వియన్నా (; German:  , Austro-Bavarian: Wean) ఆస్ట్రియా రాజధాని, ఆస్ట్రియాలో అతిపెద్ద నగరం,, ఆస్ట్రియా తొమ్మిది రాష్ట్రాల్లో ఒకటి. వియన్నా గురించి 1,757 మిలియన్  ( మెట్రోపాలిటన్ ప్రాంతంలో 2.4 మిలియన్, ఆస్ట్రియా జనాభాలో  20% పైగా ),, దాని సాంస్కృతిక, ఆర్థిక, రాజకీయ కేంద్రాలు జనాభాతో ఆస్ట్రియా యొక్క ప్రాథమిక నగరం . ఇది యూరోపియన్ యూనియన్ సరిహద్దు లోపల జనాభా 7 వ పెద్ద నగరం . 20 వ శతాబ్దం ప్రారంభం వరకు ఇది ప్రపంచంలో అతిపెద్ద జర్మన్ మాట్లాడే నగరం, ప్రపంచ యుద్ధంలో ఆస్ట్రో హంగేరియన్ సామ్రాజ్యం విడిపోయేంత నగరం 2 మిలియన్ ప్రజలను కలిగి. [ 6 ] నేడు అది కేవలం రెండో ఉంది జర్మన్ స్పీకర్లలో బెర్లిన్ . వియన్నా ఐక్యరాజ్యసమితి, OPEC అనేక ప్రధాన అంతర్జాతీయ సంస్థలకు, ఆతిథ్యమిచ్చు . నగరం ఆస్ట్రియా తూర్పున ఉంది, చెక్ రిపబ్లిక్, స్లొవేకియా,, హంగేరి సరిహద్దులకు దగ్గరగా ఉంది. ఈ ప్రాంతాల్లో ఒక యూరోపియన్ Centrope సరిహద్దు ప్రాంతంలో కలిసి పని . సమీపంలోని బ్రాటిస్లావా పాటు, వియన్నా 3 మిలియన్ల మంది ఒక మహానగర ప్రాంతంలో ఏర్పరుస్తుంది . 2001 లో, కేంద్రం ఒక UNESCO ప్రపంచ హెరిటేజ్ సైట్గా .

Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.757 million (2.4 million within the metropolitan area, more than 20% of Austria's population), and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today it is the second only to Berlin in German speakers. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city lies in the east of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be "The City of Dreams" because it was home to the world's first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The city's roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstrasse lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks.

In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver, Canada) for the world's most livable cities (in the 2012 survey of 140 cities Vienna was ranked number two, behind Melbourne). For four consecutive years (2009–2012), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its annual "Quality of Living" survey of hundreds of cities around the world, a title the city has reclaimed in 2014. Monocle's 2012 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna fourth on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within" (up from sixth in 2011 and eighth in 2010).

The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and fifth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2011 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure and markets. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.

Each year since 2005, Vienna has been the world's number one destination for international congresses and conventions. It attracts about five million tourists a year.

Name

The English name Vienna is borrowed from the Italian name Vienna. "Vienna" and the official German name Wien, and the names of the city in most languages, are thought to be derived from the Celtic word "windo-", meaning bright or fair – as in the Irish "fionn" and the Welsh "gwyn" – but opinions vary on the precise origin. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning "forest stream," which subsequently became Venia, Wienne and Wien. Others claim that the name comes from the Roman settlement of Celtic name Vindobona (Celtic "windo-bona"), probably meaning "white base/bottom [land]," which became Vindovina, Vídeň (Czech) and Wien.

The name of the city in Hungarian (Bécs), Croatian (Beč) and Ottoman Turkish (Beç) appears to have a different, Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. In Slovene, the city is called Dunaj, which in other Slavic languages means the Danube River, on which it is located.

History

Early history

Evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the frontier city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north.

Close ties with other Celtic peoples continued through the ages. The Irish monk Saint Colman (or Koloman, Irish Colmán, derived from colm "dove") is buried in Melk Abbey and Saint Fergil (Virgil the Geometer) was Bishop of Salzburg for forty years, and twelfth-century monastic settlements were founded by Irish Benedictines. Evidence of these ties is still evident in Vienna's great Schottenstift monastery, once home to many Irish monks.

In 976, Leopold I of Babenberg became count of the Eastern March, a 60-mile district centering on the Danube on the eastern frontier of Bavaria. This initial district grew into the duchy of Austria. Each succeeding Babenberg ruler expanded the march east along the Danube eventually encompassing Vienna and the lands immediately east. In 1145, Duke Henry II Jasomirgott moved the Babenberg family residence from Klosterneuburg to Vienna. Since that time, Vienna remained the center of the Babenberg dynasty.

In 1440, Vienna became the resident city of the Habsburg dynasty. It eventually grew to become the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire (1483–1806) and a cultural centre for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. Hungary occupied the city between 1485–1490.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman armies were stopped twice outside Vienna (see Siege of Vienna, 1529 and Battle of Vienna, 1683). A plague epidemic ravaged Vienna in 1679, killing nearly a third of its population.

Austro-Hungarian Empire

In 1804, during the Napoleonic wars, Vienna became the capital of the Austrian Empire and continued to play a major role in European and world politics, including hosting the 1814 Congress of Vienna. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Vienna remained the capital of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city was a centre of classical music, for which the title of the First Viennese School is sometimes applied.

During the latter half of the 19th century, the city developed what had previously been the bastions and glacis into the Ringstraße, a new boulevard surrounding the historical town and a major prestige project. Former suburbs were incorporated, and the city of Vienna grew dramatically. In 1918, after World War I, Vienna became capital of the Republic of German-Austria, and then in 1919 of the First Republic of Austria.

From the late 19th century to 1938, the city remained a centre of high culture and modernism. A world capital of music, the city played host to composers such as Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss. The city's cultural contributions in the first half of the 20th century included, among many, the Vienna Secession movement, psychoanalysis, the Second Viennese School, the architecture of Adolf Loos and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. In 1913, Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin all lived within a few miles of each other in central Vienna, with some of them being regulars at the same coffeehouses. Within Austria, Vienna was seen as a centre of socialist politics, for which it was sometimes referred to as "Red Vienna". The city was a stage to the Austrian Civil War of 1934, when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss sent the Austrian Army to shell civilian housing occupied by the socialist militia.

The Anschluss and World War II

In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. Between 1938 (after the Anschluss) and the end of the Second World War, Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin.

On 2 April 1945, the Soviets launched the Vienna Offensive against the Germans holding the city and besieged it. British and American air raids and artillery duels between the SS and Wehrmacht and the Red Army crippled infrastructure, such as tram services and water and power distribution, and destroyed or damaged thousands of public and private buildings. Vienna fell eleven days later. Austria was separated from Germany, and Vienna was restored as the republic's capital city, but the Soviet hold on the city remained until 1955.

Four-power Vienna

After the war, Vienna was part of Soviet-occupied Eastern Austria until September, 1945. As in Berlin, Vienna in September, 1945 was divided into sectors by the four powers: the USA, the UK, France and the Soviet Union and supervised by an Allied Commission. The four-power occupation of Vienna differed in one key respect from that of Berlin: the central area of the city, known as the first district, constituted an international zone in which the four powers alternated control on a monthly basis. The control was policed by the four powers on a de facto day-to-day basis, the famous "four soldiers in a jeep" method. The Berlin Blockade of 1948 raised allied concerns that the Soviets might repeat the blockade in Vienna. The matter was raised in the UK House of Commons:

There was a lack of airfields in the Western sectors, and authorities drafted contingency plans to deal with such a blockade. Plans included the laying down of metal landing mats at Schönbrunn. The Soviets did not blockade the city. The Potsdam Agreement included written rights of land access to the western sectors, whereas no such written guarantees had covered the western sectors of Berlin. During the 10 years of the four-power occupation, Vienna became a hot-bed for international espionage between the Western and Eastern blocs. In the wake of the Berlin Blockade, the Cold War in Vienna took on a different dynamic. While accepting that Germany and Berlin would be divided, the Soviets had decided against allowing the same state of affairs to arise in Austria and Vienna. Here the Soviet forces controlled the districts 2, 4, 10, 20, 21 and 22 and all areas incorporated into Vienna in 1938.

They put up barbed wire fences around the perimeter of West Berlin in 1953, but not in Vienna. By 1955, the Soviets, by signing the State Treaty, agreed to relinquish their occupation zones in Eastern Austria as well as their sector in Vienna. In exchange they required that Austria declare its permanent neutrality after the allied powers had left the country. Thus they ensured that Austria would not be a member of NATO and that NATO forces would therefore not have direct communications between Italy and West Germany.

The atmosphere of four-power Vienna is the background for Graham Greene's screenplay for the film The Third Man (1949). Later he adapted the screenplay as a novel and published it. Occupied Vienna is also depicted in the Philip Kerr novel, A German Requiem.

Austrian State Treaty and afterwards
The four-power control of Vienna lasted until the Austrian State Treaty was signed in May 1955. That year, after years of reconstruction and restoration, the State Opera and the Burgtheater, both on the Ringstraße, reopened to the public. The Soviet Union signed the State Treaty only after having been provided with the political guarantee by the federal government to declare Austria's neutrality after the withdrawal of the allied troops. This law of neutrality, passed in late October 1955 (and not the State Treaty itself), ensured that modern Austria would align with neither NATO nor the Soviet bloc, and is considered one of the reasons for Austria's late entry into the European Union.

In the 1970s, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky inaugurated the Vienna International Centre, a new area of the city created to host international institutions. Vienna has regained much of its former international stature by hosting international organizations, such as the United Nations (United Nations Industrial Development Organization, United Nations Office at Vienna and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United European Gastroenterology Federation.

