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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2415246

Under the Sign of the Black Mark is the third studio album by Swedish extreme metal band Bathory. It was recorded in September 1986 and released on 11 May 1987 through New Renaissance Records and Under One Flag. It was a key album in the development of the black metal genre, and greatly influenced the Norwegian black metal scene that emerged in the early 1990s. Background and recording. The photograph on the cover was by Gunnar Silins, from a photograph in the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. The model used was Leif Ehrnborg, a then-top class Swedish bodybuilder. The song "Woman of Dark Desires" is a tribute to the band's namesake, Elizabeth Báthory. "Enter the Eternal Fire" was the band's first epic, reaching nearly seven minutes in length, with lyrics referring to a deal with the Devil. The song "Equimanthorn" makes references to Hell as well as to Norse mythology, including Odin's "eight-legged black stallion" Sleipnir. Critical reception and legacy. Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic wrote that the album "remains a career highlight for Bathory, and a crucial LP for all lovers of extreme metal." Fenriz of Darkthrone called it "the quintessential black metal album". He also cited it as a musical inspiration for the 1995 Darkthrone album "Panzerfaust", besides Celtic Frost's "Morbid Tales" and Vader's "Necrolust" demo. On the album's impact, Daniel Ekeroth, author of the book "Swedish Death Metal", commented in an interview with "Decibel" magazine in 2012: "Even by Bathory's standards, this was a masterpiece, on par with both "Bonded by Blood" and "Reign in Blood". The songs were perfected, and the sound more atmospheric and uncanny than before. Bathory were now the most extreme "and" one of the very best metal bands out there." The song "Call from the Grave" was featured in 2009 game "" In 2017, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Under the Sign of the Black Mark" as 81st on their list of 'The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time.' Phil Anselmo from Pantera covers the song "Massacre" with his project band Scour. Track listing. Outro track introduced on 2003 remastered edition.

solitary pennant

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3201676

The 1972 Pacific typhoon season was an above average season, producing 31 tropical storms, 24 typhoons and 2 intense typhoons. It has no official bounds; it ran year-round in 1972, but most tropical cyclones tend to form in the northwestern Pacific Ocean between June and December. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The scope of this article is limited to the Pacific Ocean, north of the equator and west of the International Date Line. Storms that form east of the date line and north of the equator are called hurricanes; see 1972 Pacific hurricane season. Tropical Storms formed in the entire west Pacific basin were assigned a name by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Tropical depressions in this basin have the "W" suffix added to their number. Tropical depressions that enter or form in the Philippine area of responsibility are assigned a name by PAGASA (the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration. This can often result in the same storm having two names. Systems. A total of 36 tropical depressions formed this year in the Western Pacific, of which 30 became tropical storms. Twenty-two storms reached typhoon intensity, of which two reached super typhoon strength. Typhoon Kit (Asiang–Biring). A tropical disturbance generated by an upper tropospheric low in the mid-Pacific trough moved westward through the Caroline Islands, slowly organizing into Tropical Depression 1W on January 5. The depression quickly strengthened, reaching tropical storm status later that day and becoming a typhoon on the 6th as it neared the Philippines. Kit rapidly intensified on the 6th and 7th to a typhoon, the strongest ever in January, but its inflow was cut off to the west, weakening the typhoon as it continued westward. Kit hit the eastern Philippines as a typhoon on January 7, and turned north through the archipelago in response to a break in the subtropical ridge. This brought Kit eastward then southward, where after completing its large loop it dissipated on January 15, just from its starting location. This unusual, unexpected, and unseasonably strong typhoon killed 204 people and caused nearly $23 million in damage (1972 USD) in the Philippines. The destruction was mostly due to rains and flooding. Tropical Depression 02W. Tropical Depression 02W was a weak system that existed near the equator, doing a loop then traveling eastwards as a disturbance before dissipating. Typhoon Lola. The northern hemisphere part of a "cyclone twin" developed into a tropical depression west of Kwajalein on May 29. It headed west and slowly strengthened. As it turned to the northwest and then the north northeast, it reached its maximum intensity on June 5. It continued heading north northeast, steadily weakened, and went extratropical on June 7. Lola passed close enough to some of the islands in Micronesia to cause damage. Two fishermen were reported missing. Wind and waves caused $18 thousand (1972 USD) in damage to Pohnpei and nearby atolls. They also destroyed the fresh water system, causing a shortage of drinking water. On Pingelap and Mokil, sixty houses were destroyed. Tropical Storm Nina. Tropical Storm Nina formed as a disturbance heading westwards. It briefly became a tropical depression south of Guam, but it weakened back to a disturbance as it turned back eastwards. As it traveled eastwards, it reintensified, becoming a tropical storm late on the 3rd while far east-southeast of Guam. It did not last, though, weakening back to a disturbance on the 4th and dissipating on the 5th. Tropical Storm Mamie. Tropical Storm Mamie formed as a disturbance over the Philippines. It traveled westwards, becoming a tropical depression over the South China Sea, and then becoming a tropical storm on the 1st. The tropical storm made landfall in Vietnam late on the 3rd. It weakened to a tropical depression over land, and it became non-tropical as it went offshore. The extratropical remnants of Mamie traveled northeastwards along the Chinese coast, finally dissipating over Hokkaido. Typhoon Ora (Konsing). Typhoon Ora, which formed on June 22, crossed the northern Philippines on the 24th and 25th as an typhoon. It weakened over land, but restrengthened in the South China Sea to a typhoon before hitting southern China on June 27. An unusual feature about Ora was while crossing the South China Sea, it never featured a wall cloud, even though it had winds of typhoon strength. Ora caused heavy damage to the Manila area in the Philippines. It killed 131 people, including four who died when a ferry in the Bicol region capsized. In Manila Harbor, several ships were blown ashore. All in all, Ora left 385 thousand people homeless and caused $15 million (1972 USD) in damage. Typhoon Phyllis. Tropical Storm Phyllis, which formed on July 5, quickly intensified from late on July 9 to early July 11 to a typhoon. The typhoon turned to the northwest, steadily weakening as it approached Japan. Phyllis struck southeastern Japan on July 15 as a tropical storm, and became extratropical that night. In Japan, Phyllis caused 3 deaths, more than 300 landslides, and flooded more than 6000 homes. Overall damage was moderate. Typhoon Rita (Gloring). The near-equatorial trough spawned four tropical cyclones on July 5, one of which would become Super Typhoon Rita. Having originated over the open Western Pacific, the depression tracked westward, becoming a tropical storm on July 7 and a typhoon the next day. Rita quickly intensified, reaching super typhoon strength on July 10 and a peak of on July 11. The typhoon stalled and weakened over the next two days as it headed to the northeast. On the July 15 and July 16, Rita again stalled, weakening down to , as Tropical Storm Phyllis swung around its circulation and struck Japan. Rita then turned to the north, where it was able to restrengthen. Typhoon Tess at that time was just located some 800 nm east of Rita. A Fujiwhara interaction took place, forcing Rita executed a large loop from July 21 to July 25. In that loop the Rita caught USS Alamo and USS Juneau as they sought to evade to the south after dropping of US Marines and equipment in Okinawa. Both ships weathered the storm but Alamo sustained minor damage in the plunging seas. After looping and passing Okinawa, she continued to the northwest and began to accelerate as she entered a confluent zone created by a trough over Manchuria and a building ridge over the Sea of Japan. She passed by western South Korea, made landfall at Shidao port, Shandong and then weakened into a tropical storm. Rita entered the Gulf of Chihli, hit northeastern China, and dissipated over the Yanshan mountain northwest of Peking, China on the night of July 27. Rita's large size and long life caused heavy rains throughout the areas it hit. Rita and Tropical Storm Susan's presence strengthened the southwest monsoon flow over Luzon, where torrential rains occurring between July 17 and July 21 lead to disastrous flooding which killed 214 and with over $150 million in damage. Near Guam, on July 8, the typhoon caused an Air Force Boeing B-52 to crash into the ocean, killing one member of its six-man crew. The remaining crew members were rescued by a US Navy nuclear attack submarine which surfaced in the roiling seas and literally fished the men out by using a line attached to a periscope and reeling them in as the boat rolled in the seas. In Taiwan, heavy rains caused landslides, one of which derailed a train, killing three. In Korea, eight people were killed, more fifty small vessels were lost, and more than two hundred buildings were destroyed. In the Ryukyu Islands, three people were killed. Crop damage was heavy, numerous boats were sunk, and several highways were blocked by mudslides. Rita killed 229 people, making it this season's deadliest typhoon. Typhoon Susan (Edeng). A disturbance in the ITCZ became a tropical depression on July 5. It headed northwest over the Philippines. It intensified into a tropical storm almost immediately after entering the South China Sea on July 8. It then turned north, and erratically drifted and looped for four days. On July 11, Susan became a typhoon. On July 14, Susan moved close to the Taiwan Strait. It made landfall on the coast of Fujian province, and dissipated inland on July 15. Susan caused heavy waves on the western coast of Luzon. Along with Super Typhoon Rita, Susan altered the monsoon winds over the Philippines, which caused flooding that killed 214 people; however, as Rita was primarily responsible for these conditions, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center attributes these deaths to the former system. By itself, Susan killed four people in Taiwan. Typhoon Tess. The same near-equatorial trough that developed Rita also developed Typhoon Tess. Tess, having developed on July 7 near the Marshall Islands, tracked westward, reaching typhoon status on July 12. Over the next two days, as Tess turned to the northwest, it rapidly intensified to a typhoon. Steadily weakening as it continued northwestward, Tess bent back to the west in response to the building of a high pressure cell over Japan. The Fujiwhara effect between Tess and Rita brought Typhoon Tess into Japan on July 23. After dissipating over Sea of Japan, Tess continued northward, and merged with a front south of Vladivostok on July 25. In Japan, Tess caused strong flooding and strong surf. This killed 29 people, with 20 missing. These casualties were mostly swimmers caught in the surf. Typhoon Viola. Typhoon Viola (classified as a tropical storm by the JTWC) spent its entire life far offshore. Its precursor disturbance formed south of Wake Island on the 21st, and it traveled westwards then northwards at around 160 degrees west, before turning back eastwards on the 24th and eventually becoming extratropical on the 26th. Tropical Storm Winnie (Isang). Tropical Storm Winnie formed as a disturbance far east of the Philippines. The disturbance did a small loop, then headed northwestwards, intensifying into a tropical storm at midnight on the 30th. It continued, traveling north of the island of Taiwan before making landfall in China on the 1st of August. The storm quickly weakened into a disturbance, which traveled slowly inland before dissipating. Typhoon Alice. A tropical disturbance emerged from the ITCZ on July 29 and passed through the Marshalls. It became a tropical depression on July 30 and a tropical storm the next day. It and headed in the direction of Japan. Alice became a typhoon on August 2 and reached its maximum intensity on August 4 while southwest of Marcus. As Alice continued approaching Japan, it steadily weakened. It recurved, brushed Honshu, and went extratropical on August 8. It never made landfall. Waves generated by Alice's storm surge caused a river to overflow in Iwaki, which affected three hundred houses. No one was killed. Typhoon Betty (Maring). A tropical depression formed near the Caroline Islands on August 8. It passed through the Marianas Islands after becoming a tropical storm. Betty turned to the west and peaked as a super typhoon on August 15. It turned to more to the west northwest, passed over the southern Ryukyus and just north of Taiwan, and made landfall on the coast China on August 17. It rapidly weakened inland, and dissipated the next day. Betty had minimal effects in the Ryukyu Islands. In the Philippines, it enhanced monsoon rains. This caused flooding, which killed seven people in Ilocos Sur. Four other people were presumed dead after a light aircraft went missing. In Taiwan, rains were heavy. The resulting floods in Sanchong District stranded 300 thousand people, and washed out roads and railways. More than 220 houses were totally destroyed, with at least another 130 badly damaged. Betty killed eighteen people in Taiwan, and twenty-nine overall. The total cost of damage is unknown. Typhoon Cora. A disturbance west of Luzon became a tropical depression on August 22. It headed into the South China Sea and strengthened into a tropical storm. As it approached Hainan, it became only the fourth August tropical cyclone to intensify into a typhoon in the South China Sea since 1945. It made landfall on Hainan on August 28, emerged into the Gulf of Tonkin, and made a second landfall north of Haiphong. Cora had dissipated inland by August 29. No damage was reported, and no one was killed. Severe Tropical Storm Doris. Tropical Storm Doris stayed far from land. It formed far north of Wake Island and traveled north, becoming a tropical storm on the 26th, but it became extratropical on the 29th and dissipated shortly thereafter. Typhoon Elsie. West of Leyte Gulf, a tropical depression formed on August 30. It intensified into a tropical storm after entering the South China Sea. It strengthened into a typhoon on September 1 and slowed down. It made landfall in northern South Vietnam on September 4. It rapidly weakened inland but kept its identity. It transited the Indochina Peninsula and emerged into the Bay of Bengal on September 7, becoming Tropical Cyclone 24-72 of the 1972 North Indian Ocean tropical cyclone season. Ex-Elsie gradually restrengthened as it crossed the Bay of Bengal. It made landfall on the coast of India on September 10 and rapidly dissipated inland. While crossing Thailand, Elsie caused heavy flooding. No other impact was reported to the JTWC. Typhoon Flossie (Nitang). Typhoon Flossie formed as a disturbance west of Guam late on the 5th of September. The system intensified into a tropical storm just before landfall on Luzon. The cyclone then traveled slowly across the South China Sea, becoming a low-level typhoon before making landfall in Vietnam on the 16th. It weakened to a tropical depression as it crossed Vietnam, but it reintensified after entering the Bay of Bengal as Tropical Cyclone 25–72. Typhoon Helen (Paring). Typhoon Helen was the most destructive tropical cyclone to strike Japan during the 1972 Pacific typhoon season. Originating from a tropical disturbance on September 11 near the Northern Mariana Islands, Helen gradually intensified as it moved northwestward. By September 14, it reached typhoon strength and soon turned northeast towards Japan. Accelerating due to a trough over the East China Sea, Helen rapidly approached the country and made landfall near Cape Kushimoto as a Category 3-equivalent typhoon on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale. Later that day, a weakened Helen emerged into the Sea of Japan. After merging with an upper-level low, the storm transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on September 19 and was last noted two days later after moving through southern Hokkaido. In Japan, Typhoon Helen produced torrential rain, peaking at in Hokkaido, and damaging winds that caused widespread damage. A total of 4,213 homes were destroyed and another 146,547 were damaged as a result of flash flooding and landslides. Numerous vessels ran aground due to rough seas associated with the storm, including several thousand ton cargo freighters. In all, 87 fatalities and $102 million in damage was attributed to Typhoon Helen. Typhoon Marie. Typhoon Marie formed on October 4 and tracked westwards, while it intensified into a category 4 typhoon. Soon after reaching peak intensity, Marie weakened and turned northward and affected the northern Soviet Union and Japan until it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on October 16. Marie did not inflict much damage during its 12-day duration. Typhoon Pamela (Toyang). Typhoon Pamela struck Hong Kong killing one person. Typhoon Therese (Undang). Typhoon Therese, having developed on November 30, struck the Philippines on December 3. After crossing the islands, the typhoon reached a peak of winds in the South China Sea, a rare event for December. Therese's intensity fluctuated as it continued westward, and hit eastern South Vietnam on the 9th as a typhoon. Therese dissipated on the 12th, after causing 90 deaths and extensive damage on its path. Storm names. During the season 29 named tropical cyclones developed in the Western Pacific and were named by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, when it was determined that they had become tropical storms. These names were contributed to a revised list from late 1950. Two Central Pacific system developed, Tropical Storms June and Ruby. The naming policy at the time was to use Western Pacific names the Central Pacific. Philippines. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration uses its own naming scheme for tropical cyclones in their area of responsibility. PAGASA assigns names to tropical depressions that form within their area of responsibility and any tropical cyclone that might move into their area of responsibility. Should the list of names for a given year prove to be insufficient, names are taken from an auxiliary list, the first 6 of which are published each year before the season starts. Names not retired from this list will be used again in the 1976 season. This is the same list used for the 1968 season. PAGASA uses its own naming scheme that starts in the Filipino alphabet, with names of Filipino female names ending with "ng" (A, B, K, D, etc.). Names that were not assigned/going to use are marked in . Season effects. This table will list all the storms that developed in the northwestern Pacific Ocean west of the International Date Line and north of the equator during 1972. It will include their intensity, duration, name, areas affected, deaths, missing persons (in parentheses), and damage totals. Classification and intensity values will be based on estimations conducted by the JMA, however due to lack of information around this time sustained winds were recorded by the JTWC. All damage figures will be in 1972 USD. Damages and deaths from a storm will include when the storm was a precursor wave or an extratropical low.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=101706

Dungeon (originally published as Dungeon: Adventures for TSR Role-Playing Games) was one of the two official magazines targeting consumers of the "Dungeons & Dragons" role-playing game and associated products; "Dragon" was the other. It was first published by TSR, Inc. in 1986 as a bimonthly periodical. It went monthly in May 2003 and ceased print publication altogether in September 2007 with Issue 150. Starting in 2008, "Dungeon" and its more widely read sister publication, "Dragon", went to an online-only format published by Wizards of the Coast. Both magazines went on hiatus at the end of 2013, with "Dungeon Issue 221" being the last released. History. TSR. "Dungeon" (initially titled "Dungeon Adventures") first received mention in the editor's column of "Dragon" Issue 107 (March 1986). Lacking a title at that point, it was described as "a new magazine filled entirely with modules" made available "by subscription only" that would debut "in the late summer or early fall" of 1986 and "come out once every two months". The publication's original editor, Roger E. Moore, elaborated on this basic outline:"Dungeon Adventures" is a new periodical from TSR, Inc., in which you, the readers, may share your own adventures and scenarios from "AD&D" and "D&D" gaming with the legions of other fantasy gamers. Each issue offers a number of fairly short (but often quite complicated and long-playing) modules, selected from the best we receive.What kind of adventures do you want to see? We're going to offer as broad a spectrum of material as possible: dungeon crawls, wilderness camp-outs, "Oriental Adventures" modules, solo quests, tournament designs, "Battlesystem" scenarios, and more. The premiere issue of "Dungeon: Adventures for TSR Role-Playing Games" was undated, but "November/December 1986" appears on the cover of the subsequent issue, and Moore stated that it had been released prior to the November issue of "Dragon". The magazine's format consisted of 64 pages of short "D&D" and "AD&D" game adventures of various lengths, themes, and tones, written by both amateur and professional fantasy role-playing writers. In conjunction with the first anniversary of "Dungeon Adventures", Ken Rolston included a brief review in Issue 125 (September 1987) of "Dragon". Regarding the modules themselves, he called them "[c]heap and cheerful, full of the basic fun of "D&D" games", and said that they reminded him of "the selection of game sessions you find at gaming conventions or in old-fashioned modules". Rolston commented on the anthology format, which allowed writers to "publish fine little bits" and provided "great training grounds for new writers" that offered "an opportunity to experiment with offbeat themes and tones". Rolston concluded that "sophisticated gamers will find a lot to snicker at here, but there are some cute ideas", and added that the "writing ranges from young and enthusiastic to polished, and when compared with some of TSR's current modules...the quality of the layout and graphics is quite decent." Wizards of the Coast. With the sale of TSR due to solvency concerns, the magazine came under the umbrella of Wizards of the Coast in 1997, and the company printed the next 30 issues. With the release of Issue #78 in January 2000, the long title printed on the cover was simplified from "Dungeon: Adventures for TSR Role-Playing Games" to "Dungeon: Adventures". By Issue #82 (August 2000) it was simplified again to "Dungeon". Paizo. In late 2002, Paizo Publishing acquired publishing rights to both "Dungeon" and "Dragon" magazine titles as part of a move by Wizards of the Coast to divest business ventures not related to its core business. Return to Wizards of the Coast. On April 18, 2007, Wizards of the Coast announced that Paizo would cease publication of "Dungeon" in September of that year. Scott Rouse, senior brand manager of "Dungeons & Dragons" at Wizards of the Coast, stated, "Today the internet is where people go to get this kind of information. By moving to an online model we are using a delivery system that broadens our reach to fans around the world." Coinciding with the release of the 4th edition of "Dungeons & Dragons" in June 2008, Wizards of the Coast launched a website that included online versions of "Dungeon" and "Dragon" magazines for subscribers. In this new format, "Dungeon" (now subtitled "A Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Supplement") retained its mandate to deliver adventures of varying lengths and levels as well as articles with information and advice for DMs. Mainstay columns such as "Dungeoncraft" (written by James Wyatt) were retained, and DM-focused articles that formerly appeared in "Dragon" magazine (like "Save My Game") were incorporated into "Dungeon", making it a "one-stop shop" for DMs. The magazine shifted to a landscape format with the intent of making the articles and adventures more readable onscreen. Content was released daily and gathered into PDF compilations on a monthly basis. In May 2011, Wizards of the Coast stopped the monthly compilations and left content in single article format. In October 2012, Wizards of the Coast resumed monthly compilations. Cessation. In the September 2013 issue of "Dragon" (#427) an article by Wizards of the Coast game designer and editor Chris Perkins announced that both "Dragon" and its sibling publication "Dungeon" would be going on hiatus starting January 2014 pending the release of the "Dungeons & Dragons" 5th edition product line. The final online version was Issue #221 in December 2013. The successor magazine, called Dragon+, was subsequently released online on 30 April 2015. Content. Each issue featured a variety of self-contained, pre-scripted, play-tested game scenarios, often called "modules", "adventures" or "scenarios". Dungeon Masters (DMs) could either enact these adventures with their respective player groups as written or adapt them to their own campaign settings. "Dungeon" aimed to save DMs time and effort in preparing game sessions for their players by providing a full complement of ideas, hooks, plots, adversaries, creatures, illustrations, maps, hand-outs, and character dialogue. It was a resource containing several modules per issue, significantly cheaper than standard-format modules. From Dungeon's founding in 1986, it published content that could be used in a variety of forms of "Dungeons & Dragons" systems, much like its sister magazine, "Dragon". When Wizards of the Coast merged all "D&D" product lines into one, 2000's 3rd Edition, "Dungeon" published exclusively 3E content between September 2000's issue 82 and July 2003's issue 100, which shifted to 3.5E. With the release of 4th Edition in June 2008, issue 155 saw the 3.5E content dropped and focused exclusively on 4E. Like "Dragon", "Dungeon" was cancelled by Wizards of the Coast before the release of 5th Edition. Polyhedron. "Polyhedron", the monthly membership publication of the Role-Playing Game Association, was combined with "Dungeon" into a single magazine beginning with Issue 90 (January 2002) and lasting until Issue 111 (June 2004). Many of the "Polyhedron" sections presented complete mini-games for the d20 system in genres other than fantasy. Editor Erik Mona changed the format in September 2004, starting with Issue 114, discontinuing the "Polyhedron" component and focusing solely on "Dungeons & Dragons". Each issue included three adventures, one each for low, medium, and high levels. A few issues each year also contained another substantial article which provided further details on the setting of one of the adventures (Previously, "Dungeon" almost never had features other than modules). Following the adventures and articles, many issues included the three-page "Dungeoncraft" column, at the time written by Monte Cook, as well as a handful of shorter articles on various subjects, collectively titled the "Campaign Workbook". Adventure Paths. Beginning in 2003, "Dungeon" magazine featured episodic, multi-part adventures, referred to as "Adventure Paths", which were designed to take a group of player characters from the beginning of their adventuring careers (1st level) through epic levels (20th and above). As of April 2013, four such serials were published: "Shackled City", "Age of Worms", "Savage Tide", and "Scales of War". In August 2005 the "Shackled City" Adventure Path was collected into a hardcover edition with various revisions and corrections, new background information, and a bonus adventure meant to fill a gap near the beginning of the series. Similarly, several shorter campaign arcs (typically consisting of three parts) and various sporadic, open-ended series and side treks were featured in these later issues.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11906615

Lord Francis Powerscourt is a fictional Victorian-Edwardian detective who has appeared in fifteen novels by the author David Dickinson. Background. Powerscourt is descended from Irish aristocracy, his ancestral home is Powerscourt House in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is not clear whether he is properly Lord Powerscourt, i.e. a peer in his own right, or Lord Francis Powerscourt, i.e. the younger son of a high-ranking peer. Powerscourt's parents both died of Influenza while he was a child. Powerscourt was educated at Eton followed by Cambridge University. His early (and so far largely undocumented) career was with army intelligence in India and Afghanistan where he served with distinction. It is during these early years that Powerscourt discovers his talent for detection. His first wife and son drowned when their ship sunk in the Irish Sea. Powerscourt later remarried to Lady Lucy Hamilton and fathered two children, Olivia and Thomas, as well as becoming step father to Robert, Lady Hamilton's son from her first marriage. Twins Christopher and Elizabeth (known by her second name of Juliet) were also born and first appeared in "Death called to the Bar". Powerscourt is great friends with Lord Johnny Fitzgerald and Home Secretary and Prime Minister Lord Rosebery. Fitzgerald, who Powerscourt grew up with in Ireland, acts as an aide and confidant to Powerscourt and assists in his investigations. Both Powerscourt and Fitzgerald have saved each other's lives during their army service together. Books. All 15 books in the Lord Francis Powerscourt series have been published by Constable & Robinson. "Goodnight Sweet Prince" (2002). 1892 - Investigation into the blackmailing and murder of Prince Eddy, the son of the Prince of Wales. "Death and the Jubilee" (2002). 1897 - Investigation of a headless corpse found floating in the Thames and the threat to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. "Death of an Old Master" (2004). 1899 - Investigation into the murder of a leading London art critic. "Death of a Chancellor" (2005). 1901 - Investigation into the murder of the Chancellor of Compton Cathedral. "Death Called to the Bar" (2006). 1902 - Investigation into the murder of the leading barrister Alexander Dauntsey. "Death on the Nevskii Prospekt" (2006). 1904 - Investigation into the murder of a British diplomat in St Petersburg. "Death on the Holy Mountain" (2009). 1905 - Investigation in Ireland of a series of art thefts from stately houses. "Death of a Pilgrim" (2010). 1905 - Investigation into a pilgrim killed in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. More deaths occur to pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. "Death of a Wine Merchant" (2010). Investigation into the murder of Randolph Colville, chairman of Colville Wines, at his son's wedding. His brother Cosmo is found standing next to the body, holding a gun, but refuses to say a word. "Death in a Scarlet Coat" (2011). Investigation into the death of the Earl of Candlesby found dead on his horse with a corner of his scarlet coat visible in the morning mist. "Death at the Jesus Hospital" (publication 2012). Investigation into three men found with their throats cut. All are connected to the Silkworkers, an ancient City of London livery company. "Death of an Elgin Marble" (publication 2014). The British Museum in Bloomsbury is home to one of the Caryatids, a statue of a maiden that acted as one of the six columns in a temple which stood on the Acropolis in ancient Athens. Lord Elgin had brought her to London in the nineteenth century, and even though now she was over 2,300 years old, she was still rather beautiful - and desirable. Which is why Lord Francis Powerscourt finds himself summoned by the British Museum to attend a most urgent matter. The Caryatid has been stolen and an inferior copy left in her place. Powerscourt agrees to handle the case discreetly - but then comes the first death: an employee of the British Museum is pushed under a rush hour train before he and the police can question him. What had he known about the statue's disappearance? And who would want such a priceless object? Powerscourt and his friend Johnny Fitzgerald undertake a mission that takes them deep into the heart of London's Greek community and the upper echelons of English society to uncover the bizarre truth of the vanishing lady... "Death Comes to the Ballets Russes" (2015). London, 1912, and the famed Ballet Russes have come to London to perform. Anticipation is high, for Diaghilev's troupe is renowned throughout Europe. At the end of their famed performance of Thamar at the Royal Opera House, the Georgian queen stabs her prince to death and throws him into the river. But life mirrors art when the prince is found truly dead, stabbed through the heart in the orchestra pit below stage. But the corpse is not the dancer in the programme. It is his understudy. Powerscourt is summoned to investigate. But who was the intended victim ? the understudy, or the star of the Ballets Russes? And the Ballet Russes are not the only Russian visitors in London this season. Lenin, Europe's most dangerous revolutionary, has sent some bank robbery money to be changed into pounds. There are stolen jewels from St Petersburg to be sold. And there are other darker forces abroad too and Powerscourt has to look death in the face before he can solve the mystery of Death at the Ballet Russes. "Death Comes to Lynchester Close" (2016). Lord Francis Powerscourt is visited at home in London by the Bishop of Lynchester who wants his advice about the suspect for the death of an aged parishioner. Powerscourt advises that discretion rather than accusation is the best way forward, but this is just the start of his association with the diocese of Lynchester. The death of the parishioner has left available a property in the cathedral close which traditionally the church rents out to a suitable tenant. Four worthy candidates are nominated...and then one of them, the retail king of the south of England, is found dead in the house, poisoned by strychnine. So once again Powerscourt is summoned by the bishop as this time there is no doubt of foul play. But there are many suspects from which to choose - there are the other candidates who want to live in that very desirable property...or could it be more complex than that? Very soon Powerscourt uncovers a trail of greed, deception and death which goes straight to the heart of the cathedral itself. "Death at Melrose Hall" (2017). A night of dancing that ends with the mysterious disappearance of a stable-boy - and Lord Francis Powerscourt is summoned to investigate. Spring 1914, and Jack Harper, current owner of Melrose Hall, has thrown a party for his eldest, Andrew, who is turning twenty-one. But the following morning there is no sign of Richard O'Connor. More than just a stable-boy, Richard acts as the legs of the paralyzed Jack Harper, pushing him around the estate in his wheelchair and sharing with him an affinity with the family's stable of thoroughbreds. The police aren't interested in the disappearance of a servant so Powerscourt is summoned. And then a body is discovered in the tackroom of one of the farms on the estate. Richard O'Connor has been shot through the head - but why would anyone want to shoot him? And what of Richard's unique ability - he can tell which horse is going to win the race. Did that lead to his death? Or was it the arrival of gangs at the local races, keen to enlist Richard into their crime syndicates?

pressing issue

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48878501

The 2016 Tour of the Basque Country (, ) was a road cycling stage race that took place in the Basque Country between 4 and 9 April 2016. It was the 56th edition of the Tour of the Basque Country and the ninth event of the 2016 UCI World Tour. The race took place over mountainous terrain and was suitable for climbers. The first five stages were mountainous; the sixth and final stage was a hilly individual time trial. The defending champion was Joaquim Rodríguez (), with Nairo Quintana (), Alberto Contador () and Sergio Henao () also among the favourites for the overall victory. Luis León Sánchez won the opening stage, but lost the lead the following day on the first uphill finish to Mikel Landa (Sky). Landa lost the lead on Stage 4, with Wilco Kelderman () taking over the lead. On the second uphill finish of the race on the penultimate day, Henao took over the lead after escaping with Contador. Contador then won the time trial on the final stage and beat Henao to the overall victory by 12 seconds, with Quintana a further 23 seconds behind in third. Henao won the points classification, while Nicolas Edet () won the intermediate sprints competition and Diego Rosa () the mountains classification. Route. The route of the 2016 Tour of the Basque Country was generally mountainous, with no stages suited for the sprinters. The first stage included eight categorised climbs, the last of which was from the finish. The second finished with a climb at an average gradient of 11.7%; the third and fourth stages again contained multiple climbs shortly before the finish. The fifth stage was the most difficult, with the climb of the Arrate (referred to by its Basque name Usartza and averaging 8.5%), shortly before the finish. The final stage was a hilly individual time trial around Eibar. Participating teams. As the Tour of the Basque Country is a UCI World Tour event, all eighteen UCI WorldTeams were invited automatically and were obliged to enter a team in the race. Two UCI Professional Continental teams – and – were awarded wildcard places, bringing the number of teams to twenty. As each team included eight riders, there were a total of 160 at the start of the first stage. Pre-race favourites. The mountainous terrain meant that the favourites for victory were exclusively climbers; every stage offered the opportunity for attacks. The final two stages (the climb to Arrate and the individual time trial) were expected to be decisive. The top two riders from the 2015 edition, Joaquim Rodríguez () and Sergio Henao (), both returned to the race. Rodríguez had not been in good form and had not been in the top ten at any race in 2016. Henao had been expected to ride in support of his team's new signing Mikel Landa, but Landa had been ill and was not yet in good form; Henao was therefore his team's leader. The principal favourites, however, were Nairo Quintana () and Alberto Contador (); both men are former winners of the race (Quintana in 2013 and Contador in 2008, 2009 and 2014). Quintana had beaten Contador the previous month at the Volta a Catalunya. Other favourites included Dan Martin () and Fabio Aru (), along with Thibaut Pinot (), who had won the Critérium International. Stages. Stage 1. 4 April – Etxebarria to Markina-Xemein, The first stage took place over a course that started in Etxebarria and followed a looping course to finish near the start in Markina-Xemein. The stage began with two third-category climbs, followed by a flat section along the coast, before turning back inland for two second-category climbs; there were then two more third-category climbs. The most difficult climb of the day was the first-category Alto de Ixua ( at 7%); at the summit there were remaining. This included one more second-category climb – the eighth of the day – and a final descent to the finish, which came on flat, straight roads. The day's main breakaway formed after the first climb. It was made up of Gianluca Brambilla (), Marcel Wyss (), Nicolas Edet () and Jonathan Lastra (). Brambilla fell back from the break before the third climb of the day, where the lead over the peloton was around three minutes. The peloton was led throughout by riders from Tinkoff and from and was just over a minute from the end. Wyss was dropped on the Alto de Ixua, with remaining, and the lead dropped to less than half a minute. The peloton's chase slowed on the climb, however, and Dario Cataldo was able to attack and come across to the breakaway; he immediately dropped Lastra and, after working with Edet for a while, dropped him too and continued alone. Meanwhile, there were attacks in the peloton, with Philip Deignan (Team Sky) and Wilco Kelderman () both attempting to escape. Towards the top of the climb, Alberto Contador attacked and was followed by the other general classification favourites; this acceleration brought Cataldo back to the group. On the final climb, Daniel Navarro (Cofidis) attacked and was joined by Luis León Sánchez (Astana). Sánchez led Navarro down the fast descent; they held a small lead going into the final kilometres. Sánchez sprinted first and Navarro was unable to come past. The main group were very close at the finish, with Simon Gerrans () sprinting into third place. Sánchez therefore took the overall lead of the race, with 50 other riders on the same time. Stage 2. 4 April – Markina-Xemein to Baranbio-Garrastatxu (Amurrio), The second stage started where the first had finished, in Markina-Xemein, and headed south-west towards the finish in Amurrio. It began with a second-category climb very early in the stage; after a flat section came two more climbs, one third-category and one second-category. After a long plateau and a descent, the riders arrived in Amurrio for the first time. Another third-category ascent followed; at the summit there were to the finish. Most of this was over fairly flat roads as the riders looped around Amurrio, but the final part of the race was a steep climb, the Alto de Garrastatxu, with an average gradient of 11.7%. The climb started with a section at 11.5%, followed by another at 13.5%; the final part of the climb had a gradient of 9.3%. The first half of the stage took place in cold and rainy conditions. Nicholas Edet won the first mountain sprint, putting him into the lead of the mountain classification. A breakaway formed in the following kilometres, but the presence of two well-placed riders (Simone Petilli and Louis Meintjes) meant that the group was not allowed to build an advantage. Stefan Denifl () and Ángel Madrazo () were part of this group and were then able to escape again, forming a two-man breakaway that led most of the stage. Their lead was over three minutes with remaining, but fell rapidly; they were caught with remaining. Team Sky, along with , Cannondale and Movistar, led the peloton towards the climb, with taking over as the road began to rise. Blel Kadri () then attacked, but was soon overtaken by Wilco Kelderman (LottoNL–Jumbo) and Mikel Landa (Sky). Going into the final kilometre, they had a 14-second lead. Contador, who had lost the key stage of the Volta a Catalunya after doing too much work on the final climb, waited for the other riders in the group to chase Landa and Kelderman. Rui Costa attempted to bring the two riders back, with Contador, Henao, Rodriguez and Samuel Sánchez () following, but they were unable to catch them. In the final few hundred metres, Landa came past Kelderman and took the stage win, his first since signing for Team Sky. Keldeman was second, one second behind Landa, with Henao four seconds further back in third. Landa took over the race lead. After the stage, however, he said that Henao remained the team leader for the rest of the race and that he "could crack tomorrow". Stage 3. 6 April 2016 – Vitoria-Gasteiz to Lesaka, The third stage covered a route from Vitoria-Gasteiz to Lesaka. The route initially took the riders east along flat roads to Irurtzun, then north towards the coast. Shortly after the turn, there was a third-category climb followed immediately by a second-category climb. There were then flat roads as far as Hernani, when the riders turned east again, through Oiartzun. The final included three second-category climbs. The last of these, the Alto de la Piedad, was crossed with to the finish line. After the descent, there were flat roads to the finish. There was an early breakaway formed by Blel Kadri (), Sam Oomen (), José Gonçalves (), Daniel Teklehaimanot (Dimension Data) and, for the second consecutive day, Stefan Denifl (IAM). Gonçalves won the first mountain sprint and Denifl the second, but the group was kept close by the peloton; going into the three final climbs they had just a minute's lead. On the first of these climbs, Denifl attacked the breakaway, with only Oomen able to follow; meanwhile Michael Albasini (Orica–GreenEDGE) attacked from the peloton and was joined by Dario Cataldo (Astana), Daniel Navarro (Cofidis) and Laurens De Plus (Etixx–Quick-Step). Denifl was first to the summit of the day's third climb, with the four chasers around 30 seconds behind. On the day's penultimate climb, the chasers were joined by Adam Yates (Orica–GreenEDGE) and Pierre Rolland (); the whole group then came across to Denifl and Oomen. Denifl once again won the mountain sprint to take the lead in the mountain classification. As both Yates and Rolland were potential threats to Landa's general classification lead, Sky chased hard on the final climb, with the gap at around 15 seconds. Navarro attacked over the summit; Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) attacked from the peloton and was followed by Landa, Quintana, Samuel Sanchez and Rui Costa. Navarro rode the descent hard and had a small gap to the chasers at the foot, with a larger gap to the main peloton. Rolland and Yates attacked and caught Navarro; all the breakaway riders were finally caught with under remaining. Within the last , Steve Cummings () attacked solo and held on to take the stage win. The peloton came close to catching him – with Simon Gerrans second and Fabio Felline () – but Cummings had time to celebrate as he crossed the line. Cummings's victory came just hours after he had said in an interview with "Cyclingnews.com" that he would attempt to win stages with late attacks; it was his second such victory of the year, after a stage of the Tirreno–Adriatico. Landa retained his overall lead, with no change in the top ten riders. Stage 4. 7 April 2016 – Lesaka to Orio, The fourth stage of the race once again included several late climbs, coming at the end of a course. The racing started in Lesaka, where Stage 3 had finished, and took the riders to Orio, travelling principally along the coast. There were two climbs in the first , one first-category and the other third-category. There was then a long section of flat roads before a second-category climb with remaining. There were then three more second-category climbs in the final ; the last two were ascents of different sides of the Alt de Aia, with the last summit coming from the finish. After the final descent, there were to the finish, which included an uncategorised climb of at 7%. The beginning part of the stage was raced hard; a large breakaway formed early and contested the early climbs. Denifl won the first two climbs, but the breakaway was caught and, after , a new breakaway was formed. This was made up of six riders: Simone Petilli (Lampre–Mérida), Tim Wellens (Lotto–Soudal), Christophe Riblon (AG2R La Mondiale), Luis Ángel Maté (Cofidis), Carlos Verona (Etixx–Quick-Step) and Ángel Vicioso (Katusha). The breakaway split on the fourth climb of the day, but re-formed on the descent. Team Sky held their advantage under three minutes for most of the stage and it was reduced further approaching the final climbs; it was around 90 seconds with remaining. On the penultimate climb of the day, Warren Barguil () attacked and was followed by Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff), but Astana chased the move down. Meanwhile, Vicioso was dropped from the break; the rest of the breakaway had a one-minute lead going into the final climb. On the final climb, which had sections with a gradient of 28%, Verona attacked and escaped from the breakaway group, with Maté and Wellens chasing. Henao, Contador and Quintana attacked from the peloton, with Landa unable to follow. The riders were in several groups coming off the final climb, but Kreuziger's efforts brought the front groups back together with remaining. On the final, uncategorised climb, Contador attacked, with Henao following, but Samuel Sánchez came past both of them and descended fast to the finish line, where he won the stage. Rui Costa (Movistar) finished second, on the same time as Sánchez, as part of a sixteen-rider chasing group that included all the main favourites except Landa, who lost eight seconds. Kelderman therefore moved into the race lead, four seconds ahead of Henao, with Landa now seven seconds behind in third place. Sánchez's victory was his first since he won a stage of the 2013 Critérium du Dauphiné and his first since signing for BMC. Stage 5. 8 April 2016 – Orio to (Eibar), The final road stage of the race included eight categorised climbs, the last of which came just before the finish. It began where Stage 4 finished, in Orio, and covered a course to Eibar, where it finished at the top of the Arrate climb. The first took the riders along the coast, then inland to Eibar. On the way there were two climbs, one third-category and one second-category. The riders then left Eibar to the south for a circuit that included three second-category climbs. There was then a circuit to the north of Eibar with a further two second-category climbs. The riders then returned to the town for the final climb – the Arrate or Usartza – which was long at an average gradient of 8.2%. Following the summit, there was a short descent to the finish line. A large breakaway group formed at the beginning of the stage, consisting of at least eighteen riders. After , Diego Rosa attacked the breakaway. No one followed, and he set off on a solo breakaway. Rosa said after the stage that he had been intending to draw out a smaller breakaway group; as no one followed him, he decided to continue alone, even though he was more than from the end of the stage. For a significant portion of the stage, Rosa was chased by Maxime Monfort and Sander Armée (both ), but they were not able to reduce his advantage. At the start of the final climb of the day, he had several minutes' lead. In the peloton, Kelderman's team was unable to stay with him to the end of the day and he was isolated for the final two climbs. Earlier in the day, he crashed on a corner during a wet descent and was left with rips in his clothing. On the final climb, Mikel Landa attacked from the group of overall favourites; he joined up with his teammate David López, who had been part of the early breakaway. López paced him for some time, with Simon Clarke (Cannondale) also joining the group. They were chased, however, by Tinkoff and brought back on the final climb. Contador then attacked, with only Henao able to follow. Ródriguez and Pinot chased; Kelderman attempted to stay with them but was dropped. Rosa continued over the final climb and took a solo victory, several minutes ahead of the rest of the field. In the final metres, he stopped, dismounted and crossed the finish line on foot, holding his bike above his head. "L'Équipe" described his celebration as "unlikely but well deserved", after he had spent most of the stage riding alone. Henao and Contador finished together, two seconds ahead of Ródriguez and Pinot. Kelderman dropped to eighth place after finishing over a minute behind Henao and Contador. Henao took over both the overall lead and the points classification, while Rosa took over the lead of the mountains classification after winning six of the day's seven climbs. More than thirty riders abandoned the race during the fifth stage. They included Fabio Aru, Dan Martin, Simon Gerrans, Ryder Hesjedal (Trek–Segafredo) and Simon Yates (). Many of the retirements came after crashes on the wet roads. Stage 6. 9 April 2016 – Eibar, (ITT) The final stage of the race was a hilly, individual time trial that started and ended in Eibar. The first were fairly flat, but there was then a significant climb of at 9.7%. There was then a descent, followed by of flat roads to the finish line. Seventeen of the riders remaining in the race chose not to compete in the final stage. Caleb Fairly () was the first to start and completed the course in . The first significant time was set by Adam Yates, who crossed the finish line with a time of 30' 06". This time remained the best time until the eighth-placed rider overnight – Nairo Quintana – set a time of . Other well placed riders, including Pinot, Rodríguez and Landa, struggled on the steep climb. At the top of the climb, Quintana changed from a road bicycle to a time trial bicycle. The only rider able to beat Quintana's time was Alberto Contador. He was 23 seconds up at the top of the climb and finished five seconds ahead by the finish line. "Cyclingnews.com" suggested after the stage that Quintana's bike change may have cost him the stage victory. Henao, who had lost 46 seconds to Contador on the climb, finished 18 seconds behind and fell to second place overall. Contador therefore won the race, twelve seconds ahead of Henao, with Quintana moving up to third place overall. It was the third time that he had won the Tour of the Basque Country in the final time trial. Post-race analysis. Rider reactions. Alberto Contador had on various previous occasions announced that the 2016 would be his last as a professional racer. After his victory in the Tour of the Basque Country, however, he said "I'm sure this isn't the last time I come here" and said that he would probably continue beyond the 2016 season. It was his first general classification victory since the 2015 Route du Sud; he dedicated the victory to his fans and to Oleg Tinkov, the owner of the Tinkoff team. Sergio Henao said that he had tried a different tactic in the time trial – holding back early on in order to give more effort later in the stage – and said that he was pleased both with his own performance and with how his team had ridden. He said that he was feeling strong ahead of his main objectives for the season, the Ardennes classics. Quintana said that his bike change in the time trial had helped, but that it was not quite enough to win the stage. He said that he was pleased with how he had ridden the race and in particular with how he had recovered from illness earlier in the week. UCI World Tour standings. In the 2016 UCI World Tour season-long competition, Contador's victory moved him from third place to second, 59 points behind his teammate Peter Sagan. Sergio Henao moved from eighth to fourth and Quintana from twelfth to fifth. Spain moved into the lead of the nations' ranking, having previously been fifth. Tinkoff retained their overall lead in the teams' ranking, ahead of Team Sky. Classifications. In the Tour of the Basque Country, four different jerseys were awarded. The general classification was calculated by adding each cyclist's finishing times on each stage; the leader received a yellow jersey. No bonus seconds were awarded. The points classification – the leader of which wore a white jersey – was awarded on the basis of positions at stage finishes. The top 15 riders on each stage were awarded points (25 points for first, 20 points for second, 16 for third, 14 for fourth, 12 for fifth, 10 for sixth and one point fewer per place down to a single point for 15th). The rider with the highest number of points overall was the leader of the classification. There were also two classifications awarded for positions at points in the middle of stages. Each stage (except the individual time trial) included individual sprint points (3, 2 and 1 points respectively for the top three riders); the rider with the highest total led the classification and wore a blue jersey. Each stage also included several categorised climbs, with more points awarded for the most difficult ("first-category") climbs. The rider with the most accumulated points led the classification and wore a red and white jersey. There was also a classification for teams, in which the times of the best three cyclists from each team on each stage were added together; the team with the lowest total time led the classification.

little divide

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=182233

Paros (; ; Venetian: "Paro") is a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea. One of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Municipality of Paros includes numerous uninhabited offshore islets totaling of land. Its nearest neighbor is the municipality of Antiparos, which lies to its southwest. In ancient Greece, the city-state of Paros was located on the island. Historically, Paros was known for its fine white marble, which gave rise to the term "Parian" to describe marble or china of similar qualities. Today, abandoned marble quarries and mines can be found on the island, but Paros is primarily known as a popular tourist spot. Geography. Paros' geographic co-ordinates are 37° N. latitude, and 25° 10' E. longitude. The area is . Its greatest length from N.E. to S.W. is , and its greatest breadth . The island is of a round, plump-pear shape, formed by a single mountain () sloping evenly down on all sides to a maritime plain, which is broadest on the north-east and south-west sides. The island is composed of marble, though gneiss and mica-schist are to be found in a few places. To the west of Paros lies its smaller sister island Antiparos. At its narrowest, the channel between the two islands is less than wide. A car-carrying shuttle-ferry operates all day (to and from Pounda, south of Parikia). In addition a dozen smaller islets surround Paros. Paros has numerous beaches including Golden Beach (Chrissí Aktí) near Drios on the east coast, at Pounda, Logaras, Piso Livadi, Naousa Bay, Parikia and Agia Irini. The constant strong wind in the strait between Paros and Naxos makes it a favoured windsurfing location. History. Antiquity. The story that Paros of Parrhasia colonized the island with Arcadians is an etymological fiction of the type that abounds in Greek legends. Ancient names of the island are said to have been Plateia (or Pactia), Demetrias, Strongyle (meaning round, due to the round shape of the island), Hyria, Hyleessa, Minoa and Cabarnis. The island later received from Athens a colony of Ionians under whom it attained a high degree of prosperity. It sent out colonies to Thasos and Parium on the Hellespont. In the former colony, which was planned in the 15th or 18th Olympiad, the poet Archilochus, a native of Paros, is said to have taken part. As late as 385 BC the Parians, in conjunction with Dionysius of Syracuse, founded a colony on the Illyrian island of Pharos (Hvar). Shortly before the Persian War, Paros seems to have been a dependency of Naxos. In the first Greco-Persian War (490 BC), Paros sided with the Persians and sent a trireme to Marathon to support them. In retaliation, the capital was besieged by an Athenian fleet under Miltiades, who demanded a fine of 100 talents. But the town offered a vigorous resistance, and the Athenians were obliged to sail away after a siege of 26 days, during which they had wasted the island. It was at a temple of Demeter Thesmophoros in Paros that Miltiades received the wound from which he died. By means of an inscription, Ross was able to identify the site of the temple; it lies, as Herodotus suggests, on a low hill beyond the boundary of the town. Paros also sided with shahanshah Xerxes I of Persia against Greece in the second Greco-Persian War (480–479 BC), but, after the battle of Artemisium, the Parian contingent remained inactive at Kythnos as they watched the progression of events. For their support of the Persians, the islanders were later punished by the Athenian war leader Themistocles, who exacted a heavy fine. Under the Delian League, the Athenian-dominated naval confederacy (477–404 BC), Paros paid the highest tribute of the island members: 30 "talents" annually, according to the estimate of Olympiodorus (429 BC). This implies that Paros was one of the wealthiest islands in the Aegean. Little is known about the constitution of Paros, but inscriptions seem to show that it was modeled on the Athenian democracy, with a "boule" (senate) at the head of affairs. In 410 BC, Athenian general Theramenes discovered that Paros was governed by an oligarchy; he deposed the oligarchy and restored the democracy. Paros was included in the second Athenian confederacy (the Second Athenian League 378–355 BC). In c. 357 BC, along with Chios, it severed its connection with Athens. From the inscription of Adule, it is understood that the Cyclades, which are presumed to include Paros, were subjected to the Ptolemies, the Hellenistic dynasty (305–30 BC) that ruled Egypt. Paros then became part of the Roman Empire and later of the Byzantine Empire, its Greek-speaking successor state. Crusades. In 1204, the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade seized Constantinople and overthrew the Byzantine Empire. Although a residual Byzantine state known as the Empire of Nicaea survived the Crusader onslaught and eventually recovered Constantinople (1261), many of the original Byzantine territories, including Paros, were lost permanently to the crusading powers. Paros became subject to the Duchy of the Archipelago, a fiefdom made up of various Aegean islands ruled by a Venetian duke as nominal vassal of a succession of crusader states. In practice, however, the duchy was always a client state of the Republic of Venice. Ottoman era and independence. In 1537, Paros was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained under the Ottoman Empire until the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). During the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) in 1770–1775 Naoussa Bay was the home base for the Russian Archipelago Squadron of Count Alexey Orlov. Under the Treaty of Constantinople (1832), Paros became part of the newly independent Kingdom of Greece, the first time the Parians had been ruled by fellow Greeks for over six centuries. At this time, Paros became the home of a heroine of the nationalist movement, Manto Mavrogenous, who had both financed and fought in the war for independence. Her house, near Ekatontapiliani church, is today a historical monument. On 26 September 2000 the ferry MS Express Samina collided with the Portes islets off the bay of Parikia, killing 82 of those on board. Parikia. The capital, Parikia, situated on a bay on the north-west side of the island, occupies the site of the ancient capital Paros. Parikía harbour is a major hub for Aegean islands ferries and catamarans, with several sailings each day for Piraeus, the port of Athens, Heraklion, the capital of Crete, and other islands such as Naxos, Ios, Mykonos, and Santorini. In Parikia town, houses are built and decorated in the traditional Cycladic style, with flat roofs, whitewash walls and blue-painted doors and window frames and shutters. Shadowed by luxuriant vines, and surrounded by gardens of oranges and pomegranates, the houses give the town a picturesque aspect. Above the central stretch of the seafront road, are the remains of a medieval castle, built almost entirely of the marble remains of an ancient temple dedicated to Apollo. Similar traces of antiquity, in the shape of bas-reliefs, inscriptions, columns, and so on, are numerous. On a hillside in the southern outskirts of Parikia on the left of the Parikia – Alyki road are the remains of a temple dedicated to Asclepius. In addition, close to the modern harbour, the remains of an ancient cemetery are visible, having been discovered recently during non-archaeological excavations. Back from the port, around 400 m left of Parikia's main square, is the town's principal church, the Panagia Ekatontapiliani, literally meaning "church of the hundred doors". Its oldest features almost certainly predate the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 391. It is said to have been founded by the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (ruled 306–337), Saint Helen, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There are two adjoining chapels, one of very early form, and also a baptistery with a cruciform font. The Archaeological Museum of Paros is located in Parikia town,a small but interesting museum housing some of the many finds from sites in Paros. The best pieces, however, are in the Athens National Archaeological Museum. The Paros museum contains a fragment of the Parian Chronicle, a remarkable chronology of ancient Greece. Inscribed in marble, its entries give time elapsed between key events from the most distant past (1500 BC) down to 264 BC. Other settlements. On the north side of the island is the bay of Naoussa (Naussa) or Agoussa, which provides a safe and spacious harbour. In ancient times it was closed by a chain or boom. Another good harbour is that of Drios on the south-east side, where the Turkish fleet used to anchor on its annual voyage through the Aegean during the period of Ottoman rule over Paros (1537–1832). The three villages of Dragoulas, Mármara and Tsipidos, situated on an open plain on the eastern side of the island, and rich in remains of antiquity, probably occupy the site of an ancient town. They are known together as the "villages of Kephalos" after the steep and lofty hill of Kephalos. On this hilltop stands the monastery of "Agios Antonios" (St. Anthony). Around it are the ruins of a medieval castle which belonged in the late Middle Ages to the Venetian noble family of the Venieri. They gallantly but vainly defended it against the Turkish admiral Barbarossa in 1537. Another settlement on the island Paros is Lefkes (Λεύκες). Lefkes is an inland mountain village away from Parikia. In the late 19th century, Lefkes was the center of the municipality of Iria which belonged to the Province of Naxos until 1912. The name of the municipality Iria was one of the ancient names of Paros. Lefkes was the capital of the municipality Iria which included the villages Angyria or Ageria, Aliki, Aneratzia, Vounia, Kamari, Campos, Langada, Maltes and Marathi. Iria became Lefkes Community following the law enforcement DNZ/1912 "On Municipalities". At that time, the village managed to achieve great economic development. In the 1970s many residents moved to Athens, Maroussi and Melissia due to urbanization. However, the last few years, tourism presented to be a new source of income for the locals that led to the reconstruction of homes and landscaping for a peaceful and sweet life. Lefkes became part of the municipality of Paros in the Kapodistrias local government reform. In the latest census (2011) the population numbered 545 inhabitants. Marble quarries. Parian marble, which is white and translucent, with a coarse grain and a very beautiful texture, was the chief source of wealth for the island. The celebrated marble quarries lie on the northern side of the mountain anciently known as Marathi (afterwards Capresso), a little below a former convent of St Mina. The marble, which was exported from the 6th century BC onwards, was used by Praxiteles and other great Greek sculptors. It was obtained by means of subterranean quarries driven horizontally or at a descending angle into the rock. The marble thus quarried by lamplight was given the name of Lychnites, Lychneus (from "lychnos", a lamp), or Lygdos. Several of these tunnels are still to be seen. At the entrance to one of them is a bas-relief dedicated to Pan and the nymphs. Several attempts to work the marble have been made in modern times, but it has not been exported in any great quantities. The major part of the remaining white marble is now state-owned and, like its Pentelic counterpart, is only used for archaeological restorations.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5071079

