In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is marketing with the intention of increasing conversions—that is, site visitors who are paying customers.

Measures
Conversion marketing attempts to solve low online conversions through optimized customer service, which requires a complex combination of personalized customer experience management, web analytics, and the use of customer feedback to contribute to process flow improvement and site design.

By focusing on improving site flow, online customer service channels, and the online experience conversion marketing is commonly viewed as a long-term investment rather than a quick fix . Increased site traffic over the past 10 years has done little to increase overall conversion rates, so conversion marketing focuses not on driving additional traffic but on converting existing traffic. It requires proactive engagement with consumers using real time analytics to determine if visitors are confused and show signs of abandoning the site; then developing the tools and messages to inform consumers about available products, and ultimately persuading them to convert online. Ideally, the customer would maintain a relationship post-sale through support or re-engagement campaigns. Conversion marketing affects all phases of the customer life-cycle, and several conversion marketing solutions are utilized to help ease the transition from one phase to the next.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate is the proportion of visitors to a website who take action to go beyond a casual content view or website visit, as a result of subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.

Successful conversions are defined differently by individual marketers, advertisers, and content creators. For online retailers, for example, a successful conversion may be defined as the sale of a product to a consumer whose interest in the item was initially sparked by clicking a banner advertisement. For content creators, a successful conversion may refer to a membership registration, newsletter subscription, software download, or other activity.

Measurement
For websites that seek to generate offline responses, for example telephone calls or foot traffic to a store, measuring conversion rates can be difficult because a phone call or personal visit is not automatically traced to its source, such as the Yellow Pages, website, or referral. Possible solutions include asking each caller or shopper how they heard about the business and using a toll-free number on the website that forwards to the existing line.

For websites where the response occurs on the site itself, a site's analytics package can be used to track user behaviour.

Common conversion marketing services
Recommendations Behavioral analysis that identifies products and content relevant to the customer's perceived intent.
Targeted offers Targeting attempts to fit the right promotion with the right customer based upon behavioral and demographic information.
Ratings and reviews Using user-generated ratings and reviews to increase conversion rates, capture feedback, and engender visitor's trust.
Email personalization E-mail with embedded recommendations and chat that are tailored personally to the recipient.
Chat As consumers tend to abandon sites after only three clicks, attempts to use proactive chat, reactive chat, exit chat, and click-to-call to convert consumers quickly.
Click-to-call Supports cross-channel conversion without losing the context of the conversation when visitors move from the website to the phone.
Call to action (marketing) Statement designed to get an immediate response from the person reading or hearing it. Broadly used in business as part of a digital strategy to get your users to respond through one single action.
Cobrowsing Tool for support agent infrastructure (chat or call) to assist customers in transacting online.
Voice of the customer Feedback about products, services, and online experiences that is captured through carefully analyzed structured and unstructured data.
Automated guides predetermined steps that allow a customer to better understand product features, and options to assist with the selection process.
Retargeting Identification of visitors interested in particular products or services based on previous site browsing or search to offer relevant content through targeted ad placement.

Methods of increasing conversion rate

The process of improving the conversion rate is called conversion rate optimization. However, different sites may consider a "conversion" to be a result other than a sale. Say a customer were to abandon an online shopping cart. The company could market a special offer, like free shipping, to convert the visitor into a paying customer. A company may also try to recover the customer through an online engagement method, such as proactive chat, to attempt to assist the customer through the purchase process.

Among many possible actions to increase the conversion rate, the most relevant may be:
 Employ Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) principles to design the user experience through the conversion funnel
 Enhance the user's credibility and trust in the site, the product, and the business by displaying third-party trust logos and by quality site design
 Improve site navigation structure so that users can browse and shop with minimal effort
 Improve and focus the website content, including text, photographs, illustrations, and video, towards target conversion
 Review, and edit or remove obsolete or distracting data
 Increase usability to reduce barriers to conversion
 Create a self-serving customer service format by letting the user reach informative answers quickly with a learning database.
 Offer active help (e.g. live chat, co-browsing)
 Generate user reviews of the product or service
 Gather a baseline user experience by recording user actions and compiling key objections
 Enable clear tracking of standardized metrics using website analytics software for a predetermined conversion goal (e.g. "increase volume of newsletter subscriptions" or "decrease shopping cart abandonment percentage rate")
 Take repeated action to monitor and improve the site, based on quantitative and qualitative metrics
 Add a clear offer to the web page such as a price discount or special add-on offer like an eBook

See also
 Customer intelligence
 Win–loss analytics

References

 Berkeley-Study on Conversion rate in Spam

Digital marketing

Conversion marketing


Jade is a kind of stone. We use the name "jade" for two different sorts of mineral. The first sort is nephrite. This is a form of actinolite (asbestos is a sort of actinolite, too). The second sort is the mineral jadeite, and it is a pyroxene. The first sort (nephrite) is harder than the second sort (jadeite). The first sort (jadeite) has more colors that the second sort (nephrite).

Nephrite is Ca2(Mg, Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2.
Jadeite is NaAlSi2O6.

The two sorts of jade look nearly the same. People only found that they were two different sorts in 1863. The nephrite form of jade is very hard. In the past, Chinese people and the Maori used it to make knives and weapons. Later, when people could use metals, they liked jade because it looked nice and they thought it had special powers. Today people also use jade for jewelry.

Jade was found about 7000 years ago. The Chinese later made jewelry out of it. Only the rich could have jade because it was so rare and expensive. It was said that jade had healing powers and it was regarded as very lucky.

Gemstones

Jade


The  Tate is the United Kingdom's national museum of British and Modern Art. It is a group of four art galleries in England:
Tate Britain (opened in 1897 and renamed in 2000)
Tate Liverpool (1988),
Tate St Ives (1993)
Tate Modern (2000).
There is a website, Tate Online (1998). It is  administered as a quango (a non-departmental public body).Tate is used as the name for the corporation which was started as The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery.

The gallery was started in 1897, as the National Gallery of British Art. When its role was changed to include Modern Art it was renamed the Tate Gallery after Henry Tate. The Tate Gallery was first started in a building at Millbank, London on the Embankment. In 2000, the Tate Gallery split its collection into four museums:
Tate Britain (in the original building) displays the collection of British art from 1500 to the present day;
Tate Modern, also in London, houses the Tate's collection of British and International Modern and Contemporary art from 1900 to the present day.
Tate Liverpool, in Liverpool has the same purpose as Tate Modern but on a smaller scale, and
Tate St Ives displays modern and contemporary art by artists who have a connection with the local area. All four museums share the Tate Collection.

One of the Tate's most publicised art events is the awarding of the annual Turner Prize, which takes place at Tate Britain.

Tate Online
Tate Online is the Tate's web site. Since its launch in 1998, the site has had information on all four Tate galleries (Tate Britain, Tate St Ives, Tate Liverpool and Tate Modern) in the same website. Tate Online helps visitors with get ready to visit the galleries, but is also a gallery as well. Other resources include information on all works in Tate's Collection of British and Modern International art, e-learning for all visitors, over 400 hours of webcasts, all articles from the magazine Tate Etc, and a series of Internet art works. BT has sponsored Tate Online since 2001.

How it is run
The Tate gets money every year from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport. It is run by a board of trustees. Under the Charities Act 1993. the Tate is a tax-exempt charity. An entry fee is charged for all special collections, and there is a membership system to attract regular visitors.

Related pages
 Turner Prize

Other websites

 Tate Online — 65,000 works from the Tate Collection online, information on Tate's exhibitions and events programmes, and online learning resources.
 TATE ETC. Magazine
 Turner Worldwide  - an ongoing online cataloguing of JMW Turner's work around the world.
 Turner Collection Online  The online catalogue of Tate's collection of nearly 300 oil paintings and 30,000 works on paper by JMW Turner.
 Tate Gallery Records  Tate's own historical records.
 Tate Podcasts  Audio and video podcasts from Tate.
 Tate in Space
 Turner Museum

Art museums in the United Kingdom
Museums in England

Tate


2012 (twenty twelve) (MMXII) was  .

The year 2012 was the International Year of Cooperatives and the Alan Turing Year.

2012 was the Chinese Year of Water Dragon based on the 12-year Chinese Zodiac cycle.

Events

January

 January 1 – Start of Denmark's Presidency of the European Union
 January 5 – Portia Simpson-Miller becomes Prime Minister of Jamaica for a second time.
 January 6 – New Mexico celebrates the 100th anniversary of its statehood.
 January 10 – The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes before midnight, after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan in 2011, and the nuclear threat level.
 January 13–22 – The first Winter Youth Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria.
 January 14 – The cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off the Tuscan coast, at the island of Giglio, and partially sinks. Out of more than 4000 people on board, at least 30 people are killed.
 January 18 – The English language Wikipedia blacks out for 24 hours in protest against the internet laws SOPA and PIPA proposed by the United States Congress.
 January 20 – 185 people are killed in a series of coordinated bombings in Kano, Nigeria, carried out by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.
 January 23 – The EU adopts an embargo against Iran over its uranium enrichment.
 January 30 – Following this date, cold weather in Europe causes several deaths, due to the low temperatures.
 January 31 – 433 Eros, the second-largest Near Earth Object on record (size 13×13×33 km) passes Earth. NASA studied Eros with the NEAR Shoemaker probe launched on February 17, 1996.

February

 February 1 – Violence erupts at the end of a football match in Port Said, Egypt, killing 74 people.
 February 2 – The ferry MV Rabaul Queen sinks off the north coast of Papua New Guinea, with at least 230 people being rescued, and several missing.
 February 6 – Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II marking the 60th anniversary of her accession to the Thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia & New Zealand (as well as the 60th anniversary of her becoming Head of the Commonwealth).
 February 7 - President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed announces his resignation. Mohammed Waheed Hassan takes over from him.
 February 11 - American singer and actress Whitney Houston is found dead at her hotel in Los Angeles.
 February 12 - The Zambia national football team wins the African Cup of Nations, defeating the Ivory Coast.
 February 15 - A fire at a prison in Honduras kills at least 357 people.
 February 17 - President of Germany Christian Wulff announces his resignation following a home-loan scandal. He is the shortest-serving President in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Horst Seehofer becomes interim-President.
 February 19 - Iran suspends oil exports to France and the United Kingdom, after sanctions were imposed by the EU and the United States.
 February 21 - EU finance ministers reach an agreement on a 130 billion-Euro bailout for Greece.
 February 25 - Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi succeeds Ali Abdullah Saleh as President of Yemen.