Historical population

Because of the industrialization and migration from other parts of the Empire, the population of Vienna increased sharply during its time as the capital of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918). In 1910, Vienna had more than two million inhabitants, and was the fourth largest city in Europe after London, Paris and Berlin. Around the start of the 20th century, Vienna (Czech Vídeň, Hungarian Bécs) was the city with the second-largest Czech population in the world (after Prague). At the height of the migration, about one-third of the Viennese population was of Slavic or Hungarian origin. After World War I, many Czechs and Hungarians returned to their ancestral countries, resulting in a decline in the Viennese population. After World War II, the Soviets used force to repatriate key workers of Czech and Hungarian origins to return to their ethnic homelands to further the Soviet bloc economy.

Under the Nazi regime, 65,000 Jewish people were deported and murdered in concentration camps by Nazi forces; approximately 130,000 fled.

By 2001, 16% of people living in Austria had nationalities other than Austrian, nearly half of whom were from former Yugoslavia. ; the next most numerous nationalities in Vienna were Turks (39,000; 2.5%), Poles (13,600; 0.9%) and Germans (12,700; 0.8%).

As of 2012, an official report from Statistics Austria showed that more than 660,000 (38.8%) of the Viennese population have full or partial migrant background, mostly from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey and Germany.
 This is reflected today in the telephone list of the city where there is an eclectic list of surnames.

From 2002 to 2012 the city's population grew by over ten percent. In 2012 alone it added 25,000 people, making it the fastest growing city in German-speaking countries.

Geography and climate

Vienna is located in northeastern Austria, at the easternmost extension of the Alps in the Vienna Basin. The earliest settlement, at the location of today's inner city, was south of the meandering Danube while the city now spans both sides of the river. Elevation ranges from .

Vienna lies within a transition of oceanic climate and humid continental climate, and features, according to the Köppen classification, a Cfb (oceanic) -climate. The city has hot summers with average high temperatures of , with maxima exceeding  and lows of around . Winters are relatively dry and cold with average temperatures at about freezing point. Spring and autumn are mild. Precipitation is generally moderate throughout the year, averaging  annually, with considerable local variations, the Vienna Woods region in the west being the wettest part ( annually) and the flat plains in the east being the driest part ( annually).

Districts and enlargement

Vienna is composed of 23 districts (Bezirke). Administrative district offices in Vienna (called Magistratische Bezirksämter) serve functions similar to those in the other states (called Bezirkshauptmannschaften), the officers being subject to the Landeshauptmann (which in Vienna is the mayor); with the exception of the police, which in Vienna is governed by the President of the Police (at the same time one of the nine Directors of Security of Austria), a federal office, directly responsible to the Minister of the Interior.

As had been planned in 1919 for all of Austria but not introduced, district residents in Vienna (Austrians as well as EU citizens with permanent residence here) elect a District Assembly (Bezirksvertretung), which chooses the District Head (Bezirksvorsteher) as political representative of the district on city level. City hall has delegated maintenance budgets, e.g., for schools and parks, so that they are able to set priorities autonomously. Any decision of a district can be overridden by the city assembly (Gemeinderat) or the responsible city councillor (amtsführender Stadrat).

The heart and historical city of Vienna, a large part of today's Innere Stadt, was a fortress surrounded by fields in order to defend itself from potential attackers. In 1850, Vienna with the consent of the emperor annexed 34 surrounding villages, called Vorstädte, into the city limits (districts no. 2 to 8, after 1861 with the separation of Margareten from Wieden no. 2 to 9). Consequently the walls were razed after 1857, making it possible for the city centre to expand.

In their place, a broad boulevard called the Ringstraße was built, along which imposing public and private buildings, monuments, and parks were created by the start of the 20th century. These buildings include the Rathaus (town hall), the Burgtheater, the University, the Parliament, the twin museums of natural history and fine art, and the Staatsoper. It is also the location of New Wing of the Hofburg, the former imperial palace, and the Imperial and Royal War Ministry finished in 1913. The mainly Gothic Stephansdom is located at the centre of the city, on Stephansplatz. The Imperial-Royal Government set up the Vienna City Renovation Fund (Wiener Stadterneuerungsfonds) and sold many building lots to private investors, thereby partly financing public construction works.

From 1850 to 1890, city limits in the West and the South mainly followed another wall called Linienwall. Outside this wall from 1873 onwards a ring road called Gürtel was built. In 1890 it was decided to integrate 33 suburbs (called Vororte) beyond that wall into Vienna by 1 January 1892 and transform them into districts no. 11 to 19 (district no. 10 had been constituted in 1874); hence the Linienwall was torn down beginning in 1894. In 1900, district no. 20, Brigittenau, was created by separating the area from the 2nd district.

From 1850 to 1904, Vienna had expanded only on the right bank of the Danube, following the main branch before the regulation of 1868–1875, i.e., the Old Danube of today. In 1904, the 21st district was created by integrating Floridsdorf, Kagran, Stadlau, Hirschstetten, Aspern and other villages on the left bank of the Danube into Vienna, in 1910 Strebersdorf followed. On 15 October 1938 the Nazis created Great Vienna with 26 districts by merging 97 towns and villages into Vienna, 80 of which were returned to surrounding Lower Austria in 1954. Since then Vienna has 23 districts.

Industries are located mostly in the southern and eastern districts. The Innere Stadt is situated away from the main flow of the Danube, but is bounded by the Donaukanal ("Danube canal"). Vienna's second and twentieth districts are located between the Donaukanal and the Danube River. Across the Danube, where the Vienna International Centre is located, and in the southern areas are the newest parts of the city (districts 21–23).

Politics

In the twenty years before the First World War and until 1918, Viennese politics were shaped by the Christian Social Party, in particular long-term mayor Karl Lueger; he managed not to apply the general voting rights for men introduced by and for the parliament of imperial Austria, the Reichsrat, in 1907, thereby excluding most of the working class from taking part in decisions. For Adolf Hitler, who spent some years in Vienna, Lueger was a remarkable teacher of how to use antisemitism in politics.

Vienna is today considered the centre of the Social Democratic Party of Austria. During the period of the First Republic (1918–1934), the Vienna Social Democrats undertook many overdue social reforms. At that time, Vienna's municipal policy was admired by Socialists throughout Europe, who therefore referred to the city as "Red Vienna" (Rotes Wien). In February 1934 troops of the Conservative Austrian federal government under Engelbert Dollfuss, who had closed down the first chamber of the federal parliament, the Nationalrat, in 1933, and paramilitary socialist organisations were engaged in the Austrian civil war, which led to the ban of the Social Democratic party.

For most of the time since after the First World War, the city has been governed by the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) with absolute majorities in the city parliament. Only between 1934 and 1945, when the Social Democratic Party was illegal, mayors were appointed by the austro-fascist and later by the Nazi authorities. The current mayor of Vienna is Michael Häupl of the SPÖ. As rural Austria is dominated by conservative citizens, if the Social Democrats would not maintain their nearly unbreakable hold on Vienna, the rival Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) would dominate Austrian politics.

The city has enacted many social democratic policies. The Gemeindebauten are social housing assets that are well integrated into the city architecture outside the first or "inner" district. The low rents enable comfortable accommodation and good access to the city amenities. Many of the projects were built after WW II on vacant lots that were destroyed by bombing during the war. The city took particular pride in building them to a high standard.

Since Vienna obtained federal state (Bundesland) status of its own by the federal constitution of 1920, the mayor (except 1934–1945) also holds the function of the state governor (Landeshauptmann). The Rathaus accommodates the offices of the mayor (Magistrat der Stadt Wien) and the state government (Landesregierung). The city is administered by a multitude of departments (Magistratsabteilungen), politically supervised by amtsführende Stadträte (members of the city government leading offices; according to the Vienna constitution opposition parties have the right to designate members of the city government not leading offices).

In the 1996 City Council election, the SPÖ lost its overall majority in the 100-seat chamber, winning 43 seats and 39.15% of the vote. In 1996 the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which won 29 seats (up from 21 in 1991), beat the ÖVP into third place for the second time running. From 1996–2001, the SPÖ governed Vienna in a coalition with the ÖVP. In 2001 the SPÖ regained the overall majority with 52 seats and 46.91% of the vote; in October 2005 this majority was increased further to 55 seats (49.09%). In course of the 2010 city council elections the SPÖ lost their overall majority again and consequently forged a coalition with the Green Party – the first SPÖ/Green coalition in Austria.

Religion

Vienna is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna; its current Archbishop is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. According to the 2001 census, 49.2% of Viennese are Roman Catholics, while 25.7% are of no religion, 7.8% are Muslim, 6.0% are members of an Orthodox denomination, 4.7% are Protestant (mostly Lutheran), 0.5% are Jewish, and 6.3% are either of other religions or did not reply.

Many Roman Catholic churches in central Vienna feature performances of religious or other music, including masses sung to classical music and organ. Some of Vienna's most significant historical buildings are Roman Catholic churches, including the St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom), Karlskirche, Peterskirche, and the Votivkirche.

The proportion of Viennese who identify as Roman Catholic has dropped over the last fifty years, from 90% in 1961 to 39.8% in 2010.

Culture

Music, theatre and opera

Music is one of Vienna's legacies. Musical prodigies including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg have worked there.

Art and culture had a long tradition in Vienna, including theatre, opera, classical music and fine arts. The Burgtheater is considered one of the best theatres in the German-speaking world alongside its branch, the Akademietheater. The Volkstheater Wien and the Theater in der Josefstadt also enjoy good reputations. There is also a multitude of smaller theatres, in many cases devoted to less mainstream forms of the performing arts, such as modern, experimental plays or cabaret.

Vienna is also home to a number of opera houses, including the Theater an der Wien, the Staatsoper and the Volksoper, the latter being devoted to the typical Viennese operetta. Classical concerts are performed at world famous venues such as the Wiener Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra..known across the world for the annual widely broadcast "New Year's Day Concert", also the Wiener Konzerthaus. Many concert venues offer concerts aimed at tourists, featuring popular highlights of Viennese music, particularly the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Strauss the father, and Johann Strauss the son.