Tourette syndrome (abbreviated as Tourette's or TS) is an inherited neurodevelopmental disorder that begins in childhood or adolescence, characterized by the presence of motor and phonic tics. The management of Tourette syndrome has the goal of managing symptoms to achieve optimum functioning, rather than eliminating symptoms; not all persons with Tourette's require treatment, and there is no cure or universally effective medication. Explanation and reassurance alone are often sufficient treatment; education is an important part of any treatment plan. Tourette syndrome patients may exhibit symptoms of other comorbid conditions along with their motor and phonic tics. Associated conditions include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), learning disabilities and sleep disorders. Patients who have ADHD along with Tourette's may also have problems with disruptive behaviors, overall functioning, and cognitive function. Co-occurring OCD can also be a source of impairment, necessitating treatment. Not all persons with tics will also have other conditions and not all persons with tics require treatment, but when comorbid disorders are present, they often require treatment. Management priority. Management of Tourette syndrome can be divided into treatment of tics, and treatment of co-occurring conditions, which, when present, are often a larger source of functional impairment than the tics themselves. There is no cure for Tourette's. No one medication effectively treats all symptoms, most medications prescribed for tics have not been approved for that use, and no medication is without the risk of significant adverse effects. Treatment is focused on identifying the most troubling or impairing symptoms and helping the individual manage them. Because comorbid conditions are often a larger source of impairment than tics, they are a priority in treatment. The management of Tourette's is individualized and involves shared decision-making between the clinician, patient, family and caregivers. Education, reassurance and psychobehavioral therapy are often sufficient for the majority of cases. In particular, psychoeducation targeting the patient and their family and surrounding community is a key management strategy. Watchful waiting "is an acceptable approach" for those who are not functionally impaired. Symptom management may include behavioral, psychological and pharmacological therapies. Pharmacological intervention is reserved for more severe symptoms, while psychotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may ameliorate depression and social isolation, and improve family support. The decision to use behavioral or pharmacological treatment is "usually made after the educational and supportive interventions have been in place for a period of months, and it is clear that the tic symptoms are persistently severe and are themselves a source of impairment in terms of self-esteem, relationships with the family or peers, or school performance". Psychoeducation and social support. Knowledge, education and understanding are uppermost in management plans for tic disorders, and psychoeducation is the first step. A child's parents are typically the first to notice their tics; they may feel worried, imagine that they are somehow responsible, or feel burdened by misinformation about Tourette's. Before seeing a doctor, many parents research TS on the internet, or have seen media portrayals of severe cases. Parents may be overly concerned, and not realize that they, too, have tics, while the child may not be bothered by the tics. In some cases, neither the parents nor their child know they are ticcing; pointing out tics in this case will unnecessarily draw attention to them. In such a case, informing a parent who is unaware of their own tics can be disturbing, and they have a "right not to be informed". When their child receives a diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, both parent and child usually feel relieved, although the diagnosis can also cause distress for the parents as they confront a chronic condition that can be difficult to treat. They may also react with disbelief, denial, anger or resentment, or be exhausted and discouraged by previous encounters with medical professionals and the daily challenges faced by their child and family. Effectively educating parents about the diagnosis and providing social support can ease their anxiety. This support can also lower the chance that their child will be unnecessarily medicated or experience an exacerbation of tics due to their parents' emotional state. Psychoeducation that encourages a "matter-of-fact" attitude, and helps dispel misconceptions and stigma, is most effective when provided to parents. People with Tourette's may suffer socially if their tics are viewed as "bizarre". If a child has disabling tics, or tics that interfere with social or academic functioning, supportive psychotherapy or school accommodations can be helpful. Even children with milder tics may be angry, depressed or have low self-esteem as a result of increased teasing, bullying, rejection by peers or social stigmatization, and this can lead to social withdrawal. Some children feel empowered by presenting a peer awareness program to their classmates. It can be helpful to educate teachers and school staff about typical tics, how they fluctuate during the day, how they impact the child, and how to distinguish tics from naughty behavior. By learning to identify tics, adults can refrain from asking or expecting a child to stop ticcing, because "tic suppression can be exhausting, unpleasant, and attention-demanding and can result in a subsequent rebound bout of tics". The presence of ADHD is associated with functional impairment, disruptive behavior, and tic severity. Strategies to help the child at school can be established; these include allowing the child to chew gum to help reduce vocal tics, to use a laptop instead of writing by hand, and to take breaks from the classroom when tics are high. Providing additional test time can also be helpful, as can using oral tests when needed. Adults with TS may withdraw socially to avoid stigmatization and discrimination because of their tics. Depending on their country's healthcare system, they may receive social services or help from support groups. Behavioral. Behavioral therapies using habit reversal training (HRT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP) are first-line interventions, and have been shown to be effective. Because tics are somewhat suppressible, when people with TS are aware of the premonitory urge that precedes a tic, they can be trained to develop a response to the urge that competes with the tic. Comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics (CBIT) is based on HRT, the best researched behavioral therapy for tics. CBIT has been shown with a high level of confidence to be more likely to lead to a reduction in tics than other behavioral therapies or psychoeducation. CBIT has some limitations. Children under ten may not understand the treatment, and people with severe tics or ADHD may not be able to suppress their tics or sustain the focus required to benefit from behavioral treatments. There is a lack of therapists trained in behavioral interventions, and finding practitioners outside of specialty clinics can be difficult. Costs may also limit accessibility. TS experts debate whether increasing a child's awareness of tics with HRT/CBIT (as opposed to ignoring tics) can lead to more tics later in life. When disruptive behaviors related to comorbid conditions exist, anger control training and parent management training can be effective. CBT is a useful treatment when OCD is present. Relaxation techniques, such as exercise, yoga and meditation may be useful in relieving the stress that can aggravate tics. Beyond HRT, the majority of behavioral interventions for Tourette's (for example, relaxation training and biofeedback) have not been systematically evaluated and are not empirically supported. Medication. Children with tics typically present when their tics are most severe, but because the condition waxes and wanes, medication is not started immediately or changed often. Tics may subside with education, reassurance and a supportive environment. When medication is used, the goal is not to eliminate symptoms. Instead, the lowest dose that manages symptoms without adverse effects is used, because adverse effects may be more disturbing than the symptoms being treated with medication. There are no medications specifically designed to target tics, although some antipsychotics (for example, pimozide) have been FDA-approved for treating Tourette's. Medications which are used as primary treatment in other conditions are used with some success in treating tics. Neuroleptic medications (antipsychotics), such as haloperidol (brand name Haldol) or pimozide (brand name Orap), have historically been and continue to be the medications with the most proven efficacy in controlling tics. These medications work by blocking dopamine receptors, and are associated with a high side effect profile. The traditional antipsychotic drugs are associated with tardive dyskinesia when used long-term; and parkinsonism, dystonia, dyskinesia, and akathisia when used short-term. Additional side effects can be school phobia (a form of separation anxiety), depression, weight gain, and cognitive blunting (dulling of cognitive ability). Another traditional antipsychotic used in treating Tourette's is fluphenazine (brand name Prolixin), although the evidence supporting its use is less than that of haloperidol and pimozide. The classes of medication with proven efficacy in treating tics—typical and atypical neuroleptics—can have long-term and short-term adverse effects. The antihypertensive agents are also used to treat tics; studies show variable efficacy, but a lower side effect profile than the neuroleptics. There is moderate evidence that the antihypertensive clonidine, along with aripiprazole, haloperidol, risperidone, and tiapride, reduce tics more than placebo. Aripiprazole and risperidone are likely to lead to weight gain and sedation or fatigue; haloperidol may increase prolactin levels; tiapride may produce sleep disturbances and tiredness; and clonidine may produce sedation. Risperidone and haloperidol may produce extrapyramidal symptoms. The α2-adrenergic receptor agonists (antihypertensive agents) show some efficacy in reducing tics, as well as other comorbid features of some people with Tourette's. Originally developed to treat high blood pressure, these medications are a safer alternative to neuroleptic medications for the people with TS that respond to them. This class of medication is often the first tried for tics, as the antihypertensives have a lower side effect profile than some of the medications with more proven efficacy. The evidence for their safety and efficacy is not as strong as the evidence for some of the standard and atypical neuroleptics, but there is fair supportive evidence for their use, nonetheless. This class of medication takes about six weeks to begin to work on tics, so sustained trials are warranted. Because of the blood pressure effects, antihypertensive agents should not be discontinued suddenly. Clonidine (brand name Catapres) works on tics for about half of people with TS. Maximal benefit may not be achieved for 4–6 months. A small number of patients may worsen on clonidine. Guanfacine (brand name Tenex) is another antihypertensive that is used in treating TS. Side effects can include sedation, dry mouth, fatigue, headaches and dizziness. Sedation can be problematic when treatment is first initiated, but may wear off as the patient adjusts to the medication. Other medications that can be used to treat tics include pergolide (brand name Permax), and with less empirical support for efficacy, tetrabenazine and baclofen. There is low to very low confidence that tics are reduced with baclofen, deprenyl, flutamide, guanfacine, mecamylamine, metoclopramide, ondansetron, pimozide, pramipexole, riluzole, tetrahydrocannabinol, topiramate, or ziprasidone. There is insufficient evidence for other cannabis-based medications in the treatment of Tourette's. Clomipramine, a tricyclic, and SSRIs—a class of antidepressants including fluoxetine, sertraline, and fluvoxamine—may be prescribed when a Tourette's patient also has symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder. The benefits and harms of botulinum toxin for treating tics have not been established as of 2018. Treatment of ADHD in the presence of tic disorders. Patients with Tourette's who are referred to specialty clinics have a high rate of comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), so the treatment of ADHD co-occurring with tics is often part of the clinical treatment of Tourette's. Patients who have ADHD along with Tourette's may also have problems with disruptive behaviors, overall functioning, and cognitive function, accounted for by the comorbid ADHD, highlighting the importance of identifying and treating other conditions when present. Stimulants and other medications may be useful in treating ADHD when it co-occurs with tic disorders. Drugs from several other classes of medications can be used when stimulants fail. There is moderate evidence supporting that clonidine combined with methylphenidate, desipramine, and methylphenidate alone reduce tics more than placebo when ADHD is also present; desipramine is rarely used following reports of sudden death in children. Atomoxetine does not increase tics, but may lead to weight loss and an increased heart rate. The treatment of ADHD in the presence of tic disorders has long been a controversial topic. Past medical practice held that stimulants (such as Ritalin) could not be used in the presence of tics, due to concern that their use might worsen tics; however, multiple lines of research have shown that stimulants can be cautiously used in the presence of tic disorders. Several studies have shown that stimulants do not exacerbate tics any more than placebo does, and suggest that stimulants may even reduce tic severity. Controversy remains, and the PDR continues to carry a warning that stimulants should not be used in the presence of tic disorders, so physicians may be reluctant to use them. Others are comfortable using them and even advocate for a stimulant trial when ADHD co-occurs with tics, because the symptoms of ADHD can be more impairing than tics. The stimulants are the first line of treatment for ADHD, with proven efficacy, but they do fail in up to 20% of cases, even in patients without tic disorders. Current prescribed stimulant medications include: methylphenidate (brand names Ritalin, Metadate, Concerta), dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), and mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall). Other medications can be used when stimulants are not an option. These include the alpha-2 agonists (clonidine and guanfacine). There is good empirical support for the use of desipramine, bupropion and atomoxetine (brand name Strattera). Atomoxetine is the only non-controlled Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug for the treatment of ADHD, but is less effective than stimulants for ADHD, is associated with individual cases of liver damage, carries an FDA black box warning regarding suicidal ideation, and controlled studies show increases in heart rate, decreases of body weight, decreased appetite and treatment-emergent nausea. Other. Complementary and alternative medicine approaches, such as dietary modification, neurofeedback and allergy testing and control have popular appeal, but they have no proven benefit in the management of Tourette syndrome. Despite this lack of evidence, up to two-thirds of parents, caregivers and individuals with TS use dietary approaches and alternative treatments and do not always inform their physicians. According to Müller-Vahl (2013), medical professionals "should feel obliged to inform their patients about not only effective but also ineffective treatments". There is low confidence that tics are reduced with tetrahydrocannabinol, and insufficient evidence for other cannabis-based medications in the treatment of Tourette's. While a balanced diet may aid in overall health, and avoidance of caffeine may help minimize tics for some children, no particular diet or alternative therapy (vitamin or diet) is supported by scientific evidence. Regular exercise can help reduce stress and improve a child's sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, but the effect of exercise on symptoms remains unstudied. There is no good evidence supporting the use of acupuncture or transcranial magnetic stimulation; neither is there evidence supporting intravenous immunoglobulin, plasma exchange, or antibiotics for the treatment of PANDAS. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has become a valid option for individuals with severe symptoms that do not respond to conventional therapy and management. There is low-quality, limited evidence that DBS is safe, well tolerated, and yields a reduction of symptoms ranging from no change to complete remission. Selecting candidates who may benefit from DBS is challenging, and the appropriate lower age range for surgery is unclear. The ideal brain location to target has not been identified as of 2019. DBS has been used to treat adults with severe Tourette's that does not respond to conventional treatment. Viswanathan A "et al" (2012) say that DBS should be used in patients with "severe functional impairment that can not be managed medically". Pregnancy. A quarter of women report that their tics increase before menstruation, however studies have not shown consistent evidence of a change in frequency or severity of tics related to pregnancy. Overall, symptoms in women respond better to haloperidol than they do for men, and one report found that haloperidol was the preferred medication during pregnancy, to minimize the side effects in the mother, including low blood pressure, and anticholinergic effects. Most women find they can withdraw from medication during pregnancy without much trouble. Practice guidelines. In 2019, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) published practice guidelines, "Treatment of tics in people with Tourette syndrome and chronic tic disorders", including 46 recommendations based on a systematic review by nine physicians, two psychologists, and two patient representatives. The panel assigned three levels of recommendations corresponding to the strength of the evidence supporting the recommendation: The panel attached a helping verb to each level of recommendation: A = must; B = should, and C = may.

ongoing training

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67134134

Mali Bero or ("Mali" the "First" or "Eldest") is a mythical legendary leader of the Zarma people of western Niger who led them in their migration from an unknown region Mali eastward to western Niger several centuries ago. The story of "Mali Bero" has appeared in various forms in the Zarma society from poems, songs and oral narratives by griots. No one, however, has published a linear version of the story of "Mali Bero" that is more than a few hundreds long. Mali Bero, however, is believed to be the son of Zabarkane, another Zarma legendary figure Oral Tradition. For the Zarmas, the most important message is their migration eastward led by "Mali Bero" via "Barma Daba", a flying millet silo bottom (a flat and round surface made of wooden straw that serves as foundation for a temporary silo). The incident that prompted the migration, which was the fight between the Zarma, Tuareg and Fulani children reflects an history of an on-and-off conflict that marks relations with these three groups till date. Migration. According to oral tradition, "Mali Bero" decided one day to leave his village following a fight between one of his villagers and a child from neighboring village of the Fulani and Tuareg during a swim in the pond of "Mallé". The children of these villages had the habit of taking the clothes of the children from the village of Mali Béro to wipe their bodies after taking their baths in the pond. The children from the village of "Mali Béro" decided one day not to accept this and planned a revenge if the act is repeated. When the act was repeated, one child from the other village was killed by another child from the village of "Mali Bero". Upon hearing the news that one of his offspring has killed a child from the neighboring village, Mali Béro gathered his village and offered them to leave urgently to prevent the situation from degenerating in the event the other village decide to take revenge. He ordered them to urgently collect millet stalks for making the “Barma Daba”. Quickly, they made the "Barma Daba" in which they entered to embark on a flight in search for a new territory. After series of stops, they finallyy landed in Sargane, a village in present-day Niger . Mali Béro remained in Sargane until he died. He is buried in this same village which is found in the Ouallam Department. The tomb where Mali was buried remains an attraction for tourists, students and researchers.

chronological chronicle

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=102959

Substance abuse, also known as drug abuse, is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods which are harmful to the individual or others. It is a form of substance-related disorder. Differing definitions of drug abuse are used in public health, medical and criminal justice contexts. In some cases, criminal or anti-social behaviour occurs when the person is under the influence of a drug, and long-term personality changes in individuals may also occur. In addition to possible physical, social, and psychological harm, the use of some drugs may also lead to criminal penalties, although these vary widely depending on the local jurisdiction. Drugs most often associated with this term include: alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cannabis, cocaine, hallucinogens, methaqualone, and opioids. The exact cause of substance abuse is not clear, but there are two predominant theories: either a genetic disposition which is learned from others, or a habit which, if addiction develops, manifests itself as a chronic debilitating disease. In 2010 about 5% of people (230 million) used an illicit substance. Of these 27 million have high-risk drug use otherwise known as recurrent drug use causing harm to their health, psychological problems, or social problems that put them at risk of those dangers. In 2015 substance use disorders resulted in 307,400 deaths, up from 165,000 deaths in 1990. Of these, the highest numbers are from alcohol use disorders at 137,500, opioid use disorders at 122,100 deaths, amphetamine use disorders at 12,200 deaths, and cocaine use disorders at 11,100. Classification. Public health definitions. Public health practitioners have attempted to look at substance use from a broader perspective than the individual, emphasizing the role of society, culture, and availability. Some health professionals choose to avoid the terms alcohol or drug "abuse" in favor of language considered more objective, such as "substance and alcohol type problems" or "harmful/problematic use" of drugs. The Health Officers Council of British Columbia — in their 2005 policy discussion paper, "A Public Health Approach to Drug Control in Canada" — has adopted a public health model of psychoactive substance use that challenges the simplistic black-and-white construction of the binary (or complementary) antonyms "use" vs. "abuse". This model explicitly recognizes a spectrum of use, ranging from beneficial use to chronic dependence. Medical definitions. 'Drug abuse' is no longer a current medical diagnosis in either of the most used diagnostic tools in the world, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD). Value judgment. Philip Jenkins suggests that there are two issues with the term "drug abuse". First, what constitutes a "drug" is debatable. For instance, GHB, a naturally occurring substance in the central nervous system is considered a drug, and is illegal in many countries, while nicotine is not officially considered a drug in most countries. Second, the word "abuse" implies a recognized standard of use for any substance. Drinking an occasional glass of wine is considered acceptable in most Western countries, while drinking several bottles is seen as an abuse. Strict temperance advocates, who may or may not be religiously motivated, would see drinking even one glass as an abuse. Some groups even condemn caffeine use in any quantity. Similarly, adopting the view that any (recreational) use of cannabis or substituted amphetamines constitutes drug abuse implies a decision made that the substance is harmful, even in minute quantities. In the U.S., drugs have been legally classified into five categories, schedule I, II, III, IV, or V in the Controlled Substances Act. The drugs are classified on their deemed potential for abuse. Usage of some drugs is strongly correlated. For example, the consumption of seven illicit drugs (amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy, legal highs, LSD, and magic mushrooms) is correlated and the Pearson correlation coefficient "r">0.4 in every pair of them; consumption of cannabis is strongly correlated ("r">0.5) with usage of nicotine (tobacco), heroin is correlated with cocaine ("r">0.4) and methadone ("r">0.45), and is strongly correlated with crack ("r">0.5) Drug misuse. Drug misuse is a term used commonly when prescription medication with sedative, anxiolytic, analgesic, or stimulant properties are used for mood alteration or intoxication ignoring the fact that overdose of such medicines can sometimes have serious adverse effects. It sometimes involves drug diversion from the individual for whom it was prescribed. Prescription misuse has been defined differently and rather inconsistently based on status of drug prescription, the uses without a prescription, intentional use to achieve intoxicating effects, route of administration, co-ingestion with alcohol, and the presence or absence of dependence symptoms. Chronic use of certain substances leads to a change in the central nervous system known as a 'tolerance' to the medicine such that more of the substance is needed in order to produce desired effects. With some substances, stopping or reducing use can cause withdrawal symptoms to occur, but this is highly dependent on the specific substance in question. The rate of prescription drug use is fast overtaking illegal drug use in the United States. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, 7 million people were taking prescription drugs for nonmedical use in 2010. Among 12th graders, nonmedical prescription drug use is now second only to cannabis. In 2011, "Nearly 1 in 12 high school seniors reported nonmedical use of Vicodin; 1 in 20 reported such use of OxyContin." Both of these drugs contain opioids. A 2017 survey of 12th graders in the United States, found misuse of OxyContin of 2.7 percent, compared to 5.5 percent at its peak in 2005. Misuse of the combination hydrocodone/paracetamol was at its lowest since a peak of 10.5 percent in 2003. This decrease may be related to public health initiatives and decreased availability. Avenues of obtaining prescription drugs for misuse are varied: sharing between family and friends, illegally buying medications at school or work, and often "doctor shopping" to find multiple physicians to prescribe the same medication, without knowledge of other prescribers. Increasingly, law enforcement is holding physicians responsible for prescribing controlled substances without fully establishing patient controls, such as a patient "drug contract". Concerned physicians are educating themselves on how to identify medication-seeking behavior in their patients, and are becoming familiar with "red flags" that would alert them to potential prescription drug abuse. Signs and symptoms. Depending on the actual compound, drug abuse including alcohol may lead to health problems, social problems, morbidity, injuries, unprotected sex, violence, deaths, motor vehicle accidents, homicides, suicides, physical dependence or psychological addiction. There is a high rate of suicide in alcoholics and other drug abusers. The reasons believed to cause the increased risk of suicide include the long-term abuse of alcohol and other drugs causing physiological distortion of brain chemistry as well as the social isolation. Another factor is the acute intoxicating effects of the drugs may make suicide more likely to occur. Suicide is also very common in adolescent alcohol abusers, with 1 in 4 suicides in adolescents being related to alcohol abuse. In the US, approximately 30% of suicides are related to alcohol abuse. Alcohol abuse is also associated with increased risks of committing criminal offences including child abuse, domestic violence, rapes, burglaries and assaults. Drug abuse, including alcohol and prescription drugs, can induce symptomatology which resembles mental illness. This can occur both in the intoxicated state and also during withdrawal. In some cases, substance-induced psychiatric disorders can persist long after detoxification, such as prolonged psychosis or depression after amphetamine or cocaine abuse. A protracted withdrawal syndrome can also occur with symptoms persisting for months after cessation of use. Benzodiazepines are the most notable drug for inducing prolonged withdrawal effects with symptoms sometimes persisting for years after cessation of use. Both alcohol, barbiturate as well as benzodiazepine withdrawal can potentially be fatal. Abuse of hallucinogens can trigger delusional and other psychotic phenomena long after cessation of use. Cannabis may trigger panic attacks during intoxication and with continued use, it may cause a state similar to dysthymia. Researchers have found that daily cannabis use and the use of high-potency cannabis are independently associated with a higher chance of developing schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Severe anxiety and depression are commonly induced by sustained alcohol abuse. Even sustained moderate alcohol use may increase anxiety and depression levels in some individuals. In most cases, these drug-induced psychiatric disorders fade away with prolonged abstinence. Similarly, although substance abuse induces many changes to the brain, there is evidence that many of these alterations are reversed following periods of prolonged abstinence. Impulsivity. Impulsivity is characterized by actions based on sudden desires, whims, or inclinations rather than careful thought. Individuals with substance abuse have higher levels of impulsivity, and individuals who use multiple drugs tend to be more impulsive. A number of studies using the Iowa gambling task as a measure for impulsive behavior found that drug using populations made more risky choices compared to healthy controls. There is a hypothesis that the loss of impulse control may be due to impaired inhibitory control resulting from drug induced changes that take place in the frontal cortex. The neurodevelopmental and hormonal changes that happen during adolescence may modulate impulse control that could possibly lead to the experimentation with drugs and may lead to the road of addiction. Impulsivity is thought to be a facet trait in the neuroticism personality domain (overindulgence/negative urgency) which is prospectively associated with the development of substance abuse. Screening and assessment. There are several different screening tools that have been validated for use with adolescents such as the CRAFFT Screening Test and in adults the CAGE questionnaire. Some recommendations for screening tools for substance misuse in pregnancy include that they take less than 10 minutes, should be used routinely, include an educational component. Tools suitable for pregnant women include i.a. 4Ps, T-ACE, TWEAK, TQDH (Ten-Question Drinking History), and AUDIT. Given that addiction manifests in structural changes to the brain, it is possible that non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging could help diagnose addiction in the future. Treatment. Psychological. From the applied behavior analysis literature, behavioral psychology, and from randomized clinical trials, several evidenced based interventions have emerged: behavioral marital therapy, motivational Interviewing, community reinforcement approach, exposure therapy, contingency management They help suppress cravings and mental anxiety, improve focus on treatment and new learning behavioral skills, ease withdrawal symptoms and reduce the chances of relapse. In children and adolescents, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and family therapy currently has the most research evidence for the treatment of substance abuse problems. Well-established studies also include ecological family-based treatment and group CBT. These treatments can be administered in a variety of different formats, each of which has varying levels of research support Research has shown that what makes group CBT most effective is that it promotes the development of social skills, developmentally appropriate emotional regulatory skills and other interpersonal skills. A few integrated treatment models, which combines parts from various types of treatment, have also been seen as both well-established or probably effective. A study on maternal alcohol and other drug use has shown that integrated treatment programs have produced significant results, resulting in higher negative results on toxicology screens. Additionally, brief school-based interventions have been found to be effective in reducing adolescent alcohol and cannabis use and abuse. Motivational interviewing can also be effective in treating substance use disorder in adolescents. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are widely known self-help organizations in which members support each other abstain from substances. Social skills are significantly impaired in people suffering from alcoholism due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. It has been suggested that social skills training adjunctive to inpatient treatment of alcohol dependence is probably efficacious, including managing the social environment. Medication. A number of medications have been approved for the treatment of substance abuse. These include replacement therapies such as buprenorphine and methadone as well as antagonist medications like disulfiram and naltrexone in either short acting, or the newer long acting form. Several other medications, often ones originally used in other contexts, have also been shown to be effective including bupropion and modafinil. Methadone and buprenorphine are sometimes used to treat opiate addiction. These drugs are used as substitutes for other opioids and still cause withdrawal symptoms but they facilitate the tapering off process in a controlled fashion. Antipsychotic medications have not been found to be useful. Acamprostate is a glutamatergic NMDA antagonist, which helps with alcohol withdrawal symptoms because alcohol withdrawal is associated with a hyperglutamatergic system. Heroin-assisted treatment. Three countries in Europe have active HAT programs, namely England, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Despite critical voices by conservative think-tanks with regard to these liberal approaches, significant progress in the reduction of drug-related deaths has been achieved in those countries. For example the US, devoid of such measures, have seen large increases in drug-related deaths since 2000 (mostly related to heroin use), while Switzerland has seen large decreases. In 2018, approximately 60,000 people have died of drug overdoses in America, while in the same time period, Switzerland's drug deaths were at 260. Relative to the population of these countries, the US has 10-times more drug-related deaths compared to the Swiss Confederation, which in effect illustrates the efficacy of HAT to reduce fatal outcomes in opiate/opioid addiction. Dual diagnosis. It is common for individuals with drugs use disorder to have other psychological problems. The terms “dual diagnosis” or “co-occurring disorders,” refer to having a mental health and substance use disorder at the same time. According to the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP), “symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety and psychosis are the rule rather than the exception in patients misusing drugs and/or alcohol.” Individuals who have a comorbid psychological disorder often have a poor prognosis if either disorder is untreated. Historically most individuals with dual diagnosis either received treatment only for one of their disorders or they didn't receive any treatment all. However, since the 1980s, there has been a push towards integrating mental health and addiction treatment. In this method, neither condition is considered primary and both are treated simultaneously by the same provider. Epidemiology. The initiation of drug use including alcohol is most likely to occur during adolescence, and some experimentation with substances by older adolescents is common. For example, results from 2010 Monitoring the Future survey, a nationwide study on rates of substance use in the United States, show that 48.2% of 12th graders report having used an illicit drug at some point in their lives. In the 30 days prior to the survey, 41.2% of 12th graders had consumed alcohol and 19.2% of 12th graders had smoked tobacco cigarettes. In 2009 in the United States about 21% of high school students have taken prescription drugs without a prescription. And earlier in 2002, the World Health Organization estimated that around 140 million people were alcohol dependent and another 400 million with alcohol-related problems. Studies have shown that the large majority of adolescents will phase out of drug use before it becomes problematic. Thus, although rates of overall use are high, the percentage of adolescents who meet criteria for substance abuse is significantly lower (close to 5%). According to BBC, "Worldwide, the UN estimates there are more than 50 million regular users of morphine diacetate (heroin), cocaine and synthetic drugs." More than 70,200 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017. Among these, the sharpest increase occurred among deaths related to fentanyl and (28,466 deaths). See charts below. History. APA, AMA, and NCDA. In 1932, the American Psychiatric Association created a definition that used legality, social acceptability, and cultural familiarity as qualifying factors: In 1966, the American Medical Association's Committee on Alcoholism and Addiction defined abuse of stimulants (amphetamines, primarily) in terms of 'medical supervision': In 1973, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse stated: ...drug abuse may refer to any type of drug or chemical without regard to its pharmacologic actions. It is an eclectic concept having only one uniform connotation: societal disapproval. ... The Commission believes that the term drug abuse must be deleted from official pronouncements and public policy dialogue. The term has no functional utility and has become no more than an arbitrary codeword for that drug use which is presently considered wrong. DSM. The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (published in 1952) grouped alcohol and other drug abuse under Sociopathic Personality Disturbances, which were thought to be symptoms of deeper psychological disorders or moral weakness. The third edition, published in 1980, was the first to recognize substance abuse (including drug abuse) and substance dependence as conditions separate from substance abuse alone, bringing in social and cultural factors. The definition of dependence emphasised tolerance to drugs, and withdrawal from them as key components to diagnosis, whereas abuse was defined as "problematic use with social or occupational impairment" but without withdrawal or tolerance. In 1987, the DSM-IIIR category "psychoactive substance abuse," which includes former concepts of drug abuse is defined as "a maladaptive pattern of use indicated by...continued use despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent social, occupational, psychological or physical problem that is caused or exacerbated by the use (or by) recurrent use in situations in which it is physically hazardous." It is a residual category, with dependence taking precedence when applicable. It was the first definition to give equal weight to behavioural and physiological factors in diagnosis. By 1988, the DSM-IV defines substance dependence as "a syndrome involving compulsive use, with or without tolerance and withdrawal"; whereas substance abuse is "problematic use without compulsive use, significant tolerance, or withdrawal." Substance abuse can be harmful to your health and may even be deadly in certain scenarios. By 1994, The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) issued by the American Psychiatric Association, the DSM-IV-TR, defines substance dependence as "when an individual persists in use of alcohol or other drugs despite problems related to use of the substance, substance dependence may be diagnosed." along with criteria for the diagnosis. DSM-IV-TR defines substance abuse as: The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5), was released in 2013, and it revisited this terminology. The principal change was a transition from the abuse/dependence terminology. In the DSM-IV era, abuse was seen as an early form or less hazardous form of the disease characterized with the dependence criteria. However, the APA's 'dependence' term, as noted above, does not mean that physiologic dependence is present but rather means that a disease state is present, one that most would likely refer to as an addicted state. Many involved recognize that the terminology has often led to confusion, both within the medical community and with the general public. The American Psychiatric Association requested input as to how the terminology of this illness should be altered as it moves forward with DSM-5 discussion. In the DSM-5, substance abuse and substance dependence have been merged into the category of substance use disorders and they now longer exist as individual concepts. While substance abuse and dependence were either present or not, substance use disorder has three levels of severity: mild, moderate and severe. Society and culture. Legal approaches. Most governments have designed legislation to criminalize certain types of drug use. These drugs are often called "illegal drugs" but generally what is illegal is their unlicensed production, distribution, and possession. These drugs are also called "controlled substances". Even for simple possession, legal punishment can be quite severe (including the death penalty in some countries). Laws vary across countries, and even within them, and have fluctuated widely throughout history. Attempts by government-sponsored drug control policy to interdict drug supply and eliminate drug abuse have been largely unsuccessful. In spite of the huge efforts by the U.S., drug supply and purity has reached an all-time high, with the vast majority of resources spent on interdiction and law enforcement instead of public health. In the United States, the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison exceeds by 100,000 the total incarcerated population in the EU, despite the fact that the EU has 100 million more citizens. Despite drug legislation (or perhaps because of it), large, organized criminal drug cartels operate worldwide. Advocates of decriminalization argue that drug prohibition makes drug dealing a lucrative business, leading to much of the associated criminal activity. Cost. Policymakers try to understand the relative costs of drug-related interventions. An appropriate drug policy relies on the assessment of drug-related public expenditure based on a classification system where costs are properly identified. Labelled drug-related expenditures are defined as the direct planned spending that reflects the voluntary engagement of the state in the field of illicit drugs. Direct public expenditures explicitly labeled as drug-related can be easily traced back by exhaustively reviewing official accountancy documents such as national budgets and year-end reports. Unlabelled expenditure refers to unplanned spending and is estimated through modeling techniques, based on a top-down budgetary procedure. Starting from overall aggregated expenditures, this procedure estimates the proportion causally attributable to substance abuse (Unlabelled Drug-related Expenditure = Overall Expenditure × Attributable Proportion). For example, to estimate the prison drug-related expenditures in a given country, two elements would be necessary: the overall prison expenditures in the country for a given period, and the attributable proportion of inmates due to drug-related issues. The product of the two will give a rough estimate that can be compared across different countries. Europe. As part of the reporting exercise corresponding to 2005, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction's network of national focal points set up in the 27 European Union (EU) Member States, Norway, and the candidates countries to the EU, were requested to identify labeled drug-related public expenditure, at the country level. This was reported by 10 countries categorized according to the functions of government, amounting to a total of EUR 2.17 billion. Overall, the highest proportion of this total came within the government functions of Health (66%) (e.g. medical services), and Public Order and Safety (POS) (20%) (e.g. police services, law courts, prisons). By country, the average share of GDP was 0.023% for Health, and 0.013% for POS. However, these shares varied considerably across countries, ranging from 0.00033% in Slovakia, up to 0.053% of GDP in Ireland in the case of Health, and from 0.003% in Portugal, to 0.02% in the UK, in the case of POS; almost a 161-fold difference between the highest and the lowest countries for Health, and a 6-fold difference for POS. Why do Ireland and the UK spend so much in Health and POS, or Slovakia and Portugal so little, in GDP terms? To respond to this question and to make a comprehensive assessment of drug-related public expenditure across countries, this study compared Health and POS spending and GDP in the 10 reporting countries. Results found suggest GDP to be a major determinant of the Health and POS drug-related public expenditures of a country. Labelled drug-related public expenditure showed a positive association with the GDP across the countries considered: r = 0.81 in the case of Health, and r = 0.91 for POS. The percentage change in Health and POS expenditures due to a one percent increase in GDP (the income elasticity of demand) was estimated to be 1.78% and 1.23% respectively. Being highly income elastic, Health and POS expenditures can be considered luxury goods; as a nation becomes wealthier it openly spends proportionately more on drug-related health and public order and safety interventions. United Kingdom. The UK Home Office estimated that the social and economic cost of drug abuse to the UK economy in terms of crime, absenteeism and sickness is in excess of £20 billion a year. However, the UK Home Office does not estimate what portion of those crimes are unintended consequences of drug prohibition (crimes to sustain expensive drug consumption, risky production and dangerous distribution), nor what is the cost of enforcement. Those aspects are necessary for a full analysis of the economics of prohibition. United States. These figures represent overall economic costs, which can be divided in three major components: health costs, productivity losses and non-health direct expenditures. According to a report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Medicaid was billed for a significantly higher number of hospitals stays for Opioid drug overuse than Medicare or private insurance in 1993. By 2012, the differences were diminished. Over the same time, Medicare had the most rapid growth in number of hospital stays. Special populations. Immigrants and refugees. Immigrant and refugees have often been under great stress, physical trauma and depression and anxiety due to separation from loved ones often characterize the pre-migration and transit phases, followed by "cultural dissonance," language barriers, racism, discrimination, economic adversity, overcrowding, social isolation, and loss of status and difficulty obtaining work and fears of deportation are common. Refugees frequently experience concerns about the health and safety of loved ones left behind and uncertainty regarding the possibility of returning to their country of origin. For some, substance abuse functions as a coping mechanism to attempt to deal with these stressors. Immigrants and refugees may bring the substance use and abuse patterns and behaviors of their country of origin, or adopt the attitudes, behaviors, and norms regarding substance use and abuse that exist within the dominant culture into which they are entering. Street children. Street children in many developing countries are a high risk group for substance misuse, in particular solvent abuse. Drawing on research in Kenya, Cottrell-Boyce argues that "drug use amongst street children is primarily functional – dulling the senses against the hardships of life on the street – but can also provide a link to the support structure of the ‘street family’ peer group as a potent symbol of shared experience." Musicians. In order to maintain high-quality performance, some musicians take chemical substances. Some musicians take drugs such as alcohol to deal with the stress of performing. As a group they have a higher rate of substance abuse. The most common chemical substance which is abused by pop musicians is cocaine, because of its neurological effects. Stimulants like cocaine increase alertness and cause feelings of euphoria, and can therefore make the performer feel as though they in some ways ‘own the stage’. One way in which substance abuse is harmful for a performer (musicians especially) is if the substance being abused is aspirated. The lungs are an important organ used by singers, and addiction to cigarettes may seriously harm the quality of their performance. Smoking harms the alveoli, which are responsible for absorbing oxygen. Veterans. Substance abuse can be a factor that affects the physical and mental health of veterans. Substance abuse may also harm personal and familial relationships, leading to financial difficulty. There is evidence to suggest that substance abuse disproportionately affects the homeless veteran population. A 2015 Florida study, which compared causes of homelessness between veterans and non-veteran populations in a self-reporting questionnaire, found that 17.8% of the homeless veteran participants attributed their homelessness to alcohol and other drug-related problems compared to just 3.7% of the non-veteran homeless group. A 2003 study found that homelessness was correlated with access to support from family/friends and services. However, this correlation was not true when comparing homeless participants who had a current substance-use disorders. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides a summary of treatment options for veterans with substance-use disorder. For treatments that do not involve medication, they offer therapeutic options that focus on finding outside support groups and “looking at how substance use problems may relate to other problems such as PTSD and depression”. Sex and gender. There are many sex differences in substance abuse. Men and Women express differences in the short and long-term effects of substance abuse. These differences can be credited to sexual dimorphisms in brain, endocrine and metabolic systems. Social and environmental factors that tend to disproportionately effect women; such as child and elder care and the risk of exposure to violence are also factors in the gender differences in substance abuse. Women report having greater impairment in areas such as employment, family and social functioning when abusing substances but have a similar response to treatment. Co-occurring psychiatric disorders are more common among women than men who abuse substances; women more frequently use substances to reduce the negative effects of these co-occurring disorders. Substance abuse puts both men and women at higher risk for perpetration and victimization of sexual violence. Men tend to take drugs for the first time to be part of a group and fit in more so than women. At first interaction, women may experience more pleasure from drugs than men do. Women tend to progress more rapidly from first experience to addiction than men. Physicians, psychiatrists and social workers have believed for decades that women escalate alcohol use more rapidly once they start. Once the addictive behavior is established for women they stabilize at higher doses of drugs than males do. When withdrawing from smoking women experience greater stress response. Males experience greater symptoms when withdrawing from alcohol. There are even gender differences when it comes to rehabilitation and relapse rates. For alcohol, relapse rates were very similar for men and women. For women, marriage and marital stress were risk factors for alcohol relapse. For men, being married lowered the risk of relapse. This difference may be a result of gendered differences in excessive drinking. Alcoholic women are much more likely to be married to partners that drink excessively than are alcoholic men. As a result of this, men may be protected from relapse by marriage while women are out at higher risk when married. However, women are less likely than men to experience relapse to substance use. When men experience a relapse to substance use, they more than likely had a positive experience prior to the relapse. On the other hand, when women relapse to substance use, they were more than likely affected by negative circumstances or interpersonal problems.

real use

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=82496

Fast cutting is a film editing technique which refers to several consecutive shots of a brief duration (e.g. 3 seconds or less). It can be used to quickly convey much information, or to imply either energy or chaos. Fast cutting is also frequently used when shooting dialogue between two or more characters, changing the viewer's perspective to either focus on the reaction of another character's dialog, or to bring to attention the non-verbal actions of the speaking character. One famous example of fast cutting is the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Psycho" (1960). More recent examples include the can-can scene in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" (2001). The film "Mind Game" makes extensive use of fast cutting to convey hundreds of short scenes in the space of fifteen minutes. In "Run Lola Run" fast cutting is used to quickly tell stories about minor characters to show how the casual actions of the protagonists have profound impact on what happens to them. In various moments in the "Saw" movies, fast cutting is used frequently during trap scenes, which represent their frantic struggle to escape the trap. Director Michael Bay makes extensive use of fast-cutting in many of his feature films. He uses the technique most prominently during action sequences, in which it is used to make the action more energetic and intense. Hip hop montage. A "hip hop montage" is a subset of fast cutting used in film to portray a complex action through a rapid series of simple actions in fast motion, accompanied by sound effects. The technique was first given its name by Darren Aronofsky, who used the technique in his films "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream" to portray drug use. According to the director's commentary of "Requiem for a Dream," the hip hop montage is used in film as a sample is used in hip hop, with a few moments of film or video, respectively, repeated throughout the work for effect. The technique is derived from the hip hop culture of the 1990s and jump cuts first pioneered in the French new wave. It was used earlier in Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights". Guy Ritchie also used the technique in "Snatch" to portray transcontinental travel. The work of Edgar Wright, most notably in his collaboration with Simon Pegg ("Spaced", "Shaun of the Dead", "Hot Fuzz", and "The World's End") uses the technique for comedic effect. Joseph Gordon-Levitt used the technique extensively in "Don Jon" (2013) to portray the main character's habits.

extended train rides across different countries

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33156100

A human pony harness is used for bondage - which can be for restraint, decoration and/or to facilitate work such as pulling a cart. It is usually made of leather but can be rope, biothane or other appropriate material. It is wrapped (usually with buckles for adjustment) around the wearer's body in such a way that it cannot be slipped off. The wearer may have his/her hands strapped behind his/her back, although this is not usually recommended for pulling a cart or other work, in case of a fall. D-rings can be attached, so ropes or chains can be put on to lead the person around. A human pony harness is basically modeled off a horse harness, but adjusted for human size and shape. The pony submissive has the harness attached, often with added suitable features for a human pony such as bit-gags and decorative features such as a plume. Once the harness has been placed, the pony can be walked on a leash, attached to and pulling a wagon or other load. This can be encouraged by a pony trainer or handler using a horse whip or riding crop, as desired. To some fetishists, human pony activities are their kink, and as such the human pony harness is their main sexual toy and the human pony games the core of their fetishism. To others with a more general BDSM interest, a human pony harness can be implemented in a wider range of sexual games of domination. For instance the harness is commonly used for outdoor bondage scenes and public exposure play, it can serve as a simple tool of restraint in sadomasochistic play, etc.

humanoid dimensions

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27560517

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA or ACOA) founded circa 1973 is an organization intended to provide a forum for individuals who desire to recover from the effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family. ACA membership has few formal requirements. ACA does not receive any outside economic contributions and is supported by donations from its members. The organization is not related to any particular religion and has no political affiliation. Tony A. was among its co-founders and author of "The Laundry List"," 12 steps for adult children of alcoholics" (known as "Tony A's 12 Steps")", The Problem", which are all published in his book,"The Laundry List: The ACOA Experience" (co-authored with Dan F.) What is an "Adult Child" / Who are "Adult Children". The organization's name is often ascribed to Janet G. Woititz (c. 1939 - June 7, 1994), an American psychologist and researcher best known for her writings and lectures on the adult children of alcoholic parents, and author of the 1983 book "Adult Children of Alcoholics." The term ACoA was also extended to include PTSD by Tian Dayton PhD, specifically in her book "The ACoA Trauma Syndrome. "In it she describes how pain from childhood emerges and gets played out in adulthood, for the ACoA, as a post traumatic stress reaction. Childhood pain that has remained relatively dormant for decades can be re-stimulated or "triggered" by the dynamics of intimacy. "Just as a car backfiring triggers a soldier into unconscious memories of gunfire, when the ACoA grows up and enters the intimate relationships of partnering and parenting, the very vulnerability, dependency and closeness of those relationships can trigger unhealed and unconscious pain from childhood." History and Growth of ACA/ACOA. ACA/ACOA was originally named "Post Teen" in Mineola, Long Island in 1973 (citation needed). In the mid-1970s, a group of older Alateens in Manhattan, a part of the Al-Anon fellowship, formed a group of those who were looking for a group that was not focused on parental or spousal relationships with those dealing with alcohol substance abuse. They called this group, "Hope of Adult Children of Alcoholics." After being asked to speak on his experiences in AA and Al-Anon to this group, Tony A joined as a member. When fewer people were in attendance, Tony A opened up the group to AA members who were adult children. Eventually, Tony started a co-current group called "Generations" which was not affiliated with any 12-step group. In 1978 Tony A. wrote "The Laundry List" (the 14-characteristics of adult children) and the "Solution" and shared it with his “Generations” group. The meeting where Tony A. shared his "Laundry List" is considered the beginning of ACA/ACOA. Members of “Generations” expressed discomfort with the AA steps around this time and also declined an offer to become an official Al-Anon group in the 1980s. Tony A. began working on a version of the 12-steps specifically for adult children of alcoholics, and published them in his 1991 book, "The Laundry List: The ACOA Experience" that he wrote with Dan F. Currently, ACA allows use of Tony A's 12 steps in addition to the AA-based 12 steps formally in ACA approved literature. This twelve-step program is incorporated as Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families. The ACA framework is based on the 12 steps and 12 traditions of AA. During the 1990s, the organization went through rapid growth. In 1989, there were 1,300 ACA meetings and by 2003 there were an estimated 40,000 members of ACA. In 2014, there were 1,300 groups worldwide, about 780 of these in the USA. Organization and Relation to Other Groups. ACA is organized along the lines of 12 steps and 12 traditions adopted by the ACA World Service Organization ACA meetings are formed without leaders and are maintained by group conscience and following the 12 steps of ACA/Tony A and traditions of ACA. Meetings are held with the principle of anonymity for members online, via phone, or in-person. "The vast majority of ACAs meet informally, in school classrooms or church halls, in the evenings or over weekends. Few frequent expensive treatment centres. They are sympathetic to, but not part of, the AA movement. They meet in leaderless groups, pooling their resources of experience and insight, and reading relevant literature to deepen those assets. For an ACA, this support group provides the extended family and unconditional support which he or she never experienced. The group further provides practical help in acquiring everyday interpersonal and coping skills, and, with them, the sense of self-efficacy—a basic need, as Peele says. The group also provides a sense of community, a community of interest which there are few neighbourhood groups nowadays to provide. This sense of community is another basic need, as Peele argues. Membership comes from a felt need, not as a life sentence. AA puts it simply: 'People need people.'" ACA program. From the ACA fellowship text (also known as "The Big Red Book): "By attending these meetings on a regular basis, you will come to see parental alcoholism or family dysfunction for what it is: a disease that infected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult." The goal of working the program is emotional sobriety. In 2006, ACA published a fellowship text of 646 pages, describing in details what the program is and how it works. This text is also called "The Big Red Book" mirroring the AA fellowship text being called "The Big Book" by members of AA. ACA is more of a therapeutic program which emphasizes taking care of the self and re-parenting one's own wounded inner child with love rather than focusing on one source of substance abuse (though members may or may not have substance abuse issues) as in other 12-step groups. It aims to build oneself up, assumes personal responsibility by unequivocally standing up for one's right to a healthy life and actively works on the changes necessary to achieving it. The collective stance is not to wallow in "being a victim" but to move into the practical application of seeing family dysfunction as a generational affliction and a pattern that can be healed. Through fellowship and the support of ACAs sponsors and peers, as well as the literature, members come to learn that even the most wounded of them has an inner child worthy of love and healing. The crux of the community and its mindfulness comes from honest accounts of struggles and sincere compassion towards these. ACA does not rely heavily on a traditional "sponsor" format as in AA, although some may follow this format in ACA, but favors a "Fellow Traveler" approach that emphasizes learning from each other as you both work the program. The 12 Steps. ACA offers a program to recover from the effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family. It is not affiliated with AA, but it follows the 12-step structure and format of groups based on Alcoholics Anonymous. It features 12 steps adapted from the AA steps and 12 steps authored by co-founder, Tony A (which have not been conference approved by the ACA WSO). Recommendations. "Around AA groups different subgroups have formed to support the families: Al-Anon ... Alateen ... as well as groups for the adult child, ACoA. Discovering not being alone with one's problems is often a great help for these youths, and the contact with other youths with the same worries can help them get out of minimizing and denying the problem." Dr. Janet G. Woititz, author of "Adult Children of Alcoholics", endorsed the ACA. In November 1985 ACA celebrated its one-year anniversary as an official organization in Southern California. But ACA meetings have been taking place on an informal basis in Los Angeles for more than five years, helping some of the estimated 50 million adults who come from homes of alcoholics. ACA may often be referred to through therapists and local meetings can be found through a brief online search.

parish passages

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55320675

Arab folk dances (), also referred to as Oriental dance, Middle-Eastern dance and Eastern dance, are the traditional folk dances of the Arabs in Arab world. Arab dance has many different styles, including the three main types of folklore, classical, and contemporary. It is enjoyed and implemented throughout the Arab region, from North Africa to the Middle East. The term "Arabic dance" is often associated with the belly dance. However, there are many styles of traditional Arab dance and many of them have a long history. These may be folk dances, or dances that were once performed as rituals or as entertainment spectacle, and some may have been performed in the imperial court. Coalescence of oral storytelling, poetry recital, and music has a long-standing tradition in Arab history. Among the best-known of the Arab traditional dances are the belly dance, the ardah, and the dabke. Traditional dancing is still popular among expatriate Arabs and has also been successfully exported to international folk dance groups all over the world. All dancers wear the traditional costume to embody the history of their culture and tell their ancestors stories. History. Historically, dance has always been an important part of the Arabic culture. Some examples of the oldest social dances enjoyed in the Arab world are Debke () and Raqs Baladi (; relative-adjective "of town", "local", "rural", comparable to English "folk", with a lower-class connotation). During the series of invasions on the Arab world, Europeans were influenced by its peoples cultures. During the French campaign in Egypt and Syria in 1798, Europeans were interested in the Arab world, folk dances and music of each country. In the middle of the 19th century, the Middle East, especially the Levant, Mesopotamia and Egypt were collectively referred to as the 'East'. The Middle East attracted European painters and writers described as Orientalists, who specialized in Oriental subjects; among the most prominent personalities are Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Orientalism has undoubtedly contributed to the misconception of the popular dance as a dance of temptation, conducted for the pleasure of men. In fact, because of the traditional gender segregation, women in the Middle East usually dance only in the women's company between parents and friends. Sometimes a professional dancer and musicians were invited to the women's Caucus. Today, gender segregation is not strictly practised in many urban areas, and sometimes both men and women dance socially at family and/or community events. Arabic dance was performed in the United States in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition, which included an exhibition entitled "The streets of Cairo". The exhibition was attended by dancers from Egypt and several other Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa, including Syria and Algeria. The term "belly dancing" is often credited to Sol Bloom, its entertainment director, but referred to the dance as "danse du ventre", the name used by the French in Algeria. In his memoirs, Bloom states, "when the public learned that the literal translation was "belly dance", they delightedly concluded that it must be salacious and immoral...I had a gold mine." Types of dance. Arabs have their own diverse and rich music and dances which is part of their identity. There are a lot of Arab traditional dances as the Arab world is a vast area. Men are also as involved as women. Here are four kinds of traditional dances. List of classic dances. These dances date from the antiquity and have not ceased to evolve in history and in time. Al Ayyala. Al Ayyala dance generally known as "yowalah" is a traditional group dance of United Arab Emirates, The dance is also accompanied with traditional music, and a separate group of male and female are represented. Yowalah it is the distinctive in both its music and dancing. Belly dance. Belly dance also referred to as Arabic dance () is an Oriental expressive dance, which emphasizes complex movements of the torso. Many boys and girls in countries where belly dancing is popular will learn how to do it when they are young. The dance involves movement of many different parts of the body; usually in a circular way. Both women and men can belly dance. Shamadan. Shamadan () is a large candelabrum balanced on top of a dancer's head, in a tradition unique to Egyptian dance. This dance prop is historically used in the Egyptian wedding procession, or zeffah. The wedding procession traditionally occurs at night, winding its way through the streets of the neighborhood from the home of the bride's parents to her new home at the groom's house. This is the official moving of the bride and is led by a dancer, musicians and singers, followed by the wedding party and their friends and family. Raqs Sharqi. Raqs Sharqi () is the classical Egyptian style of belly dance that developed during the first half of the 20th century. This dance is pre-Islamic and is an oral tradition which has changed over the centuries. Some people believe that it originated as a fertility or Goddess worshipping dance, and in North Africa it can still be used to help during childbirth. Baladi. Baladi () means "of the country" and is a style of Egyptian folk dance from the early 20th century which is still very popular. Thus, ‘Egyptian Beledi’ means ‘of the country of Egypt’ It came about when farmers moved to the city and began dancing in small spaces. Egyptians have Baladi people, Baladi bread, Baladi rhythms, Baladi music and Baladi dance. It is a folk/social form of bellydance. It is more stationary than raqs sharqi, with little use of the arms, and the focus is on hip movements. Baladi dance has a 'heavy' feeling, with the dancer appearing relaxed and strongly connected to the ground. It is performed to baladi or folk music. Almeh. Almeh ( ; the sublime dance in the past is ' or ', plural ' , from Arabic: ', from "to know, be learned") was the name of a class of female entertainers in Egypt, women educated to sing and recite classical poetry and to discourse wittily. unlike the ghawazy, the awalim performed only for women and for the high class in their homes. Ouled Nail. Ouled Nail () originated a style of music, sometimes known as Bou Saâda music after the town near their homeland. In belly dancing, the term refers to a style of dance originated by the Ouled Naïl, noted for their way of dancing. Which involves small, rapid foot movements paired with vigorous torso and hip movements. Ghawazi. Ghawazi, Ghawazy () (also "ghawazee") dancers of Egypt were a group of female traveling dancers. The Ghawazee perform solo or in small groups, unveiled for heterogenic audience, in the public streets, in festivals, in cafe houses and in the Upper Egypt mawalid (local Islamic ceremony), the term itself sometimes accompanied sexual-acts in the local culture and was sometimes used as an insult. Their dancing has little of elegance; its chief peculiarity being a very rapid vibrating motion of the hips, from side to side. Folk dances. Those dances are performed during the civil celebrations or events as birth, death, wedding or a social ascent and sometimes during religious festivals. Dabke. Dabke (), is an Arab folk dance event forming part of the shared sociocultural landscape of Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Twice, Dabke was made into a fixed canon of movement patterns and steps which, through repeated execution, served to consolidate behavioral norms and cultural meanings. Deheyeh. Deheyeh (), Is a Bedouin dance practiced in The Negev, (Israel), Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, some of the Gulf states, the Syrian desert. It was practiced before the wars to stir up enthusiasm among the members of the tribe, and at the end of the battles in ancient times describe the battle and the tournaments, but now it is practiced on occasions such as weddings, holidays and other celebrations. Popular dances. Popular dances involve all forms artistic expressions of a people. Khaleegy. Khaleegy () is a dance performed in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. A long "Thawb" is worn which the dancer holds up in front. There is a step with it, but the main feature is the hair tossing as the head swings from side to side. The name of the dance literally means "gulf" in Arabic and it is danced by local women in weddings and other social events. Khaleegy is a joyful, lively, expressive, gestural and delicate dance performed in events involving happiness and celebration (like weddings). Women dance in complicity and it is often started with one of them standing alone in the dance floor to begin the dance, and then the others join her.The main body parts involved in the dance are the hands, the head and the "Thawb" itself. The hair, apart from the "Thawb" is the main element used to dance Khaleegy: women let their long hair "dance" moving it from side to side, back and forth, in circle and making other figures. Recently it has become very popular among belly dancers. The Khaleegy dance is most commonly performed to a hypnotic 2/4 rhythm with two heavy beats and a pause, called the Saudi, khaliji, or adany rhythm (from Yemen). There is not one khaliji rhythm but hundreds, as this dance represents many countries of the Gulf area. Ardah. Ardah () is a type of folkloric dance in Arabia. The dance is performed with two rows of men opposite of one another, each of whom may or may not be wielding a sword or cane, and is accompanied by drums and spoken poetry. In the Emirates, the local version is called Al Ayala. The term 'Ardah' is thought to derive from the Arabic verb "ard" meaning 'to show' or 'to parade'. It was so named because its purpose was to publicly display the fighting strength of a tribe and boost morale before an armed engagement. Although there are regional variations of the particular rendition of ardah, the purpose it serves is nearly identical throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Hagallah. Hagallah () is a folkloric dance of celebration known as the "hagallah" is performed by the settled "Bedouin "(bedu) of Mersa Matruh in Western Egypt and is often performed during the date harvest, which is the wedding season in that area. Hagallah is also known in areas of neighbouring Libya and is related to "kaf" (clapping) dances in other regions of the Middle East., hagallah is performed by the bedouin of western Egypt. It has been described as a wedding dance and also as a girl's coming-of-age dance. Schikhatt. "Schikhatt" (): in Classical Arabic, the word "sheikha" ()  is the feminine of "sheikh": a person with knowledge, experience, wisdom. In Maghrebi (Moroccan Arabic), "sheikha" limits its meaning to specify a woman with carnal knowledge extensive enough to teach others. It is an erotic women-only dance, originally performed for the bride before her wedding, with the idea of teaching her how she would be expected to move in the marriage bed. Guedra. Guedra () is a dance from the desert region of Morocco's south west, performed to induce an altered state of consciousness, with a solo performer beginning the dance with hand movements, then swinging the head and torso until a trance state is reached. Guedra dancers are single or divorced women. Sometimes men from the audience will enquire with a view to marriage. Yowla. Yowla () is traditional dance in the United Arab Emirates. It involves spinning and throwing a rifle dummy made entirely of wood and metal plating. Sacred dances. Those sacred dances are related to the dominant religion of the Arab world which is Islam. They are particularly linked to Sufism which is the heart of the Islamic tradition inaugurated by the Prophet Muhammad. Tanoura. Tanoura () Is an Egyptian folk dance with obvious Sufi origins, which today became an important ritual of the celebration rituals performed on many occasions. The dance is a rhythmic dance performed collectively by circular movements, which stems from the mystical Islamic sense of philosophical basis. It sees that the movement in the universe starts from a point and ends at the same point and therefore reflects this concept in their dance. Their movements come as if they are drawing halos, drenched in space. The word "tanoura" or "tannoura" refers to the colorful skirt worn by the whirler, with a color representing each Sufi order. Zar. Zār () is a dance performed to drive away evil spirits. It originated in the Sudan but is also popular among women in Egypt.