March

 March 2 - A tornado outbreak in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana kills 39 people.
 March 4 - Several munitions dump explosions in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, kill over 250 people.
 March 4 - Vladimir Putin declares victory in the Russian Presidential Election, returning him to the Presidency.
 March 13 - It is announced that, after 244 years, the Encyclopedia Britannica is to stop its print edition to focus on its online version.
 March 13 - A coach crash in Switzerland kills 28 people, including 22 children, who were returning to Belgium.
 March 18 - Joachim Gauck is chosen to succeed Christian Wulff as President of Germany. He becomes President immediately.
 March 19 - Four people are killed in a shooting attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. The gunman, Mohammed Merah, is killed three days later after a siege.
 March 22 - Ahmed Toumani Toure, President of Mali, is ousted in a coup after armed soldiers attack government offices.
 March 25 - Macky Sall is elected President of Senegal, succeeding Abdoulaye Wade.

April
 April 1 - Aung San Suu Kyi wins a seat in the Burmese parliament.
 April 2 - President of Hungary Pal Schmitt resigns following a plagiarism scandal.
 April 5 - President of Malawi Bingu wa Mutharika dies. Joyce Banda succeeds him.
 April 6 - The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declares an independent state, Azawad, in northern Mali, which is not recognised internationally.
 April 11 - Two strong earthquakes strike off the Indian Ocean coast of Sumatra, causing widespread panic and tsunami alerts all around the Indian Ocean.
 April 12 - A coup takes place in Guinea-Bissau as mutinous soldiers arrest interim President Raimundo Pereira and Presidential candidate Carlos Gomes Junior, as they take control of the capital, Bissau.
 April 13 - Kwangmyongsong-3, a North Korean earth observation satellite, explodes shortly after launch.
 April 16 - The trial of Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, begins in Oslo.
 April 22 - Francois Hollande defeats Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of the French Presidential election. They both go through to the second round, as National Front leader Marine Le Pen comes third.
 April 26 - Former President of Liberia Charles Taylor is found guilty of war crimes, committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War.

May

 May 2 – Edvard Munch's The Scream sells for 120 million US dollars, a record price for a work of art at auction.
 May 6 – Second round of the French Presidential Election: Francois Hollande is elected President of France, defeating Nicolas Sarkozy.
 May 6 – The Parliamentary election in Greece ends in an inconclusive result. A re-run is scheduled for June 17.
 May 7 – Vladimir Putin becomes President of Russia for a second time, swapping places with Dmitry Medvedev, who becomes Prime Minister.
 May 12 – The 2012 World Expo begins in Yeosu, South Korea. It is due to last until August 12.
 May 15 – Francois Hollande becomes President of France.
 May 18-20 – The G8 Summit is held at Camp David, near Washington, DC after a last minute switch of location. Chicago was originally the host city of the G8 summit prior to the NATO Summit.
 May 20 – Taur Matan Ruak becomes President of East Timor.
 May 20-21 - The first NATO Summit in the United States outside of Washington, D.C. is held in Chicago, Illinois.
 May 20 – A magnitude 6 earthquake strikes northern Italy, killing at least 7 people and destroying many historic buildings.
 May 20 – Annular solar eclipse: Path of annularity runs through the Pacific Ocean from East Asia to the Western and Midwestern United States.
 May 22 - The Tokyo Skytree in Tokyo, Japan, opens to the public. It is the tallest self-supporting tower in the world, at a height of 634 metres.
 May 26 – Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan, which is won for Sweden by Loreen.
 May 29 - Mitt Romney secures the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.

June

 June 2 - Former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to prison for ordering the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 Egyptian protests.
 June 2-5 - Celebrations take place across the UK and Commonwealth to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne.
 June 3 - A Dana Air Flight crashes into a building in Lagos, Nigeria, killing all 153 people on board and 40 on the ground.
 June 4 - Partial lunar eclipse
 June 6 – The second and last solar transit of Venus of the century. The next pair is predicted to occur in 2117 and 2125.
 June 8-July 1 – The UEFA Euro 2012 is played in Poland and Ukraine. It is won by the Spain national football team.
 June 9 - Devastating wildfires begin in Colorado.
 June 17 - Parliamentary election in Greece: The second such election in Greece in the space of six weeks.
 June 17 - The deciding round of Egypt's Presidential election is held.
 June 18-June 23 – Turing Centenary Conference at the University of Cambridge, in honor of the mathematician, computer scientist, and cryptographer Alan Turing, the last day of the conference being the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
 June 20 - Antonis Samaras is sworn in as Prime Minister of Greece.
 June 22 - President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo is removed from office by impeachment and is succeeded by Federico Franco.
 June 22 - A Turkish Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter airplane is shot down by the Syrian Armed Forces, killing both pilots on board, further damaging already difficult relations between the two countries.
 June 24 - Shenzhou 9, a Chinese spacecraft carrying three Chinese astronauts, including the first female one, docks manually with orbiting module Tiangong 1, becoming the third country to successfully perform the mission.
 June 24 - Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is announced as the winner of Egypt's Presidential election.
 June 28 - The United States Supreme Court declares that Barack Obama's healthcare reform plan is constitutional.
 June 30 - Mohamed Morsi is sworn in as President of Egypt.
 June 30 - Iceland's Presidential election is held, won by incumbent President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson.
 June 30 - An extra leap second is added at the end of the month.

July

 July 1 - Start of Cyprus' Presidency of the European Union
 July 1 - Presidential election in Mexico - won by Enrique Pena Nieto.
 July 4 - Scientists at CERN announce that they have discovered a particle whose properties are consistent with those of the Higgs boson, after experiments were carried out at the Large Hadron Collider.
 July 7 - Flooding affects parts of the Krasnodar Krai region in southern Russia, killing 72 people.
 July 13 - FIFA is embroiled in its second corruption scandal in just over a year, as Sepp Blatter claims that there may have been irregularities when Germany won the right to host the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
 July 18–21 – The 2012 World Rowing Championships are held at Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
 July 20 - A gunman opens fire at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado. The shooting kills 12 people and 59 are reported injured.
 July 24 - John Atta Mills, President of Ghana, dies while still in office. John Dramani Mahama takes over the running of the country until the election in December.
 July 25 - Pranab Mukherjee becomes President of India, succeeding Pratibha Patil, whose five-year term expired.
 July 27 – Opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics begins in London at 7:30 pm UTC, 8:30pm BST.
 July 29 - In Romania, a referendum is held on whether President Traian Basescu should be removed from office. He remains in his position after a low voter turnout.
 July 30/31 - Large parts of northern and eastern India are affected by wide-scale power failures, leaving over 600 million people without electricity.

August

 early August - Typhoon Haikui causes flooding in the Philippines.
 August 6 - Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, successfully lands on the planet Mars.
 August 11 - Two earthquakes over magnitude 6, followed by several aftershocks, strike the area around Tabriz in northwestern Iran, killing over 300 people.
 August 11 - US presidential candidate Mitt Romney chooses Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.
 August 11 - The Jamaican men's 4 by 100 metre team wins the gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, meaning that Usain Bolt successfully defends all three of the titles he won in Beijing in 2008.
 August 12 – The closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London takes place. Host nation Great Britain finishes with the third-highest gold medal count, 29, winning 65 medals overall.
 August 16 - Police open fire on striking miners at the Marikana mine in South Africa, killing 34.
 August 22 - It is ruled that the attempt to unseat Romania's President Traian Basescu in a referendum was not legal.
 August 24 - Cyclist Lance Armstrong announces that he will no longer fight against doping allegations, as the World Anti-Doping Agency strips him of his seven consecutive (in-a-row) Tour de France titles.
 August 24 - A court in Oslo declares Anders Behring Breivik sane and rules that he should serve a 21-year prison sentence for the 2011 Norway attacks.
 August 29 - Start of the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.
 August 31 - Researchers announce the successful implantation of an early prototype bionic eye with 24 electrodes.
 August 31 - Armenia breaks off diplomatic ties with Hungary, after the extradition of Azerbaijani Ramil Safarov to his homeland, followed by his pardoning. He had been convicted of killing an Armenian soldier in Hungary in 2004.

September
 September 7 - Two earthquakes in southern China kill at least 80 people.
 September 7 - Canada breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran, over its stance on Syria, its nuclear programme and its human rights record.
 September 9 – End of the 2012 Summer Paralympics.
 September 11 - Both embassies in Cairo, Egypt and in Benghazi, Libya were attacked by Muslims who were believed to be protesting over a movie Innocence of Muslims, this attack killed U.S. Ambassador of Libya Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, and 2 more people were killed and about two injured. It was later revealed that this may have been a coordinated terrorist attack.
 September 27 - Flooding affects parts of southern Spain.
 September 28 - A plane crashes shortly after take-off from Kathmandu, Nepal, and bursts into flames, killing all 19 people on board, who were heading to Mount Everest Base Camp.
 September 30 - Europe wins the Ryder Cup golf tournament over the United States, coming back from far behind to win.

October

 October 1 - A ferry accident in Hong Kong kills 38 people.
 October 3 - A bomb attack believed to be linked to the Syrian conflict is carried out on the other side of the border with Turkey.
 October 9 - Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist Malala Yousafzai is shot and wounded during an assassination attempt by the Taliban while returning home on a school bus.
 October 12 - The European Union wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
 October 14 - Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break the sound barrier (travel faster than the speed of sound) without mechanical help, during a record space dive out of the Red Bull helium-filled balloon from 24 miles (39 kilometres) over Roswell, New Mexico, United States.
 October 15 - British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond sign an agreement in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the terms and conditions of a referendum on Scottish independence, due to be held in 2014.
 October 19 - A bomb attack in Beirut, Lebanon, kills 11 people, including the Lebanese army chief, in an attack believed to be linked to the conflict in neighbouring Syria.
 October 24 - Ireland ceases analog television broadcasts.
 October 24-30 - Hurricane Sandy kills over 200 people in Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, Eastern United States and parts of Canada and, in terms of diameter, it is the biggest North Atlantic Hurricane ever measured. Considerable storm surge damage causes major disruption on the eastern seaboard of the United States.
 October 26 - Silvio Berlusconi is found guilty of tax fraud.
 October 30 - Hurricane Sandy dissolves.