Up until 2005, the Theater an der Wien has hosted premieres of musicals, although with the year of the Mozart celebrations 2006 it has devoted itself to the opera again and has since become a stagione opera house offering one new production each month, thus quickly becoming one of Europe's most interesting and advanced opera houses. Since 2012 Theater an der Wien has taken over the Wiener Kammeroper, a historical small theatre in the first district of Vienna seating 300 spectators, turning it into its second venue for smaller sized productions and chamber operas created by the young ensemble of Theater an der Wien (JET). Before 2005 the most successful musical by far was "Elisabeth", which was later translated into several languages and performed all over the world. The Wiener Taschenoper is dedicated to stage music of the 20th and 21st century. The Haus der Musik ("house of music") opened in the year 2000.

The Wienerlied is a unique song genre from Vienna. There are approximately 60,000 – 70,000 Wienerlieder.

In 1981 the popular British new romantic group Ultravox paid a tribute to Vienna on an album and an artful music video recording called "Vienna". The inspiration for this work arose from the cinema production called "The Third Man" with the title Zither music of Anton Karas.

The Vienna's English Theatre (VET) is an English theater in Vienna. It was founded in 1963 and is located in the 8th Vienna's district. It is the oldest English-language theater in Europe outside the UK.

Musicians from Vienna

Notable musicians were born in Vienna, including: Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II, Arnold Schönberg, Fritz Kreisler, Alban Berg, Louie Austen, Falco and Joe Zawinul.

Famous musicians who came here to work from other parts of Austria and Germany were Johann Joseph Fux, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Salieri, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Liszt, Franz von Suppé, Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler and Rainhard Fendrich.

Museums
The Hofburg is the location of the Imperial Treasury (Schatzkammer), holding the imperial jewels of the Habsburg dynasty. The Sisi Museum (a museum devoted to Empress Elisabeth of Austria) allows visitors to view the imperial apartments as well as the silver cabinet. Directly opposite the Hofburg are the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which houses many paintings by old masters, ancient and classical artifacts, and the Naturhistorisches Museum.

A number of museums are located in the Museumsquartier (museum quarter), the former Imperial Stalls which were converted into a museum complex in the 1990s. It houses the Museum of Modern Art, commonly known as the MUMOK (Ludwig Foundation), the Leopold Museum (featuring the largest collection of paintings in the world by Egon Schiele, as well as works by the Vienna Secession, Viennese Modernism and Austrian Expressionism), the AzW (museum of architecture), additional halls with feature exhibitions, and the Tanzquartier. The Liechtenstein Palace contains much of one of the world's largest private art collections, especially strong in the Baroque. Castle Belvedere, built under Prinz Eugen, has a gallery containing paintings by Gustav Klimt (The Kiss), Egon Schiele, and other painters of the early 20th century, also sculptures by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, and changing exhibitions too.

There are a multitude of other museums in Vienna, including the Albertina, the Military History Museum, the Technical Museum, the Burial Museum, the Museum of Art Fakes, the KunstHausWien, the Sigmund Freud Museum, and the Mozarthaus Vienna. The museums on the history of the city, including the former Historical Museum of the City of Vienna on Karlsplatz, the Hermesvilla, the residences and birthplaces of various composers, the Museum of the Romans, and the Vienna Clock Museum, are now gathered together under the group umbrella Vienna Museum. In addition there are museums dedicated to Vienna's individual districts. They provide a record of individual struggles, achievements and tragedy as the city grew and survived two world wars. For readers seeking family histories these are good sources of information.

Architecture

A variety of architectural styles can be found in Vienna, such as the Romanesque Ruprechtskirche and the Baroque Karlskirche. Styles range from classicist buildings to modern architecture. Art Nouveau left many architectural traces in Vienna. The Secession, Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station, and the Kirche am Steinhof by Otto Wagner rank among the best known examples of Art Nouveau in the world.

Concurrent to the Art Nouveau movement was the Wiener Moderne, during which some architects shunned the use of extraneous adornment. A key architect of this period was Adolf Loos, whose works include the Looshaus (1909), the Kärntner Bar or American Bar (1908) and the Steiner House (1910).

The Hundertwasserhaus by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, designed to counter the clinical look of modern architecture, is one of Vienna's most popular tourist attractions. Another example of unique architecture is the Wotrubakirche by sculptor Fritz Wotruba. In the 1990s, a number of quarters were adapted and extensive building projects were implemented in the areas around Donaustadt (north of the Danube) and Wienerberg (in southern Vienna).
The 220-meter high DC Tower 1 located on the Northern bank of the Danube, completed in 2013, is the talltest skyscraper in Vienna. In recent years, Vienna has seen numerous architecture projects completed which combine modern architectural elements with old buildings, such as the remodelling and revitalisation of the old Gasometer in 2001.
Most buildings in Vienna are relatively low; in early 2006 there were around 100 buildings higher than 40 m. The number of high-rise buildings is kept low by building legislation aimed at preserving green areas and districts designated as world cultural heritage. Strong rules apply to the planning, authorisation and construction of high-rise buildings. Consequently, much of the inner city is a high-rise free zone.

Vienna balls
Vienna is the last great capital of the nineteenth-century ball. There are over 200 significant balls per year, some featuring as many as nine live orchestras. Balls are held in the many beautiful palaces in Vienna, with the principal venue being the Hofburg Palace at Heldenplatz. While the Opera Ball is the best known internationally of all the Austrian balls, other balls such as the Kaffeesiederball (Cafe Owners Ball), the Jägerball (Hunter's Ball) or the Life Ball (AIDS Charity Event) are almost as well known within Austria and even better appreciated for their cordial atmosphere. Viennese of at least middle class may visit a number of balls in their lifetime. For many, the ball season lasts three months and can include up to ten or fifteen separate appearances.

Dancers and opera singers from the Vienna Staatsoper often perform at the openings of the larger balls.

A Vienna ball is an all-night cultural attraction. Major Viennese balls generally begin at 9 pm and last until 5 am, although many guests carry on the celebrations into the next day.

Education
Vienna is Austria's main centre of education and home to many universities, professional colleges and gymnasiums (high schools).

Universities
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna
Medical University of Vienna
PEF Private University of Management Vienna
University of Applied Arts Vienna
University of Applied Sciences bfi Vienna
University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Wien
University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna
University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
University of Vienna
Vienna University of Economics and Business
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna
Vienna University of Technology
Webster University Vienna
Sigmund Freud University Vienna
International Anti-Corruption Academy (in Laxenburg,  south of Vienna)
 Modul University Vienna (Private University)

International schools

AMADEUS International School Vienna
American International School Vienna
Danube International School
International University Vienna
SAE Vienna
Lauder Business School
Lycée Français de Vienne
Vienna Christian School
Vienna International School
Wake Forest University - Flow House
Megatrend Internatiional University Vienna

Leisure activities

Parks and gardens

Vienna possesses many parks, including the Stadtpark, the Burggarten, the Volksgarten (part of the Hofburg), the Schlosspark at Schloss Belvedere (home to the Vienna Botanic Gardens), the Donaupark, the Schönbrunner Schlosspark, the Prater, the Augarten, the Rathauspark, the Lainzer Tiergarten, the Dehnepark, the Resselpark, the Votivpark, the Kurpark Oberlaa, the Auer-Welsbach-Park and the Türkenschanzpark. Green areas include Laaer-Berg (including the Bohemian Prater) and the foothills of the Wienerwald, which reaches into the outer areas of the city. Small parks, known by the Viennese as Beserlparks, are everywhere in the inner city areas.

Many of Vienna's famous parks include monuments, such as the Stadtpark with its statue of Johann Strauss II, and the gardens of the baroque palace, where the State Treaty was signed. Vienna's principal park is the Prater which is home to the Riesenrad, a Ferris wheel. The imperial Schönbrunn's grounds contain an 18th-century park which includes the world's oldest zoo, founded in 1752.
The Donauinsel, part of Vienna's flood defences, is a  long artificial island between the Danube and Neue Donau dedicated to leisure activities.

Sport

Austria's capital is home to numerous football teams. The best known are the local football clubs include FK Austria Wien (21 Austrian Bundesliga titles and record 27-time cup winners), SK Rapid Wien (record 32 Austrian Bundesliga titles), and the oldest team, First Vienna FC. Other important sports clubs include the Raiffeisen Vikings Vienna (American Football), who won the Eurobowl title between 2004 and 2007 4 times in a row and had a perfect season in 2013, the Aon hotVolleys Vienna, one of Europe's premier Volleyball organisations, the Vienna Wanderers (baseball) who won the 2012 and 2013 Championship of the Austrian Baseball League, and the Vienna Capitals (Ice Hockey). Vienna was also where the European Handball Federation (EHF) was founded. There are also three rugby clubs; Vienna Celtic, the oldest rugby club in Austria, RC Donau, and Stade Viennois

Vienna hosts many different sporting events including the Vienna City Marathon, which attracts more than 10,000 participants every year and normally takes place in May. In 2005 the Ice Hockey World Championships took place in Austria and the final was played in Vienna. Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium was the venue of four Champions League and European Champion Clubs' Cup finals (1964, 1987, 1990 and 1995) and on 29 June it hosted the final of Euro 2008 which saw a Spanish 1–0 victory over Germany.

Culinary specialities

Food

Vienna is well known for Wiener Schnitzel, a cutlet of veal (Kalbs Schnitzel) or pork (Schweins Schnitzel) that is pounded flat, coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, and fried in clarified butter. It is available in almost every restaurant that serves Viennese cuisine and can be eaten hot or cold. Other examples of Viennese cuisine include Tafelspitz (very lean boiled beef), which is traditionally served with Geröstete Erdäpfel (boiled potatoes mashed with a fork and subsequently fried) and horseradish sauce, Apfelkren (a mixture of horseradish, cream and apple) and Schnittlauchsauce (a chives sauce made with mayonnaise and stale bread).