bay section

2490-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57769923

The Integrated Management Concept, or IMC is an approach to structure management challenges by applying a "system-theoretical perspective that sees organisations as complex systems consisting of sub-systems, interrelations, and functions". The most characteristic aspect of the IMC is its distinction between three particular management dimensions: normative, strategic, and operational management, which are held together by different integration mechanisms. The normative management dimension determines the general aim of the organization, the strategic dimension directs the plans, basic structures, systems, and the problem-solving behaviour of the staff for achieving it, and the operative level translates the normative missions and strategic programs into day-to-day organizational processes. The IMC was developed by Knut Bleicher and his colleagues originally as an element of the , introduced in the 1970s by Hans Ulrich and Walter Krieg at the Swiss University of St. Gallen. Thereafter, the IMC has been revised several times (e.g. with respect to its application within SMEs sectors ) and further developed by research institutions and management scholars, such as Johannes Rüegg-Stürm. Dimensions of management. Normative management. The normative management dimension deals with principles, norms, and strategies which are aimed to ensure the surviving capabilities of a company through the preservation of its identity. Bleicher states that “because of its constitutive role, normative management functions as the basis for all activities of management”. Through vision, mission, and purpose statements, normative management codifies the norms, principles, and strategies that fulfill the company's general aim. Strategic management. Strategic management focuses on achieving a company's competitive advantage. It utilizes the organizational experience in relation to its technologies, social structures, and processes against competitors in the market. While normative management functions as a foundation for activities, it is the task of strategic management to provide orientation for these activities. Operational management. The operational management dimension is characterized by the processes and tasks that apply on practice the realization of organizational norms and strategies. It aims at optimizing process efficiency and effective social cooperation to enhance performance, both within the organisation and with external stakeholders. Thus, the operational management level facilitates the development of processes, products, and services. Integration mechanisms. The IMC identifies three integration mechanisms that span the management dimensions and ensure the alignment between them. These integration mechanisms are defined as meta-integration, vertical integration, and horizontal integration. Meta-integration is based on the management and business philosophy which defines the company's consideration of and relation to its stakeholders’ values. Vertical integration is achieved throughout the three management dimensions by means of structures, activities, and behavior. "Structures" describe the translation of corporate governance into effective management and efficient processes. "Activities" refer to the development and application of corporate policies, strategic programmes, and operational tasks (e.g. marketing activities like acquiring customers or performing customer service). "Behavior" relates to defining roles that ensure that the company's culture and normative values are put into practice. Horizontal integration is about aligning the structures, activities, and behavior throughout the distinct management dimensions. Application. The IMC has been adapted in various contexts, such as foresight frameworks or cybernetic theories for organisational intelligence. More recently, it has also been used as a foundation for an Integrated Business Model Framework that identifies normative, strategic, and operational business model elements. Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund adopted the basic distinction between management levels and integration mechanisms to develop a framework for values-based innovation management stressing the impact of normative orientations for research, design and management of corporate innovation. The IMC is closely related to systems approaches such as Stafford Beer's Viable Systems Model due to its systemic and cybernetic character.

fundamental capacity

12390-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=944387

The Destruction of the European Jews is a 1961 book by historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition. It is largely held to be the first comprehensive historical study of the Holocaust. According to Holocaust historian, Michael R. Marrus ("The Holocaust in History"), until the book appeared, little information about the genocide of the Jews by Nazi Germany had "reached the wider public" in both the West and the East, and even in pertinent scholarly studies it was "scarcely mentioned or only mentioned in passing as one more atrocity in a particularly cruel war". Hilberg's "landmark synthesis, based on a masterful reading of German documents", soon led to a massive array of writings and debates, both scholarly and popular, on the Holocaust. Two works which preceded Hilberg's by a decade, but remained little known in their time, were Léon Poliakov's "Bréviaire de la haine" (Harvest of Hate), published in 1951, and Gerald Reitlinger's "The Final Solution", published in 1953. Discussing the writing of "Destruction" in his autobiography, Hilberg wrote: "No literature could serve me as an example. The destruction of the Jews was an unprecedented occurrence, a primordial act that had not been imagined before it burst forth. The Germans had no model for their deed, and I did not have one for my narrative." Written with support, published with difficulties. Hilberg began his study of the Holocaust leading to "The Destruction" while stationed in Munich in 1948 for the U.S. Army's War Documentation Project. He proposed the idea for the work as a PhD. dissertation and was supported in this by his doctoral advisor, Columbia University professor Franz Neumann. While the dissertation won a prize, Columbia University Press, Princeton University Press, Oklahoma University Press, as well as Yad Vashem all declined to publish it. It was eventually published by a small publishing company, Quadrangle Books. This first edition was published in an unusually small type. Much of the page count increase of later versions is due to being published in a conventional type size. This was not the end of Hilberg's publishing woes. It was not translated until 1982, when Ulf Wolter of the small leftist publishers Olle & Wolter in Berlin published a German translation. For this purpose the work was enlarged by about 15%, so that Hilberg spoke of a "second edition", "solid enough for the next century". Opposition from Hannah Arendt. In his autobiography, Hilberg reveals learning that Hannah Arendt advised Princeton University Press against publishing "The Destruction". This may have been due to the first chapter, which she later described as "very terrible" and betraying little understanding of German history. She did, however, base her account of the Final Solution (in "Eichmann in Jerusalem") on Hilberg's history, as well as sharing his controversial characterisation of the Judenrat. Hilberg strongly criticized Arendt's "banality of evil" thesis which appeared shortly after "The Destruction", to be published with her articles for "The New Yorker" with respect to Adolf Eichmann's trial ("Eichmann in Jerusalem"). He still defended Arendt's right to have her views aired upon being condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. In fact, David Cesarani writes that Hilberg "defended her several arguments at a bitter debate organised by "Dissent" magazine which drew an audience of hundreds". In a letter to the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, Arendt went on to write that: Hilberg also goes on to claim that Nora Levin heavily borrowed from "The Destruction" without acknowledgment in her 1968 "The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry", and that historian Lucy Davidowicz not only ignored "The Destruction"'s findings in her 1975 "The War against the Jews, 1933–1945" but also went on to exclude mention of him, along with a galaxy of other leading Holocaust scholars, in her 1981 historiographic work, "The Holocaust and the Historians". "She wanted preeminence", Hilberg writes. Opposition from Yad Vashem. Hilberg's work received a hostile reception from Yad Vashem, particularly over his treatment of Jewish resistance to the perpetrators of the Holocaust in the book's concluding chapter. Hilberg argued that "The reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance...[T]he documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged, is very slight". Hilberg attributed this lack of resistance to the Jewish experience as a minority: "In exile, the Jews... had learned that they could avert danger and survive destruction by placating and appeasing their enemies...Thus over a period of centuries the Jews had learned that in order to survive they had to restrain from resistance". Yad Vashem's scholars, including Josef Melkman and Nathan Eck, did not feel that Hilberg's characterizations of Jewish history were correct, but they also felt that by using Jewish history to explain the reaction of the Jewish community to the Holocaust, Hilberg was suggesting that some responsibility for the extent of the destruction fell on the Jews themselves, a position that they found unacceptable. The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, and the subsequent publication by Hannah Arendt and Bruno Bettelheim of works that were more critical of Jewish actions during the Holocaust than Hilberg had been, inflamed the controversy. In 1967, Nathan Eck wrote a sharply critical review of Hilberg, Arendt, and Bettelheim's claims in "Yad Vashem Studies", the organization's research journal, titled "Historical Research or Slander". Hilberg eventually reached a reconciliation with Yad Vashem, and participated in international conferences organized by the institution in 1977 and 2004. In 2012 Yad Vashem held a symposium marking the translation of his book into Hebrew. Against overstating the heroism of Jewish victims. A key reason as to why notable Jews and organizations were hostile to Hilberg's work was that "The Destruction" relied most of all on German documents, whereas Jewish accounts and sources were featured far less prominently. This, argued Hilberg's opponents, trivialized the suffering Jews endured under Nazism. For his part, Hilberg maintains that these sources simply could not have been central to a systematic, social-scientific reconstruction of the destruction process. Another important factor for this hostility by many in the Jewish community (including some Holocaust survivors) is that Hilberg refused to view the vast majority of Jewish victims' "passivity" as a form of heroism or resistance (in contrast to those Jews who actively resisted, waging armed struggle against the Nazis). Equally controversially, he provided an analysis for this passivity in the context of Jewish history. The Jews, Hilberg argued, were convinced "the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit." Hilberg calculated the economic value of Jewish slave labor to the Nazis as being several times the entire value of confiscated Jewish assets, and used this as evidence that the destruction of Jews continued irrespective of economic considerations. Additionally, Hilberg estimated the total number of Germans killed by Jews during World War II as less than 300, an estimate that is not conducive to an image of heroic struggle. Hilberg, therefore, disagreed with what he termed a "campaign of exaltation", explains historian Mitchell Hart, and with Holocaust historians such as Martin Gilbert who argued that "[e]ven passivity was a form of resistance[,] to die with dignity was a form of resistance." According to Hilberg, his own approach was crucial for grasping the Nazi genocide of Jews as a process. Hart adds that: This sort of "inflation of resistance" is dangerous because it suggests that the Jews truly did present the Nazis with some sort of "opposition" that was not just a horrible figment of their antisemitic imaginations. The Destruction of the Jews as a historically explicable event. This problem underscores a more fundamental question: whether the Holocaust can (or to what extent it "should") be made explicable through a social-scientific, historical account. Speaking against what he terms a "quasi mystical association," historian Nicolas Kinloch writes that "with the publication of Raul Hilberg's monumental book," the subject had risen to be considered "an event requiring more, rather than less, stringent historical analysis." Citing Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer's statement that "if the Holocaust was caused by humans, then it is as understandable as any other human event", Kinloch finally concludes that this "will itself help to make any repetition of the Nazi genocide less likely". One danger, however, from this attempt to "demystify", argues Arno Lustiger, can lead to another mystification proffering "clichés about the behaviour of the doomed Jews [which depict] their alleged cowardliness, compliance, submission, collaboration and lack of passive or armed resistance". He goes on to echo the early critics of (the no longer marginalized) Hilberg, stating that: "it is about time to publish researched testimonies of the victims and survivors [as opposed to those] documentations and books, based solely on German documents." An altogether different argument challenged the view that since the Nazis destroyed massive sets of sensitive documents pertaining to the Holocaust upon the arrival of Soviet and Western Allied troops, no truly comprehensive, verifiable historical reconstruction could be achieved. This, however, argues Hilberg, demonstrates an ignorance as to the structure and scope of the Nazi bureaucracy. While it is true that many sensitive documents were destroyed, the bureaucracy nonetheless was so immense and so dispersed, that most pertinent materials could be reconstructed either from copies or from a vast array of more peripheral ones. From these documents, "The Destruction" proceeds to outline the treatment of the Jews by the Nazi State through a succession of very different stages, each one more extreme, more dehumanizing than that which preceded it, eventually leading to the final stage: the physical destruction of the European Jews. Stages leading to the destruction process. In "The Destruction", Hilberg established what today has become orthodoxy in Holocaust historiography: the increasingly intensifying historical stages leading to genocide. Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, Hilberg argued, began relatively mildly through political-legal discrimination and the appropriation of Jewish assets (1933–39). Ghettoization followed: the isolation of Jews in and their confinement to Ghettoes (1939–41). The final stage, Hilberg concluded, was the destruction itself, the continental annihilation of European Jews (1941–45). In the early stages, Nazi policies targeting Jews (whether directly or through aryanization) treated them as sub-human, but with a right to live under such conditions that this status affords. In the later stages, policy was formulated to define the Jews as anti-human, with extermination being viewed as an increasingly urgent necessity. The growing Nazi momentum of destruction, began with the murdering of Jews in German and German-annexed and occupied countries, and then intensified into a search for Jews to either exterminate or use as forced labour from countries allied with Nazi Germany as well as neutral countries. The more sophisticated and organized, less clandestine part of the Nazi machinery of destruction tended to murder Jews not fit for intense manual labour immediately; later in the destruction process, more and more Jews initially labelled productive were also murdered. Eventually, Nazi compulsion for the eradication of the Jews became total and absolute, with any potentially available Jews being actively sought solely for the purpose of destruction. The seamless transformation from yet inextricable distinction between these stages, could be realized only through and put into practice by this very compounding process of an ever-growing dehumanization. As demonized as the Jews were, it seems highly unlikely that the destruction process of the later stage could take place during the time line of the stage which preceded it. An intentional destruction. This dynamic reveals a spontaneity which many historians belonging to the "functionalist" school, following Hilberg's elaborate description, relied upon. These historians point to the more clandestine mass murder of Jews (principally in the East) and, as stated by notable functionalist, Martin Broszat, because "no general all encompassing directive for the extermination had existed." Unlike many later scholars, "The Destruction" does not emphasize and focus on the role of Hitler, though on this, Hilberg has shifted more towards the centre, with the third edition pointing at a less direct and systemic, more erratic and sporadic, but nonetheless pivotal, involvement by Hitler in his support for the destruction process. Hitler was a crucial impetus for the genocide, Hilberg claimed, but the role played by the organs of the State and the Nazi Party should not be understated. Hitler, therefore, intended to eradicate the Jews, an intent he sometimes phrased in concrete terms, but often this intent on the part of Hitler was interpreted by rather than dictated to those at the helm of the bureaucratic machinery of destruction which administered and carried out the genocide of the Jews. An estimated destruction of 5.1 million Jews. Within a death toll often viewed as ranging from a low estimate of five million to a high estimate of seven million, Hilberg's own detailed breakdown in "The Destruction" reveals a total estimated death toll of 5.1 million Jews. Only for the death toll at Belzec does Hilberg provide a precise figure, all the others are rounded. When these rounding factors are taken into account a range of 4.9 million to 5.4 million deaths emerges. It is instructive to note that the discrepancy in total figures among Holocaust researchers is often overshadowed by that between Soviet and Western scholarship. One striking example can be seen in the Auschwitz State Museum's significant reduction of the estimated death toll in Auschwitz. On May 12, 1945, a few months after the liberation of Auschwitz, a Soviet State Commission reported that no fewer than four million people were murdered there. Although few scholars west of the Iron Curtain accepted this report, this number was displayed on a plaque at the Auschwitz State Museum until the fall of communism in 1991, when it could be revised to 1.1 million. Hilberg's own original estimate for the death toll in Auschwitz was examined although, Piper noted, this estimate fails to account for those not appearing in the records, especially those murdered immediately upon arrival. This extreme example does not, however, mean that the total death toll should be lowered by three million. Rather, the four million figure should be regarded as Soviet propaganda; following a correct distribution, the total death toll still amounts to conventionally held figures. The role played by "The Destruction" in shaping widely held views as to the distribution of and the evidence for these, has for decades been, and arguably remains, almost canonical in Holocaust historiography. Wide acclamation as seminal. Reviewing the book just after publication, Guggenheim Fellow Andreas Dorpalen wrote that Hilberg had "covered his topic with such thoroughness that his book will long remain a basic source of information on this tragic subject." Today, "The Destruction" has achieved a highly distinguished level of prestige amongst Holocaust historians. While its ideas have been modified (including by Hilberg himself) and criticized throughout four decades, few in the field dispute its being a monumental work, in both originality and scope. Reviewing the appreciably expanded 1,440-page second edition, Holocaust historian Christopher Browning noted that Hilberg "has improved a classic, not an easy task." And while Browning maintains that, with the exception of Hitler's role, there are no fundamental changes to the work's principal findings, he nevertheless states that: The controversies surrounding Hilberg's book were perhaps the main reason why its Polish translation was released only after the collapse of the Soviet union, five decades after its original publication. The year Hilberg died, he refused an offer to have a shortened version published in translation, insisting that particularly in Poland, where so much of the Holocaust took place, only the full text of his work would suffice. The complete three-volume edition translated by Jerzy Giebułtowski was released in Poland in 2013. Dariusz Libionka from IPN, who led the book launch seminars in various cities, noted that the stories of defiance so prevalent in Poland can no longer be told without his perspective which includes the viewpoint of Holocaust bureaucracy. Reportedly, the last document Hilberg signed before his death was the release form allowing for the use of the word "annihilation" (as opposed to "destruction") in the Polish title. Alleged mistakes. According to Henry Friedlander, Hilberg's 1961 and 1985 editions of "Destruction" mistakenly overlooked what Friedlander called "the most elaborate [Nazi] subterfuge" involving the disabled. This involved the collection of Jewish patients at various hospitals before being transported elsewhere and killed during the summer and autumn of 1940. Friedlander discusses this ruse in Chapter 13 of his "Origins of Nazi Genocide" (1995). According to Lithuanian-American scholar Saulius Sužiedėlis, Hilberg misinterpreted a document regarding Algirdas Klimaitis, "a small-time journalist and killer shunned by even pro-Nazi Lithuanian elements and unknown to most Lithuanians". This resulted in Klimaitis being inadvertently "transformed into the head of the 'anti-Soviet partisans.

leveling exercise

1649-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60316348

In mathematics, finiteness properties of a group are a collection of properties that allow the use of various algebraic and topological tools, for example group cohomology, to study the group. It is mostly of interest for the study of infinite groups. Special cases of groups with finiteness properties are finitely generated and finitely presented groups. Topological finiteness properties. Given an integer "n" ≥ 1, a group formula_1 is said to be "of type" "F""n" if there exists an aspherical CW-complex whose fundamental group is isomorphic to formula_1 (a classifying space for formula_1) and whose "n"-skeleton is finite. A group is said to be of type "F"∞ if it is of type "F""n" for every "n". It is of type "F" if there exists a finite aspherical CW-complex of which it is the fundamental group. For small values of "n" these conditions have more classical interpretations: It is known that for every "n" ≥ 1 there are groups of type "F""n" which are not of type "F""n"+1. Finite groups are of type "F"∞ but not of type "F". Thompson's group formula_4 is an example of a torsion-free group which is of type "F"∞ but not of type "F". A reformulation of the "F""n" property is that a group has it if and only if it acts properly discontinuously, freely and cocompactly on a CW-complex whose homotopy groups formula_5 vanish. Another finiteness property can be formulated by replacing homotopy with homology: a group is said to be of type "FH"n if it acts as above on a CW-complex whose "n" first homology groups vanish. Algebraic finiteness properties. Let formula_1 be a group and formula_7 its group ring. The group formula_1 is said to be of type FP"n" if there exists a resolution of the trivial formula_7-module formula_10 such that the "n" first terms are finitely generated projective formula_7-modules. The types "FP"∞ and "FP" are defined in the obvious way. The same statement with projective modules replaced by free modules defines the classes "FL""n" for "n" ≥ 1, "FL"∞ and "FL". It is also possible to define classes "FP""n"("R") and "FL""n"("R") for any commutative ring "R", by replacing the group ring formula_7 by formula_13 in the definitions above. Either of the conditions "F"n or "FH""n" imply "FP""n" and "FL""n" (over any commutative ring). A group is of type "FP"1 if and only if it is finitely generated, but for any "n" ≥ 2 there exists groups which are of type "FP""n" but not "F""n". Group cohomology. If a group is of type "FP""n" then its cohomology groups formula_14 are finitely generated for formula_15. If it is of type "FP" then it is of finite cohomological dimension. Thus finiteness properties play an important role in the cohomology theory of groups. Examples. Finite groups. A finite group formula_16 acts freely on the unit sphere in formula_17, preserving a CW-complex structure with finitely many cells in each dimension. Since this unit sphere is contractible, every finite group is of type F∞. A non-trivial finite group is never of type "F" because it has infinite cohomological dimension. This also implies that a group with a non-trivial torsion subgroup is never of type "F". Nilpotent groups. If formula_1 is a torsion-free, finitely generated nilpotent group then it is of type F. Geometric conditions for finiteness properties. Negatively curved groups (hyperbolic or CAT(0) groups) are always of type "F"∞. Such a group is of type "F" if and only if it is torsion-free. As an example, cocompact S-arithmetic groups in algebraic groups over number fields are of type F∞. The Borel–Serre compactification shows that this is also the case for non-cocompact arithmetic groups. Arithmetic groups over function fields have very different finiteness properties: if formula_1 is an arithmetic group in a simple algebraic group of rank formula_20 over a global function field (such as formula_21) then it is of type Fr but not of type Fr+1.

thompson's association

5943-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12082608

Madise (also Harju-Madise) is a village in Lääne-Harju Parish, Harju County, Estonia. It is the birthplace of Bengt Gottfried Forselius. Harju-Madise Church. Harju-Madise Church is located on a high limestone cliff about half a kilometre from the seashore. The first sanctuary on the site was a small wooden construction that was replaced by a stone construction in the 15th century. Because of the unique position on a high shore the church tower was also used as a lighthouse. Only the western portal of the original church has been preserved to date. During reconstruction work in 1760–80, the choir, vestry and tower were added to the original building. In middle of nineteenth century the Baltic-German noblemen of Padise (then "Padis") and Leetse manors wanted to celebrate the coronation of the new czar, Alexander II, so the tower was built even higher and supported by side pillars. Inside the church the most outstanding elements are a pulpit carved by Johann Valentin Rabe and a painted shrine donated by the landlord of Põllküla.

particular location

418-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16144918

Freedom of religion in Singapore is a guaranteed right under Article 15 of the Constitution of Singapore which states: "Every person has the right to profess and practise his religion and to propagate it." This freedom, however, is not an unfettered one and can be restricted by a general law relating to public order, public health or morality. Singapore is a secular state and has no state religion. It was named the most religiously diverse nation by the Pew Research Center in 2014. Singapore deregistered the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1972 because of their opposition to military service which is obligatory for all male citizens. A decade later, it dissolved the Unification Church for allegedly breaking up families. The Sedition Act prohibits seditious acts and speech which "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore," and the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act empowers the Minister for Home Affairs to take a pre-emptive approach by issuing restraining orders against a religious leader that has committed or is attempting to commit certain acts threatening religious harmony. Religious demography. Singapore has an area of and a total population of 5.31 million (as of June 2013), of whom 3.6 million are citizens or permanent residents. According to a 2000 government survey, 85 percent of citizens and permanent residents profess some religious faith. Of this group, 51 percent practice Buddhism, Taoism, ancestor worship, or other religious practice traditionally associated with the ethnic Chinese population. Approximately 15 percent of the population is Muslim, 15 percent Christian, and 4 percent Hindu. The remainder is composed of atheists, agnostics, and adherents of other religions including small Sikh, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Jain communities. Among Christians, the majority of whom are ethnic Chinese, Protestants outnumber Roman Catholics by slightly more than two to one. Approximately 77.8% of the resident population is ethnic Chinese, 14% ethnic Malay, and 7% ethnic Indian. Nearly all ethnic Malays are Muslim and most ethnic Indians are Hindu. The ethnic Chinese population is divided between Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity, or is nonreligious. Foreign missionaries are active in the country. Legal and policy framework. The Constitution of Singapore provides for freedom of religion as a guaranteed right under Article 15 which states: "Every person has the right to profess and practise his religion and to propagate it." While there is no state religion in Signapore, the government plays an active but limited role in religious affairs. For example, it seeks to ensure that citizens, most of whom live in government-built housing, have ready access to religious organizations traditionally associated with their ethnic groups by helping such institutions find space in these housing complexes. The government also maintains a semiofficial relationship with the Muslim community through the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS). The MUIS advises the government on concerns of the Muslim community, drafts the approved weekly sermon, regulates some Muslim religious matters, and oversees a mosque-building fund financed by voluntary payroll deductions. The Constitution acknowledges Malay/Muslims to be "the indigenous people of Singapore" and charges the Government specifically to promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social, cultural, and language interests. The 1961 Women's Charter gives women, among other rights, the right to own property, conduct trade, and receive divorce settlements. Muslim women enjoy most of the rights and protections of the Women's Charter; however, for the most part, Muslim marriage law falls under the administration of the 1966 Administration of Muslim Law Act, which empowers the Shari'a court to oversee such matters. The act also allows Muslim men to practice polygamy. Requests to take additional wives may be refused by the Registry of Muslim Marriages, which solicits the views of existing wives and reviews the financial capability of the husband. As of 2007, there were 44 applications for polygamous marriage and 13 applications were approved. The Presidential Council for Minority Rights examines all pending bills to ensure that they do not disadvantage a particular group. It also reports to the Government on matters affecting any racial or religious community and investigates complaints. There were no complaints or reports to the Presidential Council on Minority Rights from the fiscal year 2005/2006. There are official holy days for each major religion in the country: Hari Raya Haji and Hari Raya Puasa for Muslims, Christmas and Good Friday for Christians, Deepavali for Hindus, and Vesak Day for Buddhists. The Government promotes interfaith understanding indirectly by sponsoring activities to promote interethnic harmony. Because the primary ethnic minorities are predominantly of one faith each, government programs to promote ethnic harmony have implications for interfaith relations. In February 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong unveiled the Community Engagement Programme (CEP). The goal of the CEP is to promote multiracial and interreligious harmony, in part so that a strong foundation would be in place should an incident that could provoke ethnic/religious discord, such as a religiously related terrorist attack, occur in the country. The CEP has held numerous community-based seminars, worked with trade unions to form cluster working groups on religious and community harmony, and launched a new website as a platform for communication and dialogue. The Compulsory Education Act of 2000 mandates attendance at public schools for all children, with few exceptions. In response to concern from the Malay/Muslim community regarding the fate of madrassahs, the government decided to allow Muslim students to attend school at a madrassah in lieu of a public school. Today, there are six full-time madrasahs with approximately 4,400 students and 220 religious teachers in total. The Sedition Act prohibits seditious acts and speech which "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore." The maximum penalty for a first offender is a fine of up to S$5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding three years or both, and for a subsequent offender imprisonment not exceeding five years. A statutory counterpart to the Sedition Act is section 298A of the Penal Code, which was introduced in 2007 to "criminalise the deliberate promotion by someone of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different racial and religious groups on grounds of race or religion." The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act empowers the Minister for Home Affairs to take a pre-emptive approach by issuing restraining orders against a religious leader that has committed or is attempting to commit certain acts threatening religious harmony. The overlapping array of the above legislative arrangements is designed to leave the choice of a suitable response to prosecutorial discretion when faced with potential mischiefs of a religious nature. Restrictions on religious groups. Deregistration of Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1972 the government deregistered the Singapore Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses on the grounds that its existence was prejudicial to public welfare and order because its members refuse to perform military service (obligatory for all male citizens), salute the flag, or swear oaths of allegiance to the state. At the time, there were approximately 200 Jehovah's Witnesses in the country; as of 2007 there were approximately two thousand. Although the Court of Appeals in 1996 upheld the rights of members of Jehovah's Witnesses to profess, practice, and propagate their religious belief, and the Government does not arrest members for being believers, the result of deregistration has been to make public meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses illegal. Nevertheless, since the 1996 ruling, no charges have been brought against persons attending or holding Jehovah's Witness meetings in private homes. The government can also influence religious practice through the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act. The act was passed in 1990 and revised in 2001 in response to actions that the Government viewed as threats to religious harmony. This includes aggressive and "insensitive" proselytizing and "the mixing of religion and politics." The act established the Presidential Council on Religious Harmony, which reports to the Minister for Home Affairs and is empowered to issue restraining orders against leaders and members of religious groups to prevent them from carrying out political activities, "exciting disaffection against" the Government, creating "ill will" between religious groups, or carrying out subversive activities. These orders place individuals on notice that they should not repeat such acts; contravening a restraining order can result in fines of up to $6,622 (SGD 10,000) and up to two years' imprisonment for a first offense. The act also prohibits judicial review of its enforcement or of any possible denial of rights arising from it. Missionaries, with the exception of members of Jehovah's Witnesses and representatives of the Unification Church, are permitted to work and to publish and distribute religious texts. However, while the Government does not prohibit evangelical activities, in practice it discourages activities that might upset the balance of intercommunal relations. As of 2007, authorities did not detain any Jehovah's Witnesses for proselytizing. The government has banned all written materials published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and other corporations of Jehovah's Witnesses. In practice this has led to confiscation of Bibles published by the groups, although the Bible itself has not been outlawed. A person in possession of banned literature can be fined up to SGD 2,000 (USD 1,324) and jailed up to 12 months for a first conviction. There were no government seizures of Jehovah's Witnesses literature already in the country during the previous 12-month period. In August 2006 one individual was detained briefly for attempting to bring Jehovah's Witnesses publications into the country from Malaysia. In this instance, the literature was confiscated and he was convicted of smuggling prohibited media. Authorities fined the individual SGD 6,000 (US$3,846). There were reports of Jehovah's Witnesses students being suspended from school for refusing to sing the national anthem or participate in the flag ceremony. There were 23 members of Jehovah's Witnesses incarcerated in the armed forces detention barracks because they refused to carry out the legal obligation for all male citizens to serve in the armed forces. The initial sentence for failure to comply with the military service requirement is 15 months' imprisonment, to which 24 months are added upon a second refusal. Failure to perform annual military reserve duty, which is required of all those who have completed their initial two-year obligation, results in 40-day sentences; a 12-month sentence is usual after four such refusals. All of the Jehovah's Witnesses in detention were incarcerated for failing to perform their initial military obligations and expect to serve a total of 39 months. As of January 2019, there are 9 Jehovah's witnesses in prison. Ban on International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Singapore banned the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in the 1970s and it remains banned today. Foreign ISKCON monks as well as Srila Prabhupada, founder of the Hare Krishna movement, were barred from entering Singapore, and all attempts by followers to officially register the society failed. Nevertheless, by avoiding affiliation with ISKCON, Hare Krishna followers have subsequently succeeded in registering their societies under different names. These include the Sri Krishna Mandir in Geylang and the Gita Reading Society at the Gauranga Centre in Serangoon. Dissolution of the Unification Church. In 1982 the Minister for Home Affairs dissolved the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, also known as the Unification Church (and colloquially as "Moonies"), for allegedly breaking up families. Dissolution of the Christian Conference of Asia. In January 1987, Singapore shut down the office of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), a regional ecumenical fellowship of churches and denominational councils across the Asia Pacific, for allegedly interfering in its local politics. The Ministry of Home Affairs accused the CCA of backing liberation movements and financing pro-communist movements in other countries, and giving financial support to Vincent Cheng Kim Chuan, a full-time Catholic Church worker, one of 22 people detained under the Internal Security Act, allowing detention without trial, for taking part in an alleged "Marxist Conspiracy" to overthrow the government. Singapore Special Branch officers entered the office, informing staff members of the dissolution and telling them to clear out. CCA general secretary Reverend Kenichi Otsu of Japan, Park Sang-jung of South Korea, Pura Calo of the Philippines and Nelun Gunasekara and Sri Lanka were expelled from Singapore and ordered to leave with their families. "The Singapore government does not presume to judge the rights and wrongs of liberation theology movements in other countries," said the ministry in a statement. "But by promoting political causes in the region and supporting radical activists in Singapore, the CCA has clearly breached its undertaking not to engage in political activities." City Harvest Church criminal breach of trust case. In October 2015, following a years-long trial, City Harvest Church founder Kong Hee and five other church officials were found guilty of the misappropriation of S$50 million in church funds, S$24 million of which were used to invest in sham bonds to bankroll the pop music career of his wife, Ho Yeow Sun. The case was the biggest criminal breach of trust case in the history of Singapore. While defendants argued that their actions were meant to further a religious cause, namely evangelism through Ho's entry into the world of pop music, the trial ended with all six convicted, jailed and permanently barred from having overall administrative control of any charity. Arrest of Shincheonji church members. In February 2020, Singapore began a probe into the unregistered local chapter of the Korean new religious movement Shincheonji Church of Jesus. The apocalyptic, messianic sect was known for being the centre of the first COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea. The group had fewer than 100 members in Singapore and operated covertly through a front company called Spasie Enrichment. The Ministry of Home Affairs said the group had earlier tried, and failed, to register a company under the name of Heavenly Culture, World Peace and Restoration of Light. In November 2020, 21 members of the group were arrested for being members of an unlawful society. Five South Korean nationals who held key positions were repatriated and the group's front entities were dissolved, Notable incidents. Comments on Buddhism and Taoism by Pastor Rony Tan. In February 2010, online videos posted on the website of Lighthouse Evangelism of sermons by then-senior pastor Rony Tan suggesting that Buddhism and Taoism were Satanic caused an uproar in Singapore, prompting a visit by the government's Internal Security Department. Tan swiftly pulled the videos off the website, and met with Buddhist and Taoist leaders to offer a personal apology. Returning to the pulpit that weekend, Tan said the church was "in the process of eliminating all possible offensive recorded material" and urged church members "not to circulate our past sermons which may provoke religious sensitivity". Expulsion of Indian imam. In April 2017, Nalla Mohamed Abdul Jameel, the chief imam at Jamae Chulia Mosque for over seven years, was fined S$4,000 and repatriated to India after pleading guilty to "promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion", and committing an "act prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony". In a video circulated online, the imam recited a prayer in Arabic that said “God help us against Jews and Christians”, among other things, was circulated online. He later apologised to Jewish and Christian leaders in closed-door meetings, saying that the additional supplication he read was not from the Quran, but an old Arabic text originating from his village in India. A statement by the Ministry of Home Affairs said the action was "taken with some regret". It described the imam as having worked diligently "attending to the needs of his congregation, and reaching out to other faiths" and was "not deliberately malicious.” Two Muslim Singaporeans were issued stern warnings in connection with the incident. One man was warned for posting the video on Facebook instead of filing a police report. Another, a Malay studies associate professor at the National University of Singapore, wrote a Facebook post that was seen to be made in support of the imam. Two foreign Christian preachers denied entry. In September 2017, the Ministry of Home Affairs said two foreign Christian preachers had been denied short term work passes to speak in the country. The ministry did not name the preachers but said they had made "denigrating and inflammatory comments of other religions" in the past. One of them was identified by The Straits Times as American preacher Dutch Sheets who had allegedly described Allah as "a false god", and called for prayers for those "held captive in the darkness of Islam". He also referred to Buddhists as "Tohuw", a Hebrew word meaning "lost, lifeless, confused and spiritually barren". The other unnamed preacher referred to "the evils of Islam" and "the malevolent nature of Islam and Muhammad". He called Islam "not a religion of peace", "an incredibly confused religion", interested in "world domination" and "a religion based on... adhering to uncompromising and cruel laws often focused on warfare and virtual slavery". Home affairs and law minister K Shanmugam was quoted in local press reports as saying, "Just as I have banned Muslim scholars or preachers from coming into Singapore, the most recent banning has been (for) Christian preachers. They were very Islamophobic in their statements outside of Singapore, and we decided we will ban them." Bans on Mufti Menk and Ustaz Haslin Baharim. In October 2017, Singapore banned Salafi preacher Mufti Menk, the Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe, and Ustaz Haslin Baharim of Malaysia, from entering Singapore. The Ministry of Home Affairs said the pair had previously had their Miscellaneous Work Pass applications to preach in the country rejected, and would not be allowed to get around the ban by preaching on religious-themed cruises operating from Singapore. Mufti Menk had previously described LGBT people as being "worse than animals", and put forward the view that wishing non-Muslims "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Deepavali" was "the highest form of blasphemy". Haslin Baharim had previously described non-Muslims as "deviant". Johor's Sultan Ibrahim Ismail in neighbouring Malaysia followed suit by issuing a decree to ban the pair from the state. Controversy over remarks by American preacher Lou Engle. In March 2018, remarks by fundamentalist American preacher Lou Engle that were made at a three-day conference organised by Cornerstone Community Church created an uproar. Engle had addressed thousands attending the conference, saying, “The Muslims are taking over the south of Spain. But I had a dream, where I will raise up the church all over Spain to push back a new modern Muslim movement.” Cornerstone Community Church filed a police report against "Rice Media", the online news startup that first reported the remarks. The church said the article was a “scurrilous attack” and that it had a “seditious tendency”. It also said the article contained serious allegations "that seek to, and has the effect of, stirring up religious tensions and promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims". Yang Tuck Yoong, senior pastor of the church, later said Engle's remarks were "never meant to be an indictment against Muslims or the Muslim community in Spain as a whole. Instead, he was referring to the radical Islamic insurgency, including ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) advances into that nation with intentions of pressing its brand of militant ideology. He expressed his apologies that the choice of words used might have caused unnecessary misunderstandings, as it had not been in his intention to do so." Engle did not comply with a request by the police department to return to Singapore to cooperate with investigations. Yang later met with the Mufti of Singapore and other Muslim community leaders to offer an apology. He said the church was unaware of Engle's controversial past and informed him that he would not be able to speak in Singapore in future. At an interfaith visit with a mosque months later, Yang said the church had tightened protocols and procedures to ensure "something like this never happens again".

malicious persona

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10717506

"Swarley" is the seventh episode in the second season of the television series "How I Met Your Mother". It originally aired on November 6, 2006. The name "Swarley" is taken from an in-episode joke. A coffee shop barista mistakenly hears Barney's name as "Swarley" and writes it on his cup. This leads to a running gag in which everyone mercilessly refers to Barney as "Swarley" despite his protests. This culminates to the point of the entire bar shouting "Swarley" when he enters, as a callback to the sitcom "Cheers". Plot. The men go to a coffee shop, where Ted points out that Chloe (Morena Baccarin), the woman working there, has drawn a heart next to Marshall's name on his cup. Ted insists that Chloe has a crush on Marshall because she always laughs at his bad joke about how they fit a pumpkin into a pumpkin-flavored latte. She hasn't added hearts on Ted's or Barney's cups, but has written Barney's name as "Swarley", prompting everyone to call him the name for the duration of the episode. Barney protests, but variations on the nickname become a running gag throughout the episode. Ted then proceeds to teach Marshall to use his charm to convince Chloe to go out with him. As Marshall leaves, his name is called for an unordered pumpkin latte on which Chloe has written her number. Later, when Marshall introduces Chloe to Ted and Barney at the bar, they tell him that she has the "Crazy Eyes", an indicator of future mental instability. Both Ted and Barney give Marshall examples of their experiences with this malady; Barney's crazy-eyed date wanted a threesome with a teddy bear, while Ted's crazy-eyed date picked up a long metal rod and repeatedly hit a car that nearly hit them as they were about to cross the street. Marshall shrugs it off. The next day, as Marshall is taking a test, he receives a call from Chloe who says that she is being followed by a hunchback with a limp. Later, Marshall takes Chloe back to his apartment and suspects that she broke a picture of him and Lily that was sitting on the end table, and decides to look into her eyes to see whether she is crazy or not. However, to Marshall and Chloe's surprise, Lily, who has been hiding in the apartment, pops out from behind the couch. Earlier in the week, Lily confided in Robin that she is scared by the idea of Marshall going out on a date with another woman. Despite hearing that Ted believes she has crazy eyes, Lily wanted to see what Chloe looks like. It turns out that Lily was the hunchback following Chloe—she was carrying a book bag, then covered herself with a coat to shield herself from the rain (the hump), and limped because she hit her knee while concentrating on seeing the face of Chloe. Lily, while visiting Ted and Robin in the apartment, realized that Marshall had moved the picture of the two of them. She sneaked into the apartment before Marshall brought Chloe home to put it in a more conspicuous place, and it broke. While hiding from Marshall and Chloe, she got upset and jumped out. Lily introduces herself, and leaves the apartment dejected and crying. Marshall follows her out to the steps, leaving Chloe sitting on the sofa. Marshall realizes that he should get back together with Lily even though he says that Lily has the craziest eyes he has ever seen. Six months after Ted came back to the apartment and found Marshall alone and upset after the engagement ended, he and Barney return to find Marshall and Lily happy and back together. The gang first goes to McLaren's for a drink and then returns upstairs to the apartment, finding it has been ransacked by Chloe who has been "searching" for her "lost" keys which are in fact sitting in plain sight on the coffee table in front of where she had been sitting. Marshall points out the keys and Chloe departs, leaving a nonplussed gang and apparently proving the "Crazy Eyes" theory. As she leaves, Chloe calls Robin "Roland", and Barney tries to use it as an opportunity to stop everyone from calling him "Swarley", to no success. In the final scene, Barney walks into the bar, everyone shouts "Swarley" referencing the entrance of Norm Peterson from "Cheers" and he turns and walks out dejectedly as Carl the bartender plays the "Cheers" theme: "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." The credits are then presented in the same font used on the show "Cheers". Critical reception. Staci Krause of IGN said "the whole Swarley joke had gotten very old" by the end of the episode, although "it was funny for the first ten or so times" and "the homage paid to "Cheers" was well appreciated". Krause said the animated effects used for the women with 'crazy eyes' was "rather stupid", but that the story came to a "great conclusion" as Lily crying was "one of the best emotional moments this show has ever given us". Both Digital Spy and "Radio Times" listed "Swarley" as one of the ten best "How I Met Your Mother" episodes, with the latter describing it as "one of the most ridiculous episodes of How I Met Your Mother", but claiming "that's exactly why it works".

