Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) is one of the largest choral works in classical music.  It needs a huge orchestra to play it and a huge choir to sing.  Because so many performers are needed it is often called  "Symphony of a Thousand", but that is not a name that Mahler gave to it.

Mahler worked very hard at it, composing it in quite a short time at Maiernigg in southern Austria in the summer of 1906.  It was the last of Mahler's works that was to be given its first performance in his lifetime.  The symphony was given its first performance in Munich on 12 September 1910.

Symphonies are usually pieces of music played just by an orchestra, but Beethoven started a tradition of having singing in symphonies: his Ninth Symphony is the famous one with the Ode to Joy in the last movement.  Mahler took up this idea of combining singing with symphony.  His Symphonies Nos 2, 3, and 4 all have singing in them.  The next three are just for orchestra, but in No. 8 he uses singing again.

Symphony No. 8 is very unusual because he does not have the usual three or four movements with traditional forms such as sonata form.  The whole symphony is in two parts.  Part I is based on the Latin text of a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit").  Part II is in German.  The words come from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust.

The two parts have a common idea: the idea of being saved through the power of love. Musically Mahler does this by sharing tunes throughout the symphony.  The symphony expresses the confidence of the eternal human spirit.

For many years after Mahler's death it was not often performed.  It is, of course, a very expensive symphony to perform because of the vast numbers of musicians needed.  It also needs to be performed in a very large concert hall.  Today it is played more often. The 100th anniversary of its first performance was celebrated in July 2010 in the opening concert of the BBC Proms is the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Opinions about the symphony have been divided.  Some people did not think the optimism expressed in the music was really convincing.  Other people have said it is one of the greatest musical expressions of humanity.

Mahler 8
Symphony No. 08 (Mahler)
Faust

Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)


Giovanni da Palestrina (born Palestrina, (c.1525 – February 2, 1594 in Rome) was a very important Italian composer of church music of his time.  He lived in the period called the Renaissance.  Most of his music was choral (written for choirs).  It is very polyphonic.  This means that the different voices (sopranos, altos, tenors or basses) are often singing different words and different parts of the tune at the same time.  Many composers since have studied the way that Palestrina wrote, because this is an excellent way to learn to write contrapuntal music.

Palestrina took his name from the town where he was born.  We are not sure of the exact date of his birth.  Any records of his birth were destroyed when the town burned in 1577.  He was probably a choirboy in Palestrina.  When he was grown up he got a job as organist and choir director at the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.  He was not earning much money, but he married a lady who came from a very rich family, so he was comfortably off.  Pope Julius III heard about how good this young composer was.  He asked him to come and meet him.  He was given the job of master of the Capella Juliana, the choir that sang at the services in St Peter's, Rome.  This was the top job in Italy and he was only 26.   Of course, Palestrina composed a mass in the pope's honour.

Palestrina composed 93 masses (these are musical settings of the words of the communion service).  He also wrote motets and madrigals.  Palestrina and Lassus were the two greatest composers of the late Renaissance.

16th-century Italian composers
1525 births
1594 deaths

Giovanni da Palestrina


The thyroid is one of the largest endocrine glands in the body. This gland is found in the throat. The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones.

The principal hormones it makes are thyroxine (T4) an triiodothyronine (T3), which is more active. These hormones regulate the growth of many systems in the body. T3 and T4 are synthesised from iodine and tyrosine. The thyroid also makes calcitonin, which plays a role in calcium homeostasis.

Diseases

Hyper- and hypofunction (affects about 2% of the population)
 Hypothyroidism (underactivity) - Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland does not make enough thyroid hormone.

 Hashimoto's thyroiditis / thyroiditis
 Ord's thyroiditis
 Postoperative hypothyroidism
 Postpartum thyroiditis
 Silent thyroiditis
 Acute thyroiditis
 Iatrogenic hypothyroidism
 Hyperthyroidism (overactivity)
 Thyroid storm
 Graves-Basedow disease
 Toxic thyroid nodule
 Toxic nodular struma (Plummer's disease)
 Hashitoxicosis
 Iatrogenic hyperthyroidism
 De Quervain thyroiditis (inflammation starting as hyperthyroidism, can end as hypothyroidism)

Anatomical problems
 Goitre
 Endemic goitre
 Diffuse goitre
 Multinodular goitre
 Lingual thyroid
 Thyroglossal duct cyst

Tumors
 Thyroid adenoma
 Thyroid cancer
 Papillary
 Follicular
 Medullary
 Anaplastic
 Lymphomas and metastasis from elsewhere (rare)

Deficiencies
Cretinism

Additional images

Related pages
 Thymus

Other websites
 American Thyroid Association (Thyroid Information and professional organization)
 ''New Management Guidelines for Patients with Thyroid Nodules and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer from the American Thyroid Association Taskforce.
 Thyroid Disease Manager (free online textbook)
 Thyroid Disease (Nuclear Medicine Information)
 The Thyroid Foundation of America (Education about Thyroid Disease)

Glands
Endocrine system

Thyroid


The University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign (UIUC) is a university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois system.