Vienna has a long tradition of producing the finest cakes and desserts. These include Apfelstrudel (hot apple strudel), Milchrahmstrudel (milk-cream strudel), Palatschinken (sweet pancakes), and Knödel (dumplings) often filled with fruit such as apricots (Marillenknödel). Sachertorte, a delicately moist chocolate cake with apricot jam created by the Sacher Hotel, is world famous.

In winter, small street stands sell traditional Maroni (hot chestnuts) and potato fritters.

Sausages are popular and available from street vendors (Würstelstand) throughout the day and into the night. The sausage known as Wiener (German for Viennese) in the U.S. and in Germany, is in Vienna called a Frankfurter. Other popular sausages are Burenwurst (a coarse beef and pork sausage, generally boiled), Käsekrainer (spicy pork with small chunks of cheese), and Bratwurst (a white pork sausage). Most can be ordered "mit Brot" (with bread) or as a "hot dog" (stuffed inside a long roll). Mustard is the traditional condiment and usually offered in two varieties: "süß" (sweet) or "scharf" (spicy).

Kebab and pizza are, increasingly, the snack foods most widely available from small stands.

The Naschmarkt is a permanent market for fruit, vegetables, spices, fish, meat, etc., from around the world. The city has many coffee and breakfast stores.

Drinks
Vienna, along with Paris, Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw and London, is one of the few remaining world capital cities with its own vineyards. The wine is served in small Viennese pubs known as Heuriger, which are especially numerous in the wine growing areas of Döbling (Grinzing, Neustift am Walde, Nußdorf, Salmannsdorf, Sievering), Floridsdorf (Stammersdorf, Strebersdorf), Liesing (Mauer) and Favoriten (Oberlaa). The wine is often drunk as a Spritzer ("G'spritzter") with sparkling water. The Grüner Veltliner, a dry white wine, is the most widely cultivated wine in Austria.

Beer is next in importance to wine. Vienna has a single large brewery, Ottakringer, and more than ten microbreweries. A "Beisl" is a typical small Austrian pub, of which Vienna has many.

Viennese cafés
This section is linked from Kara Mustafa

Viennese cafés have an extremely long and distinguished history that dates back centuries, and the caffeine addictions of some famous historical patrons of the oldest are something of a local legend. These coffee houses are unique to Vienna and many cities have unsuccessfully sought to copy them. Traditionally, the coffee comes with a glass of water. Viennese cafés claim to have invented the process of filtering coffee from booty captured after the second Turkish siege in 1683. Viennese cafés claim that when the invading Turks left Vienna, they abandoned hundreds of sacks of coffee beans. The Polish King Jan III Sobieski, the commander of the anti-Turkish coalition of Poles, Germans, and Austrians, gave Franz George Kolschitzky (Polish – Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki) some of this coffee as a reward for providing information that allowed him to defeat the Turks. Kolschitzky then opened Vienna's first coffee shop. Julius Meinl set up a modern roasting plant in the same premises where the coffee sacks were found, in 1891.

Tourist attractions

Major tourist attractions include the imperial palaces of the Hofburg and Schönbrunn (also home to the world's oldest zoo, Tiergarten Schönbrunn) and the Riesenrad in the Prater. Cultural highlights include the Burgtheater, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Lipizzaner horses at the spanische Hofreitschule, and the Vienna Boys' Choir, as well as excursions to Vienna's Heurigen district Döbling.

There are also more than 100 art museums, which together attract over eight million visitors per year. The most popular ones are Albertina, Belvedere, Leopold Museum in the Museumsquartier, KunstHausWien, BA-CA Kunstforum, the twin Kunsthistorisches Museum and Naturhistorisches Museum, and the Technisches Museum Wien, each of which receives over a quarter of a million visitors per year.

There are many popular sites associated with composers who lived in Vienna including Beethoven's various residences and grave at Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) which is the largest cemetery in Vienna and the burial site of many famous people. Mozart has a memorial grave at the Habsburg gardens and at St. Marx cemetery (where his grave was lost). Vienna's many churches also draw large crowds, famous of which are St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Deutschordenskirche, the Jesuitenkirche, the Karlskirche, the Peterskirche, Maria am Gestade, the Minoritenkirche, the Ruprechtskirche, the Schottenkirche, St. Ulrich and the Votivkirche.

Modern attractions include the Hundertwasserhaus, the United Nations headquarters and the view from the Donauturm.

Transportation

Vienna has an extensive transportation network with a unified fare system that integrates municipal, regional and railway systems under the umbrella of the Verkehrsverbund Ost-Region (VOR). Public transport is provided by buses, trams and 5 underground metro lines (U-Bahn). Trains are operated by the ÖBB.

Vienna has multiple road connections including motorways.

Vienna is served by Vienna International Airport, located  southeast of the city centre next to the town of Schwechat.

International relations

International organisations in Vienna
Vienna is the seat of a number of United Nations offices and various international institutions and companies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
Currently Vienna is the world's third "UN city", next to New York, Geneva, and Nairobi.
Additionally, Vienna is the seat of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's secretariat (UNCITRAL). In conjunction, the University of Vienna annually hosts the prestigious Willem C. Vis Moot, an international commercial arbitration competition for students of law from around the world.

Various special diplomatic meetings have been held in Vienna in the latter half of the 20th century, resulting in various documents bearing the name Vienna Convention or Vienna Document. Among the more important documents negotiated in Vienna are the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, as well as the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

Charitable organisations in Vienna
Alongside international and intergovernmental organisations, there are dozens of charitable organisations based in Vienna.. One such organisation is the network of SOS Children's Villages, founded by Hermann Gmeiner in 1949. Today, SOS Children's Villages are active in 132 countries and territories worldwide. Others include HASCO.

Another extremely popular international event is the annual Life Ball, which supports people with HIV or AIDS. Guests such as Bill Clinton and Whoopi Goldberg were recent attendees.

Twin towns and sister cities

Vienna is twinned with the following cities:

Partnerships
Other forms of cooperation and city friendship similar to the twin city programmes:

In addition, individual Viennese districts are twinned with  Japanese cities/districts:

Further, the Viennese district Leopoldstadt and the New York City borough Brooklyn entered into a partnership in 2007.

See also

 Augarten porcelain
 Donauinselfest
 List of honorary citizens of Vienna
 List of mayors of Vienna
 List of Viennese
 Soviet War Memorial (Vienna)
 Vienna Biennale
 Vienna (Billy Joel song)
 Vienna Circle
 Vienna (Ultravox song)
 Viennese German

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References

Further reading
Pippal, M.: A short History of Art in Vienna, Munich: C.H. Beck 2000, ISBN 978-3-406-46789-9, provides a concise overview.
Dassanowsky, Robert ed, : "World Film Locations: Vienna", London: Intellect/Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2012, ISBN 9781841505695. International films about Vienna or Austria shot on location throughout cinema history.

External links

Official websites
Wien.gv.at – Official site of the municipality, with interactive map.
Wien.info – Official site of the tourism board: events, sightseeing, cultural information, etc.
List of Embassies in Vienna

Pictures and videos of Vienna
Photos of Vienna at night (very-bored.com)
Photos of Vienna (zoomvienna.com)
Photos of Vienna (europe61.com)
PhotoGlobe Vienna – a collection of georeferenced photos of Vienna
Vienna. Pleasure and Melancholy A collection of photos of Vienna (willypuchner.com)
Panoramic pictures of Vienna (wienkultur.info)
360° virtual tour of Vienna, Austria (VRVienna.com)
Vienna Christmas market  "Wiener Christkindlmarkt" (butkaj.com)
Photos of Vienna  Sightseeings (butkaj.com)
Wien Gigapixel Panorama (12.000 Megapixel)

History of Vienna
Hundreds of articles on historical buildings of Vienna: Churches, Palaces, Art, Culture and History of Vienna
Jews in Vienna (from Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971) .
German flaktowers in Vienna
History of the Coat of Arms of Vienna and all (former) districts and municipalities

Further information on Vienna
Vienna Information Sorted by categories. Choose from 5 Languages
Events in Vienna

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A trial is where two people or two groups of people argue in a court.

Civil trial
In a civil trial, there is a plaintiff and a defendant. The plaintiff tries to prove that he or she has a reason why the defendant needs to give him or her money.

Criminal trial
In a criminal trial, there is a prosecutor and a defendant. The prosecutor works for the government and tries to prove that the defendant committed a crime. It often takes a long time to get a trial scheduled as the courts can be very busy. In the United States, Federal court can take up to 10 months to get a court date.

Judge
The judge controls the courtroom. He or she decides who speaks when, and they decide what evidence and arguments can be used. Sometimes, a jury is brought in to determine whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. If there is no jury, the judge or judges decide whether the defendant is proven guilty or not. If the defendant is proven guilty of the crime, the judge will decide the punishment, which is also called the "sentence". If the crime is serious, the defendant may go to prison or, in some countries, be executed. For smaller crimes, there is often a fine—money that must be paid, in addition to having a criminal record.

Differences in each country
Trials are different in places where the laws are different. Different countries, cities and states all have different laws that change how trials happen. Trials in some places are very short. In some places, however, important trials can take as long as a few years while the two sides gather information and put together their arguments.

Related pages
Right to a fair trial

Trial


A picture, also called an image, is a group of coloured points on a flat surface that looks the same as something else. For example, a picture can look the same as an object or a person. Pictures can also be drawings, paintings or photographs. People who make such pictures are called artists, photographers or painters.  Pictures are very helpful.  Sometimes people say pictures are worth a thousand words.  Pictures and diagrams can be used to explain how to do things, and thus a picture is a kind of tool. A moment captured in an image.

An image is something that can be seen, but it is not physically there.  It can be a photograph, a painting, or a picture on a television or computer screen.  A lens can make an image of an object appear somewhere else.  Cameras use this to make the image that becomes a photograph.