November

 November 3 - The New York City Marathon is cancelled for the first time in 42 years, due to Hurricane Sandy.
 November 4 - Bishop Tawadros is elected the next Pope of the Coptic Church in Egypt, succeeding Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, who died in March.
 November 6 – United States presidential election, 2012: After winning the electoral and popular vote, President Barack Obama wins re-election against Mitt Romney.
 November 6 - A referendum is held in Puerto Rico on its future status. A majority support a change, with a majority of them voting for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st US State.
 November 6 - In referendums, a majority of voters in the US States of Maine, Maryland and Washington support introducing same-sex marriage.
 November 6 - In other referendums, the states of Washington and Colorado have majorities voting for the legalisation of marijuana for recreational use, while Oregon rejects the proposal.
 November 10 - Four days after the United States presidential election, 2012, Barack Obama secures the state of Florida, completing the 332-206 electoral college win.
 November 13 – Total solar eclipse (It was visible in northern Australia and the South Pacific).
 November 14 - Israel launches Operation Pillar of Defense on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari. Hostilities over the following week kill 133 Palestinians and 5 Israelis.
 November 15 - The Communist Party of China unveils Xi Jinping as its next General Secretary, who is expected to lead the People's Republic of China until 2022.
 November 21 - After a week of violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip, the United States and Egypt announce a ceasefire, ending the week-long war.
 November 25 - A fire in a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills over 100 people.
 November 25 - Regional elections are held in Catalonia, dominated by the issue of possible future independence from Spain.
 November 25 - Sebastian Vettel wins the Formula One World Championship for the third year in a row, becoming the youngest driver to win three Formula One championships.
 November 25 to December 2 - Typhoon Bopha, known in the Philippines as "Pablo", kills at least 1,020 people, with 844 missing, causing considerable damage on the island of Mindanao.
 November 28 – Penumbral lunar eclipse.
 November 29 - At the UN General Assembly, a majority of member states votes to give Palestine non-member observer state status.

December
 December 1 - Enrique Pena Nieto becomes President of Mexico.
 December 3 – Jupiter in opposition.
 December 8 - In Qatar, at the UN Climate Conference, it is agreed that the Kyoto Protocol is extended until 2020.
 December 12 - North Korea announces that it has carried out a successful rocket launch.
 December 14 - Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: A shooting occurs at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, as 26 people, including 20 children, are shot dead by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who then turns the gun on himself.
 December 15 - Egypt holds a referendum on its constitution.
 December 16 - Parliamentary election in Japan: The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, under Shinzo Abe, wins the election.
 December 17 – Members of the Electoral College meet in each U.S. state.
 December 19 - Park Geunhye is elected President of South Korea over Moon Jae-in. She becomes the country's first female leader in February 2013.
 December 21 – 11:11 UTC. Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
 December 21 – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, notably used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization among others, completes a "great cycle" of thirteen baktuns. Some people believed that the end of this cycle would be the end of the world.
 December 21 - Barack Obama nominates John Kerry to become United States Secretary of State, a position in which he would succeed Hillary Clinton.
 December 26 - Shinzo Abe becomes Prime Minister of Japan for the second time.
 December 28 - At the age of 115 years, 253 days, Jiroemon Kimura of Japan becomes the oldest man ever, overtaking Christian Mortensen who had died in 1998. The oldest-ever person is Jeanne Calment, who lived for 122 years, 164 days.
 December 31 - Politicians in the United States do last-minute talks in an attempt at avoiding the so-called "Fiscal Cliff", a series of tax rises that would come into force in the new year.

Deaths

Nobel Prizes
 Physiology or Medicine: John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka
 Physics: Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland
 Chemistry: Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka
 Literature: Mo Yan
 Peace: European Union
 Economics: Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd Shapley

References

2012


Blackbody radiation is radiation produced by heated objects, particularly from a blackbody. A blackbody is an object that absorbs all radiation (visible light, infrared light, ultraviolet light, etc.) that falls on it. This also means that it will also radiate at all frequencies that heat energy produces in it.

Everything glows, depending on its temperature. Hotter things glow more in shorter wavelengths. Cooler things don't glow so much, especially in short wavelengths. Partly the radiation wavelength depends on what the material is, and partly it doesn't. The part that only depends on temperature, and not on composition, is called blackbody radiation.

Quantum wave
This part of the story of radiation was first explained by James Clerk Maxwell via wave theory but the predicted and actual intensity vs. frequency curves did not go together right. At higher frequencies classical physics predicted that more and more energy would be radiated from the body until the energy became infinite. This broke the first law of thermodynamics which is a fundamental part of all physics. This was called the ultraviolet catastrophe.

When it was realised that  classical physics did not work for blackbody radiation, the German physicist  Max Planck explained their relationship by saying that there are individual things (he did not try to guess what kind of things) that vibrate, each at its frequency. Each wave of each frequency has its special energy level. A single x-ray is very high photon energy and can go right through the human body.

A single wave or photon of infrared light is very low energy, cannot go through the human body, and can only warm it. Planck's good thinking was to realize that to get a single wave at the x-ray frequency, it was necessary to have a big enough package of energy (or "quantum") to make such a strong wave. So if a blackbody took in a single wave at the x-ray frequency, then it could give off an x-ray at some later time. But if the blackbody only took in infra-red light it would not matter how much of it was absorbed.

It could only give off infrared light and could not give off even ordinary red light, much less any higher energy light such as ultraviolet light or x-ray radiation. Planck said that the total energy given off by a blackbody at any particular frequency is equal to the number of the "vibrating things" (see above), n, that was vibrating at a given frequency, f times a special constant, h, that turns frequency units into energy units. The equation is:
E = n h f
The constant he made, h, is called the Planck constant.

The idea that a unit of light at a given frequency always has the same energy, the idea that there is a quantum of energy for each unit of light at a given frequency, became the doorway into quantum mechanics, so the idea of a blackbody is something that is basic to modern physics. It shows up in discussions of a wide variety of physics topics having to do with energies and frequencies.

Related pages
Stefan-Boltzmann law

Astrophysics
Thermodynamics
Electromagnetic radiation
Heat transfer
Infrared

Blackbody radiation


A fire temple, Agiary, Atashkadeh (), Atashgah () or Dar-e Mehr () is the place of worship for the followers of Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Iran (Persia). In the Zoroastrian religion, fire (see atar), together with clean water (see aban), are agents of ritual purity. Clean, white "ash for the purification ceremonies [is] regarded as the basis of ritual life", which "are essentially the rites proper to the tending of a domestic fire, for the temple [fire] is that of the hearth fire raised to a new solemnity". For, one "who sacrifices unto fire with fuel in his hand ..., is given happiness".

, there were 167 fire temples in the world, of which 45 were in Mumbai, 105 in the rest of India, and 17 in other countries. Of these only 9 (1 in Iran and 8 in India) are the main temples known as atash behrams and the remaining are the smaller temples known as agiarys.

History and development

Concept

First evident in the 9th century BCE, the Zoroastrian rituals of fire are contemporary with that of Zoroastrianism itself. It appears at approximately the same time as the shrine cult and is roughly contemporaneous with the introduction of Atar as a divinity. There is no allusion to a temple of fire in the Avesta proper, nor is there any Old Persian language word for one.

That the rituals of fire was a doctrinal modification and absent from early Zoroastrianism is also evident in the later Atash Nyash. In the oldest passages of that liturgy, it is the hearth fire that speaks to "all those for whom it cooks the evening and morning meal", which Boyce observes is not consistent with sanctified fire. The temple is an even later development: from Herodotus it is known that in the mid-5th century BCE the Zoroastrians worshipped to the open sky, ascending mounds to light their fires. Strabo confirms this, noting that in the 6th century, the sanctuary at Zela in Cappadocia was an artificial mound, walled in, but open to the sky, although there is no evidence whatsoever that the Zela-sanctuary was Zoroastrian. Although the "burning of fire" was a key element in Zoroastrian worship, the burning of "eternal" fire, as well as the presence of "light" in worship, was also a key element in many other religions.

By the Parthian era (250 BCE–226 CE), there were two places of worship in Zoroastrianism: one, called bagin or ayazan, was a sanctuary dedicated to a specific divinity; it was constructed in honor of the patron saint (or angel) of an individual or family and included an icon or effigy of the honored. The second, the atroshan, were the "places of burning fire" which became more and more prevalent as the iconoclastic movement gained support. Following the rise of the Sassanid dynasty, the shrines to the Yazatas continued to exist, but with the statues – by law – either abandoned or replaced by fire altars.

Also, as Schippman observed, there is no evidence even during the Sassanid era (226–650 CE) that the fires were categorized according to their sanctity. "It seems probable that there were virtually only two, namely the Atash-i Vahram [literally: "victorious fire", later misunderstood to be the Fire of Bahram], and the lesser Atash-i Adaran, or 'Fire of Fires', a parish fire, as it were, serving a village or town quarter". Apparently, it was only in the Atash-i Vahram that fire was kept continuously burning, with the Adaran fires being annually relit. While the fires themselves had special names, the structures did not, and it has been suggested that "the prosaic nature of the middle Persian names (kadag, man, and xanag are all words for an ordinary house) perhaps reflect a desire on the part of those who fostered the temple-cult ... to keep it as close as possible in character to the age-old cult of the hearth-fire, and to discourage elaboration".

