. The reason is that these areas lack one or more crucial nutrients for the photosynthetic plankton, upon whom all the others depend. Broadly speaking, areas near land masses get nutrients by rivers and wind. The key nutrient lacking in the Pacific ocean is iron, essential in molecules such as ferredoxins, iron-sulfur proteins which do electron transfer in a range of metabolic reactions.

References

Biological oceanography

Plankton


The bar (symbol bar), decibar (symbol dbar) and the millibar (symbol mbar, also mb) are units of pressure. They are not SI units, but they are anyhow also used with (although discouraged) for use with the SI. The bar is still used in descriptions of pressure because it is about the same as atmospheric pressure.

Terms
The bar, decibar and millibar are known as:
 1 bar = 100,000 pascals (Pa) = 1,000,000 dynes per square centimeter (baryes)
 1 dbar = 0.1 bar = 10,000 Pa = 100,000 dyn/cm²
 1 mbar = 0.001 bar = 100 Pa = 1,000 dyn/cm²

(A pascal is one newton per square meter.)

Origin
The word bar has its origin in the Greek word βάρος (baros), meaning weight. Its official symbol is "bar"; the earlier "b" is now no longer used, but still often seen especially as "mb" rather than the correct "mbar" for millibars.

The bar and millibar were defined by Sir Napier Shaw in 1909 and internationally used in 1929.

Other websites
Official SI website: Table 8. Non-SI units accepted for use with the SI
Conversion factors from bar to various pressure units

Units of pressure

Bar (unit)


A Singer is a person who sings with their voice. Anyone who is singing is a singer. Some people do it as a job (professional singer), others may sing without being paid (amateur singer). Singers may sing anything: songs, opera, etc. They may be accompanied by an instrument or an orchestra. Some singers also play a musical instrument such as piano, guitar or harp while they sing (they accompany themselves). Singing is important in movies and in the theatre.

The lead vocalist (or lead singer) is the member of a band who sings the main solo vocal portions of a song. The lead vocalist may also play one or more instruments, and is usually the "leader" of their group, often the spokesperson in interviews and before the public. The lead vocalist is sometimes referred to as the frontman. For example, Jerry Garcia was the lead singer and frontman for the Grateful Dead.

Qualities
A good singer will have to think of a lot of different things in a performance. Some attributes of singing skill are good vocal technique, a large vocal range, as well as feeling the song through emotional language and breathing, and also acting to provide a song with meaning. A good singer may be able to learn a song quickly, but it may take some time before they really feel it has become "part of them." A lead singer has to be a strong singer since background vocalists sing accompaniment.

Mongolian throat singing has become popular because due to its geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance.

Singers can sing as a solo, or in a group or a choir. Choirs can include gospel music, church music and even pop songs where there are usually two male groups of singers (bass and tenor) and two female groups of singers (soprano and alto). Sopranos have a higher range and altos have a lower range. Combining these two can create various harmonies which add textures to songs and make them more interesting to listen to.

People may feel like singing for various reasons. They may want to share their feelings with other people. They may be feeling happy about something, or sad, or excited, frustrated or angry. Singing is an art in which mood is expressed through the voice.

Notable singers
 taylor swift
 beyonce
 Adele
 Rihanna
 Billie Eilish
 Justin Bieber
 Freddie Mercury
 Michael Jackson
 Kanye West
 Ariana Grande

Related pages
 Singing

References

Other websites
 What It Takes to Become a Professional Singer

Entertainment occupations

Singer


A suicide attack is an attack where the attacker (either one person or a group of people) plans on killing people and/or destroying property while also dying in the process. In a suicide attack, the attacker dies as a result of the attack, for example in an explosion or a crash.

Nowadays, suicide attacks are often done with a vehicle or an explosive material such as a bomb (a suicide bombing), or sometimes both (i.e. a car filled with explosives). If everything goes according to plan, the attacker is killed as soon as their attack is complete (when their vehicle crashes or their bomb detonates).

Suicide attacks are often done in a crowded place so that as many people as possible are killed. They are common in the Middle East and South Asia. Most attacks on Israel, carried out by Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist groups are suicide bombings. The kamikaze were suicide attacks by Japanese pilots during World War II.

Suicide attacks

Suicide attack


An athletic shoe is a name for a shoe designed for sporting and physical activities, and is different in style and build than a dress shoe. Originally used mainly during sports, today they are worn as casual footwear. They are often very comfortable and usually have lots of padding.

Athletic shoes, depending on the location and the actual type of footwear, can also go by the name trainers (British English), sandshoes (Australian English) running shoes or runners (Canadian English, Australian English, Hiberno-English), sneakers (American English, Australian English), sport shoes, gym shoes, tennis shoes, tennies, sneaks, kicks (American English), takkies (South African English).

They are made of flexible kinds of material featuring soles made from rubber and an upper part made with leather or canvas. Sneakers were originally for sporting use, although today they are used as casual footwear. They are worn in school for their versatility and comfort. They are almost silent; somebody wearing sneakers can sneak up on another person. They are worn for many different types of sports.

Images

Other websites

Footwear
Sports clothing

Athletic shoe