Making Pictures

Most pictures today are 'photographs'. Photographs are made with cameras. A camera makes a picture that looks very real.

When there were no cameras, people made pictures by using paint, brushes, pencils, crayons, pens, and other things that people can write or draw with. Pictures made with paint and brush are called 'paintings'. Before cameras, some artists were able to make very real looking pictures with just paint. Sometimes pictures made with pencil or pen are called 'sketches', if they are made quickly and only look a little bit like the real thing.

Usually pictures are put on paper. Pictures made with paint are usually put on a strong, rough fabric called 'canvas'. Sometimes pictures can be put on walls or other things, even glass.

Some places, such as churches have pictures on windows made out of colored pieces of glass. These are called stained glass.

Special types of Pictures

If people take a lot of pictures, and show them one at a time, very fast, they can make a picture that looks like it is moving.  This is called a "moving picture", or a movie.  A television shows people a moving picture by using light.

A slide show is a series of pictures arranged to tell a story, for example to illustrate a narrative.

A projector shines light from a light bulb through a kind of transparent picture.  When light shines through this kind of picture onto a screen or another flat place, the picture can be seen on that flat place.  This is often used to show movies and slide shows to an audience.

Some people make pictures that do not look flat, by taking two regular flat pictures at the same time. People have to move their eyes in a special way or use a stereoscope so they can see both pictures together.  When they look at the pictures using their binocular vision correctly, the picture does not look flat.  This is called '3D' or 'three dimensional'.

Cutaway pictures show what is inside of something, that cannot actually be seen.

Graphics

Picture


Federico Fellini (born 20 January 1920 in Rimini, died 31 October 1993 in Rome) was an Italian movie-maker and director. Fellini's movies combine memory, dream, and fantasy.

The first movie Fellini directed was Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951), with Alberto Sordi, written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ennio Flaiano. In making this movie Fellini met Nino Rota, the musician that would follow him for the successful rest of his career.

Fellini was married to actress Giulietta Masina (1921-1994) from 1943 until his death. In 1945, he had a son who survived for only 2 weeks; it was the only child of Fellini and Giulietta Masina. Masina acted in many of his movies. Other actors Fellini often worked with include Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, and Anita Ekberg.

Apart from making movies he also wrote scripts for radio shows, for movies (mainly for Roberto Rossellini) and wrote comic gags for well known actors like Aldo Fabrizi. Fellini also produced several drawings (mostly pencil on paper), often humoristic portraits. His first success was in drawing advertising pictures for movies.

During Fascism an Avanguardista, his first writings were for Alleanza Cinematografica Italiana (ACI), a production company of Vittorio Mussolini, son of Benito, who introduced him to Rossellini.

In 1944, when Fascism was over, he opened a shop in Rome in which he sold these drawings. The shop was named (in English) "The Funny Face Shop", and contained works from Fellini and De Seta, Verdini, Camerini, Scarpelli, Majorana, Guasta, Giobbe, Attalo, Migneco (all writers, directors or otherwise intellectuals working for Italian cinema). In the same year started his contribution to Rossellini's Roma Città Aperta, with Aldo Fabrizi. Fellini took also part in writing another of Rossellini's movies: Paisà. He wrote also for other directors as Alberto Lattuada, Pietro Germi and Luigi Comencini.

In 1987 he won the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award. In 1993, he received an Academy Award (Oscar) for his lifetime achievement.

Movies
 Luci del varietà (1950)
 Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951)
 I Vitelloni (1953)
 La Strada (1954) Oscar (best foreign movie)
 Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) Oscar (best foreign movie)
 La Dolce Vita (1960) Oscar (best costumes)
 8 1/2 (1963) 2 Oscars (best foreign movie, best costumes)
 Giulietta degli Spiriti (1965)
 Satyricon (1969)
 I Clowns (1970)
 Roma (1972)
 Amarcord (1973) Oscar (best foreign movie)
 Casanova (1976)
 Prova d'Orchestra (1979)
 La Citta' delle Donne (1980)
 E la nave va (1983)
 Ginger and Fred (1986)
 Intervista'' (1987)

Other websites

Academy Award winning directors
Deaths from myocardial infarction
Italian movie directors
Italian screenwriters
People from Rimini
1923 births
1993 deaths

Federico Fellini


For the policy on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Blocks and bans.
A ban is an action used to stop people from doing something, either bad or dangerous. Ban can also be made on products. For example, Singapore, a country, bans chewing gum. Ban may sometimes be made on the Internet, where an administrator or a moderator with higher powers than other members can stop vandals from causing harm to others. Sometimes, users of a website say that moderators or administrators have banhammers that they use to ban bad users.

Internet
Legal terms

Ban


The military–industrial complex refers to the relationship between the government, the military, and the businesses that make things for the military. For example, the businesses can give money to politicians in elections.  Then, politicians give more money to the military.  Then, the military buys things from the businesses.  Each group gains something, so they try to keep doing the same thing.

The term was invented in the United States.  However, most countries have politicians and soldiers and people who make weapons and other military supplies; thus they have a military-industrial complex.

When there is a military-industrial complex, problems can happen.  The government can become corrupt.  A business might want the country to be at war because they make more money during war than during times of peace.

Where the term came from
President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his farewell speech—the last speech he gave while he was the President.  He said, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."  This was a warning.  It means that people should be careful or the military-industrial complex will get too much power.

Today, the term is used a lot by people writing and talking about politics.  Especially when the subject is militarism in the United States.  It also appears in discussions about private military companies—businesses that commonly employ soldiers who have left the military.

Related pages
 Constitutionalism
 Constitutional economics
 Rule according to higher law
 Roerich Pact
Lockheed Martin

Military–industrial complex


Hydrocarbon exploration (or oil and gas exploration) is the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for deposits of hydrocarbons, particularly petroleum and natural gas, in the Earth's crust using petroleum geology.

Exploration methods

Visible surface features such as oil seeps, natural gas seeps, pockmarks (underwater craters caused by escaping gas) provide basic evidence of hydrocarbon generation (be it shallow or deep in the Earth). However, most exploration depends on highly sophisticated technology to detect and determine the extent of these deposits using exploration geophysics. Areas thought to contain hydrocarbons are initially subjected to a gravity survey, magnetic survey, passive seismic or regional seismic reflection surveys to detect large-scale features of the sub-surface geology. Features of interest (known as leads) are subjected to more detailed seismic surveys which work on the principle of the time it takes for reflected sound waves to travel through matter (rock) of varying densities and using the process of depth conversion to create a profile of the substructure. Finally, when a prospect has been identified and evaluated and passes the oil company's selection criteria, an exploration well is drilled in an attempt to conclusively determine the presence or absence of oil or gas. Offshore the risk can be reduced by using electromagnetic methods

Oil exploration is an expensive, high-risk operation. Offshore and remote area exploration is generally only undertaken by very large corporations or national governments. Typical shallow shelf oil wells (e.g. North Sea) cost US$10 – 30 million, while deep water wells can cost up to US$100 million plus. Hundreds of smaller companies search for onshore hydrocarbon deposits worldwide, with some wells costing as little as US$100,000.

Elements of a petroleum prospect

A prospect is a potential trap which geologists believe may contain hydrocarbons. A significant amount of geological, structural and seismic investigation must first be completed to redefine the potential hydrocarbon drill location from a lead to a prospect. Four geological factors have to be present for a prospect to work and if any of them fail neither oil nor gas will be present.

 Source rock  When organic-rich rock such as oil shale or coal is subjected to high pressure and temperature over an extended period of time, hydrocarbons form.
 Migration  The hydrocarbons are expelled from source rock by three density-related mechanisms: the newly matured hydrocarbons are less dense than their precursors, which causes over-pressure; the hydrocarbons are lighter, and so migrate upwards due to buoyancy, and the fluids expand as further burial causes increased heating. Most hydrocarbons migrate to the surface as oil seeps, but some will get trapped.
 Reservoir  The hydrocarbons are contained in a reservoir rock. This is commonly a porous sandstone or limestone. The oil collects in the pores within the rock although open fractures within non-porous rocks (e.g. fractured granite) may also store hydrocarbons. The reservoir must also be permeable so that the hydrocarbons will flow to surface during production.
 Trap  The hydrocarbons are buoyant and have to be trapped within a structural (e.g. Anticline, fault block) or stratigraphic trap. The hydrocarbon trap has to be covered by an impermeable rock known as a seal or cap-rock in order to prevent hydrocarbons escaping to the surface

Exploration risk

Hydrocarbon exploration is a high risk investment and risk assessment is paramount for successful project portfolio management. Exploration risk is a difficult concept and is usually defined by assigning confidence to the presence of the imperative geological factors, as discussed above. This confidence is based on data and/or models and is usually mapped on Common Risk Segment Maps (CRS Maps). High confidence in the presence of imperative geological factors is usually coloured green and low confidence coloured red. Therefore, these maps are also called Traffic Light Maps, while the full procedure is often referred to as Play Fairway Analysis (PFA). The aim of such procedures is to force the geologist to objectively assess all different geological factors. Furthermore, it results in simple maps that can be understood by non-geologists and managers to base exploration decisions on.