whole establishment

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=113549

Scream is a 1996 American meta slasher film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, and Drew Barrymore. Released on December 20, it follows the character of Sidney Prescott (Campbell), a high school student in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California, who becomes the target of a mysterious killer in a Halloween costume known as Ghostface. The film combines black comedy and "whodunit" mystery with the violence of the slasher genre to satirize the clichés of the horror movie genre popularized in films such as "Halloween" (1978), "Friday the 13th" (1980) and Craven's own "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). "Scream" was considered unique at the time of its release for featuring characters who were aware of real-world horror films and openly discussed the clichés that the film attempted to subvert. Inspired by the real-life case of the Gainesville Ripper, "Scream" was influenced by Williamson's passion for horror films, especially "Halloween" (1978). The script, originally titled "Scary Movie", was bought by Dimension Films and was retitled by the Weinstein Brothers just before filming was complete. The production faced censorship issues with the Motion Picture Association of America and obstacles from locals while filming on location. The film received positive reviews and was a financial success, earning $173 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing slasher film until the release of "Halloween" (2018). It still remains the highest-grossing slasher film in adjusted dollars. It received several awards and award nominations. The soundtrack by Marco Beltrami was also acclaimed, and was cited as "[one] of the most intriguing horror scores composed in years". The score has since earned "cult status". "Scream" marked a change in the genre as it cast already-established and successful actors, which was considered to have helped it find a wider audience, including a significant female viewership. "Scream" was credited with revitalizing the horror genre in the 1990s, which was considered to be almost dead following an influx of direct-to-video titles and numerous sequels to established horror franchises of the 1970s and 1980s. These sequels drew decreasing financial and critical success, as they exploited clichés upon which films in the genre had become reliant. "Scream"s success spawned a series of sequels, though only "Scream 2", released the following year, achieved an equal level of commercial and critical success. In the years following the release of "Scream" and its sequels, they were accused of inspiring and even inducing violent crimes and murders. Plot. High school student Casey Becker receives a flirty phone call from an unknown person, during which they discuss horror movies. However, the caller turns sadistic and threatens her life. He reveals that her boyfriend Steve Orth is being held hostage on her patio and demands she answer questions about horror films. After Casey gets one wrong, Steve is murdered in front of her. When Casey refuses to answer more questions, she is murdered by a masked assailant as her parents come home. Shortly after, they find her corpse hanging from a tree. The following day, the news media descend on the town and a police investigation begins. Meanwhile, Sidney Prescott struggles with the impending first anniversary of her mother, Maureen's, murder by her lover Cotton Weary. While waiting at home for her friend Tatum Riley, Sidney receives a taunting phone call. After she hangs up, she is attacked by the killer but evades them. Sidney's boyfriend Billy Loomis arrives shortly after, but after he drops his cell phone, Sidney suspects him of making the call and flees. Billy is arrested and Sidney spends the night at Tatum's house, where she receives another ominous call. The next day, Billy is released and suspicion shifts to Sidney's father Neil Prescott, as the calls have been traced to his phone. School is suspended in the wake of the murders. After the students have left the school, the killer stabs Principal Himbry to death in his office. Tatum's boyfriend Stu Macher throws a party to celebrate the school's closure. The party is attended by Sidney, Tatum, their friend Randy Meeks, and many other students. Reporter Gale Weathers attends uninvited to cover the situation, as she expects the killer to strike. Tatum's brother deputy sheriff Dewey Riley also looks out for the murderer at the party. The killer corners Tatum in the garage and murders her by crushing her neck with the garage door. Billy arrives to speak to Sidney privately and the two have sex, while Dewey and Gale investigate the area nearby. Many party attendees are drawn away after hearing news of Himbry's death, leaving only Sidney, Billy, Randy, Stu, and Gale's cameraman Kenny. After having sex, Sidney and Billy are attacked by the killer, who presumably kills Billy. Sidney narrowly escapes from the house and seeks help from Kenny, but the killer slashes his throat. Gale and Dewey, having discovered an abandoned car that belongs to Neil Prescott, make their way back. Gale tries to escape in her van but drives off the road to avoid hitting Sidney and crashes. Meanwhile, Dewey is stabbed in the back while investigating in the house, and Sidney takes his gun for protection. Stu and Randy appear and accuse each other of being the killer. Sidney retreats into the house, where she finds Billy wounded but still alive. She gives Billy the gun before he lets Randy into the house and shoots him. Billy reveals that he feigned his injuries and is actually the killer, with Stu shortly outing himself as his accomplice. Billy and Stu discuss their plan to kill Sidney and pin the murder spree on her father, whom they have taken hostage. The pair also reveal that they murdered her mother and framed Cotton for it, as she was having an affair with Billy's father, which drove his mother away. Gale, who survived the crash, intervenes, and Sidney takes advantage of this to turn the tables on her attackers, knocking out Billy with an umbrella and dropping a television set on Stu's head. Billy then awakens and attacks Sidney, but Gale shoots him. Randy is revealed to be wounded but alive, and remarks that the killer always resurfaces for one last scare. Sidney takes the gun and shoots Billy in the head, killing him for good. As the sun rises and police arrive, Dewey, badly injured, is taken away by ambulance and Gale makes an impromptu news report about the night's events. Production. Writing. "Scream" was originally developed under the title "Scary Movie" by Kevin Williamson, an aspiring screenwriter. Influenced by a news story he was watching about a series of grisly murders by the Gainesville Ripper, Williamson became concerned about intruders upon finding an open window in the house where he was staying. He was inspired to draft an 18-page script treatment about a young woman, alone in a house, who is taunted over the phone and then attacked by a masked killer. The treatment remained as a short story while Williamson worked on another script, "Teaching Mrs. Tingle", a thriller that he would eventually sell but that would languish in development hell for many years. Struggling to pay his bills, Williamson secluded himself in Palm Springs and focused on the development of his "Scary Movie" treatment, hoping for a quick sale to meet his financial needs. Over the course of three days, Williamson developed a full-length script as well as two separate five-page outlines for potential sequels—"Scary Movie 2" and "Scary Movie 3". He hoped to entice buyers with the potential for a franchise. In an interview, Williamson said that one reason he focused on the "Scary Movie" script was because it was a film he wanted to watch, born of his childhood love of horror films such as "Halloween", but "nobody else [was] making it". His appreciation for previous horror films became evident in the script, which was inspired by and references films such as "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "When a Stranger Calls", and "Prom Night". Williamson listened to the soundtrack of "Halloween" for inspiration while writing the script. Excerpts from the soundtrack appear in the film. By June 1995 Williamson brought the "Scary Movie" script to his agent, Rob Paris, to put out for sale. Paris warned him that the level of violence and gore in his script would make it "impossible" to sell. Following the script's purchase by Miramax, Williamson was required to remove much of the gorier content, such as graphic depictions of the internal organs of gutted murder victims "rolling" down their legs. However, once Craven was secured as director, he was able to bring much of the excised content back. Williamson was going to remove a scene in the school bathroom featuring Sidney, as he felt it was awkward and out of place in the film. Craven insisted the scene should remain, as he felt it developed the character and her relationship with her deceased mother. Williamson later confirmed that he was glad that Craven proved him wrong about the scene. Dimension Films head Bob Weinstein realized while reviewing the script that there were thirty pages (approximately thirty on-screen minutes) without a murder, so he instructed Williamson to have another character killed. Williamson included the death of the character Principal Himbry (Winkler) based on this input and in doing so inadvertently resolved a problem in the script's finale. Williamson had struggled to find a reason for several extraneous characters to leave a party scene so that the killer could attack, finally determining that the announcement of the discovery of Himbry's corpse would serve to remove the non-essential characters who are so upset that they leave the party before (and enabling) the start of the murders. Concerning the killers' motives, Williamson felt it was essential for the audience to learn why the antagonists had become killers, but he also felt it was potentially scarier if they had no motivation. Opinions at the studio were split between those who believed a motive was needed for resolution and those who felt the action was scarier without one. As there were two killers, Williamson decided to do both: Billy Loomis had the motive of maternal abandonment, while the second killer, Stu Macher, jokingly suggests "peer pressure" as his motive when prompted. Development. The script for what was then known as "Scary Movie" went on sale on a Friday in June 1995, but received no bids. By the following Monday, the script had become the subject of a significant bidding war among a host of established studios, including Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Morgan Creek Productions. Producer Cathy Konrad read the script and felt it was exactly what the Weinstein brothers of the fledgling Dimension Films — then a part of Miramax — were looking for. Dimension had previously released several horror films and intended to focus on that genre. Konrad brought the script to Bob Weinstein's assistant, Richard Potter. Believing it had potential, he brought it to Weinstein's attention. Studios began to drop out of the bidding as the price of the script increased, and the final two bidders were Oliver Stone, who was at the time working under Cinergi Pictures, and the Weinsteins of Dimension Films. Williamson agreed to a bid of $400,000 from Miramax, plus a contract for two sequels and a possible fourth unrelated film. Williamson said he chose Dimension because he believed they would produce "Scary Movie" immediately and without significantly censoring the violence in the script. Craven read the script before he became involved in the production, and considered convincing a studio to buy it for him to direct. However, by the time Craven read the script, it had already been sold. Bob Weinstein approached Craven early in the planning stages, because he felt Craven's previous work in the genre that combined horror and comedy would make him the perfect person to bring Williamson's script to screen. Craven was already busy developing a remake of "The Haunting" and was considering distancing himself from the horror genre. He was growing weary of what he felt was an inherent misogyny and violence in it. Weinstein approached other directors, including Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle, George A. Romero, and Sam Raimi. Williamson said that they "didn't get it"; he was concerned that having read the script, many of the directors believed the film to be purely a comedy. Craven was approached again but continued to pass in spite of repeated requests. When production of "The Haunting" collapsed, Craven was freed from that commitment and found himself in need of a project. Meanwhile, Drew Barrymore had signed on to the film at her own request. When he heard an established actress wanted to be involved, Craven reasoned that "Scary Movie" might be different from other films of the genre he had previously undertaken, and he contacted Weinstein to accept the job. As the film neared completion, the Weinstein brothers changed the film's title from "Scary Movie" to "Scream". They were inspired by the Michael Jackson song of the same name. Bob Weinstein considered "Scary Movie" to be an unsuitable title as, in addition to the horror and violence, the film contained elements of satire and comedy; Weinstein wished for that to be better conveyed by the title. The change was effected so late into production that congratulatory gifts bore the original name. Williamson and Craven immediately disliked the new title, and considered it "stupid". Both later remarked that the change turned out to be positive, and that Weinstein had been wise to pick the new title. Following a screening of the film in front of a test audience and Miramax executives, Craven was offered a two-picture contract for sequels to "Scream". Sony Pictures filed a lawsuit against Dimension Films and Miramax, claiming that the title "Scream" infringed on the copyright of Sony's own "Screamers" (1995), released the previous year. After the case was settled out of court—the details remain confidential—"Scream 2" producer Marianne Maddalena considered that the case was a result of other issues between the two companies and did not truly pertain to the film's moniker. Maddalena confirmed that the studio was free to use the "Scream" brand for future films. Casting. "Scream" was a turning point in terms of casting for the horror genre, which normally involved relatively unknown actors. The genre was considered unsuitable for bigger names as the films had lower budgets and often attained negative critical response. Drew Barrymore read the script and was interested in being involved. She approached the production team herself to request a role. Barrymore, a member of the Barrymore family of actors and granddaughter of actor John Barrymore, had become a star in her own right following her appearance in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982). The producers were quick to take advantage of her unexpected interest, and signed her to play the lead role of Sidney Prescott. Her involvement was believed to be instrumental in attracting other popular actors to the film in spite of its smaller budget, and in causing Craven to reconsider his decision to direct the film. Before filming began, Barrymore was faced with unexpected commitments that meant she would no longer be available to play the demanding lead role. She instead played the smaller role of Casey Becker, which allowed her to remain involved and still gave the production the advantage of her stature. Killing off one of their biggest stars early in the film was considered a calculated risk, but it was believed that it would be so shocking and unexpected that the audience would then believe that any character could die. Actresses including Alicia Witt and Brittany Murphy auditioned for the lead role of Sidney; the producers also approached Reese Witherspoon, though she never auditioned. Craven had seen Neve Campbell in the TV show "Party of Five" and asked her to audition for the part. He believed she could portray a character who was "innocent", but who could also realistically handle herself while dealing with the physical conflict and emotions required by the role. Campbell was initially reluctant to perform in another horror film so soon after her supporting role in "The Craft". After a successful audition, Campbell accepted an offer to play the lead character. She accepted because "Scream" would be her first leading role, and because she adored the character, saying "She's a fantastic character for any kind of movie." For the character of news reporter Gale Weathers, the studio wanted a recognizable actress. They auditioned Brooke Shields and Janeane Garofalo. Courteney Cox, who was starring in the sitcom "Friends" at the time, approached the production to pursue the role. She was interested in playing a "bitch" character to offset her "nice" "Friends" image. This image was the main reason why the producers initially refused to consider Cox for the part. Cox continued to lobby the studio as she felt she could believably play the character; her efforts ultimately succeeded. Actresses Melinda Clarke and Rebecca Gayheart auditioned for the role of Tatum Riley, then Rose McGowan was cast. The casting director believed she best embodied the "spunky", "cynical" but "innocent" nature of the character. The studio felt the strong female cast of Campbell, Barrymore, Cox, and McGowan would help draw a significant female audience to the film. Gayheart would later land a role in "Scream 2". Kevin Patrick Walls and Justin Whalin were among the final candidates for the key role of Sidney's boyfriend Billy Loomis. Whalin took part in auditions with Campbell. Skeet Ulrich ultimately secured the role. The producers viewed him as "perfect" for the part and noted his resemblance to a young Johnny Depp as he appeared in "A Nightmare on Elm Street", one of the many films referenced in "Scream". Ulrich and Campbell had worked together on "The Craft" shortly before "Scream". They believed the experience helped them be more comfortable with each other, which allowed a more natural portrayal of the relationship between their characters. Though he failed to win the Loomis role, Walls remained in the film in the minor role of Steve Orth, boyfriend of Barrymore's Casey Becker. David Arquette was also approached for the role of Billy Loomis but he asked to read for the part of Dewey Riley after reading the script. The role, described as "hunky", was considered ill-fitting for Arquette's lean, slender appearance and approach but Arquette was still allowed to audition for the part. Craven appreciated his softer, funnier approach to the character, and gave him the role. Matthew Lillard was cast as Billy's equally sadistic friend Stu Macher by chance after accompanying his then-girlfriend to an unrelated audition taking place elsewhere in the same building. Casting director Lisa Beach saw Lillard in the hallway and asked him to audition for the part. He got into the role with "incredible ferocity". The role of Randy Meeks was contested between Jamie Kennedy and Breckin Meyer. The producers favored Kennedy, believing him to best embody the role. As he had no major roles prior to "Scream", the studio wanted a more prominent actor than Kennedy to play the character. The producers were adamant that he was the best choice and successfully fought to keep him. Roger L. Jackson, voice of the character Ghostface, was picked at the end of several weeks of local casting in Santa Rosa, where parts of "Scream" were filmed. The producers had originally intended to use his voice only as a placeholder, dubbing over it during post-production. They decided that Jackson's contribution was perfect and kept it. Craven described it as an "intelligent" and "evil" voice that would become irreplaceable to the series. To aid their performance, Jackson was never allowed to meet the other actors, preventing them from associating a face with the menacing voice. Jackson was present on the set and spoke to actors by phone to help aid their performance. The cast was rounded out by W. Earl Brown, who played Gale Weather's cameraman Kenny; Joseph Whipp, who portrayed Sheriff Burke; Lawrence Hecht as Neil Prescott (Sidney's father); and C.W. Morgan as Hank Loomis (Billy's father). Liev Schreiber appeared in a minor role as Cotton Weary, the framed killer of Sidney's mother, and Linda Blair made a brief cameo as a TV reporter outside the school. Henry Winkler appeared as Principal Himbry, an aggressive school principal. He remained uncredited so as to not draw attention away from the young main cast. Filming. Principal photography for "Scream" took place over eight weeks between April 15 and June 8, 1996, on a budget of $15million. The Weinsteins wanted to film in Vancouver as it was estimated that they could save $1million in costs compared to shooting in the United States. Craven was adamant about filming in the United States, and making a film that looked "truly American". The argument over where to film almost led to Craven being removed from the project, but the Weinsteins eventually agreed to keep the production in America. Location scouts looked at North Carolina as a possibility, but found that sites that seemed appropriate for the film's requirements would have required extensive building, repairs, or modification, which would have inflated costs. Attention was next turned towards California; scouts discovered Sonoma County and the cities of Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and the nearby Tomales Bay. The house of Barrymore's character is situated southeast of Santa Rosa on Sonoma Mountain Road, directly facing the house used in the horror film "Cujo" (1983). The home of Sidney Prescott is located near Calistoga, north of Santa Rosa. Tatum's home is situated on McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa, next to the houses used in "Pollyanna" (1960) and "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943). The home of Lillard's character, which is the location for the entire third act, is a house on Tomales Road east of Tomales Bay that had only recently become available after the death of its owners. The Woodsboro town square, including the fountain where many of the cast sit in an early scene, is represented by the Healdsburg town square. For the Woodsboro high school, Craven desired a building that looked "American", and the producers approached Santa Rosa High School. The school board insisted on seeing the script and immediately objected to the violence against teenage children and the cynical, dark dialogue, including that of the fictional school principal. Local newspapers criticized the project, and irate parents objected to such a film taking place at their children's school. Comparisons were made between film violence and the kidnap and murder of Polly Klaas three years prior, which had left the area sensitized toward violence. The producers received support from the school's students and some local residents, who recognized that economic benefits would be generated by the film's presence. Others argued for the film's First Amendment rights. The dispute resulted in a three-hour debate scheduled for April 16, one day after filming was to begin. Unwilling to be delayed, Craven began filming as scheduled on the 15th. He started with the opening scene of the film, which features Barrymore; the scene took five days to complete. The result of the Santa Rosa debate was that permission would be denied. The production was forced to find another location for the school, and ended up filming at the Sonoma Community Center, southeast of Santa Rosa. The progress of filming was criticized early on. Bob Weinstein disliked the Ghostface mask, believing it was not "scary". Upon reviewing the dailies footage of the opening scene, the studio was concerned that the film was progressing in an unwanted direction. They considered replacing Craven. To assuage their concerns, Craven and editor Patrick Lussier developed a rough workprint version of the opening 13 minutes of the film to demonstrate how the completed film might turn out. After viewing the new footage, the studio was content to let Craven continue as director. Weinstein, having seen the mask in action, was satisfied that it could be scary. The third and final act of the film, over forty minutes long, is set at a house party where Ghostface strikes. It was shot at a vacant property in Tomales over 21 nights. The scene, labelled "Scene 118", was considered the most difficult to shoot as it took place entirely in one location yet featured the individual stories and deaths of multiple characters. Actors spent weeks undertaking intense emotional and physical scenes while coated in fake blood and wounds. As the scene was set during the evening, production had no choice but to halt at dawn. Director of photography Mark Irwin was fired during filming of "Scream"s finale, a week before principal photography was to be completed. Upon review of the dailies, Craven found the footage was out of focus and unusable. Irwin was initially ordered to fire his camera crew. He retorted that if his crew were to be fired, they would also have to fire him. The producers fired him and replaced him with Peter Deming, who finished the film. Special effects and design. To produce the many grisly effects for the film, the producers recruited KNB Effects team Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman, and Gregory Nicotero. One of their first tasks was the production of a mask for the film's killer. In his script, Williamson had only described the antagonist as a "masked killer", which gave Craven no specific information on what type of mask to use or how to conceal the body. While location scouting, Maddalena discovered the Ghostface mask hanging from a post inside the house previously used for the film "Shadow of a Doubt". Craven wanted to use it, but the mask design was owned by Fun World, a costume company. He was told to create one that the production could own. KNB developed multiple design sketches varying from deformed faces to monstrous visages riddled with fangs. Craven found nothing like the Ghostface design, so he had KNB develop a mask that was based on it, with enough differences to avoid any claim of copyright. The team developed several molds based on the Ghostface design, but Craven found none were as suitable as the mask he wanted to use. Desperate to use the design, Craven finally convinced the studio to approach Fun World and gained permission to use the mask. While negotiations were in progress, he had KNB make a mask that was very similar to the original mask, but was appropriate for use in filming. The mask they produced, made of a thin foam, was used in two scenes of the film: the opening scene with Barrymore's character and the murder of Principal Himbry. Craven disliked the mask due to its slight differences from the original, and thus used the Fun World design for the rest of filming. KNB Effects created over 50 gallons of fake blood, normally composed of corn syrup and food dye, to create the special effect of severe wounds. For the penetrating effect of knives, the production used collapsible blades to prevent injury. An umbrella with a retractable tip is used as a stabbing weapon in the finale. Ulrich wore a protective vest beneath his shirt to help prevent harm while a stuntwoman attacked him with it. The second thrust missed the vest and stabbed Ulrich on his chest, impacting a wound from an open heart surgery operation. Ulrich's genuine pain was captured on film and used in the release version of "Scream". Two of the most complex special effects in the film were the corpses of Barrymore's and Walls' characters, Casey Becker and Steve Orth. Their deaths involved the character being gutted from ribcage to pelvis, essentially hollowing out the torso of internal organs, with the guts "rolling" from the wound. To allow Walls to continue to move and feign death while displaying the wound, KNB designed a chair with no back. The actor would kneel behind it while his upper body, head, and arms were positioned within the chair's seating area. An anatomical model representing the character's torso and legs was positioned in the chair and disguised so that the actor's upper body and the model appeared to be one piece. The fake abdomen was filled with rubber, latex, and gelatin pieces smeared in fake blood—the "internal organs" — which could then fall free. The other effect involved Barrymore's character being gutted and hanged by the neck from a tree. The team utilized a similar approach, but replicated Barrymore's entire body, as it would be impossible to conceal her real body and display the special effect of her character having been gutted. Post-production. After filming was completed in June 1996, Craven spent two months editing the final product. He encountered repeated conflicts with the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system (MPAA) concerning the content of scenes. He was forced to tone down or obscure the more intense scenes and overall violence to avoid an NC-17 rating, which is considered "box office suicide"—cinemas and retail chains often refused to stock NC-17 titles. Though Dimension had previously released NC-17-rated films, the rating made those films difficult to market and attract an audience. Dimension was desperate for a less-restrictive R rating, but the producers felt the demanded cuts would remove key elements from the film and reduce its quality. The opening scene featuring Barrymore was one of the most difficult parts to process through the MPAA, who required cuts based on its "intensity". Craven lied to the MPAA, claiming he had only one take of the scene and could not replace it with something less intense; the MPAA allowed the scene. Craven sent eight different cuts of the film to deal with complaints. Problematic scenes included the gutting death of Steve Orth (Walls), where he was required to remove any movement of the character's internal organs; the throat-cutting of Kenny, where he had to trim the end of the scene, as the MPAA felt the actor's pained expression was too "disturbing"; and they had to shorten the length of time spent viewing the crushed head of Tatum Riley. The MPAA still held issue with a scene from the finale, where the killers (Ulrich and Lillard) stab each other, creating large amounts of visible blood. The MPAA required that the blood not be seen in motion—falling to the floor from the body. It seemed unlikely that the film would be able to achieve an R rating without further significant cuts. With the film's release date drawing closer, Bob Weinstein intervened and personally contacted the MPAA. He believed they misunderstood the film and to which genre "Scream" really belonged, and were focusing too much on the horror elements. Weinstein explained that although he agreed with their assessment that the film was "intense", the film also had comedic elements and satire; it was not just a horror film glorifying violence. The MPAA reviewed their decision; shortly thereafter the film was granted an R rating. Music. The "Scream" score was provided by fledgling composer Marco Beltrami, his first time scoring a feature film. Craven's assistant Julie Plec had requested input on composers who were "new", "fresh", and "wonderful", and was given Beltrami's name by several people. Beltrami was contacted for samples of his work. Craven, impressed by what he heard, requested Beltrami come to the set to view the opening thirteen minutes of the film containing the introduction and the death of Barrymore's character. Beltrami was tasked with scoring a piece of music for this scene, which would be reviewed by the producers and the Weinstein brothers. Beltrami was hired to score the entire film on the basis of this sample. Beltrami had no prior experience scoring a work of horror. Craven and editor Patrick Lussier advised him on how to deliver music that would raise the tension and how to use stings to punctuate the more intense moments. Craven wanted the music to intentionally raise tension during scenes where audience expectations were already raised by their experience of previous horror films. The volume would be raised to indicate that the killer is hiding behind a door, but nothing would be present upon its opening. Beltrami decided to intentionally disregard conventional horror score styles. He approached the film as a western, taking influence from Ennio Morricone, a prolific composer for many westerns. When scoring a theme for the character of Dewey (Arquette), Beltrami approached him as a "quirky" wild west sheriff, using a Morricone-style guitar accompaniment. Sidney Prescott's theme, titled "Sidney's Lament", features a female choral arrangement expressing "sorrow" concerning the character's situation. Beltrami states that the voice "spoke" for the character, "lamenting" the loss of her mother. Christian Clemmensen of Filmtracks called the "haunting" vocals of the track the "voice of the franchise". The song was used throughout the film's sequels. Release. Theatrical. "Scream" held its premiere on December 18, 1996 at the AMC Avco theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, California. Bob Weinstein ordered that the film be released on December 20, 1996, a date others were critical of as it was the Christmas period where seasonal and family films were more prevalent. Weinstein argued this fact was in the film's favor as it meant that horror fans and teenagers had nothing interesting to watch during the December period. When "Scream"s first weekend takings amounted to only $6million, it was considered that this release date gamble had failed, but the following week, takings did not drop but increased and continued to increase in the following weeks leading to a total U.S. gross of over $100million and high critical praise. Home media. "Scream" was released in the United States on Dolby Digital (AC-3) LaserDisc (uncut) on July 2, 1997, VHS on June 24, 1997 and a special release with the "Scream 2" trailer December 2, 1997, and on DVD on December 3, 1997. A DTS Laserdisc uncut version was released on August 26, 1998 followed by a collector's edition DVD of the film on December 8, 1998, containing the film, the theatrical trailer, cast interviews, a director's commentary, and behind the scenes information. These releases were all undertaken by Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Following the release of "Scream 3", "Scream" and its first two sequels were collected in "The Ultimate Scream Collection" by Dimension Films on September 26, 2000, a boxset containing the three films and a bonus disc containing "Behind the Scream", a 30-minute documentary about the production of the three films, and additional material, including screentests and outtakes. "Scream" was also released on LaserDisc in France, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United Kingdom in 1997; and in Germany and as a special edition in Japan in 1998. "Scream" remained unreleased on DVD in some foreign territories, including Europe, until 2001. The Japanese DVD released in 1998 contained both the R-rated version of the film, plus the original "Director's Cut", which restored the gore/violence removed by the MPAA. "Scream" was released in Europe with "Scream 2" and "Scream 3" on February 26 by Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Each package contained additional content found in the Collector's Edition version of the US release, including deleted scenes, outtakes, theatrical trailers, music videos, and crew commentary. The three films were also sold as a collection called the "Scream Trilogy", released on February 26, 2001. On March 29, 2011, two weeks prior to the release of "Scream 4", "Scream" was released in US territories on Blu-ray by Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The Blu-ray presents the films in 1080p high definition. The releases contain all the additional materials found on the Collector's Edition DVD, including outtakes and deleted scenes. Reception. Box office. The film opened in 1,413 theaters, taking $6,354,586 in its opening weekend, opening in second against "Beavis and Butt-head Do America", and almost $87million in its initial release. It was re-released to theatres on April 11, 1997, and accrued a further $16.2million, for a total domestic gross of $103,046,663, and a worldwide lifetime gross of $173,046,663. "Scream" remains the most successful of the "Scream" film series, receiving a largely positive critical reception. "Scream 2" generated a worldwide gross of $172,363,301, less than $1million below that of the first film, $11million more than "Scream 3", and $75million more than "Scream 4". As of 2013, "Scream" is currently the 577th highest-grossing movie worldwide. In the United States, without adjusting for inflation, the film is the twentieth highest-grossing horror film, and remained the highest-grossing slasher film until it was surpassed by "Halloween" (2018), directly followed by "Scream 2" and "Scream 3". Adjusted for inflation, the film would have doubled its gross to $346million. Despite competition from other box office fare such as Tom Cruise's "Jerry Maguire" and Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks! ", its release during the Christmas season, and "Variety" labeling it "D.O.A." before it was even released, "Scream" became the fifteenth highest-grossing film of 1996, well placed amongst big-budget blockbusters released that year such as "Independence Day" and "". It was shown in cinemas for nearly eight months after its release. Critical response. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 79% based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Horror icon Wes Craven's subversive deconstruction of the genre is sly, witty, and surprisingly effective as a slasher film itself, even if it's a little too cheeky for some." On review aggregator Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle" appreciated the shift from the teen slasher films of the 1980s and their "endless series of laborious, half-baked sequels". Kevin Thomas of "The Los Angeles Times" called "Scream" "a bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures" and complimented the film for being "scary and gruesome" while avoiding a sense of "morbidity". "Empire" Adam Smith called it "Clever, quick and bloody funny". Williamson's script was praised as containing a "fiendishly clever, complicated plot" which "deftly mixes irony, self-reference and wry social commentary with chills and blood spills". Time Out London lauded the film's intelligence and scares, while praising the casting, saying "at last, a horror movie to shout about!" Film4 cited Craven's own "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" (1994) and its cast of self-aware characters as inspiration for "Scream", but declared that while "New Nightmare" was a "noble failure – pretty smart, but crucially not very scary" that "Scream" was "not merely clever ... it is, from its breathtaking opening sequence (with Barrymore as the woman in peril) onwards, simply terrifying". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film a positive review of 3 out of 4 stars, appreciating "the in-jokes and the self-aware characters", but was confused over whether the level of violence was "defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it". "The New York Times" Janet Maslin was not as appreciative, saying "not much of 'Scream' is that gruesome". She wrote that Craven "wants things both ways, capitalizing on lurid material while undermining it with mocking humor. Not even horror fans who can answer all this film's knowing trivia questions may be fully comfortable with such an exploitative mix." Despite being critical of the film itself, calling it "one experiment that needed more lab time", "Variety" complimented the "strong" ensemble cast, singling out the performances of Campbell and Ulrich as "charismatic". The BBC claimed that the film had promise, saying "It appeared to be clever, dangerous, witty, and fresh" but went on to label it as derivative of the films it satirized: ""Scream" runs out of humour, and in turn robs itself of the chance to get the audience to take the thrills and gut-spills it offers seriously." Accolades. "Scream" received several awards and award nominations following its release, including the Saturn Award for Best Actress for Campbell, Best Writing for Kevin Williamson, and Best Horror Film; it received Saturn nominations for Best Director for Wes Craven and Best Supporting Actor for Ulrich and Barrymore. Craven was awarded the Grand Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival. The film was awarded the 1997 Best Movie by the MTV Movie Awards, while Campbell received a nomination for Best Female Performance. Albums. Soundtrack. The "Scream" original soundtrack was released on December 17, 1996, by TVT Records. The soundtrack features 11 songs—most of which appeared in various scenes in the film—plus a piece from the film's score, "Trouble In Woodsboro"/"Sidney's Lament", by Beltrami. The Alice Cooper version of "School's Out" appeared in the film following the closure of Woodsboro high school, but it was replaced with a cover version of the song by The Last Hard Men on the album. An acoustic cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper", performed by Gus Black, plays softly in the background while Sidney and Billy discuss their relationship. The song was also one of the few songs featured in John Carpenter's Halloween, a film that Scream homaged heavily. Analyst Jeff Smith describes the musical choice as: The song "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, heard in the first film, is also used in "Scream 2" and "Scream 3". Nick Cave performs a version of the track written specifically for "Scream 3" in that film. An alternate version of the music video "Drop Dead Gorgeous" by Republica, featuring clips from the film, was shown on music networks such as MTV. Although the song can be heard in the film, it is only included on the European edition of the soundtrack album. The song was also used in one of the film's television commercials. The soundtrack album was not considered a success, failing to chart on the US "Billboard" 200. AllMusic awarded the album 3 stars out of 5. Score. The "Scream" score by Marco Beltrami was released by Varèse Sarabande on July 14, 1998, on a CD titled "Scream/Scream 2", which also contained tracks from the score of "Scream 2". The release consisted of only six tracks—"Sidney's Lament", "Altered Ego", "A Cruel World", "Trouble in Woodsboro", "Chasing Sidney", and "NC-17"—with a runtime of only 12 minutes, compared to over an hour of music made for the film and the more common 30–45 minutes of music found in other original scores. Some reviewers felt the restricted runtime was a result of the high cost of releasing a composer's music commercially, combined with Varèse Sarabande's unwillingness to pay. The score to "Scream" received generally positive reviews, with Mikael Carlsson labeling it as "some of the most intriguing horror scores composed in years". Filmtracks.com claimed the scores had "cult status", awarding it 3 stars out of 5. AllMusic said that the score "perfectly captured the post-modern, hip scare-ride of the Scream movies", also giving it 3 stars out of 5. Sequels. Williamson had attached five-page proposals for potential sequels to "Scream" when he originally sold the script, hoping to entice prospective buyers into buying a film and a franchise. When Dimension Films bought the script, they secured Williamson for two future "Scream" films, should the original prove successful. After a highly positive test screening of "Scream" at which executives from Dimension Films and Miramax were present, Craven was signed to direct the two future sequels. After the film's box office and critical success, the first sequel was greenlit and sent into production while "Scream" was still in theaters. The second picture was given an increased budget. The surviving cast—Campbell, Cox, Arquette, Kennedy, and Schreiber—all returned, as well as much of the original crew, including editor Patrick Lussier and composer Marco Beltrami. A third film followed shortly after, again with the crew and surviving cast returning to create what was, at the time, the concluding film in the "Scream" trilogy. The three original films, released in a five-year period, followed the story of Sidney Prescott's encounters with a succession of killers adopting the Ghostface disguise. The films also analyze her relationship with her deceased mother, who inadvertently initiates the events depicted in the films. "Scream 2" fared as well financially and critically as its predecessor, while "Scream 3" fared significantly worse on both counts, with critics deriding the film as having become what the original had so deftly satirized. Fifteen years after the release of "Scream" and eleven years after the release of the last film in the series, The Weinstein Company released a new sequel, "Scream 4", on April 15, 2011. Campbell, Cox and Arquette all returned to their roles, and Craven, Williamson, and Beltrami returned to the production side. The Weinstein Company stated that the success of "Scream 4" could have led to potential sequels and a new "Scream" trilogy, with Campbell, Arquette, Craven, and Williamson all having been contracted or expressed interest in appearing in future installments. Almost twenty-five years after the release of "Scream" and ten years after the release of "Scream 4", a fifth film entered development. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will direct the movie, with Kevin Williamson producing. In May 2020, it was announced that Neve Campbell was in talks to reprise her role as Sidney Prescott in the fifth film. That same month, it was announced that David Arquette would be reprising his role of Dewey Riley for the fifth film and James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick were announced as additional writers. It was also confirmed that the film will begin production later in the year in Wilmington, North Carolina when safety protocols are in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversies. In the years following the release of "Scream", the film has been accused of inspiring copycat crimes and inducing violent acts. In January 1998, 16-year-old Mario Padilla and his 14-year-old cousin, Samuel Ramirez, stabbed Mario's mother, Gina Castillo, 45 times, killing her. The case became known as the "Scream murder" and fell under intense media scrutiny after the boys claimed they were inspired by "Scream" and "Scream 2". The pair confessed to needing the money acquired from Gina's murder to fund a killing spree, which would include purchasing two Ghostface costumes, as well as a voice-changer used by the characters in the films. During their trial, Madeline Levine, a psychologist who studied the effect of violence on children, stated, "There were a whole bunch of reasons why they acted out that way. But did the movie provide a blueprint? Absolutely." The case was expected to highlight the effect of violent films on teenagers. However, presiding judge John Cheroske ordered that evidence pertaining to "Scream" be barred and that the case not be referred to as the "Scream murder", refusing media access to the courtroom, intending that the case be tried as murder and nothing else. On January 17, 1999, 13-year-old Ashley Murray was stabbed multiple times in the head and back before being left for dead by his friends Daniel Gill, 14, and Robert Fuller, 15. He was later found and saved by an elderly man walking his dog. The pair were dubbed the "Scream attackers" after it emerged that they had watched "Scream" shortly before the attack and drawings of the Ghostface mask were found among their possessions. Their actions were additionally blamed on physical abuse, drugs and exposure to black magic in their home life. Murray, who later testified against the pair, stated that he believed the film may have influenced the pair to attack him. On May 4, 1999, following the Columbine High School massacre and increasing news media reports on the effects of violent films, games, and other media on society, the United States Senate Commerce committee held a hearing about Hollywood's marketing of films to youths. The committee focused specifically on horror films. The opening scene of "Scream", featuring the murder of Barrymore's character, was shown to the committee as an example of negative media which may be viewed by children. On June 3, 2002, a 17-year-old boy lured his friend, 15-year-old Alice Beaupère, out of her parents' house in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, France, and stabbed her 42 times while wearing a Ghostface mask. He ran away when he saw a neighbor approaching, and the girl told the neighbor the name of her attacker before she died from her injuries. After being arrested, the boy told police that he had wanted to kill someone to emulate the Ghostface character from "Scream". Legacy. Prior to "Scream"s release the popularity of the horror genre had been considered to be in decline with many films released straight to video while those released in cinemas were sequels to popular and established franchises, such as "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", capable of drawing audiences despite decreasing budgets and diminishing critical reception. The glut of sequels contributed to audience familiarity with the icons of the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees that they were considered to have lost their ability to instill scares or interest in their audience. "Scream", utilizing a popular and attractive cast and an innovative script that mocked and embraced the conventions of horror which had become considered clichéd, was credited with changing the status of the genre, becoming both a financial and critical success, and launching the careers of many of its actors. Such was the film's impact that some commentators considered its legacy as the creation of a distinct era of "post-Scream" horror films. Following its release many studios, including "Scream"s own Dimension Films, rushed to capitalize on its unexpected success with the release of films such as "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997) and "Urban Legend" (1998) as well as sequels to popular, but diminishing, franchises such as "" and "Bride of Chucky". Much of the humor of the 2000 film "Scary Movie" relies upon specific references to other contemporary films. Roger Ebert remarked in his review that "to get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises." The two films on which the script is most heavily based are "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997), utilizing the general narrative arcs of both films, and featuring comedic recreations of key scenes. The backstory in which the teenagers are responsible for accidentally killing a man following a beauty pageant recalls the same plot point in "I Know What You Did Last Summer". Major references to "Scream" include the identity of Ghostface and the murder of Drew Decker in the opening scene, a reference to the opening scene of "Scream" in which the same thing occurs to the character played by Drew Barrymore. Additionally, the characters of "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" are heavily mirrored in the film, and the title "Scary Movie" was originally the working title for the project that would eventually become "Scream". In June 2001, as part of the American Film Institute's AFI 100 Years ... series, "Scream" became one of the 400 nominees in the "100 Years ... 100 Thrills" category. In 2003, the character Ghostface was nominated in the category "100 Heroes and Villains". In 2005, "Do you like scary movies? ", as spoken by Roger Jackson, was nominated for "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes", a list of the greatest cinematic quotes. "Scream" ranks #32 on "Entertainment Weekly" list of the "50 Best High School Movies", and the opening scene featuring the death of Barrymore's character ranked #13 on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments". In 2008, "Entertainment Weekly" dubbed the film a "New Classic" by ranking it #60 in their list of the "100 Best Films of the Last 13 years". In 2008 "Empire" ranked the film #482 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". In 2016, "Empire" ranked the film #3 on their list of the greatest horror films of all time.

following lunge

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3603550

Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools such as wiki , which provide a potentially infinite hypertextual substrate within which the collaboration may be situated. Open source software such as Linux was developed via mass collaboration. Factors. Modularity. Modularity enables a mass of experiments to proceed in parallel, with different teams working on the same modules, each proposing different solutions. Modularity allows different "blocks" to be easily assembled, facilitating decentralised innovation that all fits together. Differences. Cooperation. Mass collaboration differs from mass cooperation in that the creative acts taking place require the joint development of . Conversely, group members involved in cooperation needn't engage in a joint negotiation of understanding; they may simply execute instructions willingly. Another important distinction is the borders around which a mass cooperation can be defined. Due to the extremely general characteristics and lack of need for fine grain negotiation and consensus when cooperating, the entire internet, a city, and even the global economy may be regarded as examples of mass cooperation. Thus mass collaboration is more refined and complex in its process and production on the level of collective engagement. Online forum. Although an online discussion is certainly collaborative, mass collaboration differs from a large forum, email list, bulletin board, chat session or group discussion in that the discussion's structure of separate, individual posts generated through turn-taking communication means the textual content does not take the form of a single, coherent body. Of course the conceptual domain of the overall discussion exists as a single unified body, however the textual contributors can be linked back to the understandings and interpretations of a single author. Though the author's understandings and interpretations are most certainly a negotiation of the understandings of all who read and contribute to the discussion, the fact that there was only one author of a given entry reduces the entry's collaborative complexity to the discursive/interpretive as opposed to constructive/‘negotiative’ levels Coauthoring. From the perspective of individual sites of work within a mass collaboration, the activity may appear to be identical to that of . In fact, it is, with the exception being the implicit and explicit relationships formed by the interdependence that many sites within a mass collaboration share through hypertext and coauthorship with differing sets of collaborators. This interdependence of collaborative sites coauthored by a large number of people is what gives a mass collaboration one of its most distinguishing features - a coherent collaboration emerging from the interrelated collection of its parts. Collective online tools. Many of the web applications associated with Bulletin boards, or forums can include a wide variety of tools that allows individuals to keep track of sites and content that they find on the internet. Users are able to bookmark from their browser by editing the title, adding a description and most importantly classifying using tags. Other non-collective tools are also used in Mass collaborative environments such as commenting, rating and quick evaluation. Changes. Business. In the books "" and "MacroWikinomics-Rebooting business and the world", Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams list five ideas that the new art and science of wikinomics is based on: The concept of mass collaboration has led to a number of efforts to harness and commercialize shared tasks. Collectively known as crowdsourcing, these ventures typically involve on an online system of accounts for coordinating buyers and sellers of labor. Amazon's Mechanical Turk system follows this model, by enabling employers to distribute minute tasks to thousands of registered workers. In the advertising industry, Giant Hydra employs mass collaboration to enable creatives to collaborate on advertising ideas online and create what they call an 'idea matrix', a highly complex node of concepts, executions and ideas all connected to each other. In the financial industry, companies such as the Open Models Valuation Company (OMVCO) also employ mass collaboration to improve the accuracy of financial forecasts. The role of discussion. In traditional collaborative scenarios, discussion plays a key role in the negotiation of jointly developed, (the essence of collaboration), acting as a point of mediation between the individual collaborators and the outcome which may or may not eventuate from the discussions. Mass collaboration reverses this relationship with the work being done providing the point of mediation between collaborators, with associated discussions being an optional component. It is of course debatable that discussion is optimal, as most (if not all) mass collaborations have discussions associated with the content being developed. However it is possible to contribute (to Wikipedia for instance) without discussing the content you are contributing to. (Smaller scale collaborations might be conducted without discussions especially in a non-verbal mode of work - imagine two painters contributing to the same canvas - but the situation becomes increasingly problematic as more members are included.) Non-textual. Although the only widely successful examples of mass collaboration thus far evaluated exist in the textual medium, there is no immediate reason why this form of collective action couldn't work in other creative media. It could be argued that some projects within the open source software movement provide examples of mass collaboration outside of the traditional written language (see below), however, the code collaboratively created still exists as a language utilizing a textual medium. Music is also a possible site for mass collaboration, for instance on live performance recordings where audience members' voices have become part of the standard version of a song. Most "anonymous" folk songs and "traditional" tunes are also arguably sites of long term mass collaboration.

insignificant duties

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18785531

The discography of Joe Nichols, an American country music singer, consists of twenty six singles and nine studio albums. At age 19, he made his debut in 1996 with a self-titled album on the independent Intersound label. It was not until the release of his 2002 single "The Impossible" on the Universal South Records (now Show Dog-Universal Music) label that Nichols first reached Top 40 on the country charts. The single, which peaked at #3 on the "Billboard" Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs) charts, was followed by the release of his platinum-certified second album, "Man with a Memory", released in 2002. This album also produced the Number One single "Brokenheartsville". Nichols followed up "Man with a Memory" in 2004 with "Revelation" (which included the Top Five hit "What's a Guy Gotta Do"), and an album of Christmas music entitled "A Traditional Christmas". His fourth album, 2005's gold-certified "III", produced the Number One single "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off". "Real Things" followed in 2007, and "Old Things New", which produced Nichols' third Number One hit in "Gimmie That Girl", was released in 2009. Following the release of "Old Things New", Nichols' label went through a merge to become Show-Dog Universal Music, through which he released his seventh album, "It's All Good", in 2011. It produced only one chart single in "Take It Off" (which failed to reach the Top 20), and he parted ways with his label. In late 2012, Nichols was signed to Red Bow Records, as the flagship artist for the new label. Under Red Bow, Nichols released his eighth album, 2013's "Crickets". To date, it has produced two Number One hits in "Sunny and 75" and "Yeah". In August 2018 Joe parted ways with Broken Bow Music Group.

one popular hit

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4670556

A rotary-screw compressor is a type of gas compressor, such as an air compressor, that uses a rotary-type positive-displacement mechanism. These compressors are common in industrial applications and replace more traditional piston compressors where larger volumes of compressed gas are needed, e.g. for large refrigeration cycles such as chillers, or for compressed air systems to operate air-driven tools such as jackhammers and impact wrenches. For smaller rotor sizes the inherent leakage in the rotors becomes much more significant, leading to this type of mechanism being less suitable for smaller compressors than piston compressors. The gas compression process of a rotary screw is a continuous sweeping motion, so there is very little pulsation or surging of flow, as occurs with piston compressors. This also allows screw compressors to be significantly quieter and produce much less vibration than piston compressors, even at large sizes, and produces some benefits in efficiency. Working. Rotary-screw compressors use two very closely meshing helical screws, known as rotors, to compress the gas. In a dry-running rotary-screw compressor, timing gears ensure that the male and female rotors maintain precise alignment without contact which would produce rapid wear. In an oil-flooded rotary-screw compressor, lubricating oil bridges the space between the rotors, both providing a hydraulic seal and transferring mechanical energy between the rotors, allowing one rotor to be entirely driven by the other. Gas enters at the suction side and moves through the threads as the screws rotate. The meshing rotors force the gas through the compressor, and the gas exits at the end of the screws.The working area is the inter-lobe volume between the male and female rotors. It is larger at the intake end, and decreases along the length of the rotors until the exhaust port. This change in volume is the compression. The intake charge is drawn in at the end of the rotors in the large clearance between the male and female lobes. At the intake end the male lobe is much smaller than its female counterpart, but the relative sizes reverse proportions along the lengths of both rotors (the male becomes larger and the female smaller) until (tangential to the discharge port) the clearance space between each pair of lobes is much smaller. This reduction in volume causes compression of the charge before being presented to the output manifold. The effectiveness of this mechanism is dependent on precisely fitting clearances between the helical rotors and between the rotors and the chamber for sealing of the compression cavities. However, some leakage is inevitable, and high rotational speeds must be used to minimize the ratio of leakage flow rate over effective flow rate. In contrast to Roots blowers, modern screw compressors are made with different profiles on the two rotors: the male rotor has convex lobes which mesh with the concave cavities of the female rotor. Usually the male rotor has fewer lobes than the female rotor, so that it rotates faster. Originally, screw compressors were made with symmetrical rotor cavity profiles, but modern versions use asymmetrical rotors, with the exact rotor designs being the subject of patents. Size. The capacities of rotary-screw compressors are typically rated in horsepower (HP), Standard Cubic Feet per Minute (SCFM)* and pounds per square inch (PSI.) For units in the 5 through 30 HP range the physical size of these units are comparable to a typical two-stage compressor. As horsepower increases, there is a substantial economy of scale in favor of the rotary-screw compressors. As an example, a 250 HP compound compressor is a large piece of equipment that generally requires a special foundation, building accommodations and highly trained riggers to place the equipment. On the other hand, a 250 HP rotary-screw compressor can be placed on an ordinary shop floor using a standard forklift. Within industry, a 250 HP rotary-screw compressor is generally considered to be a compact piece of equipment. Rotary-screw compressors are commonly available in the 5 through 500 HP range and can produce air flows in excess of 2500 SCFM. While there are high pressure rotary-screw compressors, within the compressed air community, the upper pressure limit is generally around 125 PSI. Rotary-screw compressors tend to be smooth running with limited vibration, thus not requiring a specialized foundation or mounting system. Normally, rotary-screw compressors are mounted using standard rubber isolation mounts designed to absorb high-frequency vibrations. This is especially true in rotary-screw compressors that operate at high rotational speeds. History. The screw compressor was first patented in 1878 by Heinrich Krigar in Germany, however the patent expired without a working machine being built. The modern helical lobe screw compressor was developed in Sweden by Alf Lysholm who was the chief engineer at Ljungstroms Angturbin. Lysholm developed the screw compressor while looking for a way to overcome compressor surge in gas turbines. Lysholm first considered a roots type blower but found this was unable to generate a high enough pressure ratio. In 1935, Ljungstroms patented a helical lobe screw compressor which was then widely licensed to other manufacturers. Ljungstroms Angturbin AB was renamed Svenska Rotor Maskiner (SRM) in 1951. In 1952, the first Holroyd cutting machine was used, by the Scottish engineering company Howden, to produce helical lobe compressor rotors greatly reducing both cost and manufacturing time. In 1954, Howden and SRM jointly developed the first oil flooded screw compressor. Flooding provided both cooling, which allowed higher pressure ratios, and the elimination of timing gears. The first commercially available flooded screw air compressor was introduced in 1957 by Atlas Copco. Slot valves were developed by SRM in the 1950s, allowing for improvements in capacity control which had been a limiting factor for screw compressor application. Asymmetric rotors were first patented by SRM and subsequently introduced commercially by Sullair in 1969. The introduction of asymmetric rotors improved sealing, further increasing the types efficiency. Applications. Rotary-screw compressors are generally used to supply compressed air for larger industrial applications. They are best applied in applications that have a continuous air demand such as food packaging plants and automated manufacturing systems although a large enough number of intermittent demands, along with some storage, will also present a suitably continuous load. In addition to fixed units, rotary-screw compressors are commonly mounted on tow-behind trailers and powered with small diesel engines. These portable compression systems are typically referred to as construction compressors. Construction compressors are used to provide compressed air to jack hammers, riveting tools, pneumatic pumps, sand blasting operations and industrial paint systems. They are commonly seen at construction sites and on duty with road repair crews throughout the world. Oil-free. In an oil-free compressor, the air is compressed entirely through the action of the screws, without the assistance of an oil seal. They usually have lower maximal discharge pressure capability as a result. However, multi-stage oil-free compressors, where the air is compressed by several sets of screws, can achieve pressures of over and output volume of over . Oil-free compressors are used in applications where entrained oil carry-over is not acceptable, such as medical research and semiconductor manufacturing. However, this does not preclude the need for filtration, as hydrocarbons and other contaminants ingested from the ambient air must also be removed prior to the point of use. Consequently, air treatment identical to that used for an oil-flooded screw compressor is frequently required to ensure quality compressed air. In small piston compressors carpenters homeowners sometimes use "oil free" compressors in which oil free is a reference to not using oil but Teflon type of coatings permanently adhered to wear surfaces. Oil-injected. In an oil-injected rotary-screw compressor, oil is injected into the compression cavities to aid sealing and provide cooling for the gas charge. The oil is separated from the discharge stream, cooled, filtered and recycled. The oil captures non-polar particulates from the incoming air, effectively reducing the particle loading of compressed-air particulate filtration. It is usual for some entrained compressor oil to carry into the compressed-gas stream downstream of the compressor. In many applications, this is rectified by coalescer/filter vessels. Refrigerated compressed air dryers with internal cold coalescing filters are rated to remove more oil and water than coalescing filters that are downstream of air dryers, because after the air is cooled and the moisture is removed, the cold air is used to pre-cool the hot entering air, which warms the exiting air. In other applications, this is rectified by the use of receiver tanks that reduce the local velocity of compressed air, allowing oil to condense, drop out of the air stream, and to be removed from the compressed-air system by condensate-management equipment. Oil flooded screw compressors are used in a wide variety of applications including air compression, gas refrigeration, hydrocarbon processing and power utilization from low-grade heat sources. Sizes range from small workshop air compressors to heavy industrial compressors with output pressures as high as . New oil flooded screw air compressors release <5 mg/m3 of oil carryover. Lubricants, Polyalkylene glycol (PAG), Polyalphaolefin (PAO), Mineral Oils. PAG oil is polyalkylene glycol which is also called polyglycol. PAG oil burns off cleanly, leaving no residue, and have been used as a carrier oil for solid lubricants for high-temperature chain lubrication. Some versions are food grade and biodegradable. PAG lubricants are used by the two largest U.S. air compressor OEMs in rotary screw air compressors. PAG oil-injected compressors are not used to spray paint, because PAG oil dissolve paints. Reaction-hardening two-component epoxy resin paints are resistant to PAG oil. Polyglycols are not compatible with mineral oil based greases. A mixture of polyglycols with mineral oils results is a gelatinous, gooey mess. Mineral oil (but not polyalkylene glycol oil) lubricated compressors are recommended for mineral oil greases coated seals, such as pneumatic high speed 4-way valves and air cylinders that operate without mineral oiler lubricators. One manufacturer has rated its pneumatic high speed 4-way valves with a life of 50 million cycles, if not exposed to polyglycol oils. Polyalphaolefin PAO oil is compatible with mineral oil greases. Conical screw compressor. The relatively recently developed conical screw compressor is in effect a conical spiral extension of a gerotor. It does not have the inherent "blow-hole" leakage path which, in well designed screw compressors, is responsible for significant leakage through the assembly. This allows much smaller rotors to have practical efficiency since at smaller sizes the leakage area does not become as large a portion of the pumping area as in straight screw compressors. In conjunction with the decreasing diameter of the cone shaped rotor this also allows much higher compression ratios in a single stage with lower output pulsation. Control schemes. Among rotary-screw compressors, there are multiple control schemes, each with differing advantages and disadvantages. Start/stop. In a start/stop control scheme, compressor controls actuate relays to apply and remove power to the motor according to compressed air needs. Significant storage is required in most usage cases if the load is intermittent or is poorly matched to the compressor, the storage required will often be larger than the compressor itself. Load/unload. In a load/unload control scheme, the compressor remains continuously powered. However, when the demand for compressed air is satisfied or reduced, instead of disconnecting power to the compressor, a device known as a slide valve is activated. This device uncovers part of the rotor and proportionately reduces capacity of the machine down to typically 25% of the compressor's capability, thereby "unloading" the compressor. This reduces the number of start/stop cycles for electric motors over a start/stop control scheme in electrically-driven compressors, improving equipment service life with a minimal change in operating cost. This scheme is utilised by nearly all industrial air-compressor manufacturers. When a load/unload control scheme is combined with a timer to stop the compressor after a predetermined period of continuously unloaded operation, it is known as a dual-control or auto-dual scheme. This control scheme still requires storage since there are only two production rates available to match consumption, although significantly less than a start/stop scheme. Modulation. Instead of starting and stopping the compressor, a slide valve as described above continuously modulates capacity to the demand rather than being controlled in steps. While this yields a consistent discharge pressure over a wide range of demand, overall power consumption may be higher than with a load/unload scheme, resulting in approximately 70% of full-load power consumption when the compressor is at a zero-load condition. Due to the limited adjustment in compressor power consumption relative to compressed-air output capacity, modulation is a generally inefficient method of control when compared to variable-speed drives. However, for applications where it is not readily possible to frequently cease and resume operation of the compressor (such as when a compressor is driven by an internal-combustion engine and operated without the presence of a compressed-air receiver), modulation is suitable. The continuously variable production rate also eliminates the need for significant storage if the load never exceeds the compressor capacity. Variable displacement. Utilized by compressor companies Quincy Compressor, Kobelco, Gardner Denver, and Sullair, variable displacement alters the percentage of the screw compressor rotors working to compress air by allowing air flow to bypass portions of the screws. While this does reduce power consumption when compared to a modulation control scheme, a load/unload system can be more effective with large amounts of storage (10 gallons per CFM). If a large amount of storage is not practical, a variable-displacement system can be very effective, especially at greater than 70% of full load. One way that variable displacement may be accomplished is by using multiple lifting valves on the suction side of the compressor, each plumbed to a corresponding location on the discharge. In automotive superchargers, this is analogous to the operation of a bypass valve. Variable speed. While an air compressor powered by a variable-speed drive can offer the lowest operating-energy cost without any appreciable reduction in service life over a properly maintained load/unload compressor, the variable-frequency power inverter of a variable-speed drive typically adds significant cost to the design of such a compressor, reducing its economic benefits over a properly sized load/unload compressor if air demand is constant. However, a variable-speed drive provides for a nearly linear relationship between compressor power consumption and free air delivery allowing the most efficient operation over a very wide range of air demand. The compressor will still have to enter start/stop mode for very low demand as efficiency still drops off rapidly at low production rates due to rotor leakage. In harsh environments (hot, humid or dusty) the electronics of variable-speed drives may have to be protected to retain expected service life. Superchargers. The twin-screw type supercharger is a positive displacement type device that operates by pushing air through a pair of meshing close-tolerance screws similar to a set of worm gears. Twin-screw superchargers are also known as Lysholm superchargers (or compressors) after their inventor, Alf Lysholm. Each rotor is radially symmetrical, but laterally asymmetric. By comparison, conventional "Roots" type blowers have either identical rotors (with straight rotors) or mirror-image rotors (with helixed rotors). The Whipple-manufactured male rotor has three lobes, the female five lobes. The Kenne-Bell male rotor has four lobes, the female six lobes. Females in some earlier designs had four. By comparison, Roots blowers always have the same number of lobes on both rotors, typically 2, 3 or 4. Comparative advantages. The rotary screw compressor has low leakage levels and low parasitic losses vs. Roots type. The supercharger is typically driven directly from the engine's crankshaft via a belt or gear drive. Unlike the Roots type supercharger, the twin-screw exhibits internal compression which is the ability of the device to compress air within the housing as it is moved through the device instead of relying upon resistance to flow downstream of the discharge to establish an increase of pressure. The requirement of high-precision computer-controlled manufacturing techniques makes the screw type supercharger a more expensive alternative to other forms of available forced induction. With later technology, manufacturing cost has been lowered while performance increased. All supercharger types benefit from the use of an intercooler to reduce heat produced during pumping and compression. A clear example of the technology applied by the twin-screw in companies like Ford, Mazda, Mercedes and Mercury Marine can also demonstrate the effectiveness of the twin screw. While some centrifugal superchargers are consistent and reliable, they typically do not produce full boost until near peak engine rpm, while positive displacement superchargers such as Roots type superchargers and twin-screw types offer more immediate boost. In addition to this, twin-screw superchargers can keep the reasonable boost to higher rpm better than other positive displacement supercharges. Related terms. The term "blower" is commonly used to define a device placed on engines with a functional need for additional airflow, such as a 2-stroke Diesel engine, where positive intake pressure is needed to "scavenge", or clear spent exhaust gasses from the cylinder and force a fresh intake charge into the cylinder before the compression stroke. The term "blower" is applied to rotary screw, roots-type, and centrifugal compressors when utilized as part of an automotive forced induction system.

greater separation

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973826

Human genetic resistance to malaria refers to inherited changes in the DNA of humans which increase resistance to malaria and result in increased survival of individuals with those genetic changes. The existence of these genotypes is likely due to evolutionary pressure exerted by parasites of the genus "Plasmodium" which cause malaria. Since malaria infects red blood cells, these genetic changes are most commonly alterations to molecules essential for red blood cell function (and therefore parasite survival), such as hemoglobin or other cellular proteins or enzymes of red blood cells. These alterations generally protect red blood cells from invasion by "Plasmodium" parasites or replication of parasites within the red blood cell. These inherited changes to hemoglobin or other characteristic proteins, which are critical and rather invariant features of mammalian biochemistry, usually cause some kind of inherited disease. Therefore, they are commonly referred to by the names of the blood disorders associated with them, including sickle-cell disease, thalassemia, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, and others. These blood disorders cause increased morbidity and mortality in areas of the world where malaria is less prevalent. Development of genetic resistance to malaria. Microscopic parasites, like viruses, protozoans that cause malaria, and others, cannot replicate on their own and rely on a host to continue their life cycles. They replicate by invading the hosts' cells and usurping the cellular machinery to replicate themselves. Eventually, unchecked replication causes the cells to burst, killing the cells and releasing the infectious organisms into the bloodstream where they can infect other cells. As cells die and toxic products of invasive organism replication accumulate, disease symptoms appear. Because this process involves specific proteins produced by the infectious organism as well as the host cell, even a very small change in a critical protein may render infection difficult or impossible. Such changes might arise by a process of mutation in the gene that codes for the protein. If the change is in the gamete, that is, the sperm or egg that join to form a zygote that grows into a human being, the protective mutation will be inherited. Since lethal diseases kill many persons who lack protective mutations, in time, many persons in regions where lethal diseases are endemic come to inherit protective mutations. When the "P. falciparum" parasite infects a host cell, it alters the characteristics of the red blood cell membrane, making it "stickier" to other cells. Clusters of parasitized red blood cells can exceed the size of the capillary circulation, adhere to the endothelium, and block circulation. When these blockages form in the blood vessels surrounding the brain, they cause cerebral hypoxia, resulting in neurological symptoms known as cerebral malaria. This condition is characterized by confusion, disorientation, and often terminal coma. It accounts for 80% of malaria deaths. Therefore, mutations that protect against malaria infection and lethality pose a significant advantage. Malaria has placed the strongest known selective pressure on the human genome since the origin of agriculture within the past 10,000 years. "Plasmodium falciparum" was probably not able to gain a foothold among African populations until larger sedentary communities emerged in association with the evolution of domestic agriculture in Africa (the agricultural revolution). Several inherited variants in red blood cells have become common in parts of the world where malaria is frequent as a result of selection exerted by this parasite. This selection was historically important as the first documented example of disease as an agent of natural selection in humans. It was also the first example of genetically controlled innate immunity that operates early in the course of infections, preceding adaptive immunity which exerts effects after several days. In malaria, as in other diseases, innate immunity leads into, and stimulates, adaptive immunity. Mutations may have detrimental as well as beneficial effects, and any single mutation may have both. Infectiousness of malaria depends on specific proteins present in the cell walls and elsewhere in red blood cells. Protective mutations alter these proteins in ways that make them inaccessible to malaria organisms. However, these changes also alter the functioning and form of red blood cells that may have visible effects, either overtly, or by microscopic examination of red blood cells. These changes may impair the function of red blood cells in various ways that have a detrimental effect on the health or longevity of the individual. However, if the net effect of protection against malaria outweighs the other detrimental effects, the protective mutation will tend to be retained and propagated from generation to generation. These alterations which protect against malarial infections but impair red blood cells are generally considered blood disorders, since they tend to have overt and detrimental effects. Their protective function has only in recent times, been discovered and acknowledged. Some of these disorders are known by fanciful and cryptic names like sickle-cell anemia, thalassaemia, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, ovalocytosis, elliptocytosis and loss of the Gerbich antigen and the Duffy antigen. These names refer to various proteins, enzymes, and the shape or function of red blood cells. Innate resistance. The potent effect of genetically controlled innate resistance is reflected in the probability of survival of young children in areas where malaria is endemic. It is necessary to study innate immunity in the susceptible age group (younger than four years), because in older children and adults, the effects of innate immunity are overshadowed by those of adaptive immunity. It is also necessary to study populations in which random use of antimalarial drugs does not occur. Some early contributions on innate resistance to infections of vertebrates, including humans, are summarized in Table 1. It is remarkable that two of the pioneering studies were on malaria. The classical studies on the Toll receptor in "Drosophila" fruit fly were rapidly extended to Toll-like receptors in mammals and then to other pattern recognition receptors, which play important roles in innate immunity. However, the early contributions on malaria remain as classical examples of innate resistance, which have stood the test of time. Mechanisms of protection. The mechanisms by which erythrocytes containing abnormal hemoglobins, or are G6PD deficient, are partially protected against "P. falciparum" infections are not fully understood, although there has been no shortage of suggestions. During the peripheral blood stage of replication malaria parasites have a high rate of oxygen consumption and ingest large amounts of hemoglobin. It is likely that HbS in endocytic vesicles is deoxygenated, polymerizes and is poorly digested. In red cells containing abnormal hemoglobins, or which are G6PD deficient, oxygen radicals are produced, and malaria parasites induce additional oxidative stress. This can result in changes in red cell membranes, including translocation of phosphatidylserine to their surface, followed by macrophage recognition and ingestion. The authors suggest that this mechanism is likely to occur earlier in abnormal than in normal red cells, thereby restricting multiplication in the former. In addition, binding of parasitized sickle cells to endothelial cells is significantly decreased because of an altered display of "P. falciparum" erythrocyte membrane protein-1 (PfMP-1). This protein is the parasite's main cytoadherence ligand and virulence factor on the cell surface. During the late stages of parasite replication red cells are adherent to venous endothelium, and inhibiting this attachment could suppress replication. Sickle hemoglobin induces the expression of heme oxygenase-1 in hematopoietic cells. Carbon monoxide, a byproduct of heme catabolism by heme oxygenase-1(HO-1), prevents an accumulation of circulating free heme after "Plasmodium" infection, suppressing the pathogenesis of experimental cerebral malaria. Other mechanisms, such as enhanced tolerance to disease mediated by HO-1 and reduced parasitic growth due to translocation of host micro-RNA into the parasite, have been described. Types of innate resistance. The first line of defense against malaria is mainly exerted by abnormal hemoglobins and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. The three major types of inherited genetic resistance – sickle cell disease, thalassemias, and G6PD deficiency – were present in the Mediterranean world by the time of the Roman Empire. Hemoglobin abnormalities. Distribution of abnormal hemoglobins. Malaria does not occur in the cooler, drier climates of the highlands in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Tens of thousands of individuals have been studied, and high frequencies of abnormal hemoglobins have not been found in any population that was malaria free. The frequencies of abnormal hemoglobins in different populations vary greatly, but some are undoubtedly polymorphic, having frequencies higher than expected by recurrent mutation. There is no longer doubt that malarial selection played a major role in the distribution of all these polymorphisms. All of these are in malarious areas, The thalassemias have a high incidence in a broad band extending from the Mediterranean basin and parts of Africa, throughout the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and into the Pacific Islands. Sickle-cell. Sickle-cell disease was the genetic disorder to be linked to a mutation of a specific protein. Pauling introduced his fundamentally important concept of sickle cell anemia as a genetically transmitted molecular disease. The molecular basis of sickle cell anemia was finally elucidated in 1959, when Ingram perfected the techniques of tryptic peptide fingerprinting. In the mid-1950s, one of the newest and most reliable ways of separating peptides and amino acids was by means of the enzyme trypsin, which split polypeptide chains by specifically degrading the chemical bonds formed by the carboxyl groups of two amino acids, lysine and arginine. Small differences in hemoglobin A and S will result in small changes in one or more of these peptides . To try to detect these small differences, Ingram combined paper electrophoresis and the paper chromotography methods. By this combination he created a two-dimensional method that enabled him to comparatively "fingerprint" the hemoglobin S and A fragments he obtained from the tryspin digest. The fingerprints revealed approximately 30 peptide spots, there was one peptide spot clearly visible in the digest of haemoglobin S which was not obvious in the haemoglobin A fingerprint. The HbS gene defect is a mutation of a single nucleotide (A to T) of the β-globin gene replacing the amino acid glutamic acid with the less polar amino acid valine at the sixth position of the β chain. HbS has a lower negative charge at physiological pH than does normal adult hemoglobin. The consequences of the simple replacement of a charged amino acid with a hydrophobic, neutral amino acid are far ranging, Recent studies in West Africa suggest that the greatest impact of Hb S seems to be to protect against either death or severe disease—that is, profound anemia or cerebral malaria—while having less effect on infection per se. Children who are heterozygous for the sickle cell gene have only one-tenth the risk of death from falciparum as do those who are homozygous for the normal hemoglobin gene. Binding of parasitized sickle erythrocytes to endothelial cells and blood monocytes is significantly reduced due to an altered display of "Plasmodium falciparum" erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP-1), the parasite's major cytoadherence ligand and virulence factor on the erythrocyte surface. Protection also derives from the instability of sickle hemoglobin, which clusters the predominant integral red cell membrane protein (called band 3) and triggers accelerated removal by phagocytic cells. Natural antibodies recognize these clusters on senescent erythrocytes. Protection by HbAS involves the enhancement of not only innate but also of acquired immunity to the parasite. Prematurely denatured sickle hemoglobin results in an upregulation of natural antibodies which control erythrocyte adhesion in both malaria and sickle cell disease. Targeting the stimuli that lead to endothelial activation will constitute a promising therapeutic strategy to inhibit sickle red cell adhesion and vaso-occlusion. This has led to the hypothesis that while homozygotes for the sickle cell gene suffer from disease, heterozygotes might be protected against malaria. Malaria remains a selective factor for the sickle cell trait. Thalassemias. It has long been known that a kind of anemia, termed thalassemia, has a high frequency in some Mediterranean populations, including Greeks and southern Italians. The name is derived from the Greek words for sea ("thalassa"), meaning the Mediterranean Sea, and blood ("haima"). Vernon Ingram deserves the credit for explaining the genetic basis of different forms of thalassemia as an imbalance in the synthesis of the two polypeptide chains of hemoglobin. In the common Mediterranean variant, mutations decrease production of the β-chain (β-thalassemia). In α-thalassemia, which is relatively frequent in Africa and several other countries, production of the α-chain of hemoglobin is impaired, and there is relative over-production of the β-chain. Individuals homozygous for β-thalassemia have severe anemia and are unlikely to survive and reproduce, so selection against the gene is strong. Those homozygous for α-thalassemia also suffer from anemia and there is some degree of selection against the gene. The lower Himalayan foothills and Inner Terai or Doon Valleys of Nepal and India are highly malarial due to a warm climate and marshes sustained during the dry season by groundwater percolating down from the higher hills. Malarial forests were intentionally maintained by the rulers of Nepal as a defensive measure. Humans attempting to live in this zone suffered much higher mortality than at higher elevations or below on the drier Gangetic Plain. However, the Tharu people had lived in this zone long enough to evolve resistance via multiple genes. Medical studies among the Tharu and non-Tharu population of the Terai yielded the evidence that the prevalence of cases of residual malaria is nearly seven times lower among Tharus. The basis for resistance has been established to be homozygosity of α-Thalassemia gene within the local population. Endogamy along caste and ethnic lines appear to have prevented these genes from being more widespread in neighboring populations. HbC and HbE erythroids. There is evidence that the persons with α-thalassemia, HbC and HbE have some degree of protection against the parasite. Hemoglobin C (HbC) is an abnormal hemoglobin with substitution of a lysine residue for glutamic acid residue of the β-globin chain, at exactly the same ß-6 position as the HbS mutation. The "C" designation for HbC is from the name of the city where it was discovered—Christchurch, New Zealand. People who have this disease, particularly children, may have episodes of abdominal and joint pain, an enlarged spleen, and mild jaundice, but they do not have severe crises, as occur in sickle cell disease. Haemoglobin C is common in malarious areas of West Africa, especially in Burkina Faso. In a large case–control study performed in Burkina Faso on 4,348 Mossi subjects, that HbC was associated with a 29% reduction in risk of clinical malaria in HbAC heterozygotes and of 93% in HbCC homozygotes. HbC represents a ‘slow but gratis’ genetic adaptation to malaria through a transient polymorphism, compared to the polycentric ‘quick but costly’ adaptation through balanced polymorphism of HbS. HbC modifies the quantity and distribution of the variant antigen "P. falciparum" erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) on the infected red blood cell surface and the modified display of malaria surface proteins reduces parasite adhesiveness (thereby avoiding clearance by the spleen) and can reduce the risk of severe disease. Hemoglobin E is due to a single point mutation in the gene for the beta chain with a glutamate-to-lysine substitution at position 26. It is one of the most prevalent hemoglobinopathies with 30 million people affected. Hemoglobin E is very common in parts of Southeast Asia. HbE erythrocytes have an unidentified membrane abnormality that renders the majority of the RBC population relatively resistant to invasion by "P falciparum". Other erythrocyte mutations. Other genetic mutations besides hemoglobin abnormalities that confer resistance to "Plasmodia" infection involve alterations of the cellular surface antigenic proteins, cell membrane structural proteins, or enzymes involved in glycolysis. Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is an important enzyme in red cells, metabolizing glucose through the pentose phosphate pathway, an anabolic alternative to catabolic oxidation (glycolysis), while maintaining a reducing environment. G6PD is present in all human cells but is particularly important to red blood cells. Since mature red blood cells lack nuclei and cytoplasmic RNA, they cannot synthesize new enzyme molecules to replace genetically abnormal or ageing ones. All proteins, including enzymes, have to last for the entire lifetime of the red blood cell, which is normally 120 days. In 1956 Alving and colleagues showed that in some African Americans the antimalarial drug primaquine induces hemolytic anemia, and that those individuals have an inherited deficiency of G6PD in erythrocytes. G6PD deficiency is sex-linked, and common in Mediterranean, African and other populations. In Mediterranean countries such individuals can develop a hemolytic diathesis (favism) after consuming fava beans. G6PD deficient persons are also sensitive to several drugs in addition to primaquine. G6PD deficiency is the second most common enzyme deficiency in humans (after ALDH2 deficiency), estimated to affect some 400 million people. There are many mutations at this locus, two of which attain frequencies of 20% or greater in African and Mediterranean populations; these are termed the A- and Med mutations. Mutant varieties of G6PD can be more unstable than the naturally occurring enzyme, so that their activity declines more rapidly as red cells age. This question has been studied in isolated populations where antimalarial drugs were not used in Tanzania, East Africa and in the Republic of the Gambia, West Africa, following children during the period when they are most susceptible to "falciparum" malaria. In both cases parasite counts were significantly lower in G6PD-deficient persons than in those with normal red cell enzymes. The association has also been studied in individuals, which is possible because the enzyme deficiency is sex-linked and female heterozygotes are mosaics due to lyonization, where random inactivation of an X-chromosome in certain cells creates a population of G6PD deficient red blood cells coexisting with normal red blood cells. Malaria parasites were significantly more often observed in normal red cells than in enzyme-deficient cells. An evolutionary genetic analysis of malarial selection of G6PD deficiency genes has been published by Tishkoff and Verelli. The enzyme deficiency is common in many countries that are, or were formerly, malarious, but not elsewhere. PK deficiency. Pyruvate kinase (PK) deficiency, also called erythrocyte pyruvate kinase deficiency, is an inherited metabolic disorder of the enzyme pyruvate kinase. In this condition, a lack of pyruvate kinase slows down the process of glycolysis. This effect is especially devastating in cells that lack mitochondria, because these cells must use anaerobic glycolysis as their sole source of energy because the TCA cycle is not available. One example is red blood cells, which in a state of pyruvate kinase deficiency rapidly become deficient in ATP and can undergo hemolysis. Therefore, pyruvate kinase deficiency can cause hemolytic anemia. There is a significant correlation between severity of PK deficiency and extent of protection against malaria. Elliptocytosis. Elliptocytosis a blood disorder in which an abnormally large number of the patient's erythrocytes are elliptical. There is much genetic variability amongst those affected. There are three major forms of hereditary elliptocytosis: common hereditary elliptocytosis, spherocytic elliptocytosis and southeast Asian ovalocytosis. Southeast Asian ovalocytosis. Ovalocytosis is a subtype of elliptocytosis, and is an inherited condition in which erythrocytes have an oval instead of a round shape. In most populations ovalocytosis is rare, but South-East Asian ovalocytosis (SAO) occurs in as many as 15% of the indigenous people of Malaysia and of Papua New Guinea. Several abnormalities of SAO erythrocytes have been reported, including increased red cell rigidity and reduced expression of some red cell antigens. SAO is caused by a mutation in the gene encoding the erythrocyte band 3 protein. There is a deletion of codons 400–408 in the gene, leading to a deletion of 9 amino-acids at the boundary between the cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains of band 3 protein. Band 3 serves as the principal binding site for the membrane skeleton, a submembrane protein network composed of ankyrin, spectrin, actin, and band 4.1. Ovalocyte band 3 binds more tightly than normal band 3 to ankyrin, which connects the membrane skeleton to the band 3 anion transporter. These qualitative defects create a red blood cell membrane that is less tolerant of shear stress and more susceptible to permanent deformation. SAO is associated with protection against cerebral malaria in children because it reduces sequestration of erythrocytes parasitized by "P. falciparum" in the brain microvasculature. Adhesion of "P. falciparum"-infected red blood cells to CD36 is enhanced by the cerebral malaria-protective SAO trait . Higher efficiency of sequestration via CD36 in SAO individuals could determine a different organ distribution of sequestered infected red blood cells. These provide a possible explanation for the selective advantage conferred by SAO against cerebral malaria. Duffy antigen receptor negativity. "Plasmodium vivax" has a wide distribution in tropical countries, but is absent or rare in a large region in West and Central Africa, as recently confirmed by PCR species typing. This gap in distribution has been attributed to the lack of expression of the Duffy antigen receptor for chemokines (DARC) on the red cells of many sub-Saharan Africans. Duffy negative individuals are homozygous for a DARC allele, carrying a single nucleotide mutation (DARC 46 T → C), which impairs promoter activity by disrupting a binding site for the hGATA1 erythroid lineage transcription factor. In widely cited "in vitro" and "in vivo" studies, Miller et al. reported that the Duffy blood group is the receptor for "P. vivax" and that the absence of the Duffy blood group on red cells is the resistance factor to "P. vivax" in persons of African descent. This has become a well-known example of innate resistance to an infectious agent because of the absence of a receptor for the agent on target cells. However, observations have accumulated showing that the original Miller report needs qualification. In human studies of "P. vivax" transmission, there is evidence for the transmission of "P. vivax" among Duffy-negative populations in Western Kenya, the Brazilian Amazon region, and Madagascar. The Malagasy people on Madagascar have an admixture of Duffy-positive and Duffy-negative people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. 72% of the island population were found to be Duffy-negative. "P. vivax" positivity was found in 8.8% of 476 asymptomatic Duffy-negative people, and clinical "P. vivax" malaria was found in 17 such persons. Genotyping indicated that multiple "P. vivax" strains were invading the red cells of Duffy-negative people. The authors suggest that among Malagasy populations there are enough Duffy-positive people to maintain mosquito transmission and liver infection. More recently, Duffy negative individuals infected with two different strains of "P. vivax" were found in Angola and Equatorial Guinea; further, "P. vivax" infections were found both in humans and mosquitoes, which means that active transmission is occurring. The frequency of such transmission is still unknown. Because of these several reports from different parts of the world it is clear that some variants of "P. vivax" are being transmitted to humans who are not expressing DARC on their red cells. The same phenomenon has been observed in New World monkeys. However, DARC still appears to be a major receptor for human transmission of "P. vivax". The distribution of Duffy negativity in Africa does not correlate precisely with that of "P. vivax" transmission. Frequencies of Duffy negativity are as high in East Africa (above 80%), where the parasite is transmitted, as they are in West Africa, where it is not. The potency of "P. vivax" as an agent of natural selection is unknown, and may vary from location to location. DARC negativity remains a good example of innate resistance to an infection, but it produces a relative and not an absolute resistance to "P. vivax" transmission. Gerbich antigen receptor negativity. The Gerbich antigen system is an integral membrane protein of the erythrocyte and plays a functionally important role in maintaining erythrocyte shape. It also acts as the receptor for the "P. falciparum" erythrocyte binding protein. There are four alleles of the gene which encodes the antigen, Ge-1 to Ge-4. Three types of Ge antigen negativity are known: Ge-1,-2,-3, Ge-2,-3 and Ge-2,+3. persons with the relatively rare phenotype Ge-1,-2,-3, are less susceptible (~60% of the control rate) to invasion by "P. falciparum". Such individuals have a subtype of a condition called hereditary elliptocytosis, characterized by oval or elliptical shape erythrocytes. Other rare erythrocyte mutations. Rare mutations of glycophorin A and B proteins are also known to mediate resistance to "P. falciparum". Human leucocyte antigen polymorphisms. Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphisms common in West Africans but rare in other racial groups, are associated with protection from severe malaria. This group of genes encodes cell-surface antigen-presenting proteins and has many other functions. In West Africa, they account for as great a reduction in disease incidence as the sickle-cell hemoglobin variant. The studies suggest that the unusual polymorphism of major histocompatibility complex genes has evolved primarily through natural selection by infectious pathogens. Polymorphisms at the HLA loci, which encode proteins that participate in antigen presentation, influence the course of malaria. In West Africa an HLA class I antigen (HLA Bw53) and an HLA class II haplotype (DRB1*13OZ-DQB1*0501) are independently associated with protection against severe malaria. However, HLA correlations vary, depending on the genetic constitution of the polymorphic malaria parasite, which differs in different geographic locations. Hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin. Some studies suggest that high levels of fetal hemoglobin (HbF) confer some protection against falciparum malaria in adults with Hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin. Validating the malaria hypothesis. Evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane was the first to give a hypothesis on the relationship between malaria and the genetic disease. He first delivered his hypothesis at the Eighth International Congress of Genetics held in 1948 at Stockholm on a topic "The Rate of Mutation of Human Genes". He formalised in a technical paper published in 1949 in which he made a prophetic statement: "The corpuscles of the anaemic heterozygotes are smaller than normal, and more resistant to hypotonic solutions. It is at least conceivable that they are also more resistant to attacks by the sporozoa which cause malaria." This became known as 'Haldane's malaria hypothesis', or concisely, the 'malaria hypothesis'. Detailed study of a cohort of 1022 Kenyan children living near Lake Victoria, published in 2002, confirmed this prediction. Many SS children still died before they attained one year of age. Between 2 and 16 months the mortality in AS children was found to be significantly lower than that in AA children. This well-controlled investigation shows the ongoing action of natural selection through disease in a human population. Analysis of genome wide association (GWA) and fine-resolution association mapping is a powerful method for establishing the inheritance of resistance to infections and other diseases. Two independent preliminary analyses of GWA association with severe falciparum malaria in Africans have been carried out, one by the Malariagen Consortium in a Gambian population and the other by Rolf Horstmann (Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg) and his colleagues on a Ghanaian population. In both cases the only signal of association reaching genome-wide significance was with the "HBB" locus encoding the "β"-chain of hemoglobin, which is abnormal in HbS. This does not imply that HbS is the only gene conferring innate resistance to falciparum malaria; there could be many such genes exerting more modest effects that are challenging to detect by GWA because of the low levels of linkage disequilibrium in African populations. However the same GWA association in two populations is powerful evidence that the single gene conferring strongest innate resistance to "falciparum" malaria is that encoding HbS. Fitnesses of different genotypes. The fitnesses of different genotypes in an African region where there is intense malarial selection were estimated by Anthony Allison in 1954. In the Baamba population living in the Semliki Forest region in Western Uganda the sickle-cell heterozygote (AS) frequency is 40%, which means that the frequency of the sickle-cell gene is 0.255 and 6.5% of children born are SS homozygotes. It is a reasonable assumption that until modern treatment was available three quarters of the SS homozygotes failed to reproduce. To balance this loss of sickle-cell genes, a mutation rate of 1:10.2 per gene per generation would be necessary. This is about 1000 times greater than mutation rates measured in "Drosophila" and other organisms and much higher than recorded for the sickle-cell locus in Africans. To balance the polymorphism, Anthony Allison estimated that the fitness of the AS heterozygote would have to be 1.26 times than that of the normal homozygote. Later analyses of survival figures have given similar results, with some differences from site to site. In Gambians, it was estimated that AS heterozygotes have 90% protection against "P. falciparum"-associated severe anemia and cerebral malaria, whereas in the Luo population of Kenya it was estimated that AS heterozygotes have 60% protection against severe malarial anemia. These differences reflect the intensity of transmission of "P. falciparum" malaria from locality to locality and season to season, so fitness calculations will also vary. In many African populations the AS frequency is about 20%, and a fitness superiority over those with normal hemoglobin of the order of 10% is sufficient to produce a stable polymorphism.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5604578