The university has 18 Colleges that offer more than 150 programs of study. It is a selective state schools in the United States. Many of its popular undergraduate and graduate programs are ranked high in the US.

History
The university was established in 1867. It opened for classes on March 2, 1868 with only two faculty members and a small group of students. In 1982, the name of the university was changed from the University of Illinois to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Colleges and schools
The university has the following colleges and schools:
 College of Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences
 College of Applied Health Sciences
 Institute of Aviation
 College of Business
 College of Education
 College of Engineering
 College of Fine and Applied Arts
 Graduate College
 Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations
 College of Law
 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
 Graduate School of Library and Information Science
 College of Media
 College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign
 School of Social Work
 College of Veterinary Medicine

Notable alumni and faculty
Notable people associated with the university have been successful in fields such as science, business, and politics. The university has produced many Nobel Prize winners.

John Bardeen, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 and 1972, worked on the faculty of the university from 1951 to 1991.
Roger Ebert, who became the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Other websites
 Official Website

Association of American Universities
Illinois
Urbana-Champaign
1867 establishments in Illinois

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign


Radiocarbon dating, also known as the C14 dating method, is a way of telling how old an object is. It is a type of radiometric dating.

The method uses the radioactive isotope carbon-14. Most organic matter contains carbon. Carbon has different isotopes, which are usually not radioactive. 14C is the radioactive one, its half-life  (time it takes to reduce its radioactivity by half)  is about 5,730 years. This makes it possible to tell the age of substances that contain carbon. The method works to about 60,000 years old. Dates obtained are usually written as before present ('present' is 1950).

Plants take up atmospheric carbon dioxide by photosynthesis, and are eaten by animals, so every living thing is constantly exchanging carbon-14 with its environment as long as it lives. Once it dies, however, this exchange stops.

In 1958 Hessel de Vries showed that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere varies with time and locality. The relatively short-lived 14C is constantly renewed by cosmic ray bombardment on atmospheric nitrogen. Since the bombardment is slightly variable, and for other reasons, the 14C taken into organic matter is also slightly variable. That leads to errors in the chronology. However, under about 20,000 years the results can be compared with dendrochronology, based on tree rings. For the most accurate work, variations are compensated by means of calibration curves.

The method was developed by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1949. In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. He first demonstrated the accuracy of radiocarbon dating by accurately estimating the age of wood from an ancient Egyptian royal barge of which the age was known from historical documents.

Other websites
Radiocarbon - The main international journal of record for research articles and date lists relevant to 14C
C14dating.com - General information on Radiocarbon dating
NOSAMS: National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Discussion of calibration
Several calibration programs can be found at www.radiocarbon.org
CalPal Online (Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration & Paleoclimate Research Package)
OxCal program (Oxford Calibration)
Fairbanks' Radiocarbon Calibration program (for prior to 12400 BP)
Further basic information on radiocarbon dating (PDF)

References

Archaeology
Carbon
Radiometric dating

Radiocarbon dating


Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege and often financial aid given by a person or an organization. It can also refer to the business given by a regular customer, and the guardianship of saints.

In some countries the term is often used to describe the corrupt use of state money and goods to benefit groups, families, ethnicities or races in exchange for votes. These patronage systems are different depending on the area in which they are practiced.

The term comes from the Latin patronatus.

Sources and other websites
Johannes Baptist Sägmüller. Patron and Patronage, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XI, 1911, Robert Appleton Company. This is the reference for the Canon law section.
 The role of patrons in the Renaissance

Politics
Art

Patronage


Saint-Barthélemy, officially the Collectivity of Saint-Barthélemy (French: Collectivité de Saint-Barthélemy), is a new overseas collectivity of France. It was created on 22 February 2007. It consists of the island of Saint-Barthélemy and neighboring small islands.

The island of Saint-Barthélemy, also known as Saint Barts, Saint Barths, or Saint Barth, is in the Caribbean among the Leeward Islands. Its land area is 21.0 km² (8.1 sq. miles). Administratively, the whole island of Saint-Barthélemy was a French commune (commune de Saint-Barthélemy). It was part of Guadeloupe, which is an overseas région and overseas département of France. For this reason, it is part of the European Union. In 2003, the people voted in favour of becoming independent from Guadeloupe. They wanted to form a separate overseas collectivity (COM) of France. On February 7, 2007  the  French Parliament passed a bill granting COM status to both Saint-Barthélemy and neighbouring Saint-Martin. The new status took effect on 22 February 2007, when the law was published in the Official Journal.