Terms used in petroleum evaluation

 Bright spot  On a seismic section, coda that have high amplitudes due to a formation containing hydrocarbons.
 Chance of success An estimate of the chance of all the elements (see above) within a prospect working, described as a probability.
 Dry hole  A boring that does not contain commercial hydrocarbons. See also Dry-hole clause
 Flat spot  Possibly an oil-water, gas-water or gas-oil contact on a seismic section; flat due to gravity.
 Full Waveform Inversion  A supercomputer technique recently use in conjunction with seismic sensors to explore for petroleum deposits offshore.
 Hydrocarbon in place  Amount of hydrocarbon likely to be contained in the prospect. This is calculated using the volumetric equation - GRV x N/G x Porosity x Sh / FVF
 Gross rock volume (GRV)  Amount of rock in the trap above the hydrocarbon water contact
 Net sand  Part of GRV that has the lithological capacity for being a productive zone; i.e. less shale contaminations.
 Net reserve  Part of net sand that has the minimum reservoir qualities; i.e. minimum porosity and permeability values.
 Net/gross ratio (N/G)  Proportion of the GRV formed by the reservoir rock (range is 0 to 1)
 Porosity  Percentage of the net reservoir rock occupied by pores (typically 5-35%)
 Hydrocarbon saturation (Sh)  Some of the pore space is filled with water - this must be discounted
 Formation volume factor (FVF)  Oil shrinks and gas expands when brought to the surface. The FVF converts volumes at reservoir conditions (high pressure and high temperature) to storage and sale conditions
 Lead  Potential accumulation is currently poorly defined and requires more data acquisition and/or evaluation in order to be classified as a prospect.
 Play  An area in which hydrocarbon accumulations or prospects of a given type occur. For example, the shale gas plays in North America include the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Fayetteville, Haynesville, Marcellus, and Woodford, among many others.
 Prospect  A lead which has been more fully evaluated.
 Recoverable hydrocarbons  Amount of hydrocarbon likely to be recovered during production. This is typically 10-50% in an oil field and 50-80% in a gas field.

Licensing

Petroleum resources are typically owned by the government of the host country. In the United States, most onshore (land) oil and gas rights (OGM) are owned by private individuals, in which case oil companies must negotiate terms for a lease of these rights with the individual who owns the OGM. Sometimes this is not the same person who owns the land surface. In most nations the government issues licences to explore, develop and produce its oil and gas resources, which are typically administered by the oil ministry. There are several different types of licence. Oil companies often operate in joint ventures to spread the risk; one of the companies in the partnership is designated the operator who actually supervises the work.

 Tax and Royalty  Companies would pay a royalty on any oil produced, together with a profits tax (which can have expenditure offset against it). In some cases there are also various bonuses and ground rents (license fees) payable to the government - for example a signature bonus payable at the start of the licence. Licences are awarded in competitive bid rounds on the basis of either the size of the work programme (number of wells, seismic etc.) or size of the signature bonus.
 Production Sharing contract (PSA)  A PSA is more complex than a Tax/Royalty system - The companies bid on the percentage of the production that the host government receives (this may be variable with the oil price), There is often also participation by the Government owned National Oil Company (NOC). There are also various bonuses to be paid. Development expenditure is offset against production revenue.
 Service contract  This is when an oil company acts as a contractor for the host government, being paid to produce the hydrocarbons.

Reserves and resources

Resources are hydrocarbons which may or may not be produced in the future. A resource number may be assigned to an undrilled prospect or an unappraised discovery. Appraisal by drilling additional delineation wells or acquiring extra seismic data will confirm the size of the field and lead to project sanction. At this point the relevant government body gives the oil company a production licence which enables the field to be developed. This is also the point at which oil reserves and gas reserves can be formally booked.

Oil and gas reserves
Oil and gas reserves are defined as volumes that will be commercially recovered in the future. Reserves are separated into three categories: proved, probable, and possible. To be included in any reserves category, all commercial aspects must have been addressed, which includes government consent. Technical issues alone separate proved from unproved categories. All reserve estimates involve some degree of uncertainty.

Proved reserves are the highest valued category. Proved reserves have a "reasonable certainty" of being recovered, which means a high degree of confidence that the volumes will be recovered. Some industry specialists refer to this as P90, i.e., having a 90% certainty of being produced. The SEC provides a more detailed definition:
Proved oil and gas reserves are those quantities of oil and gas, which, by analysis of geoscience and engineering data, can be estimated with reasonable certainty to be economically producible—from a given date forward, from known reservoirs, and under existing economic conditions, operating methods, and government regulations—prior to the time at which contracts providing the right to operate expire, unless evidence indicates that renewal is reasonably certain, regardless of whether deterministic or probabilistic methods are used for the estimation. The project to extract the hydrocarbons must have commenced or the operator must be reasonably certain that it will commence the project within a reasonable time.
 Probable reserves are volumes defined as "less likely to be recovered than proved, but more certain to be recovered than Possible Reserves". Some industry specialists refer to this as P50, i.e., having a 50% certainty of being produced.
 Possible reserves are reserves which analysis of geological and engineering data suggests are less likely to be recoverable than probable reserves. Some industry specialists refer to this as P10, i.e., having a 10% certainty of being produced.

The term 1P is frequently used to denote proved reserves; 2P is the sum of proved and probable reserves; and 3P the sum of proved, probable, and possible reserves. The best estimate of recovery from committed projects is generally considered to be the 2P sum of proved and probable reserves. Note that these volumes only refer to currently justified projects or those projects already in development.

Reserve booking

Oil and gas reserves are the main asset of an oil company. Booking is the process by which they are added to the balance sheet.

In the United States, booking is done according to a set of rules developed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The reserves of any company listed on the New York Stock Exchange have to be stated to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Reported reserves may be audited by outside geologists, although this is not a legal requirement.

In Russia, companies report their reserves to the State Commission on Mineral Reserves (GKZ).

See also

 Abiogenic petroleum origin
 Decline curve analysis
 Drill baby drill
 Energy development
 Future energy development
 Giant oil and gas fields
 Hubbert peak
 NORM
 Petroleum
 Petroleum exploration in the Arctic
 Petroleum licensing
 Renewable energy
 Seismic source
 Site survey
 Upward continuation
 Wildcatter
 Extraction of petroleum

References

External links
Oilfield Glossary
Exploration Geology Forums

Exploration
Petroleum geology
Natural gas
Oil exploration
Fossil fuels

da:Olieudvinding

Hydrocarbon exploration


A Regierungsbezirk is a government region of Germany in some federal states (Bundesländer).

Regierungsbezirke are divided into districts (Kreise), either Landkreise or urban districts: cities which constitute a district in their own right (kreisfreie Städte). The Regierungsbezirk is governed by a Bezirksregierung and led by a Regierungspräsident.

Not all Bundesländer have this sub-division; some are directly divided into districts. Currently, five states are divided into 22 Regierungsbezirke, ranging in population from 5,255,000 (Düsseldorf) to 1,065,000 (Gießen):

 Baden-Württemberg: Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Tübingen
 Bavaria: Oberbayern, Niederbayern, Oberpfalz, Oberfranken, Mittelfranken, Unterfranken, Schwaben
 Hesse: Darmstadt, Gießen, Kassel
 North Rhine-Westphalia: Arnsberg, Cologne, Detmold, Düsseldorf, Münster
 Saxony: Chemnitz, Dresden, Leipzig

History
The first Regierungsbezirke were created by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1808/16, which divided its provinces into 25 Regierungsbezirke. The Regierungsbezirke of North Rhine-Westphalia are in direct continuation of those created in 1815. Other states of the German Empire created similar entities, named Kreishauptmannschaft (in Saxony) or Kreis (in Bavaria and Württemberg) (not to be confused with the Kreis or Landkreis today). During the Third Reich, the Nazi government unified the naming; since then all these entities are called Regierungsbezirk.

On January 1 2000 Rhineland-Palatinate disbanded its three Regierungsbezirke Koblenz, Rheinhessen-Pfalz and Trier - the employees and assets of the three Bezirksregierungen were converted into three public authorities responsible for the whole state, each covering a part of the former responsibilities of the Bezirksregierung.

On January 1, 2004, Saxony-Anhalt disbanded its three Regierungsbezirke: Dessau, Halle and Magdeburg. The responsibilities are now covered by a Landesverwaltungsamt with three offices at the former seats of the Bezirksregierungen.

On January 1, 2005, Lower Saxony disbanded its four Regierungsbezirke: Braunschweig, Hanover, Lüneburg, and Weser-Ems.

In 2005, North Rhine-Westphalia planned to abolish its five Regierungsbezirke and create three self-government entities. The old, "Prussian-style", Regierungsbezirk had no self-government organs.

Local government of Germany

Regierungsbezirk


The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a computer software copyleft license. This license lets the user of the software use a program in many of the same ways as if it were public domain. They can use it, change it, and copy it. They can also sell or give away copies of the program with or without any changes they made to it. The license lets them do this as long as they agree to follow the terms of the license. The GPL was created by Richard Stallman. The current version is version 3, created in 2007, although some software still uses version 2, created in 1991.

There are two main terms to the license. Both apply to giving the program away or selling it.
A copy of the source code or written instructions about how to get a copy must be included with the software. If the software is able to be downloaded from the internet, the source code must also be available for downloading.
The license of the software can not be changed or removed. It must always use the GPL.

If the user does not agree to follow the GPL, they can still use the software under copyright laws. They can use it and make copies or changes to it for themselves, but they cannot give it away or sell it. They also can not change the license.

Related pages
 List of software licenses

Other websites
 GNU General Public License v1.0
 GNU General Public License v2.0
 GNU General Public License v3.0
 GNU website

Software licences

GNU General Public License


Vertebrae (singular: vertebra) are the individual irregular bones that make up the spinal column (aka ischis) – a flexuous and flexible column.
There are normally thirty-three (33) vertebrae in humans, including the five that are fused to form the sacrum (the others are separated by intervertebral discs) and the four coccygeal bones which form the tailbone.
The upper three regions comprise the remaining 24, and are grouped under the names cervical (7 vertebrae), thoracic (12 vertebrae) and lumbar (5 vertebrae), according to the regions they occupy.  Each vertebra has a hole through which the spinal cord passes.