The North Avenue Bridge can refer to one of three bridges that has carried North Avenue (Illinois Route 64) over the North Branch of the Chicago River on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. A center-pier swing bridge built in 1877 was replaced in 1907 by a bascule bridge, allowing river traffic more room for maneuvering in and out of the North Canal, just north of Goose Island. Due to deteriorating conditions and inadequate capacity, the bascule bridge was demolished in 2006 to make room for a hybrid suspension/cable-stayed bridge. The suspension/cable-stayed bridge fully opened on May 23, 2008. History. As Chicago grew into a center of industry and commerce in the late 19th century, numerous fixed-span crossings were replaced by center-pier swing bridges, the most common type of bridge that allowed pedestrians and wagons to cross the Chicago River while also periodically allowing ship traffic below. In 1877, one of these bridges was constructed just north of Goose Island. Development of the bascule bridge. The 1877 bridge and its counterparts, while the most common bridge of the mid-19th century, were criticized by both the shipping and real estate industries of Chicago. As the 19th century came to a close, shipping vessels had grown larger, and the swing bridges' center piers had become navigational hazards. In addition, each swing span required a large clearance around the bridge, preventing the development of docking facilities near the bridge. As open land along the Chicago River grew scarce, real estate and shipping companies grew increasingly critical of the swing spans. No progress was made on the issue until 1890, when the United States Congress gave the United States War Department the authorization to build new bridges over waterways, and to force changes to existing bridges that posed a hazard to navigation. In 1892, the directive was enforced in Chicago when a just-completed bridge at Canal Avenue was ordered removed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That year, the city's engineers began to study suitable alternatives to the hazardous swing-span bridge. The search generated disagreement between the Scherzer Rolling Lift Company of Chicago and Chicago Department of Public Works City Engineer John E. Ericson. Although the rolling lift bridge (a type of bascule bridge) was mechanically the most simple alternative, engineers soon discovered that the span applied its load in a rolling motion on its foundation, crumbling poorly built foundations. Ericson directed his staff to investigate other bridges in the U.S. and Europe, eventually finding that the Tower Bridge (1894) would be an appropriate starting point. With a model bridge that was patent-free, had a fixed center of gravity and simple mechanical motion, in 1900 Ericson prompted the Chicago City Council to allocate funding to replace five deteriorating swing-span bridges. The first five bridges were built at Clybourn Place (later Cortland Avenue) in 1902, Division Street over both the North Branch Canal (1903) and the Chicago River (1904), 95th Street over the Calumet River (1903) and at Western Avenue over the North Branch Canal (1904). During the same period of time, the Scherzer Company built seven of their rolling lift bridges over the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was widened to accommodate larger flows from the recently reversed Chicago River. These bridges, built under the authority of the Chicago Sanitary District, only needed to be approved by the Corps of Engineers, not the Department of Public Works. By 1904, the city had obtained permission to issue bonds to replace the rest of the swing bridges on the Chicago River. Ericson sent the Scherzer Company and the Sanitary District specifications for the bridge in 1905. A design by John W. Page, the inventor of a bascule bridge over the Sanitary and Ship Canal, was rejected in March 1905 due to noncompliance to specifications. The Scherzer Company waited until the bidding deadline to submit two separate designs; both of these were also rejected due to noncompliance. Two contracts were bid out for the trunnion style bascule bridge that Ericson had pioneered; one contract for $81,369 (1905) went to the Jackson and Corbett Company for the substructure, and one for $111,983 (1905) went to the Roemheld and Gallery Company for superstructure work. After the decision, Scherzer brought its argument with Ericson into court, arguing that the Department of Public Works had "maliciously, fraudulently and unlawfully" prohibited Scherzer from bidding their bridge design, which they claimed was both superior in quality and less expensive. A settlement was reached in August 1905, and construction for the new North Avenue Bridge began in early 1906. Ericson was removed from the Public Works' bridge division and control over bridge design was passed to a separate administrative entity headed by Thomas G. Pihlfeldt. However, under Pihlfeldt's guidance the city continued to express preference for the trunnion bascule design. 1907 bridge description. The bridge measured about from one abutment to the other. The bridge took the general form of a Pratt truss; however, where most Pratt trusses would incline downwards at the shoreline, the tail ends of the North Avenue Bridge truss curved upwards, tapering towards the center of the span. Where the tail ends were tallest, deep lateral braces provided support for the bridge. The deck of the bridge was wide at the approaches. Upon construction, the roadway for the approaches consisted of wood blocks atop a steel-supported concrete slab. Approach sidewalks, made of concrete, had railings made of steel mesh that overlooked the river. On the movable leaves, a wide wooden deck was centered between two metal brackets that held plank sidewalks. The roadway itself was separated by the center truss. Originally, streetcar tracks ran on both sides of the bridge. Decline of the North Branch shipping district. After new manufacturing facilities opened on the Calumet River in the southern portion of Chicago, shipping traffic on the Chicago River fell dramatically. By the mid-1920s, the Department of Public Works had floated a proposal to replace the moving bridges with fixed spans through a ten-year period from 1925–1935, citing high maintenance costs. The proposal was not acted upon, partially due to opposition by the Army Corps of Engineers; however, except for a brief resurgence in traffic during World War II, shipping volume remained low. The historical bridge was last raised in 1972. By the 1990s, the Corps of Engineers agreed to city plans to convert the Chicago River's lift bridges to fixed spans. As the surrounding area transformed from primarily industrial to residential and commercial in nature, traffic volumes on the aging bridge increasing, causing bottlenecks. As required by National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 regulations, the city offered the structure to any interested parties for relocation and preservation elsewhere. Because of the complexity of the outdated lifting mechanism, no cities offered to take the bridge. 2007-2008 bridge replacement. Due to age and the high cost of maintenance, a replacement fixed-span bridge was built through 2007–2008. The new bridge is a fixed-span, hybrid suspension/cable-stayed bridge of the same height but nearly twice as long in length. The original bridge was two lanes wide; the new bridge has four lanes plus sidewalks, helping to reduce congestion caused by the 40,000 cars/day that travel on the bridge. James McHugh Construction Company served as the general contractor for the new bridge. Designs for the new North Avenue Bridge were constrained by several factors. An active railroad line runs along the eastern bank of the river, requiring a level-crossing or overpass. The banks of the Chicago River were to be kept open and utilized for further development. The United States Coast Guard required the bridge to have a vertical clearance of . Finally, the new crossing, situated at the northern tip of Goose Island and having a clear view to the Chicago skyline, was required to be aesthetically pleasing. Due to rising costs of steel, the construction of a new bascule bridge was ruled out. The length of the crossing proved to be too short for a pure suspension bridge, while a pure cable-stayed bridge would require a larger tower than preferred for the site. As a result, engineers turned to the concept of a hybrid suspension/cable-stayed bridge. Prior to work on the new bridge, work crews constructed and opened a temporary bridge just to the north of the new bridge. The temporary bridge allowed for the relocation of utilities, construction of an improved river wall and uninterrupted substructure construction for the new bridge. The center span was constructed on three barges in the Chicago River, because of Coast Guard regulations that required the channel to be open at all times. After the center span was constructed, it was towed to the bridge, where 16 jacks lifted the span into place. The new bridge was completed in 22 months, and cost US$25,000,000 to build. The bridge is anchored by four pairs of pylons, with each pylon weighing . The pylons rest on 10 smaller micropiles that extend into bedrock. From the pylons, a total of 24 cable-stays support the approach spans, as well as the ends of the center span. A suspension cable, running from anchorages at the feet of the bridge to the tops of the pylons, supports the middle portion of the center span. The deck of the bridge is post-tensioned to allow horizontal forces of the bridge to be transferred to anchor blocks at the ends of the span. It was constructed with of high-performance concrete, and with a latex overlay. The total thickness of the deck is only .

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60990660

Spirobranchus cariniferus, commonly known as the blue tubeworm or spiny tubeworm, or by its Māori name "toke pā", is a species of tube-building polychaete worm endemic to New Zealand. This species forms patchy, belt-like colonies of hard, white, triangular tubes, each containing a bright blue worm. These are cemented to the shaded side of rocks in the lower to mid-tidal zone. It may also inhabit hard objects such as dead shells and small stones. When submerged, it puts out a fan of dark-blue tentacles to feed, which it retracts during low tide. Individuals living in Dunedin's Otago Harbour are the only polychaetes known to host gregarine parasites. Little is known about their impact on the worms, but it is likely to be a negative one. Description. Adult worms can grow to 40 mm long and 3 mm wide. The tube is hard, white, and triangular in cross-section with a ridge running along the top. This extends from above the tube opening to form a sharp protective spine. The operculum is a flat, calcareous plate. Its stalk is flat with prolonged wings. Its body is a yellow to orange colour towards the posterior and a bright blue at the anterior. Radioles are a bright to dark blue with some white bands. Diet. The blue tubeworm is a surface filter feeder. It feeds on plankton and organic particles, which it filters from the water using its fan of tentacles. Distribution. It is found throughout New Zealand. Its tube layers can be up to 30 cm thick in the cooler climate of the South Island.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2069521

The Oregon Ducks are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Oregon, located in Eugene. The Ducks compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. With eighteen varsity teams, Oregon is best known for its American football team and track and field program, which has helped Eugene gain a reputation as "Track Town, USA". Oregon's main rivalries are with the Oregon State Beavers (the Civil War) and the Washington Huskies. Nicknames and mascot history. Oregon teams were originally known as Webfoots, possibly as early as the 1890s. The Webfoots name originally applied to a group of fishermen from the coast of Massachusetts who had been heroes during the American Revolutionary War; their descendants had settled in Oregon's Willamette Valley in the 19th century and the name stayed with them. A naming contest in 1926 won by "Oregonian" sports editor L. H. Gregory made the Webfoots name official, and a subsequent student vote in 1932 affirmed the nickname, chosen over other suggested nicknames such as Pioneers, Trappers, Lumberjacks, Wolves, and Yellow Jackets. Ducks, with their webbed feet, began to be associated with the team in the 1920s, and live duck mascots were adopted to represent the team. Journalists, especially headline writers, also adopted the shorter Duck nickname, but it wasn't until the 1940s that the image of Donald Duck, permitted via a handshake deal between Walt Disney and Oregon athletic director Leo Harris, cemented the image of the Duck as the school's mascot. Both nicknames were still in use well into the 1970s. In 1978, a student cartoonist came up with a new duck image, but students rejected the alternative by a 2-to-1 margin. Although Donald wasn't on that ballot, the University Archivist declared that the election made Ducks the school's official mascot, replacing Webfoots. Varsity programs. The University of Oregon sponsors teams in eight men's and twelve women's NCAA sanctioned sports, primarily competing in the Pac-12 Conference and acrobatics & tumbling competing in the National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association, and lacrosse and indoor track & field teams competing in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Football. The football program began in 1893 and played its first game on February 22, 1894, defeating Albany College 46-0. The football team moved to its new home, Hayward Field in 1919 where it shared the facility with the track and field team until Autzen Stadium was completed in 1967. Winning its first Rose Bowl in 1917 against the University of Pennsylvania under head coach Hugo Bezdek, the Ducks have returned to the Rose Bowl seven additional times in 1920, 1957, 1995, 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2020;. While in the Pacific Coast Conference, the Ducks won five conference co-championships in 1919, 1933, 1948, and 1957. The Pacific Coast Conference was disbanded in 1958, and the Ducks played as an independent until they joined the PCC's effective successor, the Pacific-8 Conference (then officially the Athletic Association of Western Universities), which later became the Pacific-10 Conference and eventually the Pac-12 Conference, in 2011. In the Pac-8/10/12, they have won seven conference championships (1994, 2001, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2019) and shared one championship (2000). The Ducks were 3–2 during the BCS era, winning the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, the 2012 Rose Bowl, and the 2013 Fiesta Bowl and losing the 2010 Rose Bowl and the 2011 BCS National Championship Game. In 2014, Oregon won a school record 13 games and saw junior quarterback Marcus Mariota win the school's first Heisman Trophy. That same year, the Ducks made the first ever College Football Playoff and beat the defending champion Florida State Seminoles 59–20 in the 2015 Rose Bowl semi-final. The loss to Oregon ended the Seminoles 29 game win streak and moved the Ducks into the final. They made the first ever CFP National Championship Game where they lost 42–20 to Ohio State. Basketball. The Ducks men's basketball team played its first season in 1902-1903 under head coach Charles Burden. It was not until 1927 that the Ducks played their first game at McArthur Court, defeating Willamette University 38-10. Head coach Howard Hobson was hired in 1936 and took the basketball team nicknamed "The Tall Firs" to win the first NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in 1939. The Tall Firs achieved a 29-5 record, capped by a 46-33 victory over Ohio State University in the championship game. in the inaugural year for the event. The Ducks men's team would add only one more shared Pacific Coast Conference title to their two until winning the Pacific-10 Conference title in the 2001-2002 season under head coach Ernie Kent. The Ducks would also make an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament that season along with the 2006-2007 season. In 2010-2011, the Ducks moved into the new Matthew Knight Arena and welcomed new coach Dana Altman. Since, Altman has won three Pac-12 Conference Coach of the Year honors (2013, 2015, 2016) and led Oregon to the 2013 Pac-12 Conference Men's Basketball Tournament Championship. In addition, Altman has taken Oregon to four straight NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament for the first time in program history (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), including a trip to the Sweet 16 in 2013 and the Elite 8 in 2016. The Ducks won the 2015-2016 Pac-12 Conference Tournament. This led to the Ducks being the top seed in the West Regional of the 2015-2016 NCAA tournament, its first ever top seeding in the NCAA tournament. The Ducks defeated Holy Cross and Saint Joseph's in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament to advance to the Sweet 16 in Anaheim, where they defeated the number four seed and defending national champion Duke Blue Devils, 82-68, to advance to the Elite 8. On the women's side, three eventual first-round WNBA draft picks—Sabrina Ionescu (30 points), Satou Sabally (25 points), and Ruthy Hebard—led the No. 1 ranked Ducks to a 93–86 victory over Team USA in November 2019. Their opponents had won the last six Olympic gold medals, the 2018 World Cup, and already qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and included WNBA stars Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Nneka Ogwumike, and Sylvia Fowles. The exhibition game was Team USA's first loss to a college team in 20 years. Ionescu, the top pick in the 2020 draft, is also the only NCAA basketball player of either sex to record 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 1,000 assists in a career, as well as the recipient of multiple national player of the year awards in both 2019 and 2020, sweeping all of the major awards in the latter year. Track and field. The University of Oregon Cross Country and Track & Field programs have a particularly long and storied history, earning Eugene the nickname Track Town, United States. After several years of struggling, Bill Hayward became the head coach in 1903 and provided solid direction for the program for 44 years, coaching Daniel Kelly and Ralph Hill to Olympic Silver Medals. After Hayward's retirement in 1947, his trainee Bill Bowerman took over the head coaching position in 1949. Bill Bowerman became a legendary coach, winning numerous NCAA team Championships at Oregon and coached many to All-American and Olympian status such as Steve Prefontaine. His talents were not limited to the track, as he also co-founded Nike, pressured the Amateur Athletic Union to improve its services, and brought the Olympic Trials and NCAA Championships to Hayward Field. Bill Bowerman retired in 1973 and his assistant coach, Bill Dellinger became the head coach who brought four NCAA Cross Country Championships and one NCAA Track & Field Championship. Steve Prefontaine, who ran at Oregon in the early 1970s, was a legend in his own right, setting 13 American records in seven separate events and only lost three races at Hayward Field during the span of his career. He won seven NCAA championships and today, the Prefontaine Classic is held every year at Hayward Field in his honor. The program has garnered numerous NCAA national titles across all the disciplines. Baseball. The Ducks baseball team first played in 1877, the year following the establishment of the university. In 1981, baseball was dropped due to budgetary concerns. Baseball would be reinstated 26 years later by interim athletic director Patrick Kilkenny and played its first game in 2009. George Horton, who led the Cal State Fullerton baseball team to an NCAA national championship, was hired in 2007 to lead the reinstated Oregon Ducks baseball program. In his second year, Horton guided the team in to a 40-24 record and a berth in the NCAA regionals. Softball. Oregon Softball plays home games at the new Jane Sanders Stadium. Oregon has had recent success under Coach Mike White who has taken Oregon to the Women's College World Series (WCWS) four times in the last 6 years. Oregon has appeared in seven WCWS, in 1976, 1980, 1989, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017. In 2014 and 2017, the Ducks reached the national semi-finals. Volleyball. The Oregon Volleyball program are coached by Matt Ulmer and play its home games at Matthew Knight Arena. They have appeared in the NCAA Tournament 16 times including the 2012 National Title Game. Oregon defeated #1 Penn State in the National Semi-Finals before losing to eventual champion Texas in the title match. Other varsity sports. The Ducks also have varsity teams in women's basketball, golf, tennis, lacrosse, soccer, team stunts and gymnastics. Notable non-varsity sports. Rugby. Founded in 1961, the University of Oregon Rugby Football Club plays Division 1 college rugby in the Northwest collegiate rugby conference against local rivals such as Washington and Washington State. Oregon's biggest rivalry, however, is their "civil war" matchup against in-state rival Oregon State University. Oregon plays its home games at Riverfront Field. The Ducks have been led by head coach Pate Tuisue since 2012. The University of Oregon Women's Club Rugby Team has been coached by Greg Farrell since 1998. They are a part of the Pacific Mountain Rugby Conference. During their league season they will play University of Washington, Washington State University, Oregon State, Boise State University, and Western Washington University. For the past couple years the team's main rival has been Washington State University. Oregon Women's also plays on Riverfront field. Ice hockey. The Ducks compete at the Pacific 8 Intercollegiate Hockey Conference of the American Collegiate Hockey Association Division II. Championships. NCAA team championships. Oregon has won 34 NCAA National Championships. Other national team championships. Below are four national team titles that are not bestowed by the NCAA: Athletic facilities. The Oregon Ducks football complex is located north of the main campus. The complex includes Autzen Stadium where the games are played, the Len Casanova Center where the locker rooms and training facilities are located, the indoor practice field called the Moshofsky Center, and the outdoor training field named Kilkenny Field. Much of the cost of the state-of-the-art facilities were paid for by the prominent university boosters Phil Knight, Ed Moshofsky, and Patrick Kilkenny. Also in the football complex is PK Park, the University of Oregon baseball stadium, completed in 2009 for the reemergence of the baseball program, located in the northeast corner of the parking lot. The basketball teams along with other court-based sports play at Matthew Knight Arena, dubbed "Matt Court" in a play on McArthur Court's longstanding nickname "Mac Court", the Oregon Ducks' main court through the first part of the 2010–11 season. Hayward Field was originally constructed for the football team in 1919 and in 1921, a track was installed to accommodate the track team. Today, it is the home of the Oregon Ducks track and field team. This storied venue has been the host of the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships twelve times. The Olympic Trials have been hosted at this venue four times. Jane Sanders Stadium, the newest Ducks sports venue, located at the south end of campus, opened in March 2016 as the home diamond for the Ducks softball team. Rivalries. The Oregon Ducks have an in-state rivalry with the Oregon State Beavers in which they play for the Platypus Trophy. The rivalry, dubbed the Civil War, has been scored across ten different sports that the two universities share over the past nine years. The series is currently tied 4-4-1. The Oregon Ducks and the Washington Huskies have enjoyed a border rivalry that many consider to be even more fierce than the respective teams’ in-state rivalries. The rivalry began to build steam in 1948, when the Ducks and the California Golden Bears tied for the conference win and the Huskies’ vote went to Cal which inked them in for a trip to the Rose Bowl. A few years later, there was a move to remove Oregon, Oregon State, and Washington State from the Pacific Coast Conference (whose history the Pac-10 claims as its own) and the Huskies did not object. Relationship with Nike. The University of Oregon is commonly referred to as the University of Nike due to the influence of Nike co-founder Phil Knight's influence through his donations to the school over the years. Knight ran in the University of Oregon Track & Field program under Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. Knight graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959 with a bachelor's degree in accounting and went on to earn an M.B.A. at Stanford University. Knight returned to Oregon and with Bowerman, also a University of Oregon alumnus, later founded Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964, which officially became Nike in 1978. In 1970, Bowerman revolutionized the athletic shoe by pouring molten rubber into a waffle iron, creating a prototype rubber sole. University of Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine became the first major track athlete to wear Nike shoes and converted many of his peers to the Nike brand. Nike has maintained a close relationship with UO ever since, manufacturing all university logo clothing and uniforms for athletic teams, including research prototypes for high-tech "smart clothes", such as jerseys with cooling systems. Numerous University of Oregon graduates have also gone on to become executives, designers, and business partners of Nike such as Tinker Hatfield and Dan Wieden. Phil Knight has personally donated significant amounts to the University for both academic and athletic aspirations, including significant amounts toward the Knight Library, the Knight Law Center, numerous endowed chairs, support for the track & field program, the Autzen Stadium expansion, and a $100 million donation to create the Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund. Controversy surrounding Nike's labor practices precipitated protests in 2000 led by a group of students calling themselves the Human Rights Alliance. Protests included a 10-day tent city occupation of the lawns in front of Johnson Hall, the main administration building, demanding the university join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). University President Dave Frohnmayer signed a one-year contract with the WRC, causing Phil Knight to withdraw a previous $30 million commitment toward the Autzen Stadium expansion project and no further donations toward the University. Nike, since 1998, had actively improved worker conditions abroad and strongly endorsed the Fair Labor Association, an association with similar aspirations of the WRC but with origins and board members from the apparel industry, including Nike. In a public statement, Phil Knight criticized the WRC for having unrealistic provisions and called it misguided while praising the FLA for being balanced in its approach. The students disagreed, saying the FLA has conflicting interests, but President Dave Frohnmayer along with several others agreed with Knight in that the WRC provides unbalanced representation. Citing a legal opinion from the University Counsel, President Frohnmayer in October 2000, released a statement saying that the University could not pay its membership dues for the WRC since the WRC was neither an incorporated entity nor had tax-exempt status and to do so was a violation of state law. The Oregon University System on February 16, 2001 enacted a mandate that all institutions within the OUS choose business partners from a politically neutral standpoint, barring all universities in Oregon from membership in the WRC and the FLA. Following the dissolved relationship between the university and the WRC, Phil Knight reinstated the donation and increased the amount to over $50 million. Since then, activity on the subject died down and Frohnmayer believed that the leaders of the protest lost their foothold since they did not represent the majority of students on campus. The relationship between the University of Oregon and Nike was the topic of the book, "University of Nike" by Joshua Hunt. In the book, Hunt describes the influence that Nike held over university administrators as well as the strong arm tactics Nike employed to the benefit of corporate interests under the guise of philanthropy. The book also points to this relationship as a bellwether as other U.S. states reduce higher education funding, resulting in universities accepting a greater percentage of their funding from corporate sources with their corresponding interests.

nine-tenths of the last decade

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=799777

(Sanskrit: गुण) is a concept in Hinduism and Sikhism, which can be translated as "quality, peculiarity, attribute, property". The concept is originally notable as a feature of Samkhya philosophy. The gunas are now a key concept in nearly all schools of Hindu philosophy. There are three gunas, according to this worldview, that have always been and continue to be present in all things and beings in the world. These three "gunas" are called: ' (goodness, calmness, harmonious), ' (passion, activity, movement), and "" (ignorance, inertia, laziness). All of these three "gunas" are present in everyone and everything, it is the proportion that is different, according to Hindu worldview. The interplay of these "gunas" defines the character of someone or something, of nature and determines the progress of life. In some contexts, it may mean "a subdivision, species, kind, quality", or an operational principle or tendency of something or someone. In human behavior studies, "Guna" means personality, innate nature and psychological attributes of an individual. Like all Sanskrit technical terms, "guṇa" can be difficult to summarize in a single word. Its original and common meaning is a thread, implying the original materials that weave together to make up reality. The usual, but approximate translation in common usage is "quality". Terminology. "Guna" appears in many ancient and medieval era Indian texts. Depending on the context, it means: Guṇa is both a root and a word in Sanskrit. Its different context-driven meanings are derived from either the root or the word. In verse VI.36 of Nirukta by Yāska, a 1st millennium BC text on Sanskrit grammar and language that preceded Panini, "Guṇa" is declared to be derived from another root "Gaṇa", which means "to count, enumerate". This meaning has led to its use in speciation, subdivision, classification of anything by peculiarity, attribute or property. This meaning has also led to its use with prefixes such as "Dviguna" (twofold), "Triguna" (threefold) and so on. In another context, such as phonology, grammar and arts, "Guṇa-" takes the meaning of "amantrana" (आमन्त्रणा, addressing, invitation) or "abhyasa" (अभ्यास, habit, practice). In the Mahabharata Book 6 Chapter 2, the meaning of "guna" similarly comes in the sense of addressing each part (the root implying amantrana), and thereby it means "avayava" (अवयव, member, subdivision, portion). In Sanskrit treatises on food and cooking, "guna" means quality, tendency and nature of ingredient. Ancient South Indian commentators, such as Lingayasurin, explain that the meaning of "guna" as "thread, string" comes from the root guna- in the sense of repetition ("abhyasa"), while the Telugu commentator Mallinatha explains the root "guna-" is to be understood in Sisupalavadha as "amredana" (आम्रेडन, reiteration, repetition). Larson and Bhattacharya suggest that the "thread" metaphor relates to that which connects and runs between what we objectively observe to the "tattva" (तत्त्व, elementary property, principle, invisible essence) of someone or something. In the context of philosophy, morality and understanding nature, "Guna-" with more dental "na" takes the meaning of addressing quality, substance, tendency and property. In abstract discussion, it includes all hues of qualities – desirable, neutral or undesirable; but if unspecified, it is assumed with good faith to be good and divine in Indian philosophy. Thus, "Guṇi" from the root "Guṇa-" means someone or something with "divine qualities", as in Svetasvatara Upanishad hymn VI.2. The gunas under various philosophies. Innate qualities and tendencies are key ancient concepts in Indian literature. Maitrayaniya Upanishad is one of the earliest texts making an explicit reference to Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and linking them to their "Guna" – as creator/activity, preserver/purity, destroyer/recycler respectively. The idea of three types of "guna", innate nature and forces that together transform and keep changing the world is, however, found in numerous earlier and later Indian texts. Samkhya school of Hinduism. In Samkhya philosophy, a is one of three "tendencies, qualities": sattva, rajas and tamas. This category of qualities has been widely adopted by various schools of Hinduism for categorizing behavior and natural phenomena. The three qualities are: In Indian philosophy, these qualities are not considered as present in either-or fashion. Rather, everyone and everything has all three, only in different proportions and in different contexts. The living being or substance is viewed as the net result of the joint effect of these three qualities. According to Samkya school, no one and nothing is either purely Sattvik or purely Rajasik or purely Tamasik. One's nature and behavior constitute a complex interplay of all of all three gunas, in varying degrees. In some, the conduct is Rajasik with significant influence of Sattvik guna; in some it is Rajasik with significant influence of Tamasik guna, and so on. The balance of Gunas of everything and everyone can change and does. However, change in one quality faces inertia from other two qualities in Indian worldview. Change needs internal or external influence or reinforcement, as knowledge and force to transform. The force to change comes from the "Rajas" guna, the Sattva guna empowers one towards harmonious and constructive change, while Tamas guna checks or retards the process. In Indian mythology, Vishnu is envisioned with more "Sattva", Brahma with more "Rajas", and Shiva seen with all three "Gunas". Nyaya school of Hinduism. In Nyaya (Generality or common features) school of Hinduism, there is extensive debate on what "Guna" means, and whether quality is innate, subjective or describable. Early scholars of this school identified 17 qualities, which later scholars expanded to 24 . Different scholars of this school list the 24 differently; for example, Bhasarvajna disallows 6 of the 24 commonly accepted by the ancient scholars. The most commonly accepted list is: color, taste, smell, touch, number, contact, disjunction, farness, nearness, dimension, separateness, knowledge, pleasure, frustration, desire, hatred, effort, weight, fluidity, viscosity, dispositional tendency, merit, demerit, and sound. Nyaya school considers quality as non-repeatable, a conceptual theme not found in Western philosophy where "quality" is presumed to be repeatable. It is also not found in some parallel schools of Hinduism. Repeatability means that the white in one object is same as white in other object, and white means the same thing. Nyaya scholars hold that "whiteness" is a guna of "white", but that is different from "whiteness" of an object or living being. To them, white has many hues and the "whiteness" is subjective. In Laksanavali, an ancient Indian text by Udayana, "Guna" is discussed with more nuance. For example, he writes, "quality of earth" is specific only if it meets three conditions: it occurs in earth, does not occur in anything that is not earthy, and be a distinctive quality that cannot be described as combination of other qualities. Vaisheshika school of Hinduism. In Vaisheshika school of Hinduism, which is most related to Nyaya school, states that our awareness, understanding and judgments of any person and thing in the world is relational. All relations, holds this school of Hinduism, is dyadic between "anuyogin" (referend) and "pratiyogin" (referent). "Guna" (quality) is considered as one of the seven "padārtha" (category) of relations. The others are: inherence ("samavaya"), being ("bhava"), genus ("samanya"), species ("vishesha"), substance ("dravya") and motion/action ("karman"). Unlike Vaisheshika, Nyaya considers inherence as subset of "guna" (quality). Gangesha, a Nyaya scholar, suggests a somewhat different theory, stating that our awareness is of two types – true and false. True awareness is produced when we seek to observe some excellence ("guna") in its cause, while false awareness results from observing fault ("dosha") in its cause. In other words, in Gangesha's perspective, the observer's state of mind and attitude affects relational awareness. Bhagavad Gita. Chapters 2, 3, 7, 13, 14, 17 and 18 of Bhagavad Gita discuss "Guna". Verse 17.2 refers to the three Guna – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic – as innate nature (psychology or personality of an individual). Sattvic guna is one driven by what is pure, truth, compassionate, without craving, doing the right because it is right, positive and good. Tamasic guna is one driven by what is impure, dark, destructive, aimed to hurt another, contemptuous, negative and vicious. Rajasic guna is one that is ego-driven, out of personal passion, active, ostentatious, seeking the approval of others. In Chapters 17 and 18, Bhagavad Gita illustrates various items and actions by their three "Guna". For example, three types of charity are discussed, and what makes charity Sattvic, Rajasic or Tamasic. Similarly, food, relationships, knowledge and actions are detailed in terms of the three "Guna". In Chapter 18, for example: Similarly, knowledge that is attached to object of action, without concern for understanding the cause, without concern for purpose or significance, is Tamasic knowledge; knowledge that is segregated, that considers everything unconnected, individualistic and meaningless is Rajasic; knowledge that sees one being in all beings, that seeks the whole, a unity in diversity, and similarities in the divided components is Sattvic. Furthermore, in Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advises Arjuna to transcend the three modes of existence and other forms of dualism. Guna in theory of ethics. "Guna" is one of the four important elements in the framework of ethical theories in Indian philosophy. Bommer et al. suggest that ethical/non-ethical behavior is an outcome of individual attributes, personal environment, social environment and institutional rules and laws. "Guna" theory is the ancient Indian philosophy on individual attributes, while the theories of Dharma and Ashramas address the personal and social environment, as well as part of its institutional framework. Guna theory, states Crawford, represents a hierarchical theory of values, where the relative order of hierarchy is suggested to vary within each individual along with the relative proportion of each "guna". The interplay of three "gunas" affect an individual's values, and in Hindu worldview, these values affect individual's actions, as well as the happiness and serenity experienced by the individual. The "gunas" are not considered as static and set. Hindu literature, such as the Bhagavad Gita, state it to be dynamic and changeable with knowledge, introspection and understanding of "sva-dharma". Realizing one's "sva-dharma" and Self is emphasized in Indian ethical theories. The highest state of existence and bliss, in Advaita school of Hinduism for example, is "jivanmukti" (Self-realization) and moksha. "Guna" theory's perspective on values constituting human personality is unique yet congruent with other ethical theories. Guna in cosmology. Samkhya cosmology combines the three with primal matter (universe, Prakrti). These are present in all things and beings in the world, and it is their interplay that defines the physical and psychological character and nature. They serve as the fundamental operating principles or 'tendencies' of which are called: ', ', and "". When any of the "guna" is out of balance in a being or object, the Samkhya school suggests that a pattern of evolution starts, affecting not only itself but its environment. Purusha, or consciousness, is considered as separate from Prakriti and changeless. Guna in other contexts. Sanskrit grammar. In the Sanskrit grammatical tradition (Vyakarana), "" is an ancient language innovation that strengthens vowel-stems, making them more visually palpable when written and more musically resonant when heard. Dwight states that the use of "guna" makes the Sanskrit language more dynamical, bringing out into relief the idea expressed, given its complexity; in other words, the use of "guna" in Sanskrit adds depth and sophistication in its phonetic delivery as well as intellectual structure. These innovations are not unique to Sanskrit, but also found in Greek, Latin, Italian and to some extent Russian. "Guna" and other rules of language for Sanskrit are described by Pāṇini in his "Ashtadhyayi". "Guna" refers to a set of normal-length vowels that are less reduced than the basic set (in modern terms, the "zero grade"), but more reduced than the "" vowels (in modern terms, the "lengthened grade"). As an example, "ṛ, i, u" are basic (zero-grade) vowels, with corresponding (full-grade) vowels "ar, e, o" and (lengthened-grade) vowels "ār, ai, au". (This is more understandable once it is realized that, at an earlier stage of development, Sanskrit "e" and "o" were "ai" and "au", and Sanskrit "ai" and "au" were "āi" and "āu".) "Guna" corresponds to what is now termed the "full grade" in Indo-European ablaut. Another orthography and phonology concept related to "Guna" is "Vṛddhi". Ayurveda. In the terminology of Ayurveda (traditional medicine), "guṇa" can refer to one of twenty fundamental properties which any substance can exhibit, arranged in ten pairs of antonyms, viz. heavy/light, cold/hot, unctuous/dry, dull/sharp, stable/mobile, soft/hard, non-slimy/slimy, smooth/coarse, minute/gross, viscous/liquid. Guna is also a concept in Ayurvedic medicine, as a system to assess conditions and diets. For this reason Triguna and tridosha are considered to be related in the traditions of Ayurveda.

supreme stage

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55717769

Lattice and bridged-T equalizers are circuits which are used to correct for the amplitude and/or phase errors of a network or transmission line. Usually, the aim is to achieve an overall system performance with a flat amplitude response and constant delay over a prescribed frequency range, by the addition of an equalizer. In the past, designers have used a variety of techniques to realize their equalizer circuits. These include the method of complementary networks; the method of straight line asymptotes; using a purpose built test-jig; the use of standard circuit building blocks,; or with the aid of computer programs. In addition, trial and error methods have been found to be surprisingly effective, when performed by an experienced designer. In video or audio channels, equalization results in waveforms that are transmitted with less degradation and have sharper transient edges with reduced overshoots (ringing) than before. In other applications, such as CATV distribution systems or frequency multiplexed telephone signals where multiple carrier signals are being passed, the aim is to equalize the transmission line so that those signals have much the same amplitude. The lattice and bridged-T circuits are favoured for passive equalizers because they can be configured as constant-resistance networks such as the Zobel network, as pointed out by Zobel and later by Bode. The single word description “equalizer” is commonly used when the main purpose of the network is to correct the amplitude response of a system, even though some beneficial phase correction may also be achieved at same time. When phase correction is the main concern, the more explicit term "phase equalizer" or "phase corrector" is used. (In this case, the circuit is usually an all-pass network which does not alter the amplitude response at all such as the lattice phase equalizer). When equalizing a balanced transmission line, the lattice is the best circuit configuration to use, whereas for a single-ended circuit with an earth plane, the bridged-T network is more appropriate. Although equalizer circuits, of either form, can be designed to compensate for a wide range of amplitude and phase characteristics, they can become very complicated when the compensation task is difficult, as is shown later. A variety of methods has been used to design equalizers and some of these are described below. Several of the procedures date back to the early part of the 20th century when equalizers were needed by the rapidly expanding telephone industry. Later, with the advent of television, the equalisation of video links became very important too. Amplitude correction. The aim of an equalizer network is to correct for deficiencies in the amplitude response of a transmission line, lumped element network or amplifier chain. Equalisation is often necessary with transmission lines and lumped element delay lines which tend to have increasing loss with frequency. Without correction, waveform fidelity is lost, and rise and fall times of transients are degraded (i.e. less sharp). Sometimes amplitude correction is required for more subtle reasons, for example, in the case of analogue colour television waveforms, colour errors can occur in the displayed pictures when the transmission system’s response is not flat. It is usual to choose lattice and bridged-T equalizers which are constant-resistance networks. It was pointed out by Zobel and later by Bode that such networks can be cascaded with each other and with a transmission line or with a lumped element circuit, without introducing mismatch problems. The use of constant resistance configurations has been common practice in equalizer design, for many years, and almost all of the examples presented in this article have this property. Whatever the design method, passive equalizers always introduce additional loss into the transmission path, and this has to be made good by an amplifier or repeater. The method of complementary networks. In some of his early work, Zobel devised a lumped element circuit to simulate the behaviour of a given long transmission line of interest. Such a device was useful in that it allowed investigatory work on a transmission system to be carried out in the convenience of the laboratory. Importantly, as was pointed out by Zobel, once such a network had been designed, it was always possible to find a realizable complementary network, which exhibited the inverse response. An example. The procedure can be illustrated by a simple example presented by Zobel, which is shown below. Here, the left hand lattice has a simple low-pass characteristic and the right hand lattice has the complementary characteristic. For this circuit R1*R2 = L1/C1 = L2/C2 = R0^2 with R1 < 2.R0 . <br> C2 is given by formula_1 For a normalized network R0 = 1Ω. Choose R1 = 0.5Ω and L1 = 1H then R2 = 2Ω, C1 = 1F, C2 = 3F, and L2 = 3H The responses of the individual sections and the overall response are shown in the plots for the composite network, given on the right. This compensation process can be described mathematically, by means of the basic lattice equations given in lattice network, as follows. The transmission loss of a normalized (R0 = 1) constant resistance lattice with through arms Za and cross-diagonal arms of Zb is formula_2 Now for the low-pass circuit, given above, za is a parallel combination of a 0.5Ω resistor in parallel with 1H inductor. formula_3 and so formula_4 <br> Next consider the high –pass section. Here za is a parallel combination of a 0.5Ω resistor in parallel with a 3F capacitor, so formula_5 and so formula_6 Finally, the overall response Ttot is <br> formula_7 <br> i.e. a flat response, with an overall gain of one third. This is shown in the figure above. <br> In this example, the overall characteristic is phaseless, i.e. full phase compensation has been achieved in addition to the amplitude correction. This is because exact correction has been achieved at all frequencies. Often correction is only successful over a limited range of frequencies, in which case the final result will have some residual phase. More generally, the response of a circuit or transmission line may be difficult to reproduce precisely by means of lumped element circuits, so the usual task is to find a realizable characteristic that is an acceptable match. Sometimes trial an error methods, applied in a systematic way can prove successful A general-purpose equalizer circuit. When the arms of a lattice network are purely reactive, constant resistance all-pass networks are possible, as shown in lattice delay network. If, however, resistors are included in the lattice arms, then different amplitude responses are possible while still retaining the constant resistance property. One, much-used equalizer circuit is shown here, together with the equivalent bridged-T circuit. The equivalence between the lattice and bridged-T can be shown with Bartlett's bisection theorem. The circuits have constant resistance characteristic when Z1.Z2 = R02. The transfer function of this circuit is formula_8 When normalized so that the source and terminating resistors and R0 are all unity and Z1.Z2 = 1, it becomes formula_9 and so Z1, as a function of T, is given by formula_10 The simplicity of this equation (only one impedance has to be found) makes the circuit popular in equalizer designs. The method of straight line asymptotes. The method uses an initial trial response, made up of a sequence of straight line asymptotes, to determine the pole/zero locations of a realizable network. The general principles of the method are as follows. Consider the case of a simple RC low-pass circuit whose transfer function has a single pole on the real frequency axis at p = -a, as shown This response is -3 dB at ω = a and falls at 6 dB per octave at high frequencies. It is shown plotted, in decibels, versus frequency (on a log scale). Also shown, on the right, is the two-line asymptotic approximation, with break frequency also at ω = a. As can be seen, the true response and the straight line approximation are closely matched over most of the frequency range, only deviating near to ω = a. If a zero is now added at, say, -10×a, then a new asymptote with a positive slope of 6 dB per octave is introduced, starting at ω = 10, as shown. By extending the method, a complicated loss characteristic can be approximated by a sequence of straight line asymptotes provided the steepest slope of the loss characteristic does not exceed 6 dB per octave in the frequency range. The results are plotted on a dB scale against frequency on a log scale, as before. In general, the transfer function is <br> formula_11 The actual response (magnitude) of T is easily calculated and is shown, on the plot on the right, as a function of frequency, together with the target response. A closer fit would require extra poles and zeros in T(p), at a closer spacing. The low-pass network T(p), with this response will have an L-C network for Z1 and an R-C network for Z2, when realized using the simple circuits previously described. However, of more interest here is the complementary network, since this will correct for the falling transmission loss of this response. The transfer function of the equalizer network will be formula_12 where K = 9 so that the gain of the network never exceeds unity at any frequency. The expression for Z1(p) can be derived from this equation using formula_13 So formula_14 Z1 can be realized as an R-C ladder network (or as a parallel combination of two R-C impedances, each of which is a resistor and a capacitor in series). A ladder network version of Z1 is shown on the left, together with that of Z2 (its dual network). Component values for Z1 (with R0 = 1) are: C1 = 0.04838F, C2 = 0.4747F, R1 = 2.2857Ω, R2 = 5.7152Ω and for Z2 they are L1 = 0.0438H, L2 = 0.4747H, R3 = 0.4375, R4 = 0.1750. These circuits of Z1 and Z2 can be used directly into a bridged-T equalizer network, but for use in a lattice network, the capacitor values should be doubled and resistor values halved in the Z1 network, and all resistor and inductor values doubled in the Z2 (i.e. Za = Z1/2 and Zb = 2.Z2). The overall response, when the equalizer is cascaded with the original characteristic, is shown on the right. As expected, there is ripple on the result, which is similar to the differences between the initial response and its approximation T(p). Although the response, prior to equalization, considered in this example, has a characteristic which falls linearly when plotted against log(ω), it is possible to cope with non-linear characteristics in much the same way, provided the plot falls monotonically – i.e. the slope does not change sign, and the maximum slope is less than 6 dB/octave. In such cases, a series of straight line asymptotes can also be found to approximate a response and so lead to a realizable solution. Equalizers of considerable complexity can be designed using the method of asymptotes, and they can achieve an overall, corrected, response with very low ripple («0.1 dB). Deriving compensation networks by means of an experimental test jig. An experimental test jig may be used to find the component values to find circuit values for the equalizer. The basic circuit arrangement is shown, on the left. The transfer function of this simple circuit, ignoring flat loss, is formula_15 Now, if 2.Zx = Z1, this becomes formula_16 So T(p) has the same form as the transfer function of the basic equalizer circuit given earlier with Zx identical to the “Za” lattice arms. So, although the test jig is not, in itself, a constant resistance network it does provide a convenient experimental method for determining the required component values for a lattice or bridged-T circuit which is a constant resistance network. Once the values of Zx are established, circuit values for Z1 and its dual, Z2, are found in a straightforward manner. A suggested test jig, using these concepts is shown, on the right. (i) The basic R-C circuit that forms the bulk of Zx is in the form of a ladder network, rather than a parallel combination of series R-C pairs. The total spread in the capacitor values needed is much reduced for this configuration. Usually, a network of six or seven sections is sufficient. (ii) A shunt resistor R is placed across the input terminals of Zx, and this also reduces the spread of component values. Unfortunately, it also reduces the maximum correction possible by an individual equalizer section and may result in a cascade of two or more sections being necessary to achieve total equalisation. (iii) A series resonant L-C circuit is also present across the terminals of Zx. This combination is arranged to resonate above the top frequency of the system passband and its purpose is to reduce the equalizer flat loss. (It is a technique commonly used in equalizer circuits). (iv) Instead of finding component values to achieve a desirable frequency response, an alternative approach is to optimize the transient performance, by means of test waveforms (such as pulse and bar signals., for example). Optimizing transient performance in this way is particularly applicable to situations where waveform fidelity is important such as in television. When circuit values are obtained in this way, the description “waveform corrector” is preferred to “response equalizer” An example. An example of a “waveform corrector” for a coaxial cable section for video frequencies is shown. The shunt impedance Z2 is not shown in detail. It is the dual of Z1, so whereas Z1 contains a series resonant circuit and an R-C ladder network, Z2 contains a shunt resonant circuit and an R-L ladder network. The plot of vout/vin (in dBs) versus frequency, for this circuit, using the component values proposed in the reference is also shown, on the right. Zobel’s curve fitting procedure. Zobel, in his early paper, described a procedure in which a cascade of prototype constant resistance lattice networks formed the basis of his equalizers. His method was basically a curve fitting procedure and an Appendix in his paper provided a series of networks from which a complete equalizer could be built. He apportioned contributions to the overall desired equalizer response to the various members of a lattice (or bridged-T) cascade. Each lattice circuit in the cascade was identified by its impedances Za and Zb (where Zb = R02/Za and by its “propagation function” and “attenuation constant” (in effect, the square of the magnitude). These image parameters... are all interrelated as Zobel demonstrated see (Image impedance). <br> Firstly, the lattice impedance Za can be expressed as the ratio of two polynomials in (jf) formula_17 In this expression, the impedance coefficients a0, b0, etc., one of which is unity and some may be zero, are algebraic combinations of the network elements. For any given type of network, the coefficients are fixed by the elements, and vice versa. Secondly, the propagation constant Γ can be found from formula_18 <br> in which g0, g1 ,h0, etc. are algebraic functions of a0, b0, etc. From this, the attenuation constant can be derived and expressed as a function of frequency. (It was the usual practice in the 1920s to display attenuation as a positive parameter, so the response of a low pass filter was displayed as a positively rising curve, with increasing frequency). For the attenuation constant, the expression is of the form: formula_19 <br> which is a ratio of two polynomials in f2, and in which the coefficients could be determined from the known data, or measurements. Rearranging this, Zobel obtained the “attenuation linear equation”, which holds at all frequencies, thus: formula_20 <br> By having attenuation data at sufficient data points (frequencies), a family of simultaneous equations can be solved to give the values of P0, Q0, P2, Q2, etc. From these results, Zobel showed, in the Appendix of his paper how, for each prototype equalizer circuit, it was possible to derive the component values for that section. An example. As an example, the procedure was used by Zobel to design an equalizer for a balanced line with a characteristic impedance of 600 Ω and 50 miles in length, for frequencies up to 4.5 kHz. In this early paper Zobel used the “napier” (the natural logarithm of a voltage ratio) and the “transmission unit” (a logarithm to the base 10 of a power ratio) interchangeably within his calculations. The two units are related by 1 napier = 8.686 transmission units. In the mid 1920s these units were renamed the “neper” and the “decibel" and these are the units used here. The original attenuation characteristic requiring correction is shown as “Plot 1” in the figure below. Zobel proposed that a satisfactory equalized response would be obtained by a cascade of two lattices, of the types shown in the figure on the left. The left-hand lattice, in the figure, provided correction to the response at low frequencies and the right-hand one provided correction at high frequencies. Considering first the left hand circuit, this has an attenuation linear equation formula_21 <br> so there are four unknowns to find, P0, P2, Q0, Q2, and so data at four frequencies is required. From the measured data on the transmission line Zobel proposed the following attenuation values. At f1 = 40 Hz, A1 = 0.536 neper; at f2 = 200 Hz, A2 = 0.291 neper; at f3 = 800 Hz, A3 = 0.176 neper; at f4 = 2000 Hz, A4 = 0.100 neper. Solution of the four simultaneous equations derived from this data gave P0 = 102.007 ×109, Q0 = 32.20010 ×109, P2 = 5.06037 ×106, Q2 = 3.43087 ×106, from which Zobel’s design data gave the following component values: C1 = 1.2042 μF, R1 = 168.32 Ω, C2 = 4.0342 μF, R2 = 124.19 Ω R3 = 2138.72 Ω, L3 = 0.43351H, R44 = 2898.55 Ω, L4 = 1.4523H In the case of the right-hand lattice chosen by Zobel, the attenuation constant has the same value at low and high frequencies, so P0 = F0 and it has a peak in the response near the resonant frequency of C6 and L6. The attenuation linear equation for this lattice is formula_22 The expression for attenuation constant of the right hand lattice has P0 = F0, Q0 = 1 and P4 = F0.Q4, so data was needed to solve for P0, P2, Q2 and Q4. The data used was: at f0 = 0 Hz, A1 = 0.796 neper; at f1= 3000 Hz, A1 = 0.747 neper; at f2 = 4000 Hz, A2 = 0.530 neper; at f3 = 4500 Hz, A3 = 0.300 neper. The solution of the four simultaneous equations derived from this data gave F0 = P0 = 4.913; P2 = -46.207×10−8; Q2 = -90092×10−8; Q4 = 23.198×10−16 . Using this data, Zobel’s design equations for this lattice gave following component values: R5 = 226.95 Ω, R6 = 143.4 Ω, L6 = 0.04935H, C6 = .02476 μF R7 = 1586.25 Ω, R8 = 2510.46 Ω, L8 = 8.8992mH, C8 = 0.137 μF The final results are shown in the figure below. Plot 1 of the figure shows the initial response of the cable run that was to be corrected. The compensation achieved by the left-hand (low frequency) lattice, alone, is shown in Plot 2. Finally, total compensation is shown in Plot 3, when the right-hand lattice is also included. Bode’s method for equalisation. Bode devoted Chapter XII of his well known book to the topic of equalizers. He pointed out that all transfer functions could be made up from a cascade of first and second order constant-resistance lattices which, of course, includes equalizer networks. In order to assist with the process of network design, Bode provided design details of four first and four second order networks to cover the various possible locations of the poles and zeros in the complex frequency plane. Unfortunately, some of the circuits he proposed (when pole and zero locations were complex), were derived using Brune’s synthesis method, which sometimes produced lattice impedances containing mutually coupled coils. However, a later paper provides alternative networks to avoid this problem. An example. As an example of the method, consider the realization of the simple equalizer response given earlier. It can be realized by means of simple lattices in cascade. The response required is formula_23 <br> This can be rewritten thus formula_24 <br> This can be apportioned to two first order lattices in cascade, using the Type IV circuits from Bode’s chart to give the circuit shown. This can be easily converted to a cascade of standard constant resistance bridged-T sections of the form described earlier, as shown on the right. (Aa simpler circuit is also possible, which uses fewer resistors). Development of an equalizer by circuit refinement. In addition to the methods described earlier, a final equalizer circuit may be obtained by first starting with an initial simple solution and then using a process of circuit refinement to increase the complexity of the circuit, and its response, until a satisfactory performance was obtained. An example of a commercially produced network, obtained in this way is shown below. This equalizer was able to correct for the losses in various lengths of coaxial cable type BICC T3205 (a commercial high quality 75Ω video cable). The equalizer was a bridged-T circuit, rather than a lattice, as was appropriate for coaxial cable, Two versions of the circuit were produced, one for cable lengths of 0 to 100 feet and the second for cable lengths of 100 to 180 feet. Resistors R17 and R18 were “adjusted on test” (with R17×R18 = 752) to give optimum results for a given cable length. Iterative procedures by computer programming. With the advent of modern computers, complex iterative routines can be run, which previously were prohibitively time consuming. Routines are possible which minimise the differences between an approximate trial solution and the target specification, either in a “least-squares” or “Chebyshev” sense. The programs use iterative procedures to successively solve linear programming problems, derived locally, as a way of dealing with non-linear problems. An example. An example illustrating the method, considered the insertion loss characteristic shown in “Attenuation Plot”, below. A cascade of three lattice sections, as shown, was chosen to achieve the required equalizer response. The component values, derived by the iteration procedure, gave a response which matched the characteristic in a Chebyshev sense, as required. The final result matched the target response at nine frequencies (there are nine degrees of freedom in the circuit R1 to R3, C1 to C3 and L1 to L3) with peak to peak errors of only ± 0.03 dB at intervening frequencies. Variable equalizers. In the case of variable equalizers which are set by varying resistor values only, it is usual to use only Bridged-T networks because there are less components to match than in a lattice. Even then, to ensure a fully matched network, dual potentiometers are necessary. Variable equalizers are also discussed by Rounds et al. and Bode. Bode was interested in variable equalizers adjusted by a single potentiometer, so his variable equalizers were not constant resistance networks. Phase equalizers. Introduction. A phase equalizer is a circuit which is cascaded with a network in order to make the overall phase response more linear (or to make the group delay more constant). The combined circuit will transmit waveforms with improved fidelity, compared to the performance of the initial network alone. Phase equalization is often necessary because many circuits are designed to achieve certain attenuation characteristics, with little regard paid to the phase characteristic that ensues. This is frequently the situation with filters for example, where, in the pursuit of a specific selectivity requirement, scant attention is paid to the phase response of the resulting network (as with Cauer’s filter design procedure). Usually, the circuit produced is a minimum phase network, where sudden changes in the amplitude response always result in nonlinearities in the phase response, because of the precise relationship between amplitude and phase. For example, a sharp-cut minimum phase low-pass filter, with a rapid transition from passband to stopband will always have a phase characteristic which deviates greatly from linear at frequencies in the vicinity of the cut-off frequency. The sharper the transition, the greater will be this deviation. (A plot of the group delay will also show a large increase in delay in the same frequency region). Similarly, any amplitude ripple in the filter passband will also be accompanied by ripple of the phase characteristic. In many cases, both amplitude and phase ripples are undesirable and so there is little point in correcting for one type of ripple without also tackling the other If waveform fidelity is important, then a non-linear phase characteristics are undesirable. In television, for example, the pictorial defects attributable to phase distortion are excessive ringing of the luminance information and smeared and spurious colour edges at transitions in the colour information. In practice, phase correction procedures are most successful when applied to band limited systems, such as those containing a low pass or bandpass filter. This is because such filters inherently define a finite frequency band over which it is necessary to apply the correction. As shown in lattice network, the lattice all-pass circuit is suitable as a phase correcting network because it is able to modify the phase characteristics of a filter network without introducing changes to its amplitude response. Also, the constant resistance property means that it does not create spurious reflections due to mismatch effects, when cascaded with other networks. An example. As an example of the phase correction process, consider a conventional Butterworth low-pass filter of 9th order. The circuit, shown below, is the normalised filter, to be terminated with 1 ohm and with unity cut-off frequency). The amplitude and phase characteristics of this filter are given in the figures below. Also shown, in the left-hand plot, is the phase error curve for the filter (i.e. the deviation of the phase slope from linear). As can be seen in the right-hand plot, the phase slope of the low pass filter alone is linear at low frequencies but increases too rapidly at higher frequencies, ultimately resulting in a phase deviation, from linear, of 100 degrees near the top of the pass-band. In order to correct for this phase deviation, the phase corrector needs a linear phase characteristic at low frequencies, but to be positive of the linear asymptote as the frequency increases. A cascade of three second order all-pass lattices will give the required phase characteristic for the filter, and their phase response is shown in the right hand plot. In this example, because the filter has an unbalanced form, it is necessary to use bridged-T equivalents in the phase corrector, rather than lattice circuits. The phase corrector is shown below. As the phase corrector is an all-pass and constant resistance circuit, it does not change the amplitude response of the filter. The combined characteristic has a phase curve which is linear over the pass-band of the filter, but the resulting high phase slope means the combination has a significantly greater transmission delay than the filter alone. In this example, the Butterworth low pass filter has nine poles, located at equi-angular intervals on a unity semi-circle in the left half of the complex frequency plane, and the poles and zeros of each of the three phase correctors are ±0.866 ±0.5j . The transient behaviour of the filter, when subject to a step waveform is shown above. The first plot is for the filter, alone, without phase correction and the second plot shows the performance after correction. As expected the phase correction improves waveform symmetry, reduces the 10–90% rise-time, and roughly halves the peak amplitude of the overshoots, but it has increased the delay. An overview of design methods for phase correctors. In practice, a variety of techniques have been used in the design of phase correctors. The simplest method uses trial and error procedures, aided by a basic understanding of all-pass phase characteristics. The procedure can be surprisingly successful as, often, a cascade of a few phase correctors based on the maximally phase flat second order lattice will suffice A similar approach, based on the use of standard phase tables for equalizers with parabolic delay, allows the designer to determine the appropriate network to meet a given peak delay An improved procedure, noting that group delay characteristics of many networks could be considered as sums of parabolic and linear contributions, used charts and graphs in combination with three fitting techniques, namely the 3-point fit, the slope fit or the ‘averaged’ fit, to determine component values. Brain described the phase correction of a cascade of 16 vacuum tubes interconnected by second order maximally flat inter-stage networks. The phase characteristic was derived from measurements of the amplitude response by using the relationship between amplitude and phase for minimum phase shift networks. Phase correction was accomplished by three identical second order phase correctors in the form of bridged-T networks. Fredendhall gave the pole-zero pattern and the circuit diagram for a four section delay equalizer which he proposed to the FCC should be used in transmitters to compensate for the characteristics of the ‘average’ receiver. A more mathematical approach has been described which starts by choosing a basic cascade of phase correctors and then optimising their characteristics by a simple curve fitting procedure. A LPF for television use was designed by this method. More sophisticated still, an iterative convergence procedure has been run on a computer to optimise a cascade of phase correcting sections. By having enough sections available to give the appropriate number of degrees of freedom, the desired phase characteristic can be achieved in a Chebyshev sense. Another optimisation procedure began by first noting that the delays of first and second order all-pass sections add linearly. So for a cascade of M first order and N second order networks, a best fit choice of M and N could be found to meet any given characteristic within acceptable bounds, by using a minimax approximation procedure. The process proceeded in two steps, the first was to find an approximation that coincided with the desired delay on a specified set of points. The second step consisted of perturbing those points in an attempt to find an equal ripple solution. By increasing the number of sections, chosen at the outset, the peak-peak ripple error can be made as small as required. Szentirmai has issued a computer aided design package called “S/FILSYN” which is capable of general purpose synthesis, including circuits for amplitude and phase equalization realised as lattice or bridged-T networks. He has also reviewed a number of other computer aided design packages