Saint-Barthélemy has long been considered a playground of the rich and famous and is known for its beautiful pristine beaches, gourmet dining in chic bistros and high-end designer shopping.

Geography

Saint-Barthélemy is about 150 miles east of Puerto Rico. It is near the islands of Saint Martin, Saba and Anguilla.

Gustavia, which is the main town of the island, was named after King Gustav III of Sweden, and remains as a reflection of the Swedish period.

The oldest settlement still remaining is the village of Lorient (or L'Orient), although scattered in every cemetery on the island are Swedish grave markers.  Lorient's sister village on the French mainland is the city of Lorient on the northern coast of Brittany.

Beaches
Of the 20 beaches on the small island, several are seen as especially inviting. On the southern side of the island, Saline and Governor beaches are pristine beaches with no development on them. On the western edge of the island is Colombier beach. This beach is only reachable by boat or a hike. St. Jean, Flammands and Grand-Cul-de-Sac beaches are also popular and attractive beaches which have hotels and other establishments on them. Shell Beach is popular for families with kids as it has little surf, and lots of tide pools.

St. Barths has a tidal difference of only 3 - 5 inches.  The beaches vary according to ocean currents—the weather travels onto the island following the sun from the East.  One of the main surfing beaches (Toiny) is known for its riptide, while Grand Fond is one of the island's only non-swimming beaches.  Although tourism does not allude to it, there are a small variety of warm water sharks in the Caribbean.  So, swimming at dusk and dawn or in murky waters is not recommended.  Otherwise, scuba and snorkeling are a great way to see the nurse sharks, lobsters, conch and green sea turtles that abound in the waters surrounding St. Barths.

The beach of Grand Cul-de-Sac is the easiest beach in the Caribbean to learn to sail, windsurf or kitesurf on, as it has a reef which closes off the entire bay.  The current that passes outside the reef here also carries the migrating whales and dolphins.

History
Saint-Barthélemy was first claimed by France in 1648. It was sold to Sweden in 1784. Sweden sold it back to France in 1878. The Swedish period left its mark in the names of many of the streets and the town (in honor of King Gustav III). It also left its national arms, the three crowns along with the grey heron, in the island's coat of arms.

Demographics
At the 1999 census, Saint-Barthélemy had 6,852 people. There were 326 people per square kilometer. Unlike most Caribbean islands, most of the people are Caucasians (white).

Many of the people who live there all the time are French citizens who work at the various establishments on the island. French is the primary language spoken, but many locals also speak English, particularly at the hotels and restaurants.

Transportation
Saint-Barthélemy has a small airport (IATA identifier SBH) is served by small regional commercial aircraft and charters. Most visiting aircraft carry fewer than twenty passengers, such as the Twin Otter, a common sight around Saint Barths and throughout the northern West Indies. The short airstrip is at the base of a steep hill ending directly on the beach.  The arrival descent is extremely steep over the hilltop traffic circle and departing planes fly right over the heads of sunbathers (although small signs advise sunbathers not to lie directly at the end of the runway). The nearest commercial jet airport is on the neighboring island of Saint Martin.

There are also charters to St. Barths from San Juan, Puerto Rico available through Tradewind Aviation.  The current mayor's airline, called St. Barths Commuter, offers non-prohibitive cost one-way/roundtrip travel between both of St. Maarten's airports and St. Barths.  It is also an excellent service for charters.  A favorite island business for an extra fee is via St. Barths Services, as they offer full-service attention.

Ferries to and from Saint Martin are the only other real option (although the passage from St. Maarten to St. Barths is often rough), unless one is arriving by private charter boats/yachts.

Tourism

Saint-Barthélemy has about 25 hotels, most of then with 15 rooms or fewer, and the largest, the Guanahani has just 70 rooms. Hotels are classified in the traditional French manner 3 Star, 4 Star and 4 Star Luxe.

Villa vacations are extremely popular and there are hundreds of villas terraced into the hillsides throughout the island as well has many beachfront locations. Villas here by definition can range from one-bedroom bunglalows to large luxurious homes. Saint-Barthélemy Properties  and Wimco  are the two main villa rental agencies on the island.

Singer Jimmy Buffett is a frequent visitor on the island, and owns a house there. He also owned a hotel, the Author de Rocher, before it burned down.

Sports
Saint-Barthélemy has its own bobsled team. To date the team has not achieved competitive success. The island also competes in carotchie.

Related pages
 Guadeloupe, French island in the Caribbean
 Martinique, French island in the Caribbean
 Saint Martin, French island in the Caribbean

References

Other websites
 The Insiders' Guide to St. Barthélemy
 Saint Barths Online
 Official Flag
 Radio St Barth
 Map of Saint-Barthélemy

Saint Barthélemy