References
 Gray's Anatomy: The Vertebral column - The 1917 Gray's Anatomy is available via the Bartleby project. It is available with full colour diagrams, and provides an excellent starting point in anatomy, as well as a relatively complete source for gross anatomy. This article was copied and pasted from the 1917 Gray's Anatomy, which is in the public domain.
 Smart implant will help broken vertebra  - An article from IsraCast

Bones

Vertebra


A hyperbola is a type of conic section. Like the other three types of conic sections - parabolas, ellipses, and circles - it is a curve formed by the intersection of a cone and a plane. A hyperbola is created when the plane intersects both halves of a double cone, creating two curves that look exactly like each other, but open in opposite directions. This occurs when the angle between the axis of the cone and the plane is less than the angle between a line on the side of the cone and the plane.

Hyperbolas can be found in many places in nature. For example, an object in open orbit around another object - where it never returns - can move in the shape of a hyperbola. On a sundial, the path followed by the tip of the shadow over time is a hyperbola.

One of the most well-known hyperbolas is the graph of the equation .

Definitions and equations

The two disconnected curves that make up a hyperbola are called arms or branches.

The two points where the branches are closest together are called the vertices. The line between these two points is called the transverse axis or major axis. The midpoint of the transverse axis is the center of the hyperbola.

At large distances from the center, the branches of the hyperbola approach two straight lines. These two lines are called the asymptotes. As the distance from the center increases, the hyperbola gets closer and closer to the asymptotes, but never intersects them.

The conjugate axis or minor axis is perpendicular, or at a right angle to, the transverse axis. The endpoints of the conjugate axis are at the height where a segment that intersects the vertex and is perpendicular to the transverse axis intersects the asymptotes.

A hyperbola that has a center at the origin of the Cartesian coordinate system, which is the point (0,0), and has a transverse axis on the x-axis can be written as the equation

a is the distance between the center and a vertex. The length of the transverse axis is equal to 2a. b is the length of a perpendicular line segment from a vertex to an asymptote. The length of the conjugate axis is equal to 2b.

The two branches of the above type of hyperbola open to the left and the right. If the branches open up and down and the transverse axis is on the y-axis, then the hyperbola can be written as the equation

Hyperbolic trajectory
A hyperbolic trajectory is the trajectory followed by an object when its velocity is more than the escape velocity of a planet, satellite, or star. That means its orbital eccentricity is greater than 1. For example, meteors approach on a hyperbolic trajectory, and interplanetary space probes leave on one.
Conic sections

Related pages
Hyperbolic functions

Hyperbola


Shaka kaSenzangakhona (sometimes spelled Tshaka, Tchaka or Chaka; ca. 1787 – ca. 22 September 1828) was the most important leader of the Zulu Empire. He joined the Zulu tribal groups together into the beginnings of a nation. This Zulu nation ruled a large area of southern Africa, between the Phongolo and Mzimkhulu rivers. His leadership and his energy make him one of the greatest Zulu chieftains. He has been called a military genius for his changes and new ideas. However, there were also brutal and cruel things that happened when he was in charge.

Zulu leader
Shaka maintained a good relationship with the Europeans in Africa, including the Colonial leaders. He was disliked by other Africans, including his own people, who hated his constant wars.

Ten years of  warfare placed incredible strains on the Zulu nation. Shaka, unstable and worried about being replaced by an heir, finally snapped into madness after the death of his mother in 1828. He imposed a year of celibacy on his people. He killed anyone who did not show enough sadness at the death of his mother. He was killed within the year by his half-brother, Dingane, who succeeded him as ruler.

Even though he created brutal conditions for his subjects, he created the powerful Zulu Kingdom.

References

1781 births
1828 deaths
African people
History of South Africa
Assassinated people

Shaka


Béla Bartók (b. Nagyszentimiklós, Hungary, 25 March 1881; d. New York City 26 September 1945) was a famous Hungarian composer and pianist. He was one of the most important and original composers of the 20th century. He became very interested in folk music and travelled a lot in Hungary and other countries, including Romania, listening to the folk songs which the country people sang. He often used the style of these songs in his music. He is famous for his piano music, string quartets and several pieces for orchestra including one called Concerto for Orchestra. Bartók's harmonies and lively rhythms were sometimes quite new to classical music and some audiences found them difficult to understand at first.

Childhood and early years
Béla Bartók was born in the small town of Nagyszentmiklós. In those days it was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today it is in Romania. When he was very small he showed great musical talent, and his mother taught him to play the piano.

Béla was often ill when he was a child. When he was seven his father died, and his mother took him and his sister to live in Nagyszőlős (today it is called Vinogradiv and is in the Ukraine), and then to Pozsony (today it is Bratislava in Slovakia). There he gave his first public recital when he was eleven. He included some music which he had composed himself.

Early musical career

Soon he was studying the piano with István Thoman who had studied with the famous Franz Liszt. He had lessons in composition from János Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. There he met the composer Zoltán Kodály, who was a great influence on him and who became a lifelong friend.

He soon started to compose longer pieces of music. He liked the music of Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy and these influenced his style of music. He started to be interested in folk music. This can be heard in the first of his six string quartets.

Bartók and Kodály travelled together into the countryside to collect and study old Hungarian folk melodies. People in those days thought that real Magyar (old Hungarian) folk music was Gypsy music. Bartók and Kodály showed that there were other traditions beside these. They found music which used pentatonic scales similar to those used in some parts of Asia. The two composers started to use these folk ideas in their own compositions. Kodály often quoted (copied) actual folk songs in his own music, while Bartók preferred to compose music which sounded like folksong without actually copying it.

Middle years and career

In 1909, Bartók married Márta Ziegler. Their son, also named Béla, was born in 1910.

In 1911, Bartók wrote his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle. There are only two singers in the opera: Bluebeard and his wife Judith. He also wrote a ballet called The Wooden Prince. This started to make him famous abroad. Another ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, is even more famous today. It shows the influence of Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Richard Strauss. He wrote a lot of chamber music including a total of 6 string quartets, 2 violin sonatas and a Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. He wrote some pieces for smaller orchestras: Divertimento for strings and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Bartók divorced Márta in 1923, and married a piano student, Ditta Pásztory. His second son, Péter, was born in 1924.

World War II and later career

When World War II broke out Bartók criticized the Nazis. After they came into power in Germany, he refused to give concerts there and did not use his German publisher. His political ideas gave him a great deal of trouble in Hungary.

Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók felt he had to emigrate to the USA with Ditta Pásztory. They lived in New York City. Their son Péter joined them in 1942 and later joined the United States Navy. Bartók 's older son Béla stayed in Hungary.

Bartók did not feel comfortable in the US, and found it very difficult to compose. He was also not very well known in America, and not many people were interested in his music. He and his wife Ditta gave concerts, and for a while, they were given some money to work on a collection of Yugoslav folk songs. They did not have very much money, although he had some friends who gave them enough to live on. Serge Koussevitsky asked him to write the  Concerto for Orchestra . This soon became Bartók's most popular work, and brought him some money. He was also asked by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin. This seemed to make him interested again in composing, and he went on to write his Piano Concerto No. 3 and began work on his  Viola Concerto.

Bartók died by polycythemia in New York City from on 26 September 1945, aged 64. He left the Viola Concerto unfinished at his death; it was later finished by his pupil Tibor Serly.

Music

Bartók's music has many modern techniques such atonality, bitonality and modern harmonies. He often uses different kinds of scales (not just major and minor ones), and very complicated rhythms. A lot of these are inspired by the folk music he heard. He wrote a lot of piano music, including some easy pieces for people who are learning the piano. This includes a collection of pieces in six volumes called Mikrokosmos which are very popular with young musicians today.

20th-century composers
Cancer deaths in New York City
Deaths from blood disease
Hungarian composers
1881 births
1945 deaths

Béla Bartók


Heat capacity is a measure of how much materials can store up heat as they change temperature.

Materials with high heat capacities require a lot of heat to be stored up before a small change.  Materials with low heat capacities require very little heat to be stored up before a large change.

The heat capacity of one gram (or some other unit of mass) of a material is called the specific heat capacity of the material, so that the heat capacity of something is its mass times its specific heat capacity.

Specific heat capacities are often listed in tables, like this one:

Basic physics ideas
Heat
Physical quantity

Heat capacity


Warning coloration (or aposematism) is how animals let other animals know that they are poisonous or dangerous. It is the exact opposite of camouflage. Warning colors are usually some combination of red, yellow, black and white.

Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, explained it this way, in 1889:
"The animals in question are possessors of some deadly weapons, as stings or poison fangs, or they are uneatable, and are thus so disagreeable to the usual enemies of their kind that they are never attacked when their peculiar powers or properties are known. It is, therefore, important that they should not be mistaken for defenceless [sic] or eatable species... since they might suffer injury, or even death, before their enemies discovered the danger or uselessness of their attack. They require some signal or danger flag which shall serve as a warning to would-be enemies..."

Wallace predicted that birds and other predators would reject conspicuous prey whilst accepting cryptic prey. Later reports confirmed this.

Animals with warning colors move slowly and expose themselves to sight. The sluggishness and exposure helps to advertise their defense. Along with the color and behavior often goes the foul smell of their chemical weapons. The grasshopper Aularches miliaris is a very good example. Noxious caterpillars often have thick, leathery cuticles which help them to resist young birds making a 'test'. When the bird takes a peck, disgusting fluid seeps out from special glands on its back. The caterpillar (or other larva) will often survive such an attack, and the young bird has learnt a lesson it will never forget. All in all, the predator is given good warning. Tests show that warning colors definitely do deter predators.

Some individual animals will die or receive damage while birds or mammals on the attack learn about the connection between color and taste. However, if warning costs less than hiding, the animal benefits. And the advertising traits such as colors may serve other functions as well. The patterns may help mate identification within the species, for instance.

Warning coloration is the basis of two different kinds of mimicry: Müllerian mimicry and Batesian mimicry.

Toxin resistance
There are a number of predators which eat toxic animals. Cases which have been studied suggest there is some kind of cost to be borne for their relative immunity to the toxin.