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=244315

IEEE 802.11e-2005 or 802.11e is an approved amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard that defines a set of quality of service (QoS) enhancements for wireless LAN applications through modifications to the media access control (MAC) layer. The standard is considered of critical importance for delay-sensitive applications, such as Voice over Wireless LAN and streaming multimedia. The amendment has been incorporated into the published IEEE 802.11-2007 standard. Original 802.11 MAC. Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). The basic 802.11 MAC layer uses the distributed coordination function (DCF) to share the medium between multiple stations. (DCF) relies on CSMA/CA and optional 802.11 RTS/CTS to share the medium between stations. This has several limitations: Point Coordination Function (PCF). The original 802.11 MAC defines another coordination function called the point coordination function (PCF). This is available only in "infrastructure" mode, where stations are connected to the network through an Access Point (AP). This mode is optional, and only very few APs or Wi-Fi adapters actually implement it. APs send "beacon" frames at regular intervals (usually every 100 TU or 0.1024 second). Between these "beacon" frames, PCF defines two periods: the Contention Free Period (CFP) and the Contention Period (CP). In the CP, DCF is used. In the CFP, the AP sends Contention-Free-Poll (CF-Poll) packets to each station, one at a time, to give them the right to send a packet. The AP is the coordinator. Although this allows for a better management of QoS, PCF does not define classes of traffic as is common with other QoS systems (e.g. 802.1p and DiffServ). 802.11e MAC protocol operation. The 802.11e enhances the DCF and the PCF, through a new coordination function: the hybrid coordination function (HCF). Within the HCF, there are two methods of channel accessed, similar to those defined in the legacy 802.11 MAC: HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) and Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA). Both EDCA and HCCA define Traffic Categories (TC). For example, emails could be assigned to a low priority class, and Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) could be assigned to a high priority class. Enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA). With EDCA, high-priority traffic has a higher chance of being sent than low-priority traffic: a station with high priority traffic waits a little less before it sends its packet, on average, than a station with low priority traffic. This is accomplished through the TCMA protocol, which is a variation of CSMA/CA using a shorter arbitration inter-frame space (AIFS) for higher priority packets. The exact values depend on the physical layer that is used to transmit the data. In addition, EDCA provides contention-free access to the channel for a period called a Transmit Opportunity (TXOP). A TXOP is a bounded time interval during which a station can send as many frames as possible (as long as the duration of the transmissions does not extend beyond the maximum duration of the TXOP). If a frame is too large to be transmitted in a single TXOP, it should be fragmented into smaller frames. The use of TXOPs reduces the problem of low rate stations gaining an inordinate amount of channel time in the legacy 802.11 DCF MAC. A TXOP time interval of 0 means it is limited to a single MAC service data unit (MSDU) or MAC management protocol data unit (MMPDU). The levels of priority in EDCA are called access categories (ACs). The contention window (CW) can be set according to the traffic expected in each access category, with a wider window needed for categories with heavier traffic. The CWmin and CWmax values are calculated from aCWmin and aCWmax values, respectively, that are defined for each physical layer supported by 802.11e. For a typical of aCWmin=15 and aCWmax=1023, as used, for example, by OFDM (802.11a) and MIMO (802.11n), the resulting values are as following: ACs map directly from Ethernet-level class of service (CoS) priority levels: The primary purpose of QoS is to protect high priority data from low priority data. There are also scenarios in which the data needs to be protected from other data of the same class. Admission Control in EDCA address these type of problems. The AP publishes the available bandwidth in beacons. Clients can check the available bandwidth before adding more traffic. Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) is the Wi-Fi Alliance specification which is a subset of IEEE 802.11e. Certified APs must be enabled for EDCA and TXOP. All other enhancements of 802.11e are optional. HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA). The HCF (hybrid coordination function) controlled channel access (HCCA) works a lot like PCF. However, in contrast to PCF, in which the interval between two beacon frames is divided into two periods of CFP and CP, the HCCA allows for CFPs being initiated at almost anytime during a CP. This kind of CFP is called a Controlled Access Phase (CAP) in 802.11e. A CAP is initiated by the AP whenever it wants to send a frame to a station or receive a frame from a station in a contention-free manner. In fact, the CFP is a CAP too. During a CAP, the Hybrid Coordinator (HC)—which is also the AP—controls the access to the medium. During the CP, all stations function in EDCA. The other difference with the PCF is that Traffic Class (TC) and Traffic Streams (TS) are defined. This means that the HC is not limited to per-station queuing and can provide a kind of per-session service. Also, the HC can coordinate these streams or sessions in any fashion it chooses (not just round-robin). Moreover, the stations give info about the lengths of their queues for each Traffic Class (TC). The HC can use this info to give priority to one station over another, or better adjust its scheduling mechanism. Another difference is that stations are given a TXOP: they may send multiple packets in a row, for a given time period selected by the HC. During the CFP, the HC allows stations to send data by sending CF-Poll frames. HCCA is generally considered the most advanced (and complex) coordination function. With the HCCA, QoS can be configured with great precision. QoS-enabled stations have the ability to request specific transmission parameters (data rate, jitter, etc.) which should allow advanced applications like VoIP and video streaming to work more effectively on a Wi-Fi network. HCCA support is not mandatory for 802.11e APs. In fact, few (if any) APs currently available are enabled for HCCA. Implementing the HCCA on end stations uses the existing DCF mechanism for channel access (no change to DCF or EDCA operation is needed). Stations only need to be able to respond to poll messages. On the AP side, a scheduler and queuing mechanism is needed. Other 802.11e specifications. In addition to HCCA, EDCA and TXOP, 802.11e specifies additional optional protocols for enhanced 802.11 MAC layer QoS: Automatic power save delivery. In addition to the Power Save Polling mechanism, which was available pre-802.11e, new power save delivery and notification mechanisms have been introduced in 802.11e. APSD (automatic power save delivery) provides two ways to start delivery: ‘scheduled APSD’ (S-APSD) and ‘unscheduled APSD’ (U-APSD). With APSD, multiple frames may be transmitted together by the access point to a power-saving device during a service period. After the end of a service period, the device enters a doze state until next service period. With S-APSD, service periods start according to a predetermined schedule known to the power-saving device, thus allowing the Access Point to transmit its buffered traffic without the need for any signaling. With U-APSD, whenever a frame is sent to the Access Point, a service period is triggered, which allows the access point to send buffered frames in the other direction. U-APSD can take a ‘full’ U-APSD or ‘hybrid’ U-APSD form. With Full U-APSD, all types of frames use U-APSD independently of their priority. With Hybrid U-APSD, either U-APSD or the legacy Power Save Polling mechanism is used, depending on the access category. S-APSD is available for both channel access mechanisms, EDCA and HCCA, while U-APSD is available only for EDCA. APSD is a more efficient power management method than legacy 802.11 Power Save Polling, leading to lower power consumption, as it reduces both the signaling traffic that would otherwise be needed for delivery of buffered frames to power-saving devices by an AP and the collision rate among power-save polls, typically transmitted immediately after the beacon TIM. S-APSD is more efficient than U-APSD because scheduled service periods reduce contention and because transmission between the access point and a power-saving device starts without the need for any signaling. A power-saving device using U-APSD must generate signaling frames to retrieve buffered traffic in the absence of uplink traffic, as for instance in the case of audio, video, or best effort traffic applications found in today's smartphones. U-APSD is attractive for VoIP phones, as data rates are roughly the same in both directions, thus requiring no extra signaling—an uplink voice frame can trigger a service period for the transmission of a downlink voice frame. Hybrid U-APSD is less efficient than Full U-APSD because the Power Save Polling mechanism it employs for some access categories is less efficient than APSD, as explained above. The relative advantages of the various power-save mechanisms have been confirmed independently by simulations. Most newer 802.11 stations already support a power management mechanism similar to APSD. Block acknowledgments. Block acknowledgments allow an entire TXOP to be acknowledged in a single frame. This will provide less protocol overhead when longer TXOPs are specified. NoAck. In QoS mode, service class for frames to send can have two values: QosAck and QosNoAck. Frames with QosNoAck are not acknowledged. This avoids retransmission of highly time-critical data. Direct Link Setup. Direct Link Setup allows direct station-to-station frame transfer within a basic service set. This is designed primarily for consumer use, where station-to-station transfer is more commonly used. For example, when streaming video to a television across the living room, or printing to a wireless printer in the same room, it can be more efficient to send Wi-Fi frames directly between the two communicating devices, instead of using the standard technique of always sending everything via the AP, which involves two radio hops instead of one. Also, If the AP is far away in some distant part of the home, sending all the frames to the AP and back may require them to be sent at a lower transmission rate. However, DLS requires participation from the AP to facilitate the more efficient direct communication, and few, if any, APs have the necessary support for this. Tunnelled Direct Link Setup was published as 802.11z (TDLS), allowing devices to perform more efficient direct station-to-station frame transfers without support from the AP. Both DLS and TLDS require that stations be associated with the same AP. Both DLS and TLDS improve the speed and efficiency of communications between members of a basic service set, but they do not facilitate communication between devices that are near to each other but not associated with the same AP. Nearby communication between devices not associated with the same AP can be performed using technologies like Wi-Fi Direct, but so far Wi-Fi Direct has not seen widespread adoption. Microsoft's Virtual Wi-Fi initiative was designed to accomplish the same goal as DLS. Virtual Wi-Fi allows gamers to connect wireless while accessing the Internet through an AP by allowing station adapters to have multiple MAC addresses.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30098820

Ulysses S. Grant was the most acclaimed Union general during the American Civil War and was twice elected president. Grant began his military career as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1839. After graduation he went on to serve with distinction as a lieutenant in the Mexican–American War. Grant was a keen observer of the war and learned battle strategies serving under Generals Zachary Taylor (the future 12th President) and Winfield Scott. After the war Grant served at various posts especially in the Pacific Northwest; he was forced to retire from the service in 1854 due to accusations of drunkenness. He was unable to make a success of farming and on the onset of the Civil War in April 1861, Grant was working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois. When the war began his military experience was needed, and Congressman Elihu B. Washburne became his patron in political affairs and promotions in Illinois and nationwide. Grant trained Union military recruits and was promoted to Colonel in June 1861. Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont, who viewed in Grant an "iron will" to win, appointed Grant to commander of the District of Cairo. Grant became famous around the nation after capturing Fort Donelson in February 1862 and was promoted to Major General by President Abraham Lincoln. After a series of decisive yet costly battles and victories at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General by President Lincoln in 1864 and given charge of all the Union Armies. Grant went on to defeat Robert E. Lee after another series of costly battles in the Overland Campaign, Petersburg, and Appomattox. After the Civil War, Grant was given his final promotion of General of the Armed Forces in 1866 and served until 1869. Grant's popularity as a Union war general enabled him to be elected two terms as the 18th President of the United States. Some historians have viewed Grant as a "butcher" commander who in 1864 used attrition without regard to the lives of his own soldiers in order to kill off the enemy which could no longer replenish its losses. Throughout the Civil War Grant's armies incurred approximately 154,000 casualties, while having inflicted 191,000 casualties on his opposing Confederate armies. In terms of success, Grant was the only general during the Civil War who received the surrender of three Confederate armies. Although Grant maintained high casualties during the Overland Campaign in 1864, his aggressive fighting strategy was in compliance with the U.S. government's strategic war aims and was in any case abetted by profligate Confederate generals who were willing to match his losses. Grant has recently been praised by historians for his "military genius", and viewed as a decisive general who emphasized movement and logistics. Grant is considered a modern, natural, and skillful general, leading from a central command center, using common sense, and delivering coordinated attacks on the enemy's armies. American Civil War. Initial commissions. On April 15, 1861, after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down secession. Galena was enthusiastic in support of the war and recognized in Grant the one local with broad military experience. Grant helped recruit a company of volunteers in Galena and accompanied it to Springfield, the state capital, where untrained units were assembling in great confusion. Sponsored by his influential Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, Grant was named by the governor, Richard Yates, to train volunteers. He proved efficient and energetic in the training camps but desired a field command. Yates appointed him as a colonel in the Illinois militia and gave him command of the undisciplined and rebellious 21st Illinois Infantry on June 17. He went to Mexico, Missouri, guarding the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad from Confederate attack. On July 31, 1861, President Lincoln appointed him as a brigadier general in the United States Volunteers. On September 1, he was selected by Western Department Commander, Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont, to command the District of Southeast Missouri. He soon established his headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi. His command was soon reorganized and renamed the District of Cairo. Battles of Belmont, Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson. Grant's first Civil War battles occurred while he was in command of the District of Cairo. The Confederate Army, stationed in Columbus under General Leonidas Polk, had violated Kentucky's military neutrality. Immediately, Grant took the initiative and seized Paducah, Kentucky on September 5, 1861. He was ordered by commanding Union Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont just to make demonstrations against the Confederate Army, rather than attack Polk directly. Grant obeyed the order until President Lincoln discharged Frémont from active duty on November 2, 1861. Going on the offensive, Grant took 3,000 Union troops by boat and attacked the Confederate Army commanded by General Gideon J. Pillow positioned at Camp Johnson in Belmont, Missouri on November 7, 1861. Having initially pushed back the Confederate forces from Camp Johnson, Grant's undisciplined volunteers wildly celebrated rather than continuing the fight. Pillow, who was given reinforcements by Polk from Columbus, forced the Union troops to make a hasty retreat. Although the battle was considered inconclusive and futile, Grant and his troops gained the confidence needed to continue on the offensive. More importantly, President Lincoln took notice of Grant's willingness to fight. Grant won approval from Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck to attack Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Embarking on Admiral Andrew H. Foote's naval flotilla, the expedition steamed south on February 3, 1862 with two divisions of 15,000 men. During the winter, the river had risen and swamped some of the defenses of Fort Henry. On February 6, 1862, Adm. Foote's Union fleet consisting of ironclads and wooden ships bombarded Fort Henry as Grant's troops began the landing. Before Grant could attack, the fortress surrendered. Two Union naval officers entered the fort on a rowboat to accept the surrender. Although approximately 3,000 Confederates escaped east before the surrender, the fall of Fort Henry opened up the Union war effort in Tennessee and Alabama. After the fall of Fort Henry, Grant moved his army overland 12 miles east to capture Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Foote's naval fleet arrived on February 14 and immediately started a series of bombardments; however, Fort Donelson's water batteries effectively repulsed the naval fleet. Stealthily, on February 15, Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd ordered General Pillow to strike at Grant's Union forces encamped around the fort, in order to establish an escape route through to Nashville, Tennessee. Pillow's attack pushed McClernand's corps into a disorganized retreat eastward on the Nashville road. However, the Confederate advance stalled and Grant was not able to rally the Union troops to keep the southerners from escaping. The Confederate forces, under General Simon Bolivar Buckner, finally surrendered Fort Donelson on February 16. Grant's surrender demand to Buckner was popular throughout the Union, " "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The general was colloquially known from then on as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers. The surrender of Fort Donelson was a tremendous victory for the Union war effort; 12,000 Confederate soldiers had been captured in addition to the bountiful arms inventory of the fort. However, Grant now experienced serious difficulties with his superior in St. Louis, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck. Some writers believe that Halleck was personally or professionally jealous of Grant. In any event, Halleck made various criticisms about Grant to Washington, even suggesting that Grant's performance was impaired by drinking. With Washington's support, Halleck told Grant to remain at Fort Henry and give command of the next expedition up the Tennessee River to Charles F. Smith, newly nominated as a major general. Grant asked three times to be relieved from duty under Halleck. However, Halleck soon restored Grant to field command, perhaps in part because Lincoln intervened to inquire into Halleck's dissatisfaction with Grant. Grant soon rejoined his forces, eventually known as the Army of the Tennessee, at Savannah, Tennessee. After the fall of Donelson, Grant became popularly known for smoking cigars, as many as 18–20 a day. Battle of Shiloh. In early March 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck ordered Grant's Army of the Tennessee to move southward up the Tennessee River to attack Confederate railroads. Halleck then ordered Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of Ohio to concentrate with Grant before implementing a planned attack on Confederate troops concentrated in Corinth, Mississippi. Buell, whose veteran army was only 90 miles east in Columbia, was hesitant in sending reinforcements, claiming "swollen rivers" were hindering progress. Union commanders Grant and then Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman, the informal commander at Pittsburg Landing, mistakenly assumed Confederate troops would not attack the Union Army so there were no entrenchments. On April 6, 1862, the Confederates launched a preemptive full force attack on Grant's troops in the Battle of Shiloh; the objective was to destroy Grant's forces before being reinforced by Buell's army. Over 44,000 Confederate Army of Mississippi troops, led by Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard, vigorously attacked five divisions of Grant's army bivouacked nine miles north from Savannah, Tennessee, at Pittsburg Landing. Union Col. Everett Peabody, upon his infantry discovering the oncoming Confederate assault, was able to adequately warn the Union Army to form battle lines. Nonetheless, the Confederates were initially able to drive back the Union Army. The Union soldiers left, however, under Brig. Gens. Benjamin Prentiss, W.H.L. Wallace, and James M. Tuttle, bravely withstood determined Confederate assaults in a road pocket known as the "Hornet's Nest" for seven hours before being forced to yield ground towards the Tennessee River. This gave the Union army much needed time to be able to stabilize their line formations and gather reinforcements. Prentiss, himself, was taken prisoner and forced to surrender his division to the Confederates, while Wallace was mortally wounded. Grant, nursing a previous horse fall injury, arrived from Savannah where both he and Sherman rallied the troops and staved off defeat. Although Grant's forces were battered, the Army of the Tennessee held strong compact positions with 50 artillery guns while two federal gunboats fired at the Confederates. After receiving reinforcements from Buell and his own army, Grant had a total of 45,000 troops and launched a counter offensive on April 7. Confederate General Johnston was killed in the battle on the first day of fighting, and the Confederate Army, now under Beauregard, was outnumbered and forced to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. The 23,746 casualties at Shiloh shocked both the Union and Confederacy, whose combined totals exceeded casualties from all of the United States' previous wars. The Battle of Shiloh led to much criticism of Grant for leaving his army unprepared defensively; he was also falsely accused of being drunk. According to one account, President Lincoln rejected suggestions to dismiss Grant, saying, "I can't spare this man; he fights." After Shiloh, General Halleck took the field personally and gathered a 120,000-man army at Pittsburg Landing, including Grant's Army of the Tennessee, Buell's Army of the Ohio, and John Pope's Army of the Mississippi. Halleck assigned Grant the role of second-in-command, with others in direct command of his divisions. Grant was upset over the situation and might have left his command, but his friend and fellow officer, William T. Sherman, persuaded him to stay in Halleck's Army. After capturing Corinth, Mississippi, the 120,000-man army was disbanded; Halleck was promoted to General in Chief of the Union Army and transferred east to Washington, D.C. Grant resumed immediate command of the Army of the Tennessee and, a year later, captured the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg. Refugees from Slavery. On July 2, 1862, President Lincoln had authorized African American contraband or "fugitive slaves" seeking refuge in the Union Army to be recruited. During the fall of 1862, Grant made efforts to take care of "wagon loads" of black slave refugees in Western Tennessee and Northern Mississippi. On November 13, 1862, Grant placed Chaplain John Eaton of the 27th Ohio Infantry in charge of the refugees. Eaton organized camps and put the refugees to work to bring in the fall corn and cotton crops on deserted plantations. Eaton proved to be a judicious and fair leader of the refugees, protecting them from Confederate marauders. The refugees were not paid directly at this time; however, money was allocated and spent on them reasonably for their benefit. Eventually, these African Americans were recruited into the Union Army and paid directly to cut wood to fuel the Union steamers. With the resulting income the refugees were able to feed and clothe their families. This would be the beginnings of what would be known as the Freedmens Bureau during Reconstruction. Similar efforts to incorporate African Americans into the Union war effort were made on the Atlantic coast. Many Union political conservatives in Illinois, however, were against and blocked the influx of African Americans into their state. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the states and parts of states in rebellion. Thereafter, the Union recruited both former slaves and other blacks to fight against the Confederacy in new regiments of the Union Army known as the United States Colored Troops. The Battle of Vicksburg. Resolved to take control of the Mississippi River from the Confederacy, President Lincoln and the Union Army and Navy were determined to take the Confederate stronghold Vicksburg in 1862. Lincoln authorized Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand, a war Democrat politician, to recruit troops, the XIII corps, and organize an expedition against Vicksburg. A personal rivalry developed between Grant and McClernand on who would get credit for taking Vicksburg. The Vicksburg campaign started in December 1862 and lasted six months before the Union Army finally took the fortress. The campaign combined many important naval operations, troop maneuvers, failed initiatives, and was divided into two stages. The prize of capturing Vicksburg would ensure either McClernand or Grant's success and would divide the Confederacy into two eastern and western parts. At the opening of the campaign, Grant attempted to capture Vicksburg overland from the Northeast; however, Confederate Generals Nathan B. Forrest and Earl Van Dorn thwarted the Union Army advance by raiding Union supply lines. A related direct assault riverine expedition then failed when Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was repulsed by the Confederate forces at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. In January 1863, McClernand and Sherman's combined XIII and XV corps, the Army of the Mississippi, defeated the Confederates at Arkansas Post. Grant made five attempts to capture Vicksburg by water routes; however, all failed. With the Union impatient for a victory, in March 1863, the second stage to capture Vicksburg began. Grant marched his troops down the west side of the Mississippi River and crossed over at Bruinsburg. Adm. David D. Porter's navy ships had previously made a run past Vicksburg's batteries on April 16, 1863, enabling Union troops to be transported to the east side of the river. The crossing succeeded due to Grant's elaborate series of demonstrations and diversions that masked his intended movements from the Confederates. After the crossing, Grant maneuvered his army inland, and after a series of battles, the state capital, Jackson, Mississippi, was captured. Confederate general John C. Pemberton was defeated by Grant's forces at the battles of Champion Hill and of Black River Bridge and retreated to the Vicksburg fortress. After two unsuccessful and costly assaults on Vicksburg, Grant settled in for a 40-day siege. Pemberton, unable to combine forces with the army of Joseph E. Johnston, which was hovering in central Mississippi, finally surrendered Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. The capture of Vicksburg was a turning point for the Union war effort. The surrender of Vicksburg and the defeat of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg were stinging defeats for the Confederacy, now split in two by the Union's domination of the Mississippi River. President Lincoln promoted Grant to the permanent rank of Major General in the Regular Army. Vicksburg marked the second surrender of a Confederate army (the other being Buckner's surrender to Grant the year before). During the Vicksburg siege, Grant dismissed McClernand for publishing to the press a congratulatory order that seemed to claim it was McClernand's corps that was winning the campaign. McClernand appealed the dismissal to his personal friend, President Lincoln, but to no avail. Grant had ended the rivalry on his own terms. The Union army had captured considerable Confederate artillery, small arms, and ammunition. Total casualties, killed or wounded, for the final operation against Vicksburg that started on March 29, 1863 were 10,142 for the Union and 9,091 for the Confederacy. Although the victory at Vicksburg was a tremendous advance in the Union War effort, Grant's reputation did not escape criticism. During the initial campaign in December 1862, Grant became upset and angry over speculators and traders who inundated his department and violated rules about trading cotton in a militarized zone. As a result, Grant issued his notorious General Order No. 11 on December 17, expelling all Jews who he believed were engaged in trade in his department, including their families. When protests erupted from Jews and non-Jews alike, President Lincoln rescinded the order on January 4, 1863; however, the episode tarnished Grant's reputation. In addition, Grant was accused by Maj. Gen. Charles S. Hamilton and William J. Kountz for being a "drunkard" and "gloriously drunk" in February and March, 1863. Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand was alleged to have promoted and secretly spread this rumor in the Union Army. Both McClernand and Hamilton were seeking promotion in the army at the time of these allegations. "Cincinnati Commercial" editor Murat Halstead railed that, "Our whole Army of the Mississippi is being wasted by a foolish, drunken, stupid Grant". Lincoln sent Charles A. Dana to keep a watchful eye. To save Grant from dismissal, assistant Adjutant General John A. Rawlins, Grant's friend, got him to take a pledge not to touch alcohol. General Order No. 11. During the Vicksburg campaign Grant had received numerous reports from General Sherman and others that "highly visible" Jewish merchants were trading gold for cotton and were routinely violating trade regulations in Grant's war district. When his own father, Jesse Grant, arrived at his headquarters with two prominent Jewish merchants requesting special permits to trade in cotton Grant became angry and ordered his father and his partners to leave on the next train going north. Believing Jewish merchants had used his father and were also playing a large role in the widespread cotton speculation, he issued General Order No. 11 from his Headquarters in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on December 17, 1862. Because of the generalized wording of the order allegations of antisemitism were soon levied at Grant. The Order stated in part: The "New York Times" denounced the order as "humiliating" and a "revival of the spirit of the medieval ages." Its editorial column called for the "utter reprobation" of Grant's order. After protest from Jewish leaders, the order was rescinded by President Lincoln on January 3, 1863. Though Grant initially maintained that a staff officer issued it in his name, it was suggested by Gen. James H. Wilson that Grant may have issued the order in order to strike indirectly at the "lot of relatives who were always trying to use him" (for example his father, Jesse Grant, who was in business with Jewish traders), and perhaps struck instead at what he maliciously saw as their counterpart — opportunistic traders who were Jewish. Bertram Korn suggests the order was part of a consistent pattern. "This was not the first discriminatory order [Grant] had signed [...] he was firmly convinced of the Jews' guilt and was eager to use any means of ridding himself of them." During the campaign of 1868, Grant admitted the order was his, but maintained, "It would never have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it were penned, and without reflection." The order, ostensibly in response to illegal cotton smuggling done without Treasury approval, has been described by one modern historian as "the most blatant official episode of anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century American history." Chattanooga. When Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was defeated at Chickamauga in September 1863, the Confederates, led by Braxton Bragg, besieged the Union Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga. In response, President Lincoln put Grant in charge of the new Military Division of the Mississippi to break the siege at Chattanooga, making Grant the commander of all Western Armies. Grant, who immediately relieved Rosecrans from duty, personally went to Chattanooga to take control of the situation, taking 20,000 troops commanded by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman from the Army of the Tennessee. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker was ordered to Chattanooga, taking 15,000 troops from the Army of the Potomac. Rations were running severely low for the Cumberland army and supply relief was necessary for a Union counter offensive. When Grant arrived at Chattanooga at the Union camp, he was informed of their plight and implemented a system known as the "Cracker Line," devised by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas's chief engineer, William F. "Baldy" Smith. After Union army seized Brown's Ferry, Hooker's troops and supplies were sent into the city, helping to feed the starving men and animals and to prepare for an assault on the Confederate forces surrounding the city. On November 23, Grant launched his offensive on Missionary Ridge, combining the forces of the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of the Potomac. Maj. Gen. Thomas took a minor high ground known as Orchard Knob while Maj. Gen. Sherman took strategic positions for an attack on Bragg's right flank on Missionary Ridge. On November 24, in heavy fog, Hooker captured Lookout Mountain and positioned his troops to attack Bragg's left flank at Rossville. On November 25, Grant ordered Thomas's Army of the Cumberland to make a diversionary attack only to take the "rifle pits" on Missionary Ridge. However, after the soldiers took the rifle pits, they proceeded on their own initiative without orders to make a successful frontal assault straight up Missionary Ridge. Bragg's army, routed and defeated, was in complete disarray from the frontal assault and forced to retreat to South Chickamauga Creek. Although the valiant frontal assault was successful, Grant was initially upset because he did not give direct orders for the men to take Missionary Ridge; however, he was satisfied with their results. The victory at Missionary Ridge eliminated the last Confederate control of Tennessee and opened the door to an invasion of the Deep South, leading to Sherman's Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Casualties after the battle were 5,824 for the Union and 6,667 for Confederate armies, respectively. Promotion to general-in-chief. After the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga, President Lincoln promoted Grant to a special regular army rank, General-in-chief (Lieutenant General), authorized by Congress on March 2, 1864. This rank had previously been awarded two other times, a full rank to George Washington and a Brevet rank to Winfield Scott. President Lincoln was reluctant to award the promotion, until informed that Grant was not seeking to be a candidate in the Presidential Election of 1864. With the new rank, Grant moved his headquarters to the east and installed Maj. Gen. Sherman as Commander of the Western Armies. President Lincoln and Grant met together in Washington and devised "total war" plans that struck at the heart of the Confederacy, including military, railroad, and economic infrastructures. No longer refugees, African Americans were now incorporated into the Union Army as trained soldiers, taking away the Confederacy's labor force. The two primary objectives in the plans were to defeat Robert E. Lee's Army of Virginia and Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee. They would attack the Confederacy from multiple directions: the Union Army of the Potomac, led by George G. Meade, would attack Lee's Army of Northern Virginia; Benjamin Butler would attack south of Richmond from the James River; Sherman would attack Johnson's army in Georgia; and George Crook and William W. Averell would destroy railroad supply lines in West Virginia. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture Mobile, Alabama. Franz Sigel was to guard the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and advance in the Shenandoah Valley. Grant would command all the Union army forces while in the field with Meade and the Army of the Potomac. Fort Pillow Massacre. On April 12, 1864 Confederate forces under Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest captured Union Fort Pillow and slaughtered Union African American troops rather than keep them as prisoners. Union Lt. Gen. Grant retaliated by ordering Union prisoner exchanges canceled until Union black soldiers were treated equally with white soldiers. The Confederate government declined to do so. Overland Campaign. On May 4, 1864, Grant began a series of battles with Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia known as the Overland Campaign. The first battle between Lee and Grant took place after the Army of the Potomac crossed Rapidan River into an area of secondary growth trees and shrubs known as the Wilderness. Lee was able to use this protective undergrowth to counter Grant's superior troop strength. Union Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's II corps was able to inflict heavy casualties and drive back the Confederate General A.P. Hill's corps two miles; however, Lee was able to drive back the Union advance with Confederate General James Longstreet's reserves. The difficult, bloody, and costly battles lasted two days, May 5 and 6, resulting in an advantage to neither side. Unlike Union generals who retreated after similar battles with Lee, Grant ignored any setbacks and continued to flank Lee's right moving southward. The tremendous casualties for the Battle of the Wilderness were 17,666 for the Union and 11,125 for the Confederate armies, respectively. Although the Wilderness battle was costly for the Union, Grant decided to move south and continue the fight with Lee. As the Army of the Potomac moved southward from the Wilderness, Grant, on May 8, was forced into yet an even more desperate 14-day battle at Spotsylvania. Anticipating Grant's right flank move, Lee was able to position his army at Spotsylvania Court House before Grant and his army could arrive. The battle started on May 10. Although Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was located in an exposed rough arc known as the "Mule Shoe", his army resisted multiple assaults from Grant's Army of the Potomac for the first six days of the battle. The fiercest fighting in the battle took place on a point known as "Bloody angle". Rifles refused to fire due to the troops gunpowder getting wet from rainy weather and they were forced into a bloody hand-to-hand struggle similar to battles fought in ancient times. Both Confederates and Union soldiers were slaughtered and men were piled on top of each other in their attempt to control the point. By May 21, the fighting had finally stopped; Grant had lost 18,000 men with 3,000 having been killed in the prolonged battle. Many talented Confederate officers were killed in the battle with Lee's Army significantly damaged having a total of 10–13,000 casualties. The popular Union Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick of the VI corps was killed in the battle by a sharpshooter and replaced by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright. During the fighting at Spotsylvania, Grant stated, "I will fight it on this line if it takes all summer." Finding he could not break Lee's line of defense at Spotsylvania, Grant turned southward and moved to the North Anna River a dozen miles closer to Richmond. An attempt was made by Grant to get Lee to fight out in the open by sending an individual II Corps on the west bank of the Mattaponi River. Rather than take the bait, Lee anticipated a second right flank movement by Grant and retreated to the North Anna River in response to the Union V and VI corps, withdrawing from Spotsylvania. During this time, many Confederate generals, including Lee, were incapacitated due to illness or injury. Lee, stricken with dysentery, was unable to take advantage of an opportunity to seize parts of the Army of the Potomac. After a series of inconclusive minor battles at North Anna on May 23 and 24, the Army of the Potomac withdrew 20 miles southeast to important crossroads at Cold Harbor. From June 1 to 3, Grant and Lee fought each other at Cold Harbor with the heaviest Union casualties on the final day. Grant's ordered assault on June 3 was disastrous and lopsided with 6,000 Union casualties to Lee's 1,500. After twelve days of fighting at Cold Harbor, total casualties were 12,000 for the Union and 2,500 for the Confederacy. On June 11, 1864, Grant's Army of the Potomac broke away completely from Robert E. Lee, and on June 12 secretly crossed the James River on a pontoon bridge and attacked the railroad junction at Petersburg. For a brief time, Robert E. Lee had no idea where the Army of the Potomac was. Union opinion. Among northern antiwar elements after the stalemate at Cold Harbor, Grant was castigated as the "Butcher" for having sustained high casualties without a decisive victory over Robert E. Lee. However, Grant was able to successfully eliminate Lee's offensive capacity after the Overland Campaign and pinned him in the trenches of Petersburg. Grant, himself, who regretted the assault on June 3 at Cold Harbor as a bad mistake on his part, was determined to keep casualties minimal thereafter. Grant's plan was to keep fighting and Lincoln supported him, as did the Republican party apparatus, speakers and newspapers across the North. Without a Union military victory, President Lincoln's presidential Campaign of 1864 against former general and Democratic contender George McClellan might have been at risk. Maj. Gen. Sherman was bogged down chasing Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston into a conclusive battle. Benjamin Butler, who was supposed to attack Confederate railroads south of Richmond, was trapped in the Bermuda Hundred. Sigel had failed to secure the Shenandoah Valley from Confederate invasion and was relieved from duty. The entire Union war effort seemed to be stalling and the Union public was growing increasingly impatient. The Copperheads, an anti-war movement of northern Democrats, advocated legal recognition of the Confederacy, immediate peace talks, and encouraged draft dodging and desertion. The Union war effort was at its weakest point in the summer of 1864 while leaving the Washington capitol exposed to Confederate attack. Petersburg and Appomattox. Petersburg was the supply center for Northern Virginia with five railroads meeting at one junction. Its capture meant the immediate downfall of Richmond. To protect Richmond and fight Grant at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, Lee was forced to leave Petersburg with minimal troop protection. After crossing the James River, the Army of the Potomac, without any resistance, marched towards Petersburg. After crossing the James, Grant rescued Butler from the Bermuda Hundred and sent the XVIII corps led by Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith to capture the weakly protected Petersburg, which was guarded by Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. Grant established his new headquarters at City Point for the rest of the Civil War. The Union forces quickly attacked and overtook Petersburg's outlying trenches on June 15. However, Smith inexplicably stopped fighting and waited until the following day, June 16, to attack the city, allowing Beauregard to concentrate reinforcements in secondary field works. The second Union attack on Petersburg started on June 16 and lasted until June 18, when Lee's veterans finally arrived to keep the Union army from taking the important railroad junction. Unable to break Lee's Petersburg defenses, Grant had to settle for a siege. Realizing that Washington was left unprotected due to Grant's siege of Petersburg, Lee detached a corps under the command of Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early, hoping it would force the Union army to send forces to pursue him. If Early could capture Washington, the Civil War would not have ended, but the Confederates would have embarrassed the Union and deeply wounded northern morale. Early, with 15,000 seasoned troops, marched north "down" the Shenandoah Valley, defeated Union Major General Lew Wallace at the Monocacy, and following the Battle of Fort Stevens, he reached the outskirts of Washington, causing great alarm. At Lincoln's urging, Grant dispatched the veteran Union VI Corps and parts of the XIX Corps, led by Major General Horatio Wright, to the capital. With the Union XXII Corps manning Washington's fortifications, Early was unable to take the city. The Confederate Army's mere presence close to the capital was still an embarrassment. At Petersburg, Grant blew up a section of Lee's trenches with gunpowder planted inside a huge mine tunnel dug by Pennsylvanian coal miners. The explosion dug a huge crater and opened a big gap in the Confederate line. The Union assault that followed, however, was slow and chaotic, with troops milling around inside the Crater. This allowed Lee to repulse the breakthrough. Despite the setback with the Crater incident and a Congressional investigation that followed, Grant was able to lock in Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg. Grant's Union siege at Petersburg allowed the Union war effort on other fronts to finally bear fruit. Sherman took Atlanta on September 2, 1864 and began his March to the Sea in November. With victories at Atlanta and Mobile Bay, Lincoln was re-elected President and the war effort continued. On October 19, after three battles, Philip Sheridan and the Army of the Shenandoah defeated Early's army. Sheridan and Sherman followed Lincoln and Grant's strategy of total war by destroying the economic infrastructure of the Shenandoah Valley and a large swath of Georgia and the Carolinas. On December 16, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas beat Confederate general John B. Hood at Nashville. Grant continued for months to stretch the Petersburg siege line westward to capture vital railroad lines that supplied Richmond, stretching Lee's defensive works thin. In March 1865, Grant invited Lincoln to visit his headquarters at City Point, Virginia. By coincidence, Sherman (then campaigning in North Carolina) happened to visit City Point at the same time. This allowed for the war's only three-way meeting of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman, which was memorialized in G.P.A. Healy's famous painting "The Peacemakers". Grant continued to apply months of relentless military pressure at Petersburg on the Army of Northern Virginia until Lee was forced to evacuate Richmond in April 1865. After a nine-day retreat, during which Grant expertly maneuvered his armies to block all paths of retreat, Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Considered his greatest triumph, this was the third time a Confederate Army surrendered to Grant. There, Grant offered generous terms that did much to ease tensions between the armies and preserve some semblance of Southern pride, which was needed to reunite the warring sides. Within a few weeks, the American Civil War was over, though minor actions continued until Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865. Historical reputation and aftermath. Ulysses S. Grant was a very popular man in the United States after the American Civil War. After President Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, Grant became America's first four-star general and would aid Congress, led by the Radicals, in their effort to reconstruct the South. Grant often disagreed with President Andrew Johnson's conservative approach during the Reconstruction Era of the United States. Grant was looked on as a popular national leader who could mend the nation's wounds and bring in an era of peace. Grant was able to oust the French out of Mexico as commanding general under Johnson and also able to thwart a Fenian Brotherhood attempted take over of Canada. Grant was also in charge of Indian campaigns on the Western frontier. Elected President twice in 1868 and 1872 Grant's terms in office were filled with federal corruption scandals and sectional violence over the constitutional citizenship rights of African Americans. Grant, as President, supported the efforts of Congress to protect the Civil Rights of African Americans and was able for a few years to legally and militarily defeat the Ku Klux Klan. After Grant retired from the Presidency, he went on an unprecedented World tour visiting Europe, the Mid East, and Asia, returning by ship to San Francisco in June, 1879. In March 1885, with the help of his friends in Congress, President Chester A. Arthur authorized Grant to be reinstated into the U.S. military in order to receive retirement pay. Grant then was reinstated his full rank in the U.S. military by President Grover Cleveland whereupon Grant and his family received much needed full military retirement pay. In 1885, Grant finished his popular and financially successful military memoirs and died after a painful struggle with throat cancer. Toward the end of Grant's life, the semi-religious cultic Lost Cause movement in the South, propped up Robert E. Lee, who had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, as the greatest general during the Civil War, and elevated Lee, rather than Grant, to a god-like status. This false view permeated throughout American society. Grant was viewed as a drunk and butcher who had won only because he waged a brutal war of attrition. Historian Edward H. Bonekemper counters this view and says that Grant was the most successful general of the Civil War, noting that in the West, Grant drove the Confederates out of the Mississippi Valley through a series of battles and campaigns, including Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. When Grant was brought back East and put in command of the Union Army, he was able to defeat Lee's Confederate army within a year and effectively brought the war to a close. According to Bonekemper, Grant's armies were more destructive than Confederate armies. Grant's Union armies in the West and East that battled Confederate armies, inflicted more casualties, a total of 190,760 Confederate versus 153,643 Union, a difference of 37,118. Union vs. Confederate casualties estimated. Western Campaigns and Battles of Ulysses S. Grant Eastern Campaigns and Battles of Ulysses S. Grant Totals Western and Eastern Campaigns and Battles of Ulysses S. Grant

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38557871

Arthur Kulkov (born August 20, 1983) is a Russian male model. His work has been prominently featured in American publications such as "GQ" and "Details". He has been featured on covers for both publications, a rarity in the male model industry. He is recognized for being one of the few successful Russian models working internationally and for nabbing at least one fashion campaign every season he's been an active model. Early life. Arthur was born in Mezhdurechensk, Kemerovo Oblast. He immigrated from Russia arriving in New York City. He attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York and graduated in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in Business Marketing. He got scouted by someone in the industry while playing soccer, his favorite pastime during his college years. After several times saying he was not interested to the scout, he eventually went along to meet some people and started his modelling career. Career. While most models struggle getting exposure in print work at the beginning of their careers, Kulkov struck big success working for brands such as Barneys New York, Original Penguin, Sisley and Russell & Bromley during the Fall 2008 season, his first ever and he has not even made his runway debut. He has been prominently featured in international editions of "GQ" including American, French and Italian and "Details" since the beginning of his career due to his chameleon-like abilities, walk, professionalism and adapting to whatever the client or designer wants. These abilities have been praised by editors and stylists all over the industry. In 2011, he set himself as a top model by becoming the face of Dolce & Gabbana for several seasons in a row, starting with the Fall 2010 campaign. He became a permanent fixture for Tommy Hilfiger since 2011 being prominent featured in advertisements for "The Hilfigers" lifestyle campaign. He participated in the "Rock the Sidewalk" event in Mexico City organized by Express to promote the brand. Only three international male models were chosen to be spokesperson and walk the runway at the historic Zócalo in downtown Mexico City. He has drawn himself into acting, having appeared in the 2012 short film "The Main Event in America", directed by AW McKnight, where he plays Phonix Mostlyn, a lightweight boxer who struggles with choosing between his dream of being a champion fighter or his love for a man. The film showed during the Honolulu Film Festival where he got positive reviews. This is his first feature film. Achievements. In 2009, a year after he started modelling, "CRUSHfanzine" (a magazine) dedicated its first issue to him with essays written by influential people in the industry and featured a journal with words and pictures by him. The magazine sold out its run. In 2010, he was awarded the cover of "GQ"s special issue called "Style Manual". Being the only model to land such cover. Later, in 2011, he landed the March cover of "Details", along with fellow model friends Sean O'Pry and Noah Mills. A rarity in the male model industry. In 2012, he appeared on the cover of "Chaos" magazine where he was interviewed about his life, his career, what he thinks about the modelling industry and what is coming next for him. The very first dedicated issue to a model. During the spring 2013 season, he acquired a fragrance deal from Tommy Hilfiger called "Freedom by Tommy Hilfiger" which print and TV spot campaign show him along Victoria's Secret angel Lily Aldridge and he also landed the Banana Republic's Love campaign. In 2014, he appeared again on the cover of "Details", along other fellow models like Noah Mills, Mathias Lauridsen and Clement Chabernaud. Reception. He is signed with Re:Quest Model Management in New York, Bananas Models in Paris and Why Not Model Management in Milan. He is currently ranked #8 in The Money Guys List, which annually ranks the models who make more money inside the fashion industry. He's also being featured in street style websites like Backyard Bill and The Sartorialist and magazines like "GQ", which published an article about him, and for his eye-catching personal style.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3424855

General elections were held in Costa Rica on 5 February 2006. In the presidential election, Óscar Arias of the National Liberation Party (Partido Liberación Nacional), a former president and Nobel Peace Laureate, was victorious over Ottón Solís of the Citizens' Action Party (Partido Acción Ciudadana) and twelve other minor-party candidates. Although Arias was expected to win by a wide margin, the actual polling reports were unexpectedly close. However, early results showed the contest to be closer than it actually was. The preliminary official report, after 88.45% of the vote counted, showed the result for President of the Republic almost tied between Arias with 40.51% of the vote and Ottón Solís with 40.29%. Given the small difference of only 3250 votes, the Superior Electoral Tribunal announced that a manual count of all the votes would start immediately and no official winner would be announced until that process was completed, approximately two weeks after the election. In the parliamentary election, the National Liberation Party won the mosts seats. Presidential election. Candidates. There were fourteen candidates running for the presidency in the 2006 elections. However, only a few rose in the polls above the error margin. Óscar Arias. Arias had been seen as the front runner throughout the campaign. Arias served as President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990. He is best known worldwide for his role in the signing of the Esquipulas Peace Agreement which is regarded as the crucial plan which led to the eventual end to the series of civil wars that took place throughout Central America, most notably in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, during the 1980s. For his role he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. With the monetary portion of the award he started the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, an advocacy group for demilitarization, women's rights and conflict resolution through dialogue. Through this group Arias helped to settle conflicts throughout Latin America, participating in the process to demilitarize Haiti and Panama. Arias made the fight against poverty and corruption the headlining issues of his campaign. During public appearances he promised to provide scholarships to poor families so their children could stay in school and not have to work (a promise he fulfilled on his first day in office), and spoke about the urgency of signing the Central American Free Trade Agreement in order to create high-paying jobs for Costa Rica's youth. With the pre-election opinion polls favoring Óscar Arias, he did not foresee such stiff competition from his closest rival Ottón Solís. At first count, there was a difference of only 0.4% (Óscar Arias = 40.6% vs Ottón Solís = 40.2%), or about 3,200 votes. Large numbers of voters supporting candidates other than Óscar Arias and Ottón Solís chose to cast their ballot for Ottón Solís at the last minute, with the objective of keeping Óscar Arias from winning the elections. Election laws in Costa Rica dictate, among other things, that a candidate requires 40% of the votes to avoid a second round of voting for election of the President. Further, in case of a tie with candidates having the same number of votes, the elder of the two wins the seat. Ottón Solís. Solís was the candidate of the Citizens' Action Party (PAC). Solís is a co-founder of the party and was its candidate in the 2002 presidential elections. In that election he ran against Rolando Araya of the National Liberation Party (PLN) and Abel Pacheco of the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC). On 3 February 2002 the first round was held, in which Solís lost. He was running in an effort to break up the two-party system in Costa Rica. Solís is a critic of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He has called for the renegotiations of CAFTA to add protection for vulnerable farmers and industrial companies. He has said that in its current form, "CAFTA will increase poverty in Central America because it will displace farmers and industrial workers and will increase the cost of health care." He also said that "I never imagined CAFTA was going to be so one sided," and "The law of the jungle benefits the big beast. We are a very small beast." Solís sees several possible detrimental aspects that could come from CAFTA. First he claims that it will cause the breakup of the public telecommunications and electricity monopolies which will have to be privatized. Additionally he thinks that the lowered trade barriers will cause a flood of cheap food products from the United States to come in and this will hurt the internal market for small-scale farmers. Otto Guevara. Otto Guevara Guth is the co-founder, along with Rigoberto Stewart and Raúl Costales Domínguez, of the Movimiento Libertario, a libertarian party. He was elected to the legislature in 1998. Guevara originally ran as a libertarian politician who claimed to believe in cutting of government programs, which he saw as excessive. Some of these programs included government subsidies for food, US$10,000 subsidies for housing, and free textbooks paid for by the state. He also rejected government funding for the party's political campaigns. For the 2006 election, a faction of the Movimiento Libertario led by Guevara took control of the party and backed down on many of the party's initial positions. They have decided to accept government funding, which was previously qualified by him as immoral, and on several interviews he has claimed that public education needs to be strengthened by more funding, that the country needs to build more jails, and several other issues that will actually increase government spending. On the foreign policy front, Guevara is in favor of advancing civil liberties abroad. He is a critic of the Castro government in Cuba, accusing politicians in Latin America of being accomplices to the lack of political liberty by not speaking out against the country's government. Guevara has linked the lack of political liberties in Cuba to what he sees as an overextension of the state in Costa Rica. Specifically he sees that eliminating regulations which, according to him, affect the development of the economy, as being a part of his program to protect political liberty. Specifically he sees regulations on agroindustry as being a considerable problem. He hasn't yet made clear if his position on these issues changed along with the others. Given that his position on Cuba was likely the result of influence by Raúl Costales, an exiled Cuban who was one of the party founders and a long-time party secretary, and that he separated himself from the party after they voted to accept money from the government, it's likely Guevara's foreign policy has changed. Ricardo Toledo. Toledo is the candidate for the ruling Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) and used to be a close friend of president Abel Pacheco. He has a long history within the party as, among other things, President of the Youth of the Social Christian Unity Party, Coordinator of the party's southern districts, the head of management for the party, and senior officer and Vice-minister of the Ministry of Labor. He has also served in the legislature. Antonio Álvarez. Antonio Álvarez is the candidate for the party that he heads, the Union for Change Party (UPC). He is running on a platform of political change. In an interview with newspaper "Al Día" Álvarez said that one thing that he believes negatively affects the country is unregulated immigration of Nicaraguans. He recommends stricter penalties for employers of immigrants who might be exploiting the Nicaraguans for cheap labor, and for increased use of documentation for immigrants. On the economic front, Álvarez is interested in helping to build infrastructure because he believes it is essential to the continued economic development of Costa Rica. He is in favor of using the grant of public work and the emergency road network plan to build up the highways. He believes that a major problem with the health system is that it is inadequately funded and that violators are not penalized. Specifically he points to businesses who are not paying in order to have enough money to fund changes to the medical system. He is not in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage but is in favor of extending the benefits of marriage over to a civil union. In order to fight corruption in the municipalities and to ensure that money reaches the level that it is supposed to, Álvarez recommends more oversight in the hiring process so that the most qualified and honest people are in the positions where money distribution is involved. He is in favor of programs which encourage entrepreneurship, especially among the younger generation. Also for college students, he is not in favor of eliminating exams for the baccalaureate, but rather wants to expand education through increased infrastructure, new programs including secondary schools, and diversifying education through the regions. Campaign. Polemic over the Central American Free Trade Agreement was influential in the campaign as many candidates and parties took positions in support or reject of the treaty and Costa Rican society was split over the issue. Results. Legislative Assembly. While PLN managed to return as the main political force in the Assembly, PAC become for the first time and till this date second largest political group in the Parliament. PUSC on the other hand, affected by corruption scandals, suffered a humiliating defeat passing from be the first parliamentary party with 19 deputies to only 5. The Libertarian Movement kept its 6 seats while the newly resurrected National Union Party led by former Costa Rican Ombudsman José Manuel Echandi won one only seat for Echandi himself (who later will resign from the party, living it seatless). Three then regional political parties won one seat each; socialist Broad Front, disable people's right party Accessibility without Exclusion and Christian party National Restoration. Broad Front's seat went for Spanish émigré José Merino and was the return of the Left in the Parliament after one period without representation. The recently founded party Unión for Change made by PLN's dissident Antonio Álvarez Desanti did not won any seat. Municipal Councils. The elections of municipal councilors of Costa Rica in 2006 were an electoral process held in parallel with the presidential and legislative elections. In them the 495 tenure aldermen and the 495 alternates that conform the 81 Municipal Councils were chosen. The Central Canton of San José, the most populous, named 13 aldermen. Desamparados and Alajuela named 11. Others less populated (Puntarenas, Limón, Pococí, Heredia, Cartago, La Unión, San Carlos, Goicoechea, Pérez Zeledón, etc.) named 9. Others even smaller (Tibás, Grecia, Vázquez de Coronado, Montes de Oca, Siquirres, Escazú, Turrialba, etc.) appointed 7 council members. Finally, the smallest (Turrubares, San Mateo, Santa Ana, Mora, Montes de Oro, Talamanca, etc.) named 5.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33225355

is a video game character from the "Tekken" series developed by Namco Bandai Games, first appearing in "Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion". Created by Dr. Bosconovitch, Alisa is a gynoid with detachable body parts. She and Lars Alexandersson are the main protagonists of the console versions of that game's Scenario Campaign mode. Her surname is commonly misspelled as "Boskonovitch", because her creator's surname is spelled that way. Alisa has received a generally positive reception from fans of the series, proving to be one of the more popular characters introduced in "Tekken 6". She has been both praised and criticised for her character design. Character design. Unlike other new "Tekken 6" characters who were based on fan input, both Alisa and Lars were created using a different approach, focusing on their importance to the game's story. In an interview, "Tekken" project director and chief producer Katsuhiro Harada said, "Alisa's quite popular overseas as well. Personally, I didn't think we would get much of a following. We usually do research for new characters, but Alisa was something we created based on internal staff feedback. We really wanted a character with chainsaws on her arms." Scriptwriter Dai Satō then asked, "Influenced by Ash by any chance?" Harada replied, "Exactly. (laugh) I'm a huge fan of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead". I just didn't think Alisa would catch on, considering her vast differences from the other characters." Satō said in 2011 that he had chosen her as one of the two lead characters because he felt Alisa is "the face of the franchise's future". Katsuhiro Harada, described her as "a robot created in the image of Dr. Bosconovitch's daughter." Gameplay. Alisa is entirely bionic and amplifies many of her attacks with collapsible jet pack like wings from her back and rockets from her feet she can also extend chainsaws from her lower arms. Her body parts are detachable, they instantly grow back in what appears to be nanoparticle-assisted regeneration. All of her body parts appear to be non-critical, some of her attacking moves involves removing her own head to use as a weapon or even a makeshift explosive device with no ill effects, and arms can be torn off by the opponent or even used as improvised missiles. Alisa uses attacks such as rockets, an explosive head and attacks from her chainsaw appendages. Her fighting style has been listed as simply "Unique". In the Korean version, Alisa's chainsaws are changed into energy beams reminiscent of lightsabers, and body parts can not be removed. However, all of her moves remain intact such as Alisa's head explosion replace with a small ball. Appearances. In video games. Alisa Bosconovich was created to protect Jin Kazama and serves him through her travels. Alisa is placed in a starring role in the console-only Scenario Campaign mode in "Tekken 6". After being activated following a botched raid on a Mishima Zaibatsu lab, she joins Lars Alexandersson in his pursuit of his lost memories (which occur as a result of the events at the lab). She is controlled by the CPU in this mode (unless the player chooses to play as Alisa herself, at which point CPU control is given to Lars). Alisa helps Lars (or whoever the player has chosen to use in Scenario Campaign) battle the waves of enemies and has an AI system that grows as she participates in battle. She keeps a journal which she constantly updates with entries regarding the events of her journey with Lars, as well as her own personal opinion about them. It is later revealed that she is actually an android in the employ of Jin, to which she has been serving as a way for Jin to observe what has been happening in the world at large. She is commanded by Jin to disable safe mode (including her personality and behavior inhibition programming) and attack Lars. After a stalemate battle with Lars, she leaves for the desert to join Jin. When Lars arrives, she attacks him again where this time she is ultimately defeated and shuts down. Lars rescues her body and takes her to a robotics corporation (run by Lee Chaolan) where she can be revived. Although the scenario campaign was removed from PlayStation Portable's port, the developers added background information for the character. In "Tekken 7", Alisa has been revived, though suffers memory loss and attacks Lee in self defence upon rebooting. Upon losing, Alisa remembers who Lee is, though questions why she is at Violet systems. Lee then uses his machinery to restore Alisa's memory, which then gives her the desire to find Lars. Before Lee can take her to Lars though, Violet Systems is attacked by the Tekken Force. Lee and Alisa fight them off and flee to another of Lee's facilities, where Lars had been waiting. Alisa happily jumps on Lars in excitement, though the Tekken Force attack again, searching for Jin's body. Alisa assists Lars and Lee in fighting off the Tekken force but Alisa is stopped by Nina Williams who stalls Alisa long enough for a Tekken Force helicopter to capture Jin. Lee proceeds to blow up his facility, killing countless members of the Tekken force, whilst Alisa flies away happily holding Lars. Other than the main games of the series, Alisa also appears in the portable game ' as well as the non-canon "Tekken Tag Tournament 2", in which her ending (as well as other character's) reinforces her friendship with Ling Xiaoyu first shown in the animated CGI film '. Outside of the Tekken series, she is a playable character in "Street Fighter X Tekken" as downloadable content, alongside her official tag partner, Lars. She appears as an assist unit in "Project X Zone", alongside fellow Tekken characters Jin, Xiaoyu, and a younger Heihachi Mishima. She appears as an unlockable character in the free-to-play game, "Tekken Revolution". Other appearances. Alisa appears as one of the main characters in the 2011 CGI film "". She is a student in the Kyoto International School and befriends Ling Xiaoyu but hides the fact that she is a robot. She acts upon the orders of Jin to find Shin Kamiya along with Xiaoyu under the forced orders of Anna Williams. After Xiaoyu saves her from an ambush attack from Anna, she joins Xiaoyu in finding the truth about the M-cell experiments done on Shin. Throughout the film, she starts to develop a sense of humanity in which she would often hesitate even under her normal protocol commands and her fondness with her friendship with Xiaoyu. During the final battle between Heihachi Mishima and Devil Jin, a severely damaged Alisa sacrifices herself by distracting Heihachi with a blast allowing Jin to defeat him. In the end Jin reverses her standby mode and end credits show her fully restored and discussing how she and Xiaoyu should enter the Tekken tournament. Alisa appears in the "Tekken Tag Tournament 2" live-action short film portrayed by Amandine Desprez. Alisa appears in "Tekken Comic", a manga based on "Tekken 6". A live-action Alisa, portrayed by Michelle Ballee, also appears in the "Tekken Tag Tournament 2" Girl Power Trailer, shown at Comic-Con in 2012. In 2012, Kotobukiya released an Alisa Bosconovitch action figure as part of their "Tekken Tag Tournament 2" toyline. Reception. Randolph Ramsay of GameSpot praised Alisa for her move list the fact that she uses her head as an explosive and attacks from her chainsaw appendages, after stating "Alisa is just sheer fun to play as given her frankly bizarre move list". GameSpot opined that Alisa is the most fun to play as out of all the new characters in "Tekken 6," stating "She has a charge-up attack that results in her firing her forearms in a devastating rocket attack. As with all such moves in Tekken, it's generally easy enough to dodge but can be pulled off with some aplomb when you really want to ram home your superiority against a showboating or incompetent opponent--or just someone who elects to play as Eddy or Christie." Ryan Clements of IGN also commented on her move list, calling it "ridiculous", but in a good way, since he enjoyed using her. GameSpy commented that "Alisa's style is wild," but called her getup "completely absurd." 1UP.com commented that Alisa is sexy, cute and has a bubbly personality and stated that she's "the coolest new Tekken character to emerge in years," praising her chainsaws and head bomb. GameZone said she is a good character and commented that her attacks are devastating, stating that "You’ll catch on to her secret whenever her robotic parts creep out and pummel an opponent." Team Xbox declared the move where Alisa removes her head as "one of the most hilarious moves in the franchise's history." Alisa has also been given comments on her looks. VideoGamer.com called her a "sexed-up cyborg" and thought her rocket projectile attack was coming out of her breasts. They also opined that she seems overpowered at first "but upon closer inspection lacks the essential Tekken tools to ensure long-term usefulness". "NZGamer" said that she is "as cute as a button" and comments that she has a mismatched wardrobe. Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb commented that for a robot, Alisa is pretty. In a list of "12 match-ups we want to see in "Street Fighter X Tekken"" article by GamesRadar, they listed a match-up between Alisa and Juri, stating "What do nerds love even more than robots? Hot girls that are robots. Alisa and Juri both fit the bill perfectly". In GamesRadar article for "Street Fighter X Tekken", they stated "Though new, the mechanically winged android has become one of the lead stars of the franchise." In 2012, she was listed as one of the most "ridiculous" "Tekken" characters by "Game Informer", who said "Why is a stupid robot fairy in a fighting game? I don't think even Namco Bandai knows the answer to that". In 2013, "Complex" listed Alisa as the tenth "most badass Russian character in video games", where they observe "Alisa is known to be a real sweetheart once you get to know her." In a 2012 official fan poll held by Bandai Namco, Alisa was the seventh-most requested "Tekken" character for inclusion in "Tekken X Street Fighter", receiving 10,650 (12.09%) of 88,280 votes.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50952709

Unitedville village is a village located Cayo District, Belize. Unitedville is home to 974 persons with the main ethnic groups being Creoles the most numerous and seconded by the Mestizos. The main livelihood activity in this community is traditionally subsistence farming. Residents produce much of their own food, such as corn, ground food, beans, some rice, various tropical fruits, chickens and small livestock. Surplus production was sold. All members of the family generally participate in this activity. Thus, the families develop strong, united relationships. Unitedville is closer to San Ignacio, as opposed to Belmopan, and as such the villagers shop and recreate in that town rather than in the capital. Villagers of Unitedville relate to Belmopan mainly for administrative services. Recently, there is an increasing trend in the number of younger members of the village engaged in the fields of construction and the public service. Demographics. The population of the village is 974. History. The origin of this community goes back to the time when the Belize (Old) River was the main avenue of transportation to the west of the then colony of British Honduras. At that time many small posts were established along the river providing various services to travelers and workers of the profitable timber and chicle extraction from the western forests of British Honduras. To develop the colony, more efficient means of transportation was inevitable, thus a cart road was established connecting the western communities to the capital Belize city. With this, the communities shifted to the locations along the cart road but still near the river where they did subsistence farming. In light of this, the first settlers of what is now Unitedville established their community on the banks of small Barton Creek, and called the community small Barton Creek. The paved George Price Highway now facilitates transportation to the west of the country. Freedom Struggle. Sometime later, Belize was experiencing a strong drive to attain its independence from the British and establish the independent Nation of Belize. The Leader of this Peaceful Constructive Revolution was The Honorable George Cadle Price. In order to have citizens of the new nation in Central America, George price set out to have the people consider themselves with a new identity united to form the country of Belize; thus many communities were renamed. As a result, the community of Small Barton Creek was renamed “Unitedville”. Other examples of renamed communities are “Esperanza”, and “Georgeville”. Sports. School also participates in football tournaments such as Bishopcup

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5566163

In partner dances, close embrace is a type of closed position where the leader and follower stand facing each other chest-to-chest in full or partial body contact. The dancers usually stand offset from one another, such that each has their right foot in between the feet of their partner. When in close embrace, the dance is led (and followed) with the whole body, rather than with the arms or with visual cues. Various partner dances make use of this position, most notably Argentine Tango, but also Balboa, Collegiate Shag, Swing Walk, Blues, and others.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3599603

Knarvik (or Knarrviki) is the administrative centre of the municipality of Alver in Vestland county, Norway. The village is located on the mainland, about straight north of the city at the confluence of four fjords: Osterfjorden (heading east), Sørfjorden (heading southeast), Salhusfjorden (heading southwest), and the Radfjorden (heading northwest). The village of Isdalstø lies immediately north of Knarvik. The village has a population (2019) of 5,875 and a population density of . This makes it the largest settlement in the Nordhordland district of Vestland. The center of the village is the site of the Knarvik Senter, the largest shopping centre in Nordhordland with 61 stores. The European route E39 highway runs straight through the village dividing it into two major parts. The northern part is where the large shopping mall is located while the southern part is still in its original state with scattered buildings and shops. Knarvik has several kindergartens, a junior high school, and a regional high school (Knarvik vidaregåande skule) with more than 1,000 students. One of those students is Mesfin. The newly built Knarvik Church was completed in 2014 to serve the growing community. Before its completion, residents had to travel up to Alversund Church in the village of Alversund, located about to the north. Transportation. In recent years population and traffic has increased creating demand for an upgrade of the infrastructure. Rush hour traffic is an increasingly common sight. Today, Knarvik is connected with Bergen via the Hagelsund Bridge (finished 1982) and the Nordhordland Bridge (finished 1994). The car ferry connection between Knarvik and Bergen (Knarvik – Steinestø), that historically transported cars and people between the two places was in use up until the completion of the Nordhordland Bridge. That ferry connection was at one time carrying more vehicles than any other car ferry connection in Norway.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38147173

Prelest (from , from - cajolery (charm, seduction), ), also known as: spiritual delusion, spiritual deception, delusion, illusion, is a Orthodox Christian term referring to, according to Holy Fathers of Orthodox Church, a false spiritual state, a spiritual illness, "a wounding of human nature by falsehood" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov). Prelest should not be confused with mental illness, i.e. illness of the brain. It is a spiritual illness, an illness of the freedom of will, an illness of the soul in its personal relation to God that originates from vainglory, pride, and demonic suggestion and that is to be cured by humility and Holy Sacraments and under the guidance of the spiritual father. In a broad interpretation, everyone is considered to be in prelest, that is, everyone has some wrong thoughts and views, does not fully understand the meaning of life and the degree of own sinfulness etc. When used in a narrow sense meaning that some particular person is in the state of prelest, it usually means that this person, initially being on the path of pious Christian life, became possessed with the strongest pride and self-conceit right up to the thought about personal sanctity. To consider oneself a saint - that is a clear prelest because the closer a man is to God, the more he sees his imperfection, and all true saints considered themselves in the feeling of the heart the greatest sinners. The state opposite to prelest is spiritual sobriety. Eastern Orthodox views. General information. Strictly speaking, any human error or any acceptance of a false thought as truth, from Orthodox point of view, can be the beginning of prelest: "The source of self-delusion and demonic deception is the false thought" (St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)). But Holy Fathers wrote mainly about the errors in the human judgement about spiritual matters and especially about the errors in understanding of the personal spiritual state. True view of oneself (of own spiritual condition, position relative to God, sinfulness etc.) is tightly connected with the passions of pride and vainglory and is distorted by these passions. The degree of prelest, according to St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), is the degree of such distortion, i.e. the amount of falseness in the view of oneself and the degree of difficulty of change from the false view to the true one. Different kinds of prelest are described by many Holy Fathers, including the Fathers of Philokalia: St. Gregory of Sinai, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the Metaphrast, St. Symeon the New Theologian and others. Even when some Holy Father does not use the term "prelest" explicitly, writing about ascetic life implies writing what spiritual practice is true, i.e. leads to salvation, and what is false, i.e. leads to the opposite and, therefore, accepting it as true is prelest. A modern reader can find the most thorough explanation of prelest in the writings of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) where he relentlessly keeps the traditions of Holy Fathers. Some of these writings were incorporated into a book "On prelest" dedicated solely to different forms of delusion (wrong way of prayer, trust to dreams, excessive zeal, false humility etc. ), which St. Ignatius explains on the basis of the words from Holy Fathers of the first centuries and provides information about different recent cases of delusion. In this book, St. Ignatius gives the following definition of prelest: it is "wounding of human nature with falsehood" or, in other words, "man’s assimilation of falsehood which he accepts as truth". Some modern ascetics such as elder Joseph the Hesychast, elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain, elder Daniel Katounakiotis also wrote about prelest. The concept of prelest is very important in Orthodox spirituality and ascetics. From the Orthodox point of view, it is one of the main dangers for a Christian (especially monastic) starting to pray with the Jesus prayer, or even, as Elder John (Krestiankin) notes below, for any person joining Orthodoxy, especially in the first years after that event. Identifying prelest in its particular manifestations is called discernment (or discrimination) of spirits. The virtue of discrimination "is greater than any other virtue; and is the queen and crown of all the virtues". According to Orthodox Holy Fathers, it corresponds to a very high degree of spiritual age and requires "three renunciations" (Evagrius, St. John Cassian, St. John Climacus): separation from the world, inner fight with passions, acquisition of prayer and deep spiritual knowledge. True discrimination comes after a long previous experience of fighting with passions. The source of discrimination is in the action of Divine grace and the virtue of humility. Orthodox teaching on prelest is thus about spiritual practices or phenomena, in which a person acquires, from the Orthodox point of view, a false opinion of oneself, of these phenomena, of God, and this false opinion is accepted due to the presence of the passion of pride in this person. Professor N.E. Pestov in his book writes that in general, the safest spiritual path in relation to prelest is to live in obedience to an experienced and holy elder, or at least to live on the advice of others. The fastest way to fall into prelest is the opposite - to trust own thoughts and not to listen to any advice. General prelest and prelest proper. According to Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, "Spiritual deception is the state of all men without exception, and it has been made possible by the fall of our original parents. All of us are subject to spiritual deception. Awareness of this fact is the greatest protection against it. Likewise, the greatest spiritual deception of all is to consider oneself free from it". Theophan, the Archbishop of Poltava, comments on this statement of St. Ignatius briefly by setting apart "general prelest" and prelest in its "proper sense" of the word. On the bases of all the above-mentioned he gives the following definition: "Briefly, the difference between 'general prelest' and prelest in the particular sense of the word can, on the basis of the above, be expressed thus. General prelest is forgetting and not noticing one's sinfulness. That which we call prelest proper is attributing to oneself righteousness when it does not actually exist. If a man thinks he is righteous, then his righteousness is not divine, but diabolical, foreign to the grace of God and to humility. One should recall the famous saying of Abba Poemen the Great: 'I prefer a man who sins and repents to one who does not sin and does not repent. The first has good thoughts, for he admits that he is sinful. But the second has false, soul-destroying thoughts, for he imagines himself to be righteous' (Bp. Ignatius, Patericon, 75)". View from the outside. According to Orthodox Holy Fathers, it is possible to consider someone holy only when viewing from the outside. Considering oneself holy is a clear manifestation of prelest because the closer someone is to God, the more sinful he sees himself. St. Macarius the Great says: "if you see that someone is arrogant and proud of that he is a partaker of grace, then even if he created miracles and raised the dead, but if he does not recognize his soul as honourless and despised, and himself poor in spirit and vile, he is robbed by malice not knowing that for himself. Even if he creates miraculous signs, one should not believe him, because the sign of Christianity – for the ones who are well-versed before God, is to strive to hide it from people, and if he has all the king’s treasures, to hide them and always say: “this is not my treasure, the other put it at my place, and I am a beggar, when the one who put it will want, he will take it away from me.” If someone says: “I am rich, I’m quite enough of what I have acquired, and I don’t need more of it,” then this is not a Christian, but a vessel of delusion and of the devil. For the enjoyment of God is insatiable, and to what extent one tastes and communes is, in such a way becomes more greedy. Such people have an eagerness and uncontrollable love for God, the more they try to succeed and gain, the more they recognize themselves as poor, as they are meager in everything, and have not gained anything. They say: “I am not worthy that this sun illuminates me.” This is a sign of Christianity, this is humility." St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that "humility does not see itself humble. On the contrary, it sees in itself a lot of pride. It takes care to find all its branches; looking for them, it sees that there is still a lot to look for." St. John Cassian writes that "a cleaner look notices more, a reproachful life gives rise to a great sorrow of self-reproach, the correction of morals and zeal for virtues multiply wailing and sighing. For no one can be satisfied with the degree of perfection in which he has succeeded, and the cleaner one will be in the spirit, the more he sees himself unclean, the more he finds reasons for humility. And the faster he strives for height, the more he sees that he has more where to strive." St. Paisios of the Holy Mountain says that "a man who considers himself a saint and prays for others, considering them sinners, is disgusting to God". St. Anthony (Putilov) of Optina writes in his diary that "I saw that only then I was in a true opinion of myself when I had a bad thought about myself; and when I had a good thought I was in delusion". Kinds. Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes there are many kinds of prelest. Each kind corresponds to the particular passion, from which it resulted, and each kind is somehow associated with pride. All kinds of prelest are also associated with improper prayer and occur when repentance is not the basis of the prayer. St. Ignatius notes that in terms of prayer, there are two distinct kinds of prelest: St. Ignatius says that the first kind of prelest results from the wrong action of the mind and the second - from the wrong action of the heart. Saint Gregory of Sinai also says about several forms of delusion: Prelest and insanity. According to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. Gregory of Sinai, St. Symeon the New Theologian, Valaam Elder Schema-Abbot John (Alexeev) and other ascetics, the first kind of prelest (prayer with imagination) very often leads to insanity. The second kind (conceit) sometimes does not result in a mental disease, but the person cannot achieve salvation being in a state of one of the seven deadly sins - pride. St. Ignatius writes about it: "This kind of prelest - is terrible: it is equally fatal for the soul as the first one, but is less evident; it rarely ends in madness, suicide, but definitely corrupts both the mind and the heart." False visions. According to the Holy Fathers, false visions are associated with pride. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov says that those people, who want to see visions, and whose mind is not renewed and recreated by the Holy Spirit, are filled with pride - that means, as writes St. Ignatius, that there is a connection between prelest of the first and the second kind (i.e. between "imagination" and "conceit"). Archimandrite Seraphim (Alexiev) says: "Where there is pride and at the same time one has a vision - it can not be from God, but by all means - from the evil one." Romanian elder Cleopa (Ilie) specifies 7 ways of falling into delusion of false visions and dreams: Elder Cleopa also provides examples of different saints from the Patericon who rejected the visions because they considered themselves unworthy to see it and due to the danger of delusion. He also quotes arguments of different Holy Fathers saying that one should not easily accept visions even if they have all attributes of true ones - if the saints were fast to accept visions they would be deluded and would not have become saints. Elder Joseph the Hesychast says, mentioning the examples from his life, that true visions are always preceded or followed by very intense suffering and sorrows and are given by God only as a consolation. Even if the vision is true, it is very difficult to withstand the fight with thoughts and not to get proud of the fact of the vision. Elder Joseph writes about pride after visions: "What happens after that? A person becomes the mock of the demons. They fool him with writings and visions, with dreams and revelations, with symbols and numbers, with oracles and a heap of superstitions." Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain tells such story about a woman who had one true vision. Then the Devil suggested her a thought that she was chosen by God and she believed it. Then the demons started to torment her with different visions and revelations. In the end, she had another true vision and was told to write to elder Paisios so that he could help her. So elder Paisios says that out of all her visions, only 2 were from God. Also Elder Daniel Katounakiotis writes about several such cases of long condition of prelest accompanied by visions. He writes in a letter about one hierodeacon by the name of Ierotheos who had a lot of visions. Even though he confessed everything, nobody of the confessors understood that this was a delusion. Then elder Sabbas advised him how to find out the truth. After that the delusion was revealed. But in spite of the fact that the visions ceased after repeated exorcism, the injury to the soul of Ierotheos remained very serious and later he broke all monastic vows. Another case of prelest happened to a lay man Nicolaus. He was also subjected to a long and strong action of demons. Even though elder Daniel convinced Nicolaus that all his visions were false, the traces of delusion were seen to the end of his life. In the book "The Great Watch", in the notes of elder Jerome (Solomentsov) from St. Panteleimon monastery on Mt. Athos, the life of hieroschemamonk Theophan is described. He had many visions, and for 15 years he confessed everything to the spiritual father. But then he became noticeably more concealed and proud. He began to think that the spiritual father does not lead such a high life as he does. Once, when he visited the confessor, he told him about some of his visions and then let it slip like this: "And I was not ordered to tell you about some visions." To this the confessor said, "I congratulate you on your prelest!" When he did talk about the two visions that he had concealed, it turned out that they were false. One of the key points was the question of freedom of mind during the vision - if the mind can control the vision, then it is not true (for example, St. Maximos Kavsokalyvites talks with St. Gregory about this). In the following life, father Theophan could not get out of the delusion, he left Athos, engaged in trade and died in torments. Self-conceit. St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that "people infected with prelest of 'conceit' are very common. Anyone who does not have a contrite spirit, who recognizes any own merits and achievements, anyone not holding steadily the teaching of the Orthodox Church, but discussing about any dogma or tradition arbitrarily, at his discretion, or according to the heterodox teaching, is in this kind of prelest. The degree of deviation and persistence of deviation determines the degree of prelest". St. Ignatius also quotes St. Macarius the Great who said: "as there is no person completely free from pride: there is no person who would be completely free from the action on him of a subtle delusion called 'conceit'". There is an example when "conceit" may also result in a mental disease. Hieromartyr Bishop Arseny (Zhadanovsky) in his "Spiritual Diary" writes about one woman who was in this kind of delusion. She wanted to take Holy Communion every day. When she was forbidden to do so, she started to serve the Divine Liturgy herself at her home. "Her case, however, ended sadly. She lost her mind and she is currently in the mental hospital." False gifts. Sometimes the demons can "help" a deluded person. This "help" can include either recommendations about certain things, even theological and very complicated, or can take the form of false spiritual gifts: false healing ability, false clairvoyance, false gift of prophecy, false unceasing prayer, false power over demons, false reading of thoughts, false dispassion etc. The term "false" here means "not Divine". An inexperienced person, not knowing enough about true Divine gifts, to whom and under which conditions they can be given, can easily accept such false gift as being Divine. Such false gift can be received either together with some evident external event like an appearance of false "Christ" sending the "gift", or can happen gradually and unnoticeably for the receiving person. Some people who received false gifts prematurely and due to conceit prayed to God asking to send them a gift and they did receive it, but from the demons. Others did not ask anything explicitly, but were already conceited and considered themselves worthy, i.e. were in the state of prelest of the second kind. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh recalls that when he was young, he had an ability to read thoughts of other people. Once he asked God: "If this gift is not from You, dispel it". And this ability immediately disappeared. It is very difficult for a conceited person to decline such gift, to consider oneself unworthy of receiving it and ask God to take the gift away. If these false gifts are accepted by the deluded person, it can lead him/her into demon possession or suicide. False silence of thoughts ("demonic silence"). Internal silence and lack of thoughts do not necessarily indicate the high spiritual condition of the particular person. According to St. John Climacus, demons can deliberately leave a person - either to lead him into carelessness and then suddenly attack him, or if a person has already established himself in sinful skills, or if a person has one main passion that replaces all the others. According to the experience of Father John (Adlivankin), who works in the St. John of Kronstadt rehabilitation center assisting former sectarians and occultists, he repeatedly heard people’s confessions of how they often observed a state of complete "dispassion", i.e. the absence of any sinful thoughts. This was when they were sectarians and occultists. After turning to Orthodoxy, they no longer had such a long calm state. According to Fr. John, such condition (he calls it "demonic silence") is very dangerous - complete thoughtlessness and comfort, and it inevitably causes the thoughts about the person’s exclusiveness, i.e. pride. Trust in night dreams. A rather dangerous kind of prelest is trust in dreams. The Holy Fathers say that we should never pay attention to them because they may originate from the demons. St. John Climacus says: "The devils of vainglory do their prophecies in dreams. They guess the future and, as part of their deceit, they inform us of it so that we are astonished to discover our visions coming true. Indeed we get carried away with the notion that we are already close to the gift of foreknowledge." The Wisdom of Sirach reads: "The hopes of a man void of understanding are vain and false: and dreams lift up fools. Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind. "() "For dreams have deceived many, and they have failed that put their trust in them. "() If the person starts to notice dreams, looks for signs about the future in the dreams, the demons can quickly increase his trust to dreams to such extent that will lead to suicide or can turn the person into heresy or other deadly sins. Passion of teaching. Apostle James warns against unauthorized teaching in his Epistle: "My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation" (). If the desire of teaching in the particular person originates from the passions of vainglory and pride rather than from love and humility, it becomes a kind of prelest, being based on a false idea of personal dignity and ability to teach and that such teaching is pleasing to God. Archbishop Averky (Taushev) in his analysis of James 3:1 says that one should start teaching with the great caution and distrust to oneself. Such inner determination is opposite to pride and conceited opinion about personal merits. St. John Climacus also warns about forbidden teaching when he speaks about vainglory: "Ignore him when he tells you to accept the office of bishop or abbot or teacher. It is hard to drive a dog from a butcher's counter." Teaching can be a kind of prelest in the following situations: One of correct motivations of teaching is the obedience to share information with others according to the commandment "Give to every man that asketh of thee" (, ). In particular, Elder Joseph the Hesychast quotes these words in his letters when he explains why he gives advice not arbitrary, but only when being asked. The same commandment is mentioned by St. Gregory Palamas in a letter to nun Xenia when he explains why he decided to give her instructions. St. Ignatius (Briachaninov) also writes about arbitrary teaching that "fathers forbid advising neighbors on own accord, without questioning from the neighbor; unauthorized council is a sign of presence of a consciousness of own competence and spiritual dignity – which is obvious pride and self-deception (Opinion of hieromartyr Peter, Metropolitan of Damascus, and other Fathers. Philokalia, Vol. 3). This does not apply to the rectors and superiors, who are required to teach the brotherhood handed to them at all times and on every encountered need without being asked (2 Tim 4, 2). But when they visit other monasteries, they should be guided by the advice of St. Macarius of Alexandria given to St. Pachomius the Great. Pachomius said to Macarius about the guidance of the brethren and judgment over them. Abba Macarius said, "Teach and judge your subordinates and do not judge anyone outside" (Patericon and Memorable Tales of Abba Macarius of the City, Ch. 2). This rule was and is respected by all the abbots wishing to please God." The conceited teacher often does not notice that he does harm to his students because they do not understand, understand incorrectly or even cannot understand at all some subject not having enough experience or knowledge, but the teacher does not cease his teaching. Lord Jesus warns against teaching those who are unprepared and cannot understand: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." (). St. John Chrysostom in the interpretation of these words says that the corruption of life is the reason why the teaching is not understood. St. Symeon the New Theologian speaks in a similar way about teaching of something that cannot be understood: "the one who speaks about the ultimate steps of perfection to the novices and especially to the most lazy of them, not only does not help them, but also makes them to go back". The same idea about teaching of high matters is expressed by Apostle Paul: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14) The teacher, according to St. Symeon the New Theologian, should know the subject from experience. Elder Joseph the Hesychast writes: "it is a fact that when a passionate person attempts to teach another passionate person, grace immediately withdraws from the one who teaches, and then he falls into the same faults and passions as the other person. For before “praxis,” he has not been given this duty." Also the main role in the human understanding belongs not to the efforts of the teacher but to the action of Divine grace. Elder Joseph notes that he witnessed many times that unless God will help with His grace to understand, no human efforts alone can make the teaching successful. St. Innocent of Alaska writes about the action of the spirit of love that only the one who have plenty of faith and love can have a mouth and wisdom, which all hearts of the listeners shall not be able to resist. Regarding arbitrary (i.e. without permission of the bishop) teaching in the church, the rule 64 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council reads: "That a layman must not publicly make a speech or teach, thus investing himself with the dignity of a teacher, but, instead, must submit to the ordinance handed down by the Lord, and to open his ear wide to them who have received the grace of teaching ability, and to be taught by them the divine facts thoroughly. <...> If anyone be caught disobeying the present Canon, let him be excommunicated for forty days." The interpretation of this canon then reads: "But if any layman chance to be experienced in discourse and modest in manner, he is not prohibited from answering and teaching in private those asking questions, as Zonaras states, and ch. 32 of Book VIII of the Apostolic Injunctions declare. For they shall be, it says, all taught of God: in which manner Apollos spoke, and taught the facts about the Lord, and in spite of the fact that he only knew the baptism of the Lord (Acts 28:25), and Aquilas and Priscilla, who taught the same Apollos the way of God more exactly". Carelessness. The delusion of carelessness and negligence is the gradual and unnoticeable weakening of zeal for virtues in a man and appearance of a false idea that salvation can be achieved without labors. St. Ambrose of Optina writes in one of his letters about carelessness as about a kind of delusion: "The delusion of carelessness (may be); but regular delusion will not occur because we are not ascetics". In another letter, he cites the Gospel: "You complain about the coldness and reluctance to fulfill your Christian duties. Remember the words of the Gospel, that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force (), and force yourself according to your abilities and opportunity." The true ascetic is never satisfied with his current state. He understands that it is never enough, that he has to fight and that he does not fulfill the commandments. In the state of negligence and in the absence of spiritual zeal, the human condition inevitably worsens: "The human soul as being immortal, can not remain in the same state: it either improves or worsens". (St. Macarius of Optina). St. Gregory of Sinai says that the cause of carelessness is self-love. Bishop Pankratius (Zherdev), the abbot of Valaam monastery, says in an interview about monastic life that both extremes are dangerous: excessive zeal and carelessness. The latter it is a delusion too and it predominates now. In the state of carelessness, a monk is deceived thinking that he still conducts monastic life while in fact, according to the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov, he is just a black firebrand. Though he wears black clothes, he differs from a layman only in that he does not have a wife. Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman) in his book of conversations with the monastics also thinks that carelessness is delusion and says that carelessness in some sense is opposite to pride, but even more dangerous. A very common manifestation of carelessness is the weakening of abstemiousness in food. With excessive nutrition, the passions begin to act in the person and darken the mind, especially the passion of sexual lust, and especially in the young persons. Also carelessness can manifest itself in laziness to physical labor, when the person is too sparing himself, is lazy to attend long church services, abandons the daily prayer rule. In obedience, a monk can be lazy to fight with himself cutting out his will, not striving to do exactly according to the blessing of the spiritual father but rather trusting his own intellect and reasoning. Schema-archimandrite Abraham considers the abandonment of Jesus prayer to be the most dangerous manifestation of the carelessness for monastics: "If a person abandons the Jesus Prayer, he rejects the spiritual life", "abandonment of the prayer rope rule means that you do not conduct any monastic life." Holy Fathers say the same about abandonment of the prayer. St. John Climacus writes: "Self-will is the ruin of the monk living in obedience. But ruin for the solitary is the interruption of prayer." St. Isaac of Syria says that "The start of the mind derangement (when the sign of it starts to show up in the mind), is primarily seen in the laziness to the Divine service and to the prayer." In addition, St. John Climacus names carelessness as one of the reasons for the demon attacks as well as one of the reasons why God may not fulfill the prayers of a man: "Every demonic upheaval within us arises from the following three related causes namely, carelessness, pride, or the envy of demons. The first is pitiable, the second deplorable, but the third is blessed"; "When requests are made to God and are not immediately answered, the reason may be one of the following: either that the petition is premature, or because it has been made unworthily or vaingloriously, or because if granted, it would lead to conceit, or because negligence and carelessness would result." Causes of prelest. According to Saint Gregory of Sinai, there are 3 sources for prelest: "arrogance, the envy of demons, and the divine will that allows us to be tried and corrected. Arrogance arises from superficiality, demonic envy is provoked by our spiritual progress, and the need for correction is the consequence of our sinful way of life. The delusion arising solely from envy and self-conceit is swiftly healed, especially when we humble ourselves. On the other hand, the delusion allowed by God for our correction, when we are handed over to Satan because of our sinfulness, God often permits to continue until our death, if this is needed to efface our sins. Sometimes God hands over even the guiltless to the torment of demons for the sake of their salvation". If the person conceals sins or thoughts in confession or does not trust to his spiritual father, he can also fall into prelest: "Think in this wise: the Holy Spirit dwells in your confessor, and he will tell you what is right. But if you say to yourself that your confessor lives a careless life, how can the Holy Spirit dwell in him, you will suffer mightily for such thoughts, and the Lord will bring you low, and you are sure to fall into delusion". Also, elder Ephraim of Philotheou speaks about his teacher, elder Joseph the Hesychast, who used to say to his disciples about some people who suffered from prelest. Such people quite often committed suicide because they believed that an Angel appeared to them, whereas it was a demon. The delusion was in the thought: "Do not tell that to the Elder". The most likely time to fall into prelest. Elder John Krestiankin in his word about spiritual guiding says that the most dangerous time in relation to prelest is the beginning of the spiritual life. "Upon entering the Church, winged with new sensations, the newly-born reaches with his consciousness straight for the Kingdom of Heaven, to the heights of mysteries that are hidden behind the impenetrable curtain of Divine revelation. At that moment the spiritual father and his spiritual child enter into a unified struggle with the dark powers, the latter of which are ready with their deceit to turn the new convert from the path of salvation. The enemy's deception will hunt after this person for the rest of his life, offering him its dangerous sweetness. This initial period is particularly dangerous, for this sweetness still resonates with the nature of the fleshly man, and finds sympathy and response deep within his soul. The spiritual father's strength in this struggle lies in prayer and love for his spiritual child's soul, which has come to desire its own salvation. The spiritual child's protection lies in his trust of the pastor, in the awareness of his own sinfulness, and mistrust of himself". St. Gregory of Sinai also writes that "around beginners and those who rely on their own counsel the demons spread the nets of destructive thoughts and images, and open pits into which such people fall; for their city is still in the hands of the workers of iniquity, and in their impetuosity they are easily slain by them. It is not surprising that they are deceived, or lose their wits, or have been and still are deluded, or heed what is contrary to truth, or from inexperience and ignorance say things that should not be said. Often some witless person will speak about truth and will hold forth at length without being aware of what he is saying or in a position to give a correct account of things. In this way he troubles many who hear him and by his inept behavior he brings abuse and ridicule on the heads of hesychasts. It is not in the least strange that beginners should be deceived even after making great efforts, for this has happened to many who have sought God, both now and in the past". Premature desire of impossible virtues. St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that there is a spiritual law of interrelationship of virtues so that one certain virtue cannot be acquired without acquiring another that is in close relationship with the first one. For a spiritually inexperienced person, the very idea that some virtue can be premature seems almost blasphemous, but this is true according to Holy Fathers. St. Isaac of Syria writes that "It is the good will of the most wise Lord that we reap our spiritual bread in the sweat of our brow. He established this law not out of spite, but rather so that we would not suffer from indigestion and die. Every virtue is the mother of the one following it. If you leave the mother who gives birth to the virtue and seek after her daughter, without having first acquired the mother, then these virtues become as vipers in the soul. If you do not turn them away, you will soon die". St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes that "the fallen angel strives to deceive monks and draw them to destruction, offering them not only sin in its various forms, but also lofty virtues that are not natural to them". St. John Climacus writes that "the devil proposes impossible virtues to those who live under obedience, and unsuitable ideas to those living in solitude. <...>The enemy persuades them to look too soon for these virtues, so that they may not persevere and attain them in due time." St. Ignatius warns that the books of Holy Fathers can act on novices so much that they, in inexperience and ignorance, easily dare to leave the place of residence, which has all the convenience for personal salvation by means of execution of evangelical commandments, and to seek for another higher way of life, seductively painted in their imagination. Such desires are the basis of many forms of prelest: desire of visions, revelations, and other supernatural gifts, execution of very long prayer rule, extreme fasting, premature desire of stillness and seclusion. Expectation of grace. The very thought about forthcoming grace and receiving Divine gifts, expectation of grace is a clear manifestation of pride. St. Ignatius writes: "If there is an expectation of grace within you – beware, you are in a dangerous state! <...> Prelest exists already in self-conceit, in considering oneself worthy, in the very expectation of grace." The Gospel says: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation" (). According to St. Isaac of Syria and St. Macarius of Optina, these words mean that the ones who prematurely desired to acquire grace, acquired pride and fall. And this is not a sign that a man loves God but a mental illness. Saints who acquired grace, thought that they did not have it, and this humility kept them safe from the fall. St. Isaac adds: "How can we strive for high Divine gifts while Apostle Paul glories in tribulations." The same idea is expressed by St. Nectarios of Aegina: "The ones who seek the Divine gifts and insights while being immersed in the passions are in proud and foolish delusion. First, one need to work on cleansing oneself. Grace is sent as a gift to those who are cleansed from the passions. And they get it quietly, at the moment that they do not notice." St. Ambrose of Optina provides in one letter an example of such expectation of Divine gifts. A nun thought that she will receive all spiritual gifts at the day of the feast of Archangel Michael; but on that day she was depressed and thought of suicide. St. Ambrose wrote that it was a delusion, and that living in complete solitude would be dangerous for her because of such demonic attacks. Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman) reminisces about his youth, when he did not pray with the Jesus Prayer, did not know any experienced elders, and did not read the books of the Holy Fathers. He read for the first time the conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Motovilov, but understood it in a primitive way and began to pray about acquisition of grace. As a result, he began to see visions from demons. Fortunately, later he came to his senses and realized that he was in delusion. Healing. The above-mentioned kinds and properties of prelest suggest possible general means of curing it. These are opposite to different manifestations of prelest: Nevertheless, no universal and suitable for everyone advice can be given for curing prelest. From the general point of view, fight with prelest is a fight with demonic thoughts mostly containing pride which, as St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) notes, sometimes changes into deep sadness and desire of suicide. Keeping this in mind, the means of curing prelest should include some means of fighting with sinful thoughts and decreasing their influence on the deluded person. Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain says that if a spiritual person trusts his thoughts - that is already the beginning of delusion. Pride darkens the mind and even the prayers of holy people do not help such person. He should understand that keeping such thoughts (like "I am holy", "I am better than others" etc.) in the mind - that is prelest. Such thoughts should be disclosed either to the elder, or to the spiritual father, or to the abbess of the monastery, and then thrown away. Because of that, the first way to get rid of prelest is the Sacrament of Confession. If the person saw any vision, he should tell it immediately to his spiritual father not concealing anything. Then the person should follow exactly the specific advice of the spiritual father. Other Sacraments are needed as well but sometimes deluded persons are forbidden to take the Holy Communion by their spiritual father for some period of time, sometimes rather long (1–3 years). For example, it is written in Patericon of Mt. Athos about one monk who was living with his elder in a skete at Mt. Athos. Because of conceit, he gradually started to fulfill his own will, prayed more and more but without asking his elder about it. Then he was deluded by false visions, almost died and finally revealed everything to his elder. The elder sent him to a monastery and forbade to take Holy Communion for 3 years. The monk started to live there with many brethren, washed dishes and recovered. One woman saw a lamp before icon at her house lit by itself. That happened every midnight and even in the presence of other people. She accepted that as Divine. But when she told that to her spiritual father, a known ascetic Bishop Basil (Preobrazhensky), he said: "No, this phenomenon is not from grace, but from the enemy. And because you accepted it as being from grace, I am giving you a penance: do not receive the Holy Mysteries for one year. The lampada will not light itself again". Truly, the lampada did not light by itself from that day on. Sometimes in monasteries people suffering from prelest are also given ignoble obediences to humble them. Such obediences often include some hard and dirty work. Such work therapy decreases pride and demonic attacks that cause prelest and helps to switch the mind from the sinful thoughts to something else. St. Joseph of Optina writes in one letter to the abbess of some monastery about a deluded nun by the name of Mavra. He writes that Mavra should wash dishes or peel potatoes - it can decrease the pride that caused prelest. He also writes that she should not take Holy Communion often - the spiritual father should first incline her to humility and self-abasement. At the same time, solitary life should be completely forbidden for Mavra - otherwise she will go completely mad. Another story about healing through work therapy is told by Hieromartyr Archimandrite Kronid (Lyubimov). A novice by the name of Alexander from Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra arbitrary increased his prayer rule and started to see visions. When his condition was revealed, he was sent to another monastery and was given an obedience to clean the horse stalls in the stable yard. At first, he protested: "You appoint such a great ascetic to such a humiliating obedience", but then he agreed and all brethren started to pray about him. Alexander worked all day long and did not have time for his previous intensive prayer feats. Several years later Archimandrite Kronid met Alexander who was already tonsured a monk as Athanasius and, for his humble and good monastic life, was made hierodeacon. When asked whether he remembered what had happened to him, he replied: "I remember everything, but only now realize the full horror of my state of mind." When fighting with sinful thoughts, also it can be useful to have a strict everyday schedule and to alternate mental and physical work as it was shown by an Angel to St. Anthony the Great. Although work therapy sometimes is very useful, the deluded person can become very lazy. While in delusion he could easily pray and do prostrations for hours, recovery from this state can be accompanied by strong relaxation of will, melancholy and laziness to the prayer and physical work. Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov) tells a story about a deluded woman who arbitrary increased her payer rule to 1000 prostrations every day because of conceit. She was concealing it from her spiritual father. When the spiritual father revealed the delusion through her hidden anger and petulance, she no longer could execute even her initial smaller rule of prayer and prostrations, she could not fast at all and even could not read morning and evening prayers. Regarding the opposite form of prelest, which is associated not with the excessive zeal but with the lack of it, the delusion of carelessness, Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman) notes that everyone should remember that a man can change and everyone, due to carelessness and self-justification, can quickly and unnoticeably change to their opposite. To prevent that, we need to gain a skill of self-restraint, in the first place, for the Jesus prayer. St. Anthony the Great names several means of increasing the zeal to virtues and fighting with carelessness: inner means include remembrance of death (i.e. living every day as the last day), thinking about the time after death, fear of God; external and more advanced means include: feeling of sweetness of living with God, love to God, love to do good and according to God. Elder Ephraim of Philotheou writes in a similar way that "you can conquer carelessness using constant prayer, with the mouth and mind, with the remembrance about possibility of sudden death, about the tortures of hell, about Heaven etc. We need to enforce ourselves to our spiritual duties and especially to silence and prayer". Even with Divine and human help, as Saint Ambrose of Optina notes, "It is easier to turn every sinner to repentance than to bring a deluded person to reason". However, there are cases when people were instantly healed of delusion. There is an episode in the life of St. Niphon of Athos when he was visited by a monk who accepted a false vision as true and became proud considering himself above the others. Through the prayer of the St. Niphon the monk instantly began to see his pride. Another case occurred with Archimandrite Parthenios, hegumen of St. Paul Monastery at Mount Athos. When he was young, he fell into negligence and stopped reading the monastic rule. This went on for a whole year. In the end, he suddenly cried out: "Mother of God, help me, I can not do anything. Make it so that I overcome this state!". And the state of negligence suddenly disappeared: he immediately made 400 prostrations. Prelest in the New Testament. In the scene of temptation in the desert, the devil tries to delude Lord Jesus Christ (). In the Sermon on the Mount, Lord Jesus Christ talks about false miracles (). Also Lord Jesus says about prelest and false prophets (, ). In , Apostle Paul expels the spirit of false prophecy. In , Apostle John writes about false prophets and trust to spirits. In , Apostle Paul writes about false visions. In , Apostle Paul mentions the deception of Adam and Eve. In , Apostle Paul advises to avoid delusion - "oppositions of science falsely so called". Orthodox saints who suffered from prelest and recovered. When Saint Niphon, bishop of Cyprus, was an ordinary monk, he was struggling against demons and fell into partial insanity for 4 years but later was cured. Saint Symeon the Stylite was deluded by demons who showed him a chariot wanting to take him to Heaven as it was with Prophet Elias. The chariot disappeared when St. Symeon wanted to enter it but made the sign of the Cross. Saint Iakovos worshiped a demon who appeared as Lord Jesus and who disappeared after Iakovos made the sign of the Cross. Saint Isaac the Recluse of the Kiev Caves was living in seclusion for 7 years and was deluded by a false vision of Lord Jesus. He was left by demons lying unconscious. Saints Antonius and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves were nursing him and praying about him for 2 years. After that, St. Isaac got better and in the end of his life he received the power over demons. Saint Nicetas of the Kiev Caves attempted an excessive feat of seclusion without sufficient experience. He was deluded by an "angel" who helped him and gave him a false gift of clairvoyance. When the Holy Fathers of the monastery unraveled the demon tricks and cast the "angel" away, St. Nicetas lost his supernatural abilities and even could not read at all. Later, following the way of humility, St. Nicetas became the Bishop of Novgorod and received the gift of miracleworking. Saint Theodore and Basil of the Caves suffered heavily from the demon tricks. St. Theodore was deluded by a vision of "angel" and false appearance of a demon in the form of St. Basil and was listening to them. Later, St. Basil brought St. Theodore to reason and convinced that it was a delusion. Saint Silouan the Athonite was in delusion 2 times as written in the book of elder Sofronii. Once St. Silouan accepted a vision and nobody, whom he asked about it, told him that this was a false vision. "But I was beguiled by vanity and began to see devils again. Then I knew that I had been deceived, and I made full disclosure to my confessor and asked him for his prayers; and because of his prayers I am now saved and ever beseech the Lord to grant me the spirit of humility." Unsuccessful attempts to delude Orthodox saints and modern ascetics. When Holy martyrs Timotheos and Mavra were crucified, the Devil tried to delude St. Mavra on the cross. She had two similar visions. An "angel" came to "help" her and offered a cup with water and honey. When she suggested him to pray together, the "angel" did not pray and could not look to the east. From this St. Mavra found out that this was a delusion. Then she had another vision of a man who brought her to a river of water and honey and again suggested to drink. When she refused again, the vision disappeared. When St. Pachomius the Great was living in solitude, the Devil appeared in front of him as "Christ" and said: "Greetings, Pachomius, I am Christ paying you a visit, my faithful friend." But St. Pachomius was in turmoil and had confusing thoughts. So he understood the delusion and rejected the vision: "Devil, depart from me, cursed are you and your visions and your insidious arts. You have no place among the servants of God." St. Peter of Mount Athos had many false visions trying to scare or delude him. During the first year of solitary life at Mt. Athos, St. Peter suddenly saw a "boy", whom he knew before. They started to speak and the "boy" tried to convince St. Peter to return home. St. Peter replied that he would listen only to the Mother of God since She had commanded him to settle at Mt. Athos. When St. Peter pronounced the name of the Mother of God, the demon disappeared. 7 years later a demon appeared in front of St. Peter as an "angel of light". The "angel" commanded him to go to the world for salvation of others. When St. Peter refused again and pronounced the names of the Mother of God and St. Nicholas, the "angel" disappeared. When St. Gregory the Decapolite was living in a cave, he had many demonic assaults. Once the demons appeared as Forty Martyrs of Sebaste and said that they came to give him the grace and power over demons. But St. Gregory understood their plots and rejected the vision. When elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain lived in the Stomion Monastery, he had a vision: the roof opened and he saw a pillar of light reaching the sky. At the top of it he saw a young man who looked similar to Jesus Christ. "You are honored to see Christ" - elder Paisios heard inside him. "Who am I, unworthy, to see Christ" - replied Paisios and the vision disappeared. Another time, when elder Paisios lived at Mt. Sinai, he had to go out in the night. There were several steps near his kellia and elder Paisios used a lighter to descend safely. But this time the lighter did not want to fire. Suddenly a ray of light like from a flood lamp shone from one of the rocks. Elder Paisios understood that this "help" had demonic nature and went back. The light immediately disappeared. The term "prelest" in the liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church. The notion of prelest is used in some of the liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church. In the Akathist to the Mother of God: "For thou hast quenched the furnace of deception" (Ikos 5); "For thou hast trampled on the delusion of error" (Ikos 6). In the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete: "I lie naked and ashamed, for the beauty of the tree, which I saw in the middle of the garden, deceived me" (Monday, Ode 2); "O God, Trinity yet One, save us from delusion, temptations and misfortune!" (Monday, Ode 3); "But you, my hopeless soul, have rather imitated Esau, surrendering to the crafty evil the beauty you inherited from God. In two ways, works and wisdom, have you been deceived and now is the time for you to change your ways" (Tuesday, Ode 4). In the Holy Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great: "and was led astray by the deception of the serpent", "Releasing us from the delusions of idolatry". Prelest and Jesus prayer. Many Orthodox Holy Fathers and modern ascetics wrote about the dangers of wrong practice of the Jesus prayer and prayer in general: Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, Saint Theophan the Recluse, Saint Ambrosius of Optina, Saint Macarius of Optina, elder Joseph the Hesychast, Valaam elder John (Alexeev) and others. Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy A.I. Osipov analyzes the teaching on the prayer by St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and points out that the prayer should have three properties: attention, reverence, repentance. Also humility should be the basis of the prayer as St. Ignatius says: "Today I read the declaration of St. Sisoes the Great, which I always particularly liked. A monk said to him: 'I am in constant memory of God'. St. Sisoes responded to him: 'That is not great; it will be great when you consider yourself to be worse than any creature.' St. Sisoes continues: constant memory of God is a very elevated activity!! However, this height is very dangerous, when the ladder to it is not founded on the solid rock of humility" (Holy Fathers use the words "memory of God" as a synonym for the Jesus prayer). Several dangerous practices of the Jesus Prayer can be named that contradict the teaching of the Orthodox Holy Fathers. If at least one of the following exists: he/she can fall into prelest. The false thought is already in considering one of such practices to be true, not dangerous and fruitful. Also, Metropolitan Ierotheos (Vlachos) in the book "A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain" speaks of the following errors in the prayer: St. Ignatius tells a story about the proper way of the prayer. A monk came to him from Mt. Athos. This monk did not need warm clothes in winter because of the internal heat in his body caused by the prayer and was wearing chains. At first, St. Ignatius thought that this is a true ascetic and wanted to hear something useful from him about the prayer. But then he found out that the monk uses wrong way of prayer with exaltation and imagination. St. Ignatius gingerly asked the monk to try to keep the mind in the words of the prayer. When the monk started to pray this way, that was enough to cure him. All his visions disappeared and he could not make them return. When the monk returned later, he no longer looked conceited. He took off the chains and could not do without warm clothes. St. Ambrose of Optina several times wrote in his letters that for a beginner, especially without an experienced mentor, it is much safer to start with audible verbal prayer rather with purely noetic (silent) one because many people who prayed with noetic prayer, were mentally deranged, while St. Ambrose does not know any examples of people falling into prelest with verbal prayer. During practice of the Jesus prayer, the person always encounters an opposition from the demons through the thoughts. They attempt either to make the person abandon the prayer or to make the prayer unpleasing to God, i.e. to drive the person into pride and prelest. There is even such wrong opinion that one can fall into prelest because of the Jesus prayer. This opinion is denied by Valaam elder John (Alexeev): "One falls into prelest not because of the prayer but because of pride, self-conceit and following own will". This following own will includes neglecting Confession and advice of the spiritual father, as elder Joseph the Hesychast notes: "It is not just a matter of saying the prayer, but it is also a matter of being attentive. You must be vigilant with your thoughts, masterfully controlling them. Otherwise, they will take control of you and in the end you will become the laughing-stock of the demons. I have never seen a soul make progress in the prayer without frankly confessing secret thoughts". St. Paisius Velichkovsky says that though Jesus Prayer purifies man from all passions and keeps him safe from delusions, a man can fall into delusion if he practices the Prayer "according to own will, not according to the power of the teaching of the Holy Fathers, without counsel and questioning of the experienced" and because "being arrogant, passionate, and weak, lives without obedience and submission". And the reason of delusion is not the Prayer, but "following own will and pride of the ones who follow own will." A warning to those who follow own will is also expressed by St. Gregory of Sinai: "it is impossible for all to be taught this discipline (i.e. unceasing prayer). Obedient illiterates and simples can be trained in it – yes – since obedience for the sake of humility is capable of all virtue. But the disobedient, whether simple or educated, are not taught this science lest they fall into prelest. For those who are a law unto themselves cannot escape conceit, which is usually followed by prelest as St. lsaac says. But some people, not thinking of the harm they may do, teach every newcomer the efforts they themselves make to keep remembrance of God, in order that the mind should become accustomed to this remembrance and begin to love it-which is impossible, especially for those accustomed to live as they choose. For, since their mind is impure owing to negligence and arrogance, and is not cleansed with tears, they mostly see images of shameful thoughts instead of prayer, while the impure spirits rooted in their hearts gnash their teeth, disturbed by the terrible name (of God), and strive to destroy the man who thus wounds them. Therefore, if a man, who acts on his own, hears or reads in books about this doing and wishes to practise it, he will suffer one of two things: if he forces himself to efforts he will fall into prelest and will remain uncured or, if he does not make efforts, he will remain unsuccessful his whole life". Similar to the last words is said by St. Macarius the Great about not making efforts in the fight with passions: "if someone compels himself to the prayer until he attains the gift from God, and does not force or bother himself in the same measure to humility, love, meekness and to other virtues: sometimes the grace of God happens to him by his prayer and petition; because God is merciful, and he gives what is requested to those who ask of Him. But, without having prepared and accustomed himself to the virtues mentioned above, either he loses the grace, or he receives and falls, or does not succeed from arrogance; because he does not commit his will to the commandments of the Lord". Attention during prayer. Keeping attention too low. There is a general notion of Orthodox Holy Fathers, especially of 18-20th centuries, that one of the dangerous phenomena during prayer is keeping attention too low. That is, if during prayer, instead of the upper part of the heart, the person keeps attention at the bottom of the heart or even lower than the heart (i.e. close to sexual organs). But the question where exactly the attention should be kept for the particular person it not so straightforward, especially for a novice. Archbishop Anthony (Golynsky-Mikhailovsky) in his book on Jesus prayer analyses many writings of Holy Fathers and says that though some people can start practicing prayer already from the heart, some others on the first stage can keep attention in the throat. It can be difficult for a novice to keep attention in the heart while striving to enclose the mind within the words of the prayer. In the same book, in a quote of St. Basil Polyanomerulsky, it is noted that some people even having heard where attention should be kept did not know where the top of the heart was and were keeping attention at the bottom of it or even in the center of the stomach resulting in delusion. In another quote in the same book, St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) says that the upper part of the physical heart coincides with the spiritual heart – the concentration of all spiritual powers, the human spirit. And while the grace upon Baptism sanctifies it, the middle and bottom of the heart (associated with powers of anger and lust respectively) are not yet purified; keeping attention in these places can invoke passions and delusion. Three ways of attention and prayer. St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Silouan the Athonite say that there are three ways of prayer: The second way is better than the first one, and the third one is far better than the others and is the only truly correct and fruitful way of prayer. St. Silouan says that these three ways or stages of prayer correspond to the stages of normal development of human spirit: the first movement of the mind is outward, the second stage is the return to self, and the third stage is the movement to God through the inner man. If the person stays in and is satisfied with the first way, this, besides fruitlessness may lead to delusion. The first way keeps the person in the state of misapprehension, in the imagined world and the real life gradually starts to be filled with this imagination and fantasy. The second way is not so dangerous but its result is also fruitlessness, it does not allow to reach the freedom from passions and moreover, contemplation. St. John Climacus writes the same about imagination: "during prayer do not admit any sensory imagination, so as not to be subject to distraction" (in the Russian translation of the Ladder, "distraction" here is interpreted with the meaning of "madness"). St. Symeon says that the third stage is reached under the obedience to the spiritual father because without obedience one cannot have the consciousness clean. St. Silouan says that union of mind with heart is experienced by any believer when he prays with attention, "from heart", especially with tears; but the third way is not only tears; it is mind that stands with prayerful attention in the heart. During this, the mind is freed from any image and imagination and sees all thoughts that approach the heart before they reach it. The prayer in this state guards the mind from these thoughts and from initiation of any sinful passion. Valaam elder John (Alexeev) writes in a letter to a woman who lives in the world that the third way of prayer does not suit her: it cannot be without solitude and solitude cannot be without prayer; she should be satisfied with that she keeps attention in the chest and she should strive more to keep the consciousness clean before God, people and things. In another letter about the prayer to a monk, elder John advises that he should not seek tears; it is better to attain inner peace; if the place in the heart is prepared by humility, God will give his mercy without our wish and expectation. False unceasing (self-moving) Jesus prayer. Sometimes, very rarely, God gives some humble and pious individuals, who reached the highest degree of purification from passions, a gift of unceasing (self-moving) heart prayer. That is one of the greatest blessings from God that a person can receive. But if the person is conceited, he may confuse the Divine gift with something merely natural or even demonic. Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin) writes about Saint Seraphim (Romantsov), elder of the Glinsk Monastery, and about the importance of obedience which is required to receive the Divine grace. Once Fr. Seraphim spoke to a nun who thought of herself as having an unceasing prayer. She lived in the mountains and severely fasted. Fr. Seraphim said: "Once a day, you have to have a hot meal". She stared at Father Seraphim: "Do I have to waste the time and distract the mind from the prayer to prepare lunch?" Fr. Seraphim widely crossed himself: "Cross my heart, that you do not have any prayer and never had it". When she left, Fr. Seraphim said, "She did not understand anything. The one, who gave her the schema, he was in prelest himself. Poor soul, how much struggles she will have!" Another time St. Seraphim (Romantsov) said to a monk: "You do not have any prayer of Jesus: you just got used to it, as some people get used to the bad language". St. Ambrose of Optina also writes in a letter that one person has had an unceasing prayer when asleep. And when he listened closer to what his heart was saying, he heard: "Meow" − like a cat but not the Jesus prayer. Once elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain met a man who got used to the words of the Jesus prayer. But upon talking with this man, elder Paisios realized that he was in delusion thinking very high of himself, e.g. that his every thought comes from God because he constantly prays. Elder hierodeacon Ephraim from the Glinsk monastery says in conversation with archpriest Basil (Serebrennikov) when the latter asked about a friend, a nun who thought of herself as having an unceasing prayer, "but this is delusion. The true grace-filled heart Jesus prayer is a very rare gift of God, and people who have this gift are outside the world, under a bushel" <…> "Because otherwise, who would be doing good deeds in the world? Everyone would be praying, huddled in the corners ...Usually what they take for the grace-filled prayer of the heart is just pronunciation of the words with attention (mind) in the heart and it is a subtle demonic delusion". And he showed how even a person's voice changed depending on the place of application of attention: he put his finger to his forehead, then to his Adam's apple (throat), then to his heart - everywhere there was a distinct sound of the voice when pronouncing "Fr. Basil". Elder Ephraim continues: "Here is your name as if in my heart. So your praying friends are in subtle delusion". Magicism and "automatic" view of prayer. One of the kinds of false attitude to prayer originates from a widespread view on God, prayer, and spiritual life, implying that God can be "forced" to execute the petition that is asked in the prayer, i.e. as if the prayer acts "by itself", solely by pronouncing the words, with no regard to the spiritual condition of the person who prays. This "automatic" view can apply to any relationship with God, to any action of Divine grace including the prayer and Sacraments. Orthodox theologian Fr. Valery Dukhanin writes that such view has nothing to do with Orthodox faith and rather belongs to magic: "The main property of magic – correct ritual. That is a drastic difference with the Sacraments of the Church, which cannot help without man’s personal relation to God". Unconditional action of prayer assumes that free will does exist neither in man nor in God and that God can do something harmful and with no regard to the inner determination of all involved persons. St. Hilarion of Optina writes that though we should pray about each other, the view on prayer that every petition is necessarily executed originates from pride and leads to delusion. The Valaam elder schema-hegumen John (Alekseev) writes about Jesus prayer: "Why do we read the Jesus Prayer? So that, constantly remembering the Lord and repenting of sins come to spiritual peace, inner silence and love for our neighbor and righteousness, then we live in God, who is love. But there are people who look at this prayer as a kind of magic that will give them reading of minds, insight, the gift of miracles and healings, etc. This approach to prayer is extremely sinful. Those who act so are deceived by demons who give them some kind of power to destroy them altogether, forever". Professor A.I. Osipov writes that "an awareness of magic is deeply present in our 'old man'. For very many people, Orthodoxy consists in placing candles, 'venerating', donating something, leaving prayer requests, ordering Liturgies, molebens and pannikhidas, joining in the cross processions, visiting holy shrines, confessing and receiving Communion. The most important part of salvation, life according the commandments and repentance, remains undone. However, without spiritual transformation (in Greek, the word for repentance is μετάνοια [metanoia], which means to change one’s way of thinking), all of these external activities are at the least useless, and at the worst harmful, for they can cause one to feel self-righteous and raise his self-opinion over “sinners.”" Also some holy fathers wrote about such "automatic" attitude to the Sacraments (i.e. without faith and willingness to fight with passions): St. John Chrysostom, St. Mark the Ascetic, St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Such false "automatic" attitude to the action of Holy Sacraments is named by A.I. Osipov as one of the reasons of degeneration of Christian faith and backsliding into paganism. Delusions of Antichrist. Apostles Paul and John say in their epistles that Antichrist will come right before the end of times (2 Thess. 2, 1 John 2:18). His coming will be accompanied by false miracles and signs. Father Nikita Grigoriev in his book "Faith and delusion" writes about Antichrist that "in appearance, he will be kind, gentle, patient and merciful. He will attract everyone by his “love” and will amaze everyone with his “miracles” but this “love” will be false just as the “miracles” will likewise be false. Moreover, this “love” will not be salvific for the people, but destructive because it will not call people to genuine repentance, to take up one’s Cross, to spiritual rebirth through the Holy Spirit in the Church of Christ. No, the anti-Christ’s love will condone human passions. From the very beginning, in Paradise, when man fell, he did not want to hear about his sin; he did not wish to repent and be forgiven. He wanted to remain in his sin and justify it. The anti-Christ will not rebuke passions and call people to genuine contrition of heart in order to forgive and heal them, but on the contrary will justify them just as they are. It will make people feel good about themselves as they are." Orthodox views on the lives of certain modern elders and saints of the Orthodox Church. Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy A.I. Osipov in his lecture course on “Basic Theology” speaks in one of the lectures (as well as in the textbook for this course and some other public lectures) about false way of prayer and false spirituality. He says that some books containing errors appeared recently. These errors can be attributed to either misunderstanding of the basics of spiritual life by the authors of the books or to such errors and delusion of the character, i.e. particular elders or even glorified saints that are described in these books. One of such saints is elder Porphyrios (Bairaktaris) of Kafsokalivia (1906-1991). A.I. Osipov stresses that he knows about this elder only from the book ("Elder Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia. Life and words. Maloyaroslavets, 2006. In Russian"). And the book contains some wrong views that true saints should not have. These errors include: Another book that A.I. Osipov criticizes in the same textbook, is "The Teacher of Mental Prayer. Life of Hieromonk Charalambos of the Monastery of Dionysiou" (Moscow, 2005). The criticism is related to a controversial topic about the speed of pronunciation of the Jesus Prayer. Elder Charalambos teaches to say it very fast, which contradicts to the teaching of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). And the disciple of the elder right after first such fast pronunciation of several thousands of prayers felt sweetness in the mouth. After that, the elder became very happy for his disciple and was saying that this is correct way. The elder does not have any doubts about such fast appearance of sweetness and tears of thanksgiving. Prof. Osipov compares such fast practice with pagan mantras and quotes the words of St. Seraphim (Romantsov) mentioned above in the section "False unceasing (self-moving) Jesus prayer": "You do not have any prayer of Jesus: you just got used to it, as some people get used to the bad language". Elder Charalambos thinks that attention is maintained better with fast prayer while Prof. Osipov says, referring to St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), that attention can be hardly reached under such conditions, especially for a novice. Orthodox views on the lives of certain saints of the Roman Catholic Church. The accusation of prelest has long been marshalled in polemics against Western spirituality. There is a widespread view among Orthodox theologians, initially based on the opinion of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)(1807-1867), St. Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894) and Optina elders that some of the most respected saints of the Roman Catholic Church who were glorified since it turned to papal supremacy, as it is described in their books or books about them, were in a state of prelest and therefore could not become saints if considered taking in account the Orthodox view of humility and spiritual life. This view consists of the following. St. Ignatius provides examples of visions and other mystical experiences of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas à Kempis and compares them with experience of Orthodox saints of the first centuries. Professor A.I. Osipov analyzes teachings on this subject by St. Ignatius and points at a significant difference in Orthodox and Roman Catholic view on spirituality, repentance and humility. He writes in a book which is a textbook for the Basic theology course in the Moscow Theological Academy that there are many phrases attributed to St. Francis that reveal his true degree of humility: Saint Francis's very life's goal, ("I have labored and want to labor … because this brings honor," "I want to suffer for others and redeem the sins of others"), shows his fall which he himself does not see; it shows his own sins. At the end of his life, he said, "I am not aware of any sin I have committed which I have not redeemed through confession and repentance. His dying words were, 'I have fulfilled what I should have fulfilled. '"<br><br> By comparison, we shall cite the last moments of Saint Sisoes the Great (fifth century):<br><br> Surrounded by the brothers at the moment of his death, he was as if talking with invisible beings. The brothers asked him, "Father, tell us, with whom are you speaking?" He answered, "With angels who have come to take me; but I am begging them to leave me for a short time, in order to repent." The brothers knew that Sisoes was perfect in the virtues, and protested, "You have no need to repent, Father." Sisoes answered, "Truly, I do not know if I have even begun to repent. "<br><br> Sisoes' deep understanding of his own imperfection is the main outstanding trait of all true saints and is the most important sign that their revelations were true. The words of St. Francis "I have fulfilled what I should have fulfilled" in this quote (taken from the referenced book of Prof. A.I. Osipov in English), were taken by A.I. Osipov from another book in Russian, which in turn took it from another book. For comparison, the life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure contains it in the following from: "I have done what was mine to do" (P. 150). The interpretation of such words and relation to humility is explained, in particular, in the book by Mitrofan Lodyzhensky "Light Invisible" adapted in the shorter article by Father George Macris. Father George Macris writes that "in his farewell address to the Franciscans, St. Francis said: “Now God is calling me, and I forgive all my brethren, both those present and those absent, their offenses and their errors and remit their sins as far as it is in my power.” These words reveal that on his death bed, Francis felt himself to be powerful enough to remit sins like the Pope. It is known that the remission of sins outside the Sacrament of Penance and the Eucharist in the Roman Church was a prerogative of papal power. Francis’ assumption of this prerogative could only have been with the assurance of his own sanctity". Considering oneself holy is a clear manifestation of prelest as it is explained in the subsection "View from the outside" above. Prof. A.I. Osipov also says that there are 3 main manifestations of delusions of Catholic mystics: Russian philosopher A.F. Losev (1893-1988) analyzes Western spirituality and in particular, visions of St. Angela of Foligno: "That is not a prayer and conversation with God. These are very strong hallucinations on the basis of hysteria i.e. prelest". "Orthodox prayer dwells in the upper part of the heart, not below. Through prayer and ascetic experience it has been learned in the East that nurturing the prayer in some other place in the body is always the result of a delusional state. Catholic erotomania is connected, apparently, with violent excitement and fever at the bottom of the heart". Keeping attention during prayer too low is also mentioned above in the section "Prelest and Jesus prayer" as one of the dangerous ways of prayer. Another Russian philosopher M.V. Lodyzhenskii (1852-1917) compares Orthodox and Roman Catholic mystics and points at the differences in humility between St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Francis of Assisi. In his opinion, the reason why St. Francis did not reach the true humility is that Roman Catholic Church at that time did not have the true humility at all. The strongest evidence of the spiritual pride the author finds in the papal supremacy. In particular, he writes in "Light Invisible" confronting St. Francis and St. Seraphim of Sarov: "Although Francis, as we know from his biography, also worked hard on himself, although he often spoke out about the need for humility and gave the Franciscan brothers useful teachings in this regard, he himself in his whole life has far from developing a profound Seraphim’s humility with which we met from the biography of the Russian saint. Francis’s humility found only sporadic impulses, albeit very strong, impulses not relieved of exaggeration and even, one might say, theatricality. This humility of Francis did not become an inseparable from him property of his nature. Very different moods often broke into Francis’s nature. So, from the biography of Francis, we learn about such speeches of Francis to his students:’I am not aware for myself of any sin that I couldn’t atone for by confession and repentance. For the Lord, by his mercy, gave me the gift to clearly recognize in prayer in what I was pleasing to or not pleasing to him.’ These words, of course, are far from real humility. Rather, they resemble the speech of that self-righteous man (Pharisee), who, according to the parable of the Great Teacher, stood in the temple in front of the tax collector, crying out in deep humility to God: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ These words of Francis, said in his mind that he had atoned for his sins and was pleasing to God, do not at all correspond to what the ascetics of the Philokalia require from a humble person, whom Seraphim of Sarov followed. So, Isaac the Syrian says: ‘The true righteous always think in themselves that they are unworthy of God. And that they are true righteous, this is derived from the fact that they acknowledge themselves as a wretched and unworthy of God and profess this secretly and explicitly and are enlightened to this by the Holy Spirit, so as not to be left without proper care and cooperation, while they are in this life". New-martyr Mihail Novoselov (1864-1938) compares the teaching of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), St. Theophan the Recluse, writings of M.V. Lodyzhenskii and the writings of Roman Catholic mystics. He writes that it is enough to read several pages of the writings of the Western mystics, in particular, the writings of St. Teresa of Ávila, to see that they were in prelest. Prof. A.I. Osipov says that deviations in the Roman Catholic Church started from such things that are rather subtle and not easy to understand for everyone, even for the person who knows the basics of the spiritual life. A.I. Osipov gives an example of his personal misunderstanding. He speaks in one of his lectures about the time when he studied in the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1950-60s. He knew about the book "Imitation of Jesus Christ" by Thomas à Kempis – in Ignatius Brianchaninov’s writings, there is a case when a landlord saw his daughter with this book, took it out of her hand and said: "Stop playing in romances with God." And A.I. Osipov took and read the book and did not see anything bad: "Why do they criticize it? It is true, we must imitate Jesus Christ." When he looked into this book again after a long time – he saw prelest everywhere: rapture, exaltation, false love. A.I. Osipov adds: "I did not understand, imagine that! I did not see. The people who just knew it and felt it – they understood. They saw where the falseness is." Also Prof. A.I. Osipov says that, in his opinion, this is the key to the separation between the Eastern and Western Churches - not filioque or papal supremacy - these are only consequences visible to everyone. The beginning was in the spiritual deviation of the people who turned from the path of fight with passions to the path of false love to God. Another Orthodox theologian Andrey Kuraev compares several times in his books the Eastern and the Western mystical practices. He says that often religious paths are compared by means of formal dogmatic differences – but that is not the most important part. In his opinion, the most important difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is the practice of meditative prayer. He writes that "Western spiritual authorities strongly recommend that way of spiritual practice, which the spiritual teachers of the East categorically prohibit (plus, since the time of the unity of the Church). The Eastern tradition allows, though with the utmost caution, the acceptance of an image in the mind - but in no case during prayer. 'How to imagine the Lord? Sitting on the throne or crucified?' - St. Theophan the Recluse answers the question. 'When you contemplate on the Divine, then you can imagine the Lord, if necessary. But you shouldn't keep any images during prayer.' 'If you allow images, then there is a danger - to start praying to a dream'. Not images, but meanings are made the subject of consideration here. 'Imagine the truth and pray about it, or rotate it in your mind during prayer, and compose prayers from it. The moment will come when this truth will enter the heart and embrace the whole being of the soul, nourishing and cheering it up'. <…>This intellectual meditation of Orthodoxy is closer to the Jewish origins of Christianity <…> Too emotional Catholic meditation leads to the fact that the area of the religious itself is invaded by human emotions awakened by it, which have no place in religion (at least – in not transformed form)".

major disparity

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46080

Halteres (; singular halter or haltere) (from , weights held in the hands to give an impetus in leaping) are a pair of small club-shaped organs on the body of two orders of flying insects that provide information about body rotations during flight. Examples of insects with halteres are houseflies, mosquitoes, gnats, and craneflies. Halteres oscillate rapidly along with the wings and operate like vibrating structure gyroscopes: any rotation of the plane of oscillation causes a force on the vibrating halteres by the Coriolis effect. The insect detects this force with sensory organs called campaniform sensilla and chordotonal organs located at the base of the halteres and uses this information to interpret and correct its position in space. Halteres provide rapid feedback to the wing-steering muscles, as well as to the muscles responsible for stabilizing the head. Insects of the large order Diptera (flies) have halteres which evolved from a pair of ancestral hindwings, while males of the much smaller order Strepsiptera (stylops) have halteres which evolved from a pair of ancestral forewings. Background. The majority of insects have two pairs of wings. Flies possess only one set of lift-generating wings and one set of halteres. The order name for flies, "Diptera", literally means "two wings", but there is another order of insect which has evolved flight with only two wings: strepsipterans, or stylops; they are the only other organisms that possess two wings and two halteres. The strepsipterans have adapted their forewings into halteres, whereas dipterans have adapted their hindwings into halteres. This unique structure which detects rotations/perturbations during flight has never been described in nature elsewhere, though many flying insects have been shown to detect Coriolis forces from their non-specialised wings. Halteres are able to sense small deviations in body position using the gyroscopic properties of moving mass. What this means is that halteres beat up and down in time with the flapping of the wings along a linear pathway, but when the fly's body begins to rotate, the path of the beating halteres also changes. Now, instead of the halteres following a linear path, they begin to follow a curved path. The larger the perturbation they experience, the farther the halteres move from their original linear path. During these periods, the haltere is no longer moving in only two directions (up and down), but four (up, down, left, and right). The force exerted on the halteres in response to this left right movement is known as Coriolis force and can be produced when any moving object is rotated in the three directions of rotation, yaw, pitch or roll (see figure). When this occurs, tiny bell-shaped structures at the base of the haltere experience strain as the haltere stalk bends in their direction. The nervous system can then transform the bending of these hairs into electrical signals, which the fly interprets as body rotation information. The fly uses this information to make corrections to its position and thereby restabilizes itself during flight. Further details explaining the dynamics and physiology of halteres are described below. Halteres are typically only associated with flight stabilization, but their ability to detect body rotations can elicit compensatory reactions not only from the wing steering muscles, but also from neck muscle which are responsible for head position and gaze. Halteres may also be useful for other behaviors. Certain species of flies have been observed to oscillate their halteres while walking in addition to oscillating them during flight. In these individuals, halteres could thus be detecting sensory information during walking behavior as well. When the halteres are removed, these insects perform more poorly at certain walking challenges. However, how haltere information is processed and used during walking remains, with few exceptions, unclear. Specific examples of what has been found are described below. History. Halteres were first documented by William Derham in 1714. He discovered that flies were unable to remain airborne when their halteres were surgically removed, but otherwise behaved normally. This result was initially attributed to the haltere's ability to sense and maintain equilibrium. In 1917 v. Buddenbrock asserted that something else was responsible for the flies' loss of flight ability. He claimed that the halteres should instead be considered "stimulation organs". In other words, that the activity of the halteres energized the wing muscular system, so that they acted as an on/off switch for flight. V. Buddenbrock attempted to show that activation of the halteres would stimulate the central nervous system into a state of activity which allowed the wings to produce flight behavior. It has since been concluded that this is not in fact true, and that the original assertion that halteres act as balance organs is the correct one. V. Buddenbrock was able to show that immediately after haltere removal flies were unable to produce normal wing movements. This was later explained by the fact that allowing flies a few minutes recovery time post-surgery resulted in total recovery of normal flight muscle control. Further, in an interesting side experiment performed by Pringle (1938), when a thread was attached to the abdomen of haltereless flies, relatively stable flight was again achieved. The thread in these experiments presumably aided in keeping the fly from rotating (similar to the way a heavy basket below a hot air balloon prevents the balloon from tipping), which supported the hypothesis that halteres are responsible for sensing body rotations. The original balancer theory, which was postulated by Pringle (1948), only accounted for forces produced in two directions. Pringle claimed that yaw was the only direction of rotation that flies used their halteres to detect. Using high speed video analysis, Faust (1952) demonstrated that this was not the case and that halteres are capable of detecting all three directions of rotation. In response to this new discovery, Pringle reexamined his previous assumption and came to the conclusion that flies were capable of detecting all three directions of rotation simply by comparing inputs from the left and right sides of the body. Of course, this is not the actual mechanism by which flies detect rotation. Different fields of sensory organs located in different regions at the base of each haltere detect the different directions of rotation, which also explains why flies with one haltere are still able to fly without issue. Evolution. It is generally accepted that the halteres evolved from the non-flight wings of insects — the hind-wings of Diptera and the fore wings of Strepsiptera respectively. Their movement, structure, function and development all support this hypothesis. Characterizations of the arrangement of sensory organs known as campaniform sensilla, found at the base of the haltere, show many similarities to those found at the base of the hindwings in other insects. The sensilla are arranged in a way so similar to that of hindwings, that were the halteres to be replaced with wings, the forces produced would still be sufficient to activate the same sensory organs. Genetic studies have also brought to light many similarities between halteres and hindwings. In fact, haltere development has been traced back to a single gene (Ubx), which when deactivated results in the formation of a hindwing instead. Because just a single gene is responsible for this change, it is easy to imagine a small mutation here leading to the formation of the first halteres. Convergent evolution. Though no other structure with entirely the same function and morphology as halteres has been observed in nature, they have evolved at least twice in the class Insecta, once in the order Diptera and again in Strepsiptera. Another structure in the class insecta also exists whose primary function is not the same as halteres, but that additionally serves a similar balancing function. This occurs in the order Lepidoptera and refers to the antennae of moths and butterflies. Strepsipteran haltere. Strepsipterans are a unique group of insects with major sexual dimorphism. The females spend their entire lives in a grub-like state, parasitizing larger insects. The only time they ever come out of their host insect is to extend their fused heads and thoraces for males to notice. The males are also parasites, but they eventually will leave their host to seek their female counterparts. Because of this, they still retain the ability to fly. Male strepsipterans uniquely possess two hindwings, while their forewings have taken on the club-like form of halteres. Though strepsipterans are very difficult to locate and are additionally rather short-lived, Pix "et al." (1993) confirmed that the specialized forewings that male Strepsiptera possess perform the same function as dipteran halteres. Rotational movements of the body combined with the oscillating halteres produce Coriolis forces that can be detected by fields of mechanosensors (campaniform sensilla) located at the base of the halteres. Using functional morphology and behavior studies, Pix "et al." showed that these sensors then transmit body position information to the head and abdomen to produce compensatory movements. For simplicity, the remainder of this article will refer only to dipteran halteres. Lepidopteran antennae. Certain lepidopterans (moths and butterflies) exhibit small amplitude oscillation of their antennae at constant angles during flight. Antennal movements in lepidopterans were originally hypothesized to aid in wind or gravity perception. A study performed using the hawk moth, "Manduca sexta", confirmed that these tiny, antennal oscillations were actually contributing to body rotation sensation. Sane "et al." (2007) determined that antennae were responsible for flight stabilization in hawk moths by removing the long part of the antenna (the flagellum), then reattaching it to determine its influence on flight performance. When the flagella were removed, the moths were no longer able to maintain stable flight. After reattachment of the flagella, flight performance was restored. The source of this difference was determined to be mechanosensory. There are two sets of mechanosensory organs located at the base of the lepidopteran antenna, Böhm's bristles and the Johnston organ. These fields of receptors respond to different directions of antennal movements. Antennae are also capable of sensing odor, humidity, and temperature. Sane "et al." (2007) was able to demonstrate that it was the mechanosensors that were responsible for flight stability as opposed to the other sensory organs, because when the flagella were removed and then reattached, all antennal nerves were severed excluding those at the base (Böhm's bristles and the Johnston organ). Genetics. In segmented organisms there are genes called Hox genes, which determines the development of serial homologs, or repeating structures within an organism (e.g. jointed appendages of arthropods or vertebrae in mammals). In insects, the thorax is separated into different segments. One of the things that the Hox gene "Ultrabithorax (Ubx)" is responsible for, is specifying the identity of the third thoracic segment of their body. Proper hindwing development in a number of insect species is dependent on "Ubx", including butterflies, beetles, and flies. In fruit flies, ("Ubx") is responsible for the formation of the halteres during metamorphosis. If this gene is experimentally deactivated, the haltere will develop into a fully formed wing. This single homeotic gene change results in a radically different phenotype, but also begins to give us some insight into how the ancestors of flies' hindwings may have originally evolved into halteres. Though it is clear that "Ubx" is the primary gene responsible for hindwing formation, Ubx also regulates other genes once expressed. Weatherbee (1998) postulated that differences in "Ubx" expression patterns or levels may not be responsible for the observed physiological changes. Instead, he suggested that "Ubx"-regulated target gene sets were the direct source of the observed changes. Several "Ubx"-regulated target genes have been identified, including two direct targets, "spalt" and "knot", which are expressed in the wing and repressed in halteres. Other genes which are expressed in wings and repressed in halteres have also been identified, but whether or not they act as direct targets of "Ubx" regulation are still unknown. Dynamics. Dipteran insects along with the majority of other insect orders use what are known as indirect flight muscles to accomplish flight. Indirect insect flight muscles are composed of two sets of perpendicular muscles (see left figure) that are attached to the thorax (instead of directly to the wing base as is the case for direct flight muscles). When the first set of muscles contracts, they deform the body of the insect and compress its thorax vertically, which lifts the wings. When the first set of muscles relaxes and the second set contracts, the thorax is squeezed in the opposite direction, which extends the body vertically and moves the wings downward. The below figure demonstrates this movement with only the first set of muscles. The movement of the wings and the halteres are mechanically coupled. Sane "et al." (2015) demonstrated that in freshly killed flies, without any neural input, the movement of wings was still coupled with the movement of halteres. When a forcep was used to manually move a wing up and down, not only did the opposite wing move in synchrony, the halteres also beat in antiphase with both wings. The source of this coupling however, was not between the muscles which control the halteres and those that control the wings. Instead, two small ridges of cuticle known as the subepimeral ridges were found to be responsible. These ridges connect the right wing to the right haltere and the left wing to the left haltere. Each side of the body must be synchronized and the two sides are also coupled. That is, the left and right wings and thus the left and right halteres always beat at the same frequency. However, the amplitude of the wingbeat does not always have to be the same on the left and right side. This is what allows the flies to turn and is accomplished using a gearbox, much like what you would find in an automobile. This gearbox can change the maximum amplitude of the wing movement and determine its speed of motion. The wings of flies even have a clutch structure at their base. The clutch moves between grooves in the gearbox, to engage and disengage the wing muscles and also modulate the wingbeat amplitude. When the amplitude of the left wing is less than the right, the fly will make a left turn. Even though haltere movement is controlled by separate muscles than the wings, because the wings are mechanically coupled with the halteres, changes in wingbeat frequency extend to the haltere-beat frequency as well, but haltere beat amplitude does not change. Although halteres are coupled with the wings and with each other during flight, some flies oscillate their halteres while walking (without oscillating their wings). Because the haltere muscles are tiny in comparison to the flight muscles, flight muscle activity completely overshadows that of the haltere muscles during flight. It is unknown how haltere muscle activity during flight differs from walking. The left and right halteres show much more variable phase relationships while walking compared with flying, which may indicate decoupling of the left and right haltere muscles. Differences between species. Although halteres are always synchronized with the movements of the wings, the phase at which they oscillate differs between species. Brachyceran flies (short-antennaed) oscillate their halteres almost exactly opposite their wings (180 degrees). More ancient suborders such as the Nematecerans (long-antennaed flies), which for example include crane flies and mosquitoes, exhibit a variety of wing-haltere phasing. These observed differences in wing-haltere coordination suggest that differences in sensory neuron output also exist between species. This means that the decoding mechanisms used by the central nervous system to interpret such movements and produce adequate motor output probably also vary depending on phylogeny. Morphology. The general structure of halteres are well recognized, but much variability exists between species. The more ancient families, such as tipulidae (crane flies), possess halteres with rather long stalks. This causes the haltere bulbs to be much further from the body and easily visible to the naked eye. More derived families, such as Calliphoridae (blow flies), have developed specialized structures called "calyptrae" or "squama", which are tiny flaps of wing, that cover the haltere. Pringle (1948) hypothesized that they prevented wind turbulence from affecting haltere movements, allowing more precise detection of body position, but this was never tested. The stalk of the haltere is also not always straight. Instead, the stalk's shape in more derived families tends to be reflective of the body shape of the individual. This minimizes the amount of air space between end-knobs and the sides of the abdomen and thorax. In these families, the halteres beat so close to the body that the distance between haltere and thorax is a fraction of the diameter of the haltere bulb. An extreme example of this trait is in the family Syrphidae (hoverflies), where the bulb of the haltere is positioned nearly perpendicular to the stalk. Flies typically hold their halteres at a 90 degree offset. To visualize this, if you were to imagine a person holding their arms out sideways, this would be a 180 degree offset. If that person then moved their arms backward so that the angle created between their fingertips and spine was 90 degrees, this would be a 90 degree offset. The halteres of flies work the same way. They are positioned behind their bodies, forming a 90 degree angle between the haltere bulbs and the center of their thorax. It is necessary for the halteres to be positioned like this in order to detect the three axes of motion. Those axes are yaw pitch and roll, as illustrated in the above figure (Directions of rotation). The mechanoreceptors at the base of the halteres are only able to measure force in two directions (horizontal and vertical), so a single haltere is only able to measure rotations along two of the three axes. Because the halteres are set at different angles (90 degree offset), they also beat along two separate horizontal and vertical axes. This gives them the ability to acquire information from two non-parallel planes and allows sensation of rotation in all three directions. However, flies are most sensitive to pitch. Neurophysiology. When halteres are experimentally induced to flap, volleys of action potentials within the haltere nerve occur in synchrony with the haltere-beat frequency. When flies are then rotated, these volleys break down, likely in response to different groups of sensilla being activated to inform the fly of its recently changed body position. Haltere afferents have also been shown to terminate in the mesothoracic neuropil where flight muscle neurons are located. Haltere afferent activity responding to rotations and wing steering behavior converge in this processing region. The haltere nerve. Sensory inputs from five sensory fields located at the base of the haltere all converge onto one nerve, the haltere nerve. How these sensory fields are organized at the level of the central nervous system is currently unknown. It has been determined that those five sensory fields all project to the thorax in a "region-specific" way and afferents originating from the forewing were also shown to converge in the same regions. Not every specific target for the haltere afferents have been determined, but a few connections between motor neurons known to be involved in wing steering control and particular haltere sensory fields have been identified, particularly one synapse between the haltere nerve and a wing steering motor neuron known as mnb1. Muscles. Flies use indirect flight muscles to accomplish wing movement, and the beating haltere movements are driven by the same group of muscles (see dynamics section). In addition to the indirect flight muscles which are responsible for the flapping motion, there are also steering muscle which control the rotation/angle of the wings. Because halteres evolved from hindwings, the same complement of steering muscles exists for the other directions of movement as well. Chan "et al." (1998) identified 10 direct control muscles in the haltere similar to those found in the forewing. In 1998, Chan and Dickinson proposed that the planned haltere movements (without external forces acting on them) were what initiated planned turns. To explain this, imagine a fly that wishes to turn to the right. Unfortunately, as soon as it does, the halteres sense a body rotation and reflexively correct the turn, preventing the fly from changing direction. Chan and Dickinson (1998) suggested that what the fly does to prevent this from occurring is to first move its halteres as if it were being pushed in the opposite direction that it wants to go. The fly has not moved, but the halteres have sensed a perturbation. This would allow the haltere-initiated reflex to occur, correcting the imagined perturbation. The fly would then be able to execute its turn in the desired direction. This is not how flies actually turn. Mureli and Fox (2015) showed that flies are still capable of performing planned turns even when their halteres have been removed entirely. Campaniform sensilla. The way in which rotation sensation is accomplished is that there are five distinct sensory fields located at the base of the haltere. These fields, which actually contain the majority of campaniform sensilla found on the exoskeleton of blowflies (more than 400 campaniform sensilla per haltere), are activated in response to strain created by movements at the haltere base in different directions (due to Coriolis forces acting on the end knobs). Campaniform sensilla are cap-shaped protrusions located on the surface of the exoskeleton (cuticle) of insects. Attached inside the cap is the tip of a dendritic projection (or sensory nerve fiber). The outer segment of the dendritic projection is attached to the inside surface of the cap. When the haltere is pushed to one side, the cuticle of the insect bends and the surface of the cap is distorted. The inner dendrite is able to detect this distortion and convert it to an electrical signal which is sent to the central nervous system to be interpreted. Chordotonal organs. Chordotonal organs detect and transmit distortions in their position/shape in the same way that campaniform sensilla do. They differ slightly at their site of detection. Chordotonal organs, unlike campaniform sensilla, exist beneath the cuticle and typically respond to stretch as opposed to distortion or bending. Their sensory nerve endings attach between two internal points and when those points are stretched, the difference in length is what is detected and transformed into electrical signaling. There are far fewer chordotonal organs at the base of the haltere than campaniform sensilla (on the order of hundreds), so it is assumed that they are far less important for detecting and transmitting rotational information from haltere movements. Role in visual processing. Head stabilization. Insect eyes are unable to move independently of the head. In order for flies to stabilize their visual fields, they must adjust the position of their entire head. Sensory inputs detected by halteres not only determine the position of the body, but also, the position of the head, which can move independently from the body. Halteres are particularly useful for detecting fast perturbations during flight and only respond to angular velocities (speeds of rotation) above a certain threshold. When flies are focused on an object in front of them and their body is rotated, they are able to maintain their head position so that the object remains focused and upright. Hengstenberg (1988) found that in the roll direction of rotation, the flies' ability to maintain their head position in response to body motion was only observed at speeds above 50 degrees per second and their ability peaked at 1500 degrees per second. When halteres were removed at the bulb (to retain intact sensory organs at the base) the fly's ability to perceive roll movements at high angular velocities disappeared. Halteres and vision both play a role in stabilizing the head. Flies are also able to perform compensatory head movements to stabilize their vision without the use of their halteres. When the visual field is artificially rotated around a fly at slower angular velocities, head stabilization still occurs. Head stabilization outputs due to optical inputs alone are slower to respond, but also last longer than those due to haltere inputs. From this result it can be concluded that although halteres are required for detecting fast rotations, the visual system is adept by itself at sensing and correcting for slower body movements. Thus, the visual and mechanosensory (halteres) systems work together to stabilize the visual field of the animal: first, by quickly responding to fast changes (halteres), and second, by maintaining that response until it is corrected (vision). Visual-motor integration. Flies rely on both visual information from their compound eyes and mechanical input from their halteres. Sherman and Dickinson (2002) discovered that the responsiveness of the halteres and eyes are tuned to complementary speeds of rotation. Responses to body rotations detected via the visual system are greatest at slow speeds and decrease with increased angular velocity. In contrast, body rotations detected by the halteres elicit the greatest responses at higher angular velocities and degrade as the speed of rotation decreases. The integration of these two separately tuned sensors allows the flies to detect a wide range of angular velocities in all three directions of rotation. Two main aspects of the visual field have been used to study fly vision, figure and background. Figures are the objects that the fly is focused on and background represents everything else. When haltere bulbs are removed from tethered flying flies, they are still able to track moving figures, but they struggle to stabilize moving backgrounds. If a static figure is placed in the field of view of a fly, its ability to stabilize a moving background is restored. This indicates that although halteres are not required for motion vision processing, they do contribute to it in a context-dependent manner, even when the behavior is separated from body rotations. Context determines whether the fly will use its halteres or vision as the primary source of body/head position information. Non-flying haltere activity. The necessity of halteres in flight has been well documented, yet little is known about their use in other behaviors such as walking. Certain flies in the families Muscidae, Anthomyiidae, Calliphoridae, Sarcophagidae, Tachinidae, and Micropezidae have been documented to oscillate their wings while walking in addition to during flight. The oscillation of the haltere is similar in amplitude and frequency during walking and flight for these flies, and the halteres always oscillate when walking or when flying. All other families of Diptera never oscillate their halteres while walking, but always do so while flying. Flesh flies are among those that oscillate their halteres while walking, and also perform more poorly at certain walking tasks when their halteres are removed. In contrast, fruit flies, which do not oscillate their halteres when walking, do not exhibit any differences in ability when their halteres are removed. This indicates that haltere inputs are behaviorally relevant to those species which oscillate them while walking and that they aid those individuals in walking behavior. Flies in the Calyptratae clade which include common flies like house flies, blow flies, and flesh flies also use their halteres during takeoff, whereas non-Calyptratae flies do not. Calyptratae flies are able to take off around five times faster than other flies . Calyptratae flies lacking halteres take a lot longer to become airborne, but takeoff time is not affected in non-Calyptratae flies without halteres. Stability during takeoff also suffers with haltere removal, but only in Calyptratae flies.

Primary driver

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45248330

Miroslav Šmíd, Ing. (1952, Police nad Metují, Czechoslovakia – 11 September 1993, Lost Arrow, Yosemite National Park, USA) was a Czech rock climber, solo climber, mountaineer, mountain cinematographer and photographer. He also organized climbing and cultural events. In 1981 he founded The International Festival of Mountaineering Films () in Teplice nad Metují. He also wrote several books. Life and climbing career. He started climbing in the Ostaš climbing area and continued in Adršpach-Teplice Rocks, where he climbed a number of famous first ascents. In the High Tatras, Slovakia, he completed 230 ascents (80 of which were in winter and 25 first ascents, including a solo ascent of the Poslední dostih route on Veľká Javorová veža in 1976). In Scotland he completed the first winter ascent of the Glover’s Chimney route on Ben Nevis in 1981. He also completed several solo climbs in Caucasus. He tried to make his solo climbs a secret as they were not approved of by the Socialist Party officials who lead the country at that time. When the solo ascents were revealed, it was very difficult to settle the disagreement. Still, Šmíd received an honor for his sport activities despite the solo climbing controversy. Miroslav Šmíd climbed in various mountain areas and made a number of important ascents: the Alps (first ascent in the north face of Eiger in winter in 1978), the Dolomites (north face of Cima Grande in 1975), Norway (Trollryggen in winter 1976), Caucasus (solo winter ascent of Donguz Orun 1983), Pamir Mountains (solo ascent of Peak Korzhenevskaya in 1977 and first ascent in 1979), Fann Mountains, Andes (first ascent of Yerupajá Sur, solo climb, 1980) Yosemite (solo ascent of Dihedral Wall on El Capitan 1978), Patagonia (Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, 1990) and Alaska (Mount McKinley 1989, 1991 and 1993) He ascended Mount Kenya in Africa in 1986. He also participated in expeditions to the Himalayas (Lhotse Shar, Dhaulagiri 1984, Mount Everest 1987) He also undertook demanding solo ascents (e.g. Ama Dablam in 1986). Šmíd was allured by everything adventurous, and he also became a pioneer of mountain paragliding in Czechoslovakia. His well-known descent from the Bzeduch Mountain in the Caucasus mountain range resulted in serious injury (broken pelvis) after landing on a moraine. Šmíd died on 11 September 1993 during unclear circumstances while solo climbing on the Lost Arrow in Yosemite National Park. Apparently he fell just below the top while he climbed unbelayed. All his equipment was found on the last ledge below the top. The body was found at the bottom of the gorge, between the massifs and the spire, by one of his friends. On the basis of the identification of the denture, it was proclaimed to be Šmíd’s body.

athletic pursuits

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47964559

Emotional approach coping is a psychological construct that involves the use of emotional processing and emotional expression in response to a stressful situation. As opposed to emotional avoidance, in which emotions are experienced as a negative, undesired reaction to a stressful situation, emotional approach coping involves the conscious use of emotional expression and processing to better deal with a stressful situation. The construct was developed to explain an inconsistency in the stress and coping literature: emotion-focused coping was associated with largely maladaptive outcomes while emotional processing and expression was demonstrated to be beneficial. History of the construct. Coping is a conscious attempt to address and alleviate demands perceived as stressful. Research examining coping has suggested two broad categories of coping: emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping involves attempts to regulate the negative emotional response to stress. Whereas problem-focused coping involves attempts to directly modify the stressor. Coping processes have also been defined instead on whether they involve approaching the stressful situation or avoiding it. The experience of powerful emotions has been characterized by researchers as disruptive and dysfunctional, particularly for cognitive processes. Moreover, research also suggests links between emotion-focused coping and poor psychological outcomes. A review of over 100 studies found associations between emotion-focused coping and negative outcomes such as poor life satisfaction, greater depressive and anxious symptoms and neuroticism. However, there is some evidence in the empirical literature that emotional expression can be functional and adaptive. Experimental research on expressive writing, involving emotional disclosure, has been shown to have benefits for performance on cognitive tasks and for psychological outcomes, such as depressive symptoms. Emotion regulation has also illustrated the importance of emotional processing and expression for well-being. Therapeutic approaches have also demonstrated the important role of emotions in coping with difficult situations. Emotion-focused therapy is a clinical psychology approach that emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and tolerating negative emotions and enjoying positive emotions for healthy psychological adjustment. Researchers have attempted to disentangle the maladaptive and functional aspects of emotion-focused coping by examining the measurements of emotion-focused coping. Several studies have found that emotion-focused measurements of coping often aggregate approach and avoidance strategies. A second reason emotion-focused coping has been construed as maladaptive is that measures of emotion-focused coping are confounded with measures of distress. In an attempt to rectify these difficulties with the operationalization of emotion-focused coping, a new scale for assessing emotional approach coping was proposed. In the context of natural disaster and crisis, mental health and supporting emotional coping styles has been found to be often be neglected by first responders. Research suggests that those experiencing crisis and trauma do better when they are able to engage with their emotional experiences by reflecting on them in order to make meaning of them. This process leads to an increase in tolerance of emotion, resilience, psychological flexibility, and community engagement. Furthermore, this process leads to greater growth when a collective approach to emotional processing is taken. Assessment of coping through emotional approach. Emotional approach coping can be assessed using the emotional approach coping scales developed by Stanton, Kirk, Cameron, and Danoff-Burg in 2000. The scales involve two distinct subscales of items: emotional processing and emotional expression. Emotional processing and emotional expression scales are positively correlated but distinct. The emotional processing items reflect an attempt to understand, consider and examine emotions in response to a stressful event. For example, “I acknowledge my feelings” and “I take time to figure out what I’m really feeling.” Emotional expression items assess attempts to verbally and non-verbally communicate and share emotions. Sample items include: “I allow myself to express my feelings” and “I feel free to express my emotions.” The emotional approach coping scales have been tested and validated using situational (i.e., what do you do in response to a specific stressor) and dispositional (i.e., what do you do in general) instruction sets. The scales are uncorrelated with social desirability. In addition to English, the emotional approach coping scale has also been validated in Norwegian and Turkish. Empirical support. Longitudinal research. Infertility. Among heterosexual couples coping with infertility, emotional approach coping predicted decreased depressive symptoms for both members of the couple after an unsuccessful insemination attempt. Emotional approach coping may also confer benefits for partners. Having a male partner high in emotional approach coping was protective against depressive symptoms for female partners low in emotional approach coping. Sexual assault. Emotional approach coping may confer some benefits to victims of sexual assault. Among sexual assault survivors, increases in emotional expression were associated with greater perceived control over the recovery process and feelings of control were associated with decreased distress after the assault. Breast cancer. There is mixed evidence for the utility of emotional approach coping in samples of women with breast cancer. In a longitudinal study of women with breast cancer, for women who perceived their social environments to be receptive, emotional expression predicted improved quality of life. Coping through emotional expression among women with breast cancer has also been found to predict an increase in post-traumatic growth. However, other studies have not found the same link between emotional expression and post-traumatic growth. Cross-sectional research. Student and community samples. Cross-sectional studies illustrate the link between emotional approach coping and positive psychological adjustment, under certain conditions in student and community samples. In a cross-sectional study of undergraduate women, women who scored more highly on emotional approach coping reported more positive and less negative valenced repetitive thoughts. In a community sample of African-American adults, emotional approach coping has also been found to be negatively associated with anger, trait anxiety and depressive symptoms. In addition, women who reported higher dispositional emotional processing also reported fewer depressive and anxious symptoms and greater life satisfaction; while for men, higher dispositional emotional expression was linked to greater life satisfaction. Clinical samples. There is some evidence to suggest associations between emotional approach coping and psychological well-being. In a study of individuals who met DSM-IV criteria for anxiety disorder and healthy controls, levels of emotional approach coping were lower in those individuals who met the criteria than in controls. Another study examined veterans and found that higher levels emotional expression (but not emotional processing) were associated with lower depressive symptoms and decreased post-traumatic stress disorder, even when statistically controlling for age, gender, and race. Cancer samples. Cross-sectional research of cancer samples reveals some positive, negative and mixed links with emotional approach coping. Higher emotional processing and emotional expression in female cancer survivors was associated with higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions. In male cancer survivors, higher emotional processing has been linked to higher positive emotions and higher emotional expression has been linked with lower negative emotions and fewer intrusive thoughts. However, the links between emotional approach coping and psychological adjustment are not all positive some are negative or mixed. In one study of women who had received an abnormal result on an ovarian cancer screen, higher emotional processing was associated with higher intrusive thoughts and neither emotional processing nor emotional expression were associated with cancer-related post-traumatic growth. Diabetes samples. There is from cross-sectional research that suggests the benefits of emotional processing for patients with diabetes. Among patients with type 2 diabetes, higher emotional processing was associated with greater diabetes-related knowledge, medication adherence and relevant self-care behaviors such as diet, physical activity and blood glucose monitoring. Similarly, in adolescent patients with Type 1 diabetes, emotional processing was revealed to be associated with better metabolic control. Factors that determine effectiveness. Stressor-coping strategy fit. The stressor and the individual's appraisal of the stressor may determine the effectiveness of emotional approach coping as a mechanism for managing stress. An appraisal of a stressful situation as uncontrollable may make emotional approach coping an advantageous coping mechanism. In fact, one study of undergraduates shows that when faced with a stressor individuals appraise as more uncontrollable, they are more likely to endorse using emotional approach coping to manage it. Gender. There is some evidence to suggest that the utility of emotional approach coping varies by gender. In a longitudinal study, emotional approach coping was found to predict increased life satisfaction and decreased depressive symptoms over time in women; however, in men, emotional approach coping predicted poorer adjustment over time. Some samples have also found that women report using emotional processing and expression more than men. However, research of infertile couples found no differences in the utility of emotional approach coping for men and women. Individual differences. Individual differences, such as skill at engaging active coping techniques and comfort with expressing emotions, may modify the tendency to successfully employ emotional approach coping. Individuals high in perceived emotional intelligence may also be more likely to use emotional approach coping skillfully. Holding unrealistic perceptions of control may make the use of coping through emotional approach less likely because expressing and processing emotions could lead to evaluations that result in acknowledgement of illusions of control. Personality attributes, such as hope, can also moderate the effectiveness of emotional approach coping. Women with breast cancer who were high in hope and reported coping with emotional expression, had fewer medical appointments for cancer-related complaints, enhanced physical health and decreased distress compared to women who did not cope using emotional expression. Mechanisms. Goal identification and pursuit. The effects of emotional approach coping could be the result of identifying goals, understanding barriers to achieving those goals, and finding new pathways to achieve them. Emotional expression and processing could help individuals direct attention to identify the most important goals in their lives. Habituation to the stressor and cognitive appraisal. The effects of emotional approach coping could also be due to exposure to stressful stimuli when actively processing and expressing emotions. The repeated exposure to the stressor could result in physiological habituation. Repeated exposure to a stressor through emotional expression and processing could also lead to cognitive reappraisal of the stressor and related self-affirmations. Affect labeling. The process of labeling the emotions (i.e., putting them into words) may lessen the intensity of the emotional experience. Studies have shown the process of affective labeling leads to decreases in brain regions such as the amygdala and increases in activation of the prefrontal cortex, possibly indicating beneficial emotion regulation. Regulation of social environment. The use of emotional approach coping may signal to the social environment that an individual is in need of support. The responsiveness of the social environment will determine the adaptiveness of emotional approach coping. Emotional expression that is met with empathetic concern may lead to better adjustment than emotional expression met by rejection. Some evidence from the research suggests this could be a potential mechanism. For women with breast cancer who perceive their social environment to be highly receptive, coping through emotional expression predicts improved quality of life.

more expansion

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25234737

The 1948 Palestinian exodus occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine's Arab population – fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba, in which between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed and Palestinian history erased, and also refers to the wider period of war itself and the subsequent oppression up to the present day. The precise number of refugees, many of whom settled in refugee camps in neighboring states, is a matter of dispute but around 80 percent of the Arab inhabitants of what became Israel (half of the Arab total of Mandatory Palestine) left or were expelled from their homes. About 250,000–300,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled before the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948, a fact which was named as a "casus belli" for the entry of the Arab League into the country, sparking the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The causes are also a subject of fundamental disagreement among historians. Factors involved in the exodus include Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare, fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic, direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities, the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes, collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders, and an unwillingness to live under Jewish control. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Arabs who had left from returning to their homes or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The expulsion of the Palestinians has since been described by some historians as ethnic cleansing, while others dispute this charge. The status of the refugees, and in particular whether Israel will allow them the right to return to their homes, or compensate them, are key issues in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The events of 1948 are commemorated by Palestinians both in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere on 15 May, a date known as Nakba Day. History. The history of the Palestinian exodus is closely tied to the events of the war in Palestine, which lasted from 1947 to 1949, and to the political events preceding it. In September 1949, the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated 711,000 Palestinian refugees existed outside Israel, with about one-quarter of the estimated 160,000 Palestinian Arabs remaining in Israel as "internal refugees". December 1947 – March 1948. In the first few months of the civil war, the climate in the Mandate of Palestine became volatile, although throughout this period both Arab and Jewish leaders tried to limit hostilities. According to historian Benny Morris, the period was marked by Palestinian Arab attacks and Jewish defensiveness, increasingly punctuated by Jewish reprisals. Simha Flapan wrote that attacks by the Irgun and Lehi resulted in Palestinian Arab retaliation and condemnation. Jewish reprisal operations were directed against villages and neighborhoods from which attacks against Jews were believed to have originated. The retaliations were more damaging than the provoking attack and included killing of armed and unarmed men, destruction of houses and sometimes expulsion of inhabitants. The Zionist groups of Irgun and Lehi reverted to their 1937–1939 strategy of indiscriminate attacks by placing bombs and throwing grenades into crowded places such as bus stops, shopping centres and markets. Their attacks on British forces reduced British troops' ability and willingness to protect Jewish traffic. General conditions deteriorated: the economic situation became unstable, and unemployment grew. Rumours spread that the Husaynis were planning to bring in bands of "fellahin" (peasant farmers) to take over the towns. Some Palestinian Arab leaders sent their families abroad. Yoav Gelber wrote that the Arab Liberation Army embarked on a systematic evacuation of non-combatants from several frontier villages in order to turn them into military strongholds. Arab depopulation occurred most in villages close to Jewish settlements and in vulnerable neighborhoods in Haifa, Jaffa and West Jerusalem. The more impoverished inhabitants of these neighborhoods generally fled to other parts of the city. Those who could afford to fled further away, expecting to return when the troubles were over. By the end of March 1948 thirty villages were depopulated of their Palestinian Arab population. Approximately 100,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled to Arab parts of Palestine, such as Gaza, Beersheba, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jaffa and Bethlehem. Some had left the country altogether, to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. Other sources speak of 30,000 Palestinian Arabs. Many of these were Palestinian Arab leaders, middle and upper-class Palestinian