The Battle of al-Qādisiyyah (636 CE) and the Battle of Nihavānd (642 CE) were instrumental to the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and state-sponsored Zoroastrianism; destruction or conversion (mosques) of some fire temples in Greater Iran followed. The faith was practiced largely by the aristocracy but large numbers of fire temples did not exist. Some fire temples continued with their original purpose although many Zoroastrians fled. Legend says that some took fire with them and it most probably served as a reminder of their faith in an increasingly persecuted community since fire originating from a temple was not a tenet of the religious practice.

Archaeological traces

The oldest remains of what has been identified as a fire temple are those on Mount Khajeh, near Lake Hamun in Sistan. Only traces of the foundation and ground-plan survive and have been tentatively dated to the 3rd or 4th century BCE. The temple was rebuilt during the Parthian era (250 BCE-226 CE), and enlarged during Sassanid times (226–650 CE).

The characteristic feature of the Sassanid fire temple was its domed sanctuary where the fire-altar stood. This sanctuary always had a square ground plan with a pillar in each corner that then supported the dome (the gombad). Archaeological remains and literary evidence from Zend commentaries on the Avesta suggest that the sanctuary was surrounded by a passageway on all four sides. "On a number of sites the gombad, made usually of rubble masonry with courses of stone, is all that survives, and so such ruins are popularly called in Fars čahār-tāq or 'four arches'."

Ruins of temples of the Sassanid era have been found in various parts of the former empire, mostly in the southwest (Fars, Kerman and Elam), but the biggest and most impressive are those of Adur Gushnasp in Media Minor (see also The Great Fires, below). Many more ruins are popularly identified as the remains of Zoroastrian fire temples even when their purpose is of evidently secular nature, or are the remains of a temple of the shrine cults, or as is the case of a fort-like fire temple and monastery at Surkhany, Azerbaijan, that unambiguously belongs to another religion. The remains of a fire-altar, most likely constructed during the proselytizing campaign of Yazdegerd II (r. 438–457) against the Christian Armenians, have been found directly beneath the main altar of the Echmiadzin Cathedral, the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Legendary Great Fires
Apart from relatively minor fire temples, three were said to derive directly from Ahura Mazda, thus making them the most important in Zoroastrian tradition. These were the "Great Fires" or "Royal Fires" of Adur Burzen-Mihr, Adur Farnbag, and Adur Gushnasp. The legends of the Great Fires are probably of antiquity (see also Denkard citation, below), for by the 3rd century CE, miracles were said to happen at the sites, and the fires were popularly associated with other legends such as those of the folktale heroes Fereydun, Jamshid and Rustam.

The Bundahishn, an encyclopaediaic collection of Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology written in Book Pahlavi, which was finished in the 11th or 12th century CE, states that the Great Fires had existed since creation and had been brought forth on the back of the ox Srishok to propagate the faith, dispel doubt, and protect all humankind. Other texts observe that the Great Fires were also vehicles of propaganda and symbols of imperial sovereignty.

The priests of these respective "Royal Fires" are said to have competed with each other to draw pilgrims by promoting the legends and miracles that were purported to have occurred at their respective sites. Each of the three is also said to have mirrored social and feudal divisions: "The fire which is Farnbag has made its place among the priests; ... the fire which is Gūshnasp has made its place among the warriors; ... the fire which is Būrzīn-Mitrō has made its place among agriculturists" (Denkard, 6.293). These divisions are archaeologically and sociologically revealing, because they make clear that, since from at least the 1st century BCE onwards, society was divided into four, not three, feudal estates.

The Farnbag fire (translated as 'the fire Glory-Given' by Darmesteter) was considered the most venerated of the three because it was seen as the earthly representative of the Atar Spenishta, 'Holiest Fire' of Yasna 17.11, and it is described in a Zend commentary on that verse as "the one burning in Paradise in the presence of Ohrmazd."

Although "in the eyes of [contemporary] Iranian Zoroastrian priests, the three fires were not 'really existing' temple fires and rather belonged to the mythological realm", several attempts have been made to identify the locations of the Great Fires. In the early 20th century, A. V. Jackson identified the remains at Takht-i-Suleiman, midway between Urumieh and Hamadan, as the temple of Adur Gushnasp. The location of the Mithra fire, i.e. that of Burzen-Mihr, Jackson "identified with reasonable certainty" as being near the village of Mihr half-way between Miandasht and Sabzevar on the Khorasan road to Nishapur. The Indian (lesser) Bundahishn records the Farnbag fire having been "on the glory-having mountain which is in Khwarezm" but later moved "upon the shining mountain in the district of Kavul just as it there even now remains" (IBd 17.6). That the temple once stood in Khwarezm is also supported by the Greater (Iranian) Bundahishn and by the texts of Zadsparam (11.9). However, according to the Greater Bundahishn, it was moved "upon the shining mountain of Kavarvand in the Kar district" (the rest of the passage is identical to the Indian edition). Darmesteter identified this "celebrated for its sacred fire which has been transported there from Khvarazm as reported by Masudi" . If this identification is correct, the temple of the Farnbag fire then lay 10 miles southwest of Juwun, midway between Jahrom and Lar. ()

Iranshah Atash Behram

According to Parsi legend, when (over a thousand years ago) one group of refugees from (greater) Khorasan landed in Western Gujarat, they had the ash of such a fire with them. This ash, it is said, served as the bed for the fire today at Udvada.

This fire temple was not always at Udvada. According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, 'Story of Sanjan', the only existing account of the early years of Zoroastrian refugees in India and composed at least six centuries after their arrival, the immigrants established a Atash-Warharan, 'victorious fire' (see Warharan for etymology) at Sanjan. Under threat of war (probably in 1465), the fire was moved to the Bahrot Caves 20 km south of Sanjan, where it stayed for 12 years. From there, it was moved to Bansdah, where it stayed for another 14 years before being moved yet again to Navsari, where it would remain until the 18th century. It was then moved to Udvada where it burns today.

Although there are numerous eternally burning Zoroastrian fires today, with the exception of the 'Fire of Warharan', none of them are more than 250 years old. The legend that the Indian Zoroastrians invented the afrinagan (the metal urn in which a sacred fire today resides) when they moved the fire from Sanjan to the Bahrot Caves is unsustainable. Greek historians of the Parthian period reported the use of a metal vase-like urn to transport fire. Sassanid coins of the 3rd-4th century CE likewise reveal a fire in a vase-like container identical in design to the present-day afrinagans. The Indian Zoroastrians do however export these and other utensils to their co-religionists the world over.

Today

Nomenclature
One of the more common technical terms – in use – for a Zoroastrian fire temple is dar be-mehr, romanized as darb-e mehr or dialectally slurred as dar-e mehr. The etymology of this term, meaning 'Mithra's Gate' or 'Mithra's Court' is problematic. It has been proposed that the term is a throwback to the age of the shrine cults, the name being retained because all major Zoroastrian rituals were solemnized between sunrise and noon, the time of day especially under Mithra's protection. Etymological theories see a derivation from mithryana (so Meillet) or *mithradana (Gershevitch) or mithraion (Wilcken). It is moreover not clear whether the term referred to a consecrated inner sanctum or to the ritual precinct.

Among present-day Iranian Zoroastrians, the term darb-e mehr includes the entire ritual precinct. It is significantly more common than the older atashkada, a Classical Persian language term that together with its middle Persian predecessors (𐭪𐭲𐭪 𐭠𐭲𐭧𐭱 ātaxš-kadag, -man and -xanag) literally means 'house of fire'. The older terms have the advantage that they are readily understood even by non-Zoroastrian Iranians. In the early 20th century, the Bombay Fasilis (see Zoroastrian calendar) revived the term as the name of their first fire temple, and later in that century the Zoroastrians of Tehran revived it for the name of their principal fire temple.

The term darb-e mehr is also common in India, albeit with a slightly different meaning. Until the 17th century the fire (now) at Udvada was the only continuously burning one on the Indian subcontinent. Each of the other settlements had a small building in which rituals were performed, and the fire of which the priests would relight whenever necessary from the embers carried from their own hearth fires. The Parsis called such an unconsecrated building either dar-be mehr or agiary. The latter is the Gujarati language word for 'house of fire' and thus a literal translation of atashkada. In recent years, the term dar-be mehr has come to refer to a secondary sacred fire (the dadgah) for daily ritual use that is present at the more prestigious fire temples. Overseas, in particular in North America, Zoroastrians use the term dar-be mehr for both temples that have an eternally burning fire as well as for sites where the fire is only kindled occasionally. This is largely due to the financial support of such places by one Arbab Rustam Guiv, who preferred the dialectal Iranian form.

Classification
Functionally, the fire temples are built to serve the fire within them, and the fire temples are classified (and named) according to the grade of fire housed within them. There are three grades of fires, the Atash Dadgah, Atash Adaran, and Atash Behram.

Atash Dadgah
The Atash Dadgah is the lowest grade of sacred fire, and can be consecrated within the course of a few hours by two priests, who alternatingly recite the 72 verses of the Yasna liturgy. Consecration may occasionally include the recitation of the Vendidad, but this is optional. A lay person may tend the fire when no services are in progress. The term is not necessarily a consecrated fire, and the term is also applied to the hearth fire, or to the oil lamp found in many Zoroastrian homes.

Atash Adaran
The next highest grade of fire is the Atash Adaran, the "Fire of fires". It requires a gathering of hearth fire from representatives of the four professional groups (that reflect feudal estates): from a hearth fire of the asronih (the priesthood), the (r)atheshtarih (soldiers and civil servants), the vastaryoshih (farmers and herdsmen) and the hutokshih (artisans and laborers). Eight priests are required to consecrate an Adaran fire and the procedure takes between two and three weeks.

Atash Behram

The highest grade of fire is the Atash Behram, "Fire of victory", and its establishment and consecration is the most elaborate of the three. It involves the gathering of 16 different "kinds of fire", that is, fires gathered from 16 different sources, including lightning, fire from a cremation pyre, fire from trades where a furnace is operated, and fires from the hearths as is also the case for the Atash Adaran. Each of the 16 fires is then subject to a purification ritual before it joins the others. Thirty-two priests are required for the consecration ceremony, which can take up to a year to complete.

A temple that maintains an Adaran or Behram fire also maintains at least one Dadgah fire. In contrast to the Adaran and Behram fires, the Dadgah fire is the one at which priests then celebrate the rituals of the faith, and which the public addresses to invoke blessings for a specific individual, a family or an event. Veneration of the greater fires is addressed only to the fire itself – that is, following the consecration of such a fire, only the Atash Nyashes, the litany to the fire in Younger Avestan, is ever recited before it.

A list of the nine Atash Behrams:

Iranshah Atash Behram in Udvada, India. Established 1742.
 Desai Atash Behram in Navsari, India. Established 1765.
 Dadiseth Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1783.
 Vakil Atash Behram in Surat, India. Established 1823.
 Modi Atash Behram in Surat, India. Established 1823.
 Wadia Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1830.
 Banaji Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1845.
 Anjuman Atash Behram in Mumbai, India. Established 1897.
Yezd Atash Behram in Yazd, Iran. Established 1934.

Physical attributes

The outer façade of a Zoroastrian fire temple is almost always intentionally nondescript and free of embellishment. This may reflect ancient tradition (supported by the prosaic nature of the technical terms for a fire temple) that the principal purpose of a fire temple is to house a sacred fire, and not to glorify what is otherwise simply a building.

The basic structure of present-day fire temples is always the same. There are no indigenous sources older than the 19th century that describe an Iranian fire temple (the 9th century theologian Manushchir observed that they had a standard floor plan, but what this might have been is unknown), and it is possible that the temples there today have features that are originally of Indian origin. On entry one comes into a large space or hall where congregation (also non-religious) or special ceremonies may take place. Off to the side of this (or sometimes a floor level up or down) the devotee enters an anteroom smaller than the hall he/she has just passed through. Connected to this anteroom, or enclosed within it, but not visible from the hall, is the innermost sanctum (in Zoroastrian terminology, the atashgah, literally 'place of the fire' in which the actual fire-altar stands).

A temple at which a Yasna service (the principal Zoroastrian act of worship that accompanies the recitation of the Yasna liturgy) may be celebrated will always have, attached to it or on the grounds, at least a well or a stream or other source of 'natural' water. This is a critical requirement for the Ab-Zohr, the culminating rite of the Yasna service.

Only priests attached to a fire temple may enter the innermost sanctum itself, which is closed on at least one side and has a double domed roof. The double dome has vents to allow the smoke to escape, but the vents of the outer dome are offset from those of the inner, so preventing debris or rain from entering the inner sanctum. The sanctum is separated from the anteroom by dividers (or walls with very large openings) and is slightly raised with respect to the space around it. The wall(s) of the inner sanctum are almost always tiled or of marble, but are otherwise undecorated. There are no lights – other than that of the fire itself – in the inner sanctum. In Indian-Zoroastrian (not evident in the modern buildings in Iran) tradition the temples are often designed such that direct sunlight does not enter the sanctuary.

In one corner hangs a bell, which is rung five times a day at the boi – literally, '[good] scent' – ceremony, which marks the beginning of each gah, or 'watch'. Tools for maintaining the fire – which is always fed by wood – are simply hung on the wall, or as is sometimes the case, stored in a small room (or rooms) often reachable only through the sanctum.

In India and in Indian-Zoroastrian communities overseas, non-Zoroastrians are strictly prohibited from entering any space from which one could see the fire(s). While this is not a doctrinal requirement (that is, it is not an injunction specified in the Avesta or in the so-called Pahlavi texts), it has nonetheless developed as a tradition. It is, however, mentioned in a 16th-century Rivayat epistle (R. 65). In addition, entry into any part of the facility is sometimes reserved for Zoroastrians only. This then precludes the use of temple hall for public (also secular) functions. Zoroastrians insist, though, that these restrictions are not meant to offend non-Zoroastrians, and point to similar practices in other religions. There was a custom in India that Zoroastrian women were not allowed to enter the Fire Temple and the Tower of Silence if they married a non-Zoroastrian person. This custom has been challenged before the Supreme Court of India.

Worship

When the adherent enters the sanctum he or she will offer bone-dry sandalwood (or other sweet-smelling wood) to the fire. This is in accordance with doctrinal statutes expressed in Vendidad 18.26-27, which in addition to enumerating which fuels are appropriate, also reiterates the injunctions of Yasna 3.1 and Yashts 14.55 that describe which fuels are not (in particular, any not of wood).

In present-day Zoroastrian tradition, the offering is never made directly, but placed in the care of the celebrant priest who, wearing a cloth mask over the nostrils and mouth to prevent pollution from the breath, will then – using a pair of silver tongs – place the offering in the fire. The priest will use a special ladle to proffer the holy ash to the layperson, who in turn daubs it on his or her forehead and eyelids, and may take some home for use after a Kushti ceremony.

A Zoroastrian priest does not preach or hold sermons, but rather just tends to the fire.  Fire Temple attendance is particularly high during seasonal celebrations (Gahambars), and especially for the New Year (Noruz).

The priesthood is trigradal.  The chief priest of each temple has the title of dastur.  Consecration to this rank relieves him of the necessity of purification after the various incidents of life that a lesser priest must expiate.  Ordinary priests have the title of mobad, and are able to conduct the congregational worship and such occasional functions as marriages.  A mobad must be the son, grandson, or great-grandson of a mobad.  The lowest rank is that of herbad, or ervad; these assist at the principal ceremonies.

Gallery

See also

 Azargoshnasp fire temple

References

Sources

External links

Zoroastrian Places of Worship
Photos of the remains of a fire temple

Temples
Zoroastrianism

Fire temple


Liga Bangsa-bangsa merupakan sebuah perbadanan antarabangsa yang ditubuhkan selepas Persidangan Keamanan Paris 1919. Matlamat-matlamatnya termasuk gencatan senjata; mengelak peperangan melalui keselamatan kolektif; menyelesaikan perselisihan antara negara-negara melalui perundingan dan diplomasi; dan meningkatkan taraf hidup di seluruh dunia. Falsafah diplomasi Liga merupakan sebuah perubahan besar dalam cara berfikir mengenai diplomasi. Falsafah yang lama, yang diasaskan pada Kongres Vienna (1815), melihat Eropah sebagai suatu peta perikatan antara negara-negara yang selalu berubah. Hal ini mencipta suatu keseimbangan kuasa yang dipelihara oleh tentera yang kuat dan persetujuan rahsia. Menurut falsafah yang baru, Liga Bangsa-bangsa merupakan sebuah kerajaan untuk kerajaan, yang memainkan peranan menyelesaikan perselisihan antara negara-negara individu dalam suatu forum yang terbuka dan berasaskan undang-undang. Sokongan untuk Liga paling kuat daripada Presiden Demokrat Woodrow Wilson, dari Amerika Syarikat (AS), walaupun AS tidak menyertai Liga selama-lamanya.

Liga Bangsa-bangsa tidak mempunyai tentera sendiri, oleh itu, Liga Bangsa-bangsa perlu bergantung kepada negara berkuasa (yang kerap enggan) menguatkuasakan keputusannya. Selepas beberapa kejayaan dan banyak kegagalan, Liga gagal menghalang Kuasa Axis daripada tindakan agresif yang dilakukan oleh mereka pada zaman 1930-an. Perang Dunia Kedua membuktikan kegagalan Liga untuk mencegah perang dunia. Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu menggantikan Liga selepas Perang Dunia Kedua, dan mewarisi beberapa agensi dan perbadanan yang telah ditubuhkan oleh Liga.

Bahasa-bahasa
Bahasa-bahasa rasmi Liga Bangsa adalah Perancis, Inggeris dan Sepanyol (bermula pada tahun 1920). Pada awal tahun 1920-an, terdapat cadangan untuk Liga Bangsa menerima Esperanto sebagai bahasa kerjanya. Sepuluh delegasi menerima cadangan ini dengan hanya satu tentangan dari delegasi Perancis, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux tidak suka bagaimana bahasa Perancis hilang kedudukannya sebagai bahasa antarabangsa dan melihat Esperanto sebagai satu ancaman. Dua tahun kemudian, Liga Bangsa mencadangkan negara-negara ahlinya untuk memasukkan Esperanto di dalam kurikulum pendidikan mereka.

Struktur
Liga ini mempunyai tiga organ utama: secretariat (pimpinan seorang Setiausaha Agung yang bertapak di Geneva), Majlis dan Dewan Perhimpunan, termasuk juga banyak agensi dan suruhanjaya. Sebarang tindakan yang perlu diambil harus mendapat undian keseluruhan oleh Majlis serta undian majoriti oleh Dewan Perhimpunan.

Sekretariat
The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the civil service for the League.

Over the life of the League from 1920–1946, the three Secretaries General were:
 Sir James Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth (U.K.) (1920-1933)
 Joseph Avenol (Perancis) (1933-1940)
 Seán Lester (Ireland) (1940-1946)
The General Secretary wrote annual reports on the work of the League.

The first president was Paul Hymans, a well-known Belgian politician.

Majlis
Majlis Liga mempunyai kuasa menguruskan sebarang hal yang berkaitan dengan keamanan dunia. Majlis ini mulanya diduduki empat ahli tetap (United Kingdom, Perancis, Itali, Jepun) dan empat ahli bukan tetap yang dilantik Dewan Perhimpunan setiap tiga tahun. Ahli-ahli bukan tetap liga yang pertama ialah Belgium, Brazil, Yunani and Sepanyol. Amerika Syarikat dahulunya dirancang untuk menjadi ahli tetap Liga Bangsa ke-5, namun Senat negara tersebut yang dikuasai Parti Republikan selepas berlangsungnya pilihan raya Senat 1918 itu mengundi menentang ratifikasi Perjanjian Versailles pada 19 Mac 1920 , maka kerusi kelima dalam Liga tersebut diambil alih oleh China.  Bilangan negara anggota bukan tetap dalam Majlis semakin bertambah dengan beransurnya menjadi enam negara pada 22 September 1922 dan kemudiannya 9 buah kerusi pada 8 September 1926. Jerman menyertai Liga sebagai ahli kekal Majlis yang ke-6 pada September 8 1926. Kerusi Jepun dan Jerman diambil alih oleh negara ahli bukan tetap yang baru selepas negara-negara tersebut menarik balik keahlian mereka dalam Majlis Liga.

The Council met in ordinary sessions four times a year, and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.

Perhimpunan

Each member was represented and had one vote in the League Assembly. Individual member states did not always have representatives in Geneva. The Assembly held its sessions once a year in September.

Eamon de Valera was the President of the Council of the League of Nations at its 68th and Special Sessions in September and October 1932, and President of the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1938. C.J. Hambro was President in 1939 and 1946.

Perbadanan lain
Liga ini mengawasi Mahkamah Tetap Keadilan Antarabangsa serta agensi dan suruhanjaya lain yang dicipta untuk menangani isu antarabangsa yang penting; termasuklah Suruhanjaya Perlucutan Senjata, Pertubuhan Kesihatan, Pertubuhan Buruh Antarabangsa, Suruhanjaya Mandat, Badan Pusat Candu Tetap, Suruhanjaya Pelarian dan Suruhanjaya Perhambaan. Sebahagian daripada agensi dan suruhamjaya dalam liga ini masih berjaya mengikut mandat mereka meskipun pentadbiran pusat mendapat nasib yang sebaliknya.

 Disarmament Commission  The Commission obtained initial agreement by France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom to limit the size of their navies. However, the UK refused to sign a 1923 disarmament treaty, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, facilitated by the commission in 1928, failed in its objective of outlawing war. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military buildup during the 1930s by Italy, Germany and Japan.
 Health Organization  This body focused on ending leprosy and malaria, the latter by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organization also succeeded in preventing an epidemic of typhus from spreading throughout Europe due to its early intervention in the Soviet Union.
 Mandates Commission  The Commission supervised League of Nations Mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join, most notably the plebiscite in Saarland in 1935.
 International Labour Organization  This body was led by Albert Thomas. It successfully banned the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also worked to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen.
 Permanent Central Opium Board  The Board was established to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second International Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of opium and its by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the legal international trade in narcotics.
 Commission for Refugees  Led by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission oversaw the repatriation and, when necessary the resettlement, of 400,000 refugees and ex-prisoners of war, most of whom were stranded in Russia at the end of World War I. It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to deal with a refugee crisis in that country and to help prevent disease and hunger. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless peoples.
 Slavery Commission  The Commission sought to eradicate slavery from the world, and fought forced prostitution and drug trafficking, particularly in opium. It succeeded in gaining the emancipation of 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and organized raids against slave traders in its efforts to stop the practice of forced labour in Africa. It also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers in Tanganyika from 55% to 4%. In other parts of the world, the Commission kept records on slavery, prostitution and drug trafficking in an attempt to monitor those issues.

Several of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War. In addition to the International Labour Organisation, the Permanent Court of International Justice became a UN institution as the International Court of Justice, and the Health Organization was restructured as the World Health Organization.

Kegagalan spesifik
The general weaknesses of the League are illustrated by its specific failures.

Cieszyn

Cieszyn (German Teschen, Czech Těšín) is a region between Poland and today's Czech Republic, important for its coal mines. Czechoslovakian troops moved to Cieszyn in 1919 to take over control of the region while Poland was defending itself from invasion of Bolshevik Russia. The League intervened, deciding that Poland should take control of most of the town, but that Czechoslovakia should take one of the town's suburbs, which contained the most valuable coal mines and the only railroad connecting Czech lands and Slovakia. The city was divided into Polish Cieszyn and Czech Český Těšín. Poland refused to accept this decision; although there was no further violence, the diplomatic dispute continued for another 20 years.

Vilna

After World War I, Poland and Lithuania both regained the independence that they had lost during the partitions of Poland in 1795. Though both countries shared centuries of common history in the Polish-Lithuanian Union and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, rising Lithuanian nationalism prevented the recreation of the former federated state. The city of Vilna (Lithuanian Vilnius, Polish Wilno) was made the capital of Lithuania, despite being mainly Polish in ethnicity.

During the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, a Polish army took control of the city. Despite the Poles' claim to the city, the League chose to ask Poland to withdraw: the Poles did not. The city and its surroundings were proclaimed a separate state of Central Lithuania and on 20 February 1922 the local parliament passed the Unification Act and the city was incorporated into Poland as the capital of the Wilno Voivodship. Theoretically, British and French troops could have been asked to enforce the League's decision; however, France did not wish to antagonise Poland, which was seen as a possible ally in a future war against Germany, while the United Kingdom was not prepared to act alone. Both the United Kingdom and France also wished to have Poland as a 'buffer zone' between Europe and the possible threat from Communist Russia. Eventually, the League accepted Wilno as a Polish town on March 15 1923. Thus the Poles were able to keep it until Soviet invasion in 1939.

Lithuanian authorities declined to accept the Polish authority over Wilno and treated it as a constitutional capital. It wasn't until the 1938 ultimatum, when Lithuania resolved diplomatic relations with Poland and thus de facto accepted the borders of its neighbour.

Ruhr

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay reparations. They could pay in money or in goods at a set value; however, in 1922 Germany was not able to make its payment. The next year, France and Belgium chose to act upon this, and invaded the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr, despite this being in direct contravention of the League's rules. With France being a major League member, and the United Kingdom hesitant to oppose its close ally, nothing was done in the League despite the clear breach of League rules. This set a significant precedent – the League rarely acted against major powers, and occasionally broke its own rules.

Corfu
One major boundary settlement that remained to be made after World War I was that between Greece and Albania. The Conference of Ambassadors, a de facto body of the League, was asked to settle the issue. The Council appointed Italian general Enrico Tellini to oversee this. While examining the Greek side of the border, Tellini and his staff were murdered. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed, and demanded the Greeks pay reparations and execute the murderers. The Greeks, however, did not actually know who the murderers were.

On 31 August 1923, Italian forces occupied the island of Corfu, part of Greece, with fifteen people being killed. Initially, the League condemned Mussolini's invasion, but also recommended Greece pay compensation, to be held by the League until Tellini's killers were found. Mussolini, though he initially agreed to the League's terms, set about trying to change them. By working on the Conference of Ambassadors, he managed to make the League change its decision. Greece was forced to apologise and compensation was to be paid directly and immediately. Mussolini was able to leave Corfu in triumph. By bowing to the pressure of a large country, the League again set a dangerous and damaging example. This was one of the league's major failures.

Krisis Manchuria

The Manchuria Crisis was one of the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for Japan's withdrawal from the organisation. In the Mukden Incident, the Japanese held control of the South Manchurian Railway in the Chinese region of Manchuria. They claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway, which was a major trade route between the two countries, on 18 September 1931. (In fact, the sabotage had been committed by Japanese Army personnel bent on establishing a pretext for conquest.) In retaliation, the Japanese army, acting contrary to the civilian government's orders, occupied the entire province of Manchuria, which they named Manchukuo. In 1932, Japanese air and sea forces bombarded the Chinese city of Shanghai and a short war broke out.

The Chinese government asked the League for help, but the long voyage around the world for League officials to investigate the matter themselves delayed matters. When they arrived, the officials were confronted with Chinese assertions that the Japanese had invaded unlawfully, while the Japanese claimed they were acting to keep peace in the area. Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the Lytton Report declared Japan to be in the wrong and demanded Manchuria be returned to the Chinese. However, before the report was voted upon by the Assembly, Japan announced intentions to invade more of China. When the report passed 42-1 in the Assembly (only Japan voted against), Japan left the League. Economic sanctions were powerless, since Japan's major trading partner was the U.S., which was not a member of the League and declined to cooperate with it out of fear of war. The United Kingdom, concerned about the security of its large commercial interests in China as well as its Asian colonies, was reluctant to anger Japan over a region that was not central to its own interests. Once again, the League bowed to the more powerful, and showed its weakness.

Perang Chaco

The League failed to prevent the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay in 1932 over the arid Chaco Boreal region of South America. Although the region was sparsely populated, it gave control of the Paraguay River which would have given one of the two landlocked countries access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum. Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932, when the Bolivian army, following the orders of President Daniel Salamanca Urey, attacked a Paraguayan garrison at Vanguardia. Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American conference offered to mediate instead.

The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 100,000 casualties and bringing both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control over most of the region. This was recognized in a 1938 truce by which Paraguay was awarded three-quarters of the Chaco Boreal.

Perang Saudara Sepanyol

Pada 17 Julai 1936, konflik bersenjata meletus di antara Republikan (kerajaan sayap kiri Sepanyol) dan Nasionalis (pemberontak sayap kanan, kebanyakkannya pegawai Tentera Darat Sepanyol). Alvarez del Vayo, Menteri Luar Sepanyol, merayu kepada Liga Bangsa pada bulan September 1936 mendapatkan persenjataan bagi mempertahankan integriti wilayah dan kemerdekaan politik Itali. Bagaimanapun, Liga Bangsa tidak dapat campur tangan dalam Perang Saudara Sepanyol mahupun menghalang penglibatan luar dalam konflik ini. Hitler dan Mussolini terus menerus membantu pemberontak Nasionalis yang diketuai oleh Jeneral Franco, manakala Kesatuan Soviet pula membantu pengikut setia Sepanyol. Liga Bangsa telah mencuba untuk menghalang penglibatan sukarela antarabangsa.

Pencerobohan Abyssinia Itali

Antara kejadian yang paling terkenal berlaku pada bulan Oktober 1935, apabila Benito Mussolini mengarahkan Jeneral Pietro Badoglio dan 400,000 tentera untuk menceroboh Abyssinia (Habsyah). Tentera Darat Itali yang moden dengan mudahnya mengalahkan pasukan Abyssinia yang miskin dan memiliki persenjataan lemah, dan menawan Addis Ababa pada bulan Mei 1936, memaksa Maharaja Haile Selassie untuk melarikan diri. Itali telah menggunakan senjata kimia (gas mustard) dalam menentang Abyssinia.

Liga Bangsa telah mengutuk serangan Itali dan mengenakan sekatan ekonomi pada bulan November 1935, bagaimanapun sekatan ini tidak berkesan. Perdana Menteri Britain, Stanley Baldwin menyatakan, perkara ini terjadi kerana tiada seorangpun yang memiliki pasukan tentera untuk bertahan daripada serangan Itali. Pada 9 Oktober 1935, Amerika Syarikat (bukan ahli Liga Bangsa) enggan bekerjasama dengan tindakan Liga Bangsa. It had embargoed exports of arms and war material to either combatant (in accordance with its new Neutrality Act) on 5 October and later (29 February 1936) endeavored (with uncertain success) to limit exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point they were a dead letter in any event.

As was the case with Manchuria, the vigor of the major powers in responding to the crisis in Abyssinia was tempered by their perception that the fate of this poor and far-off country, inhabited by non-Europeans, was not a central interest of theirs.

Axis re-armament
The League was powerless and mostly silent in the face of major events leading to World War II such as Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and annexation of Austria. As with Japan, both Germany in 1933 – using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext – and Italy in 1937 simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgment. The League commissioner in Danzig was unable to deal with German claims on the city, a significant contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.

Trivia
 Pemimpin komunis Sweden, Fredrik Ström merujuk Liga Bangsa sebagai Imperialis Antarabangsa.

Lihat juga
 Negara anggota Liga Bangsa
 Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator Republikan A.S. yang mengetuai penentangan ke atas penyertaan A.S. dke dalam Liga Bangsa
 Palais des Nations, dibina sebagai ibu pejabat Liga Bangsa

Rujukan
 Walters, F.P. (1952). "A History of the  League of Nations".
 Walsh, Ben (1997). Modern World History. John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.. ISBN 0-7195-7231-2.
 The Essential Facts About the League of Nations, published in Geneva, with ten editions between 1933 and 1940
 George Gill (1996) The League of Nations from 1929 to 1946: From 1929 to 1946 (Partners for Peace Series). Avery Publishing Group. ISBN 0-89529-637-3
 League of Nations chronology , Retrieved 21 January 2006.
 Marbeau, M. (2001). "La Société des Nations". Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 2-13-051635-1
 Pfeil, A (1976). "Der Völkerbund".

Pautan luar

 Covenant of the League of Nations
 League of Nations Photo archive
 League of Nations Article from Factmonster/Information Please
 Proposed flags for the League
 League of Nations  article at Spartacus
 Background of the League of Nations
 Map of League of Nations members
 League of Nations timeline
 Table of Assemblies Dates of each annual assembly, links to list of members of each country's delegation
 Woodrow Wilson's Appeal for Support of the League of Nations 1919 speech
 Wilson's Final Address in Support of the League of Nations Speech made 25 September 1919
 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge speaks out against the League of Nations  August 1919 speech
 leagueofnations (History Learning Site)
  History (1919-1946)  from the United Nations Office at Geneva

Pertubuhan antarabangsa

Liga Bangsa


Popularity is the state of being well-liked or well-known. People, things, and ideas can be popular. Popularity figures are an important part of many people's personal value systems, and forms a critical part of success in fields such as management, politics, and the entertainment industry, among others.

Many different varieties of popularity exist, and many ways in which to gain it. General popularity usually involves respect in two ways: a popular person is respected by groups of people and will take that respect. This reinforces the idea that the person deserves the popularity. Likewise, amicability (friendliness) is an important part of popularity, as a person who does not like others is unlikely to be liked by others. This inverse nature of interpersonal popularity is often overlooked by people (particularly the young) who are attempting to become popular: being loud may be successful in gaining attention, but is unlikely to provide mutual respect.

Society

Popularity


Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutiérrez  (December 31, 1930 – March 30, 2010) was a Bolivian-American educator known for teaching students calculus from 1974 to 1991 at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Escalante was the subject of the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, in which he is portrayed by Edward James Olmos.

In 1993, the asteroid   5095 Escalante was named after him.

Early life
Escalante was born in 1930 in La Paz, Bolivia. Both of his parents were teachers. Escalante was proud of his Aymara heritage.

Early career
Escalante taught mathematics and physics for 12 years in Bolivia before he immigrated to the United States. He worked various jobs while teaching himself English and earning another college degree before eventually returning to the classroom as an educator.

In 1974, he began to teach at Garfield High School. Escalante was initially so disheartened by the lack of preparation of his students that he called his former employer and asked for his old job back. Escalante eventually changed his mind about returning to work when he found 12 students willing to take an algebra class.

Shortly after Escalante came to Garfield High School, its accreditation became threatened. Instead of gearing classes to poorly performing students, Escalante offered AP Calculus. He had already earned the criticism of an administrator, who disapproved of his requiring the students to answer a homework question before being allowed into the classroom: "He said to 'Just get them inside.' I said, 'There is no teaching, no learning going on here. We are just baby-sitting.'"

Determined to change the status quo, Escalante persuaded a few students that they could control their futures with the right education. He promised them that they could get jobs in engineering, electronics, and computers if they would learn math: "I'll teach you math and that's your language. With that, you're going to make it. You're going to college and sit in the first row, not the back because you're going to know more than anybody."

The school administration opposed Escalante frequently during his first few years. He was threatened with dismissal by an assistant principal because he was coming in too early, leaving too late, and failing to get administrative permission to raise funds to pay for his students' Advanced Placement tests. The opposition changed with the arrival of a new principal, Henry Gradillas. Aside from allowing Escalante to stay, Gradillas overhauled the academic curriculum at Garfield, reducing the number of basic math classes and requiring those taking basic math to take algebra as well. He denied extracurricular activities to students who failed to maintain a C average and to new students who failed basic skills tests. One of Escalante's students remarked, "If he wants to teach us that bad, we can learn."

Escalante continued to teach at Garfield and instructed his first calculus class in 1978. He recruited fellow teacher Ben Jiménez and taught calculus to five students, two of whom passed the AP calculus test. The following year, the class size increased to nine students, seven of whom passed the AP calculus test. By 1981, the class had increased to 15 students, 14 of whom passed. Escalante placed a high priority on pressuring his students to pass their math classes, particularly calculus. He rejected the common practice of ranking students from first to last but frequently told his students to press themselves as hard as possible in their assignments.

National attention
In 1982, Escalante first gained media attention when 18 of his students passed the Advanced Placement Calculus exam. The Educational Testing Service found the scores to be suspicious because they all made exactly the same math error on the sixth problem, and they also used the same unusual variable names. Fourteen of those who passed were asked to take the exam again. Twelve of them agreed to retake the test, and all did well enough to have their scores reinstated.

In 1983, the number of students enrolling and passing the calculus test more than doubled. That year, 33 students took the exam, and 30 passed. That year, he also started to teach calculus at East Los Angeles College. By 1987, 83 students passed the AB version of the exam, and another 12 passed the BC version. That was the peak for the calculus program. The same year, Gradillas went on sabbatical to finish his doctorate with hopes that he could be reinstated as principal at Garfield or a similar school with a similar program upon his return.

In 1988, a book, Escalante: The Best Teacher in America by Jay Mathews, and a film, Stand and Deliver, were released based on the events of 1982. Teachers and other interested observers asked to sit in on his classes. He shared with them: "The key to my success with youngsters is a very simple and time-honored tradition: hard work for teacher and student alike." Escalante received visits from political leaders and celebrities, including President Ronald Reagan and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1990, Escalante worked with the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education to produce the video series Futures, which won a Peabody Award.

Escalante has described the film "Stand and Deliver" as "90% truth, 10% drama." He stated that several points were left out of the film:
 It took him several years to achieve the kind of success shown in the film.
 No student who did not know multiplication tables or fractions was ever taught calculus in a single year.
 Escalante suffered inflammation of the gallbladder, not a heart attack.

Over the next few years, Escalante's calculus program continued to grow.

Departure from Garfield
In his final years at Garfield, Escalante received threats and hate mail. By 1990, he had lost the math department chairmanship. Escalante's math enrichment program had grown to more than 400 students. His class sizes had increased to over 50 students in some cases. That was far beyond the 35 student limit set by the teachers' union, which increased its criticism of Escalante's work. In 1991, the number of Garfield students taking advanced placement examinations in math and other subjects jumped to 570. The same year, citing faculty politics and petty jealousies, Escalante and Jiménez left Garfield. Escalante found new employment at Hiram W. Johnson High School in Sacramento, California. At the height of Escalante's success, Garfield graduates were entering the University of Southern California in such great numbers that they outnumbered all the other high schools in the working-class East Los Angeles region combined. Even students who failed the AP exam often went on to study at California State University, Los Angeles.

Angelo Villavicencio, one of Escalante's handpicked instructors, took over the program after Escalante's departure, teaching the remaining 107 AP students in two classes over the following year. Sixty-seven of Villavicencio's students went on to take the AP exam and forty-seven passed. The math program's decline at Garfield became apparent following the departure of Escalante, Villavicencio, and other teachers associated with its inception and development. In just a few years, the number of AP calculus students at Garfield who passed their exams dropped by more than 80%. In 1996, Villavicencio contacted Garfield's new principal, Tony Garcia, and offered to come back to help revive the dying calculus program. His offer was rejected.

Later life

In the mid-1990s, Escalante became a strong supporter of English-only education efforts. In 1997, he joined Ron Unz's English for the Children initiative, which eventually ended most bilingual education in California schools.

In 2001, after many years of preparing teenagers for the AP calculus exam, Escalante returned to his native Bolivia. He lived in his wife's hometown, Cochabamba, and taught at . He returned to the United States frequently to visit his children.

In early 2010 Escalante made a final trip to the United States to pursue treatment for bladder cancer. As he faced financial difficulties from the cost of his cancer treatment, cast members from Stand and Deliver, including Edward James Olmos, and some of Escalante's former pupils, raised funds to help pay for his medical bills.

Death and legacy
Escalante died on March 30, 2010, at his son's home, while undergoing treatment for bladder cancer. He was 79.

On April 1, 2010, a memorial service honoring Escalante was held at the Garfield High School. Students observed a moment of silence on the front steps of the campus. A wake was also held on April 17, 2010, in a classroom at Garfield.

Escalante is buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier Lakeside Gardens. In 2016, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his likeness.

Awards and honors
 1988 – Presidential Medal for Excellence in Education, awarded by President Ronald Reagan
 1988 – Hispanic Heritage Awards Honoree
 1990 – Honorary Doctor of Humanities – California State University, Los Angeles
 1990 – Honorary Doctor of Laws – Concordia University, Montreal
 1990 – Honorary Doctor of Laws – University of Northern Colorado
 1990 – Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
 1991 – Honorary Doctor of Science – University of Massachusetts Boston
 1998 – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters – Wittenberg University
 1998 – Free Spirit Award, from the Freedom Forum
 1998 – Andrés Bello prize, from the Organization of American States
 1999 – Inductee National Teachers Hall of Fame
 2002 – Member, President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans
 2005 – The Highest Office Award – Center for Youth Citizenship
 2005 – Best teacher in North America – Freedom Forum
 2014 – Foundational Award Winner, posthumously given to Fabiola Escalante (together with Henry Gradillas and Angelo Villavicencio)  – Escalante–Gradillas Best in Education Prize
 2016 – The United States Postal Service issued a 1st Class Forever "Jaime Escalante" stamp to honor "the East Los Angeles teacher whose inspirational methods led supposedly 'unteachable' high school students to master calculus."

See also
John Saxon (educator) - teacher that pioneered Saxon math to help students with difficulty learning algebra
List of teachers portrayed in films

References

External links
 Hall of Fame profile

 Jamie Escalante and the Lancaster Amish An MP3 of a talk by John Taylor Gatto
 Jaime Escalante documented his techniques in

1930 births
2010 deaths
Schoolteachers from California
Bolivian people of Aymara descent
Bolivian educators
Bolivian emigrants to the United States
California State University, Los Angeles alumni
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from bladder cancer
Hispanic and Latino American teachers
Pasadena City College alumni
People from La Paz
People from Los Angeles
People from Sacramento, California
Burials at Rose Hills Memorial Park

Jaime Escalante


A karyotype is the number and appearance of chromosomes in the nucleus of a eukaryote cell. The term is also used of the complete set of chromosomes in a species, or an individual organism. It describes the number of chromosomes, and what they look like under a light microscope. Attention is paid to their length, the position of the centromeres, any differences between the sex chromosomes, and any other physical characteristics. The preparation and study of karyotypes is part of cytogenetics (cytology and genetics).

The basic number of chromosomes in the somatic (body) cells of an individual or a species is called the somatic number and is designated 2n. Thus, in humans 2n = 46. In the sex cells the chromosome number is n (humans: n = 23).

So, in normal diploid organisms, chromosomes are present in two copies. There may, or may not, be sex chromosomes. Polyploid cells have multiple copies of chromosomes and haploid cells have single copies. The study of whole sets of chromosomes is sometimes known as karyology.

The chromosomes are depicted (by rearranging a microphotograph) in a standard format known as a karyogram or idiogram: in pairs, ordered by size and position of centromere for chromosomes of the same size. This may be used for many purposes; such as, to show genetic disease, what sex the animal is and its diploid number. In humans, cytologists have used karyotypes to help identify genetic abnormalities a baby might have before it is born.

Karyotypes may be studied to gather information about past evolutionary events, such as polyploidy.

Sex determination

References

Chromosomes

Karyotype


A boycott is a protest where the protesters do not buy a product or give money to a company. Instead of buying a certain product, they might also buy another, very similar product from a different company.

The word was made during the Irish Land War'. It comes from the name of Captain Charles Boycott. Boycott was in charge of looking after the land of a landlord in County Mayo, Ireland. In 1880, the tenants (those who rented) wanted their rent lowered. Boycott refused, and threw them out of the land they had rented. The Irish Land League then proposed that instead of becoming violent, everyone in the community should stop doing business with Captain Boycott. The captain was soon isolated. No one helped him with the harvest, no one worked in his stables or his house. Local businessmen no longer traded with him, the postman no longer delivered his post.

To get his harvest done, he had to hire 50 people from other counties, the counties Cavan and Monaghan. They were escorted to and from their work by 1000 policemen. Of course, this cost far more than what the harvest was worth.

Other websites

boycott resources
List of boycotts at EthicalConsumer.org

Economics
Protests

Boycott


Charlemagne (, French: Charlemagnes, , , ) (c. 2 April 748 – 28 January 814) was the king of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor. He was crowned as the Emperor on Christmas Day, 800. He was the older son of King Pippin III of the Carolingian dynasty. When Pippin died, Charlemagne and his brother Carloman ruled together. When Carloman died in 771 Charlemagne became the only ruler of the Franks.

Life
The Franks—one of the Germanic peoples who had moved their homes over the River Rhine into the Roman Empire as it was falling apart—were, by the year 700, the rulers of Gaul, and a lot of Germania east of the Rhine. They also protected the Papacy and the Roman Catholic faith. When their king Pepin the Short died, his sons, Charlemagne and Carloman were chosen to share the kingdom. They divided it into two parts: one half for Charlemagne, and the other for Carloman. Carloman died on December 4, 771, leaving Charlemagne as the leader of the whole Frankish kingdom.

He was king of the Franks from 768, and king of the Lombards from 774. He was crowned Imperator Augustus (Emperor) in Rome on Christmas Day by Pope Leo III in 800, starting the Holy Roman Empire, that they hoped would be a kind of second Western Roman Empire (while the Byzantines in Constantinople were still keeping up the Eastern Roman empire). With many wars, Charlemagne spread his empire across much of Western Europe.

Charlemagne fought in many wars over the course of his reign. He is known for using his sword, Joyeuse, in each of the thirty years of war and the 18 battles he fought in. He also finally managed to conquer Saxony, something the Roman Emperor Augustus could not do 800 years earlier. He was able to convert the Saxons to Catholic Christianity. He also had many schools built so his people could learn. However, he also killed thousands of those who failed to convert.

Death
Charlemagne's politics and plans failed, which led to low self-esteem. His last years were spent in bed in deep depression. He died in 814, leaving his kingdom to his only son, Louis the Pious. The descendants of Charlemagne are called Carolingians. His family line died out in Germany in 911 and in France in 987.

Battles and campaigns
Saxon Wars.  The Saxon Wars, also called the Saxon War or Saxon Uprising were the campaigns and insurrections of the thirty-three years from 772, when Charlemagne first entered Saxony with the intent to conquer,

References

740s births
814 deaths
Holy Roman Emperors
Frankish rulers
Carolingian dynasty
9th century in Europe

Charlemagne


A lingua franca (originally Italian for "Frankish language" - see etymology below) is a language that is used between persons who do not have the same mother tongue.

The terms working language, bridge language and vehicular language are used in the same sense.

Etymology
Around the Renaissance era a mixed language of Italian (80%) and many words from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic was used in the eastern region around the Mediterranean Sea It was in use as the language of commerce and diplomacy and was called lingua franca. At that time, in the port cities of the Ottoman empire there lived very many Italian speakers. Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca came from its meaning in Arabic. That word came into use before the Crusades, when Europeans used to be called "Franks" or Faranji in Arabic. The term lingua franca is first recorded in English in 1678.

Examples
There are many languages in all continents that are used as lingua franca.

In Africa: Afrikaans, Berber, Fanagalo, Fula, Hausa, Krio, Manding, Sango, Swahili,  Wolof

In Asia: Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Azeri, Bengali, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi-Urdu, Malay-Indonesian, Nepali, Persian, Sanskrit

In Europe: English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Polish,
Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Yiddish

In Pre-Columbian America: Chinook Jargon, Nahuatl, Quechua, Tupi

Pidgins and creoles: Guinea-Bissau Creole, Tok Pisin

All continents :  Esperanto as an auxiliary lingua franca

For some of them some explanations may be given.

English
English is the current lingua franca of international business, science, technology and aviation.  It has replaced French as the lingua franca of diplomacy since World War II. The rise of English in diplomacy began in 1919, after World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as in French. The use of English profited from the important international role of English-speaking nations (the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations) after World War II, particularly in the establishment and organization of the United Nations. English is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (the other five are French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish).

When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English was the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had many indigenous languages decided to continue using English as the lingua franca to avoid the political difficulties that had developed if one had decided to use only one of the indigenous languages.

French
French was the language of diplomacy in Europe from the 13th century, and as a result is still a working language of international institutions and is seen on documents ranging from passports to airmail letters. For many years, until the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark joined in 1973, French and German were the only official working languages of the European Economic Community. French was also the lingua franca of European literature in the 18th century.

German
German was a lingua franca in large portions of Europe for centuries, mainly the Holy Roman Empire.

As it was one of the official languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German remained an important second language in much of Central and Eastern Europe long after World War I. Today, it is still the most common second language in some of the countries in the region (e.g. in Slovenia (45% of the pop.), Croatia (34%), the Czech Republic (31%) and Slovakia (28%)). In others, it is also known by significant numbers of the population (in Poland by 18%, in Hungary by 16%).

Greek and Latin
During the time of the Roman Empire, the lingua francas were Greek and Latin. During the Middle Ages, the lingua franca was Greek in the parts of Europe, Middle East and Northern Africa where the Byzantine Empire had much influence, and Latin was used in the rest of Europe.  Latin was used as the common language of the Roman Catholic Church.  During the Second Vatican Council, Catholic liturgy changed to local languages, although Latin remains the official language of the Vatican. Latin was used as the language of scholars in Europe until the early 19th century in most subjects.

Further reading
Heine, Bernd (1970). Status and Use of African Lingua Francas.
Kahane, Henry Romanos (1958). The Lingua Franca in the Levant.
R. A. Hall, Jr. (1966). Pidgin and Creole Languages, Cornell University Press. .
MELATTI, Julio Cezar (1983). Índios do Brasil. São Paulo:Hucitec Press, 48th edition

References

Other websites
 English - the universal language on the Internet?
Lingua franca del Mediterraneo o Sabir of professor Francesco Bruni (in Italian) .
Sample texts  from Juan del Encina, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Carlo Goldoni's L'Impresario da Smyrna, Diego de Haedo and other sources.
An introduction to the original Mediterranean Lingua Franca .

Languages

Lingua franca