The rough-skinned newt is toxic, and displays its warning color by showing its abdomen. Throughout much of the newt's range, the common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) is resistant to the toxin. In several populations, these snakes successfully prey upon the newts. Toxin resistant garter snakes are the only known animals that can eat these newts and survive.

The snake's resistance to the toxin has resulted in a selective pressure that favours newts which produce more potent levels of toxin. Increases in newt toxicity then causes a selective pressure favouring snakes with mutations conferring even greater resistance. The price paid by the snakes is that their digestion and body metabolism is slower than related species. Really resistant snakes have slower crawl speeds than snakes with little or no resistance.

This is an example of co-evolution. This cycle of a predator and prey co-evolving is sometimes called an evolutionary arms race. In this case it results in the newts producing levels of toxin far in excess of what is needed to kill any other conceivable predator.

Bright colors
Animals can, and do, show bright colors which have other functions. The most common functions are:
Identification, a secondary sex characteristic to find a mate.
Temperature regulation.
Camouflage against unusual backgrounds.
However, the bright colors used for these functions tend to be different from the standard warning patterns and colors.

Unknown function
The coloring of many species has unknown function. This is usually because their life habits have not been studied sufficiently, and because no field tests have been done. One example is the moth Utetheisa pulchella, the crimson speckled moth. Its association with the plant Dittrichia viscosa, which has a somewhat unpleasant smell, suggest the moth has warning coloration, but the matter is not settled. The related species Utetheisa ornatrix, which feeds on other plants, is known to exude (squeeze out) alkaloids to put predators off.

References

Coevolution
Ethology

Warning colouration


Guantánamo Bay () is a bay in Guantánamo province, Cuba. It is at the southeastern end of Cuba (). It is the largest harbour on the south side of the island. It is surrounded by steep hills creating an enclave cut off from its immediate hinterland.

History
The bay was originally named Guantánamo by the Taíno.  Christopher Columbus landed at the location known as Fisherman's Point in 1494, naming it Puerto Grande. On landing, Columbus's crew found Taíno fisherman preparing a feast for the local chieftain. When Spanish settlers took control of the island, the bay became a vital harbor on the south side of the island.

The bay has been the focus of military activities for a long time. In the colonial era, British troops tried to land there, during the War of the Jenkin's Ear. That war was between England and Spain. It took place between 1739 and 1742. The troops could land in the bay, and later tried to take the city Santiago de Cuba. As it turned out, this was impossible. So the troops claimed the bay as theirs, and named it Cumberland Harbour. Later they left the island again, because some of their troops had died from tropical diseases.

The United States tried to buy the whole island of Cuba. In the Spanish-American war, US troops occupied the bay, because there was a harbour there. The Treaty of Paris, between the United States and Spain ended the war. It gave Cuba its independence from Spain. Spain also gave the territory of Puerto Rico, and the islands of Guam and the Philippines to the United States, amongst others. Cuba, however, came under the political and military infuence of the United States. The US then put presidents and dictators at the head of the Cuban state. These were of course favorable to the interests of the United States. In 1902 the Platt Amendment was appended to the Constitution of the Cuban state. It limited the freedom of Cuba very much. It also said that some territory in the south should be ceded to the United States for a military base.  Bound by the amendment, the Cubans granted the US a 99-year lease to the territory. This treaty was made by Tomás Estrada Palma, an American citizen, who became the first President of Cuba.

The current Cuban government rejects the Cuban-American Treaty because it violates article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The Cuban government therefore considers the U.S. presence in Guantánamo to be an illegal occupation of the area. Article 52 declares a treaty void only if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of international law.

The US Naval base

The southern portion of the bay is surrounded by the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a naval base established in 1898. Recently, the base began hosting a detainment camp for suspected militant combatants collected (actions that are viewed by some as kidnapping) from both Afghanistan and Iraq, or from secret NATO prisons in Europe (discovered recently, in 2006).

The base, sometimes called "GTMO" or "Gitmo", covers 116 km² (about 45 square miles) on the western and eastern banks of the bay. It was established in 1898, when the United States obtained control of Cuba from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, following the 1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay.  The U.S. government obtained a perpetual lease that began on February 23, 1903.

Wikisource links
 Texts of United States - Cuban agreements and treaty of 1934

References

Other websites

U.S. sources
 Read Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Guantánamo Detainees

Official U.S. military website
 www.jtftmo.southcom.mil – "Joint Task Force-Guantanamo's official website."

Official U.S. NAV base website
 NSGtmo.navy.mil  – "U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay Cuba: The United States' oldest overseas Naval Base"

Official website of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs
 www.cubaminrex.cu  – "Guantánamo: U.S. Black Hole"

Maps and photos
 Google Maps
 Photos  Hosted by Brad Beckett
 Virtual 3D Walk-through of Camp Delta (from the Art project Zone*Interdite)

Bays
Atlantic Ocean
Geography of Cuba

Guantánamo Bay


A record label or record company makes and sells audio and video recordings, on various formats including compact discs, LPs, DVD-Audio, SACDs, and cassettes. The name "record label" is from the paper label at the center of a gramophone record (what is also known as a "phonograph record" in American English).

Most major record labels are owned by a few large multinational companies (Big Four record labels) that make up the almost all of the global recording industry, although there is a recent resurgence in independent record labels.

Labels as brands
Recording companies often spend a lot of time and money in discovering new musicians or developing the talent of artists they already have signed up with a contract. The association of the brand with the artists helps define the image of both the brand and the artist.

In spite of the fact that both parties need each other to survive, the relationship between record labels and artists can, at times, be a difficult one.  Many artists have had albums changed or censored in some way by the labels before they are released—songs being edited, artwork or titles being changed, etc.  Record labels generally do this because they believe that the album will sell better if the changes are made.  Often the record label's decisions are correct ones from a commercial perspective, but this typically frustrates the artist who feels that their artwork is being destroyed.

In the early days of the recording industry, record labels were absolutely necessary for the success of any artist. The first goal of any new artist or band was to get signed to a contract as soon as possible. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, many artists were so desperate to sign a contract with a record company that they usually ended up signing a bad contract, sometimes giving away the rights to their music in the process. Entertainment lawyers are used by some to look over any contract before it is signed.

Industry consolidation

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a phase of consolidation in the record industry that led to almost all major labels being owned by a very few multinational companies, who in turn were members of the RIAA.

The resurgence of independent labels

In the 1990s, due to the widespread use of home studios, consumer CD recorders, and the Internet, independent labels began to become more commonplace. Independent labels are typically artist-owned (although not always), with a focus usually on making good music and not necessarily on the business aspects of the industry or making lots of money. Because of this, independent artists usually receive less radio play and sell fewer CDs than artists signed to major labels. However, they usually have more control over the music and packaging of the released product.

On occasion established artists, once their record contract has finished, move to an independent label. This often gives the combined advantage of name recognition and more control over one's music. Singers Dolly Parton, Aimee Mann and Prince, among others, have achieved this.

While there are many independent labels, folk singer Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records is often cited as an ideal example. The singer turned down lucrative contracts from several top-name labels in order to establish her own New-York-based company. Constant touring resulted in noteworthy success for an act without significant major funding. Ani and others from the company have spoken on several occasions about their business model in hopes of encouraging others.

Some independent labels become successful enough that major record companies negotiate contracts to either distribute music for the label or in some cases, purchase the label completely.

On the punk rock scene, the DIY punk ethic encourages bands to self-publish and self-distribute.  This approach has been around since the early 1980s, in an attempt to stay true to the punk ideals of doing it yourself and not selling out to corporate profits and control.  Such labels have a reputation for being fiercely uncompromising and especially unwilling to cooperate with the Big Five record labels at all.

The emergence of net labels
Main Article: net label

With the Internet now being a viable source for music, net labels emerge. Depending on the ideals of the net label, music files from the artists may be downloaded free of charge or for a fee that is paid via PayPal or an online payment system. Some of these labels also offer hard copy CDs in addition to direct download (for example, Baltimore's Schismatik record label ships CDs for a nominal charge).  Most net labels acknowledge the Creative Commons licensing system thus reserving certain rights for the artist.

The emergence of open-source labels
Main Article: Open source record label

The new century brings the phenomenon of open-source or open-content record label. These are inspired by the free software and open-source movement and the success of GNU/Linux.

Examples are

 LOCA Records
 Magnatune
 Opsound

References

Record label


Hentai is a Japanese word that literally means "strange appearance", but also means "perverted". Hentai, because of this, is a word used by countries outside of Japan to show porn and sex-related anime, manga and video games. The word is not used to mean this in Japan. In Japan, terms such as ecchi are used.

The word hentai is sometimes used to apply to cartoon characters that are not anime characters. Hentai is the anime version of porn. There is on screen sex, often very graphic and very imaginative. Since hentai is anime, the performers are not bound by physical laws. Makers of hentai often use this in very creative ways. Some of the acts performed in hentai would be physically impossible. Some of the performers are often impossible themselves. Fairies, monsters, and even new and strange creatures are stars of hentai.  Monsters and demons with tentacles are seen so often that "tentacle porn" is its own sub-category of hentai.

Most of the hentai (anime)-films in the late 1990s to the present day are based on Ero-Games, where the only actual goal is to date the girls in the game and have sex with one of them. The games feature various character-types, like a bookworm, a tough girl, a younger girl, and a tomboy. Ero-games can include highly taboo themes, such as coprophilia or dismemberment, pedophilia, and rape. Sometimes slightly less taboo subjects, such as incest. Some examples of these kind of game-to-hentai-anime conversions are Immoral Sisters, Isaku, Pia Carrot, Five Card, Bible Black, Words Worth, Night Shift Nurses, Huniepop, and Milk Junkies.

Famous hentai films include:
 Cream Lemon (1984)
 Urotsukidôji (1987)
 La Blue Girl (1992)
 Night Shift Nurses (2000)
 Bible Black (2001)
 Boku No Pico (2006)

Pornography
Hentai

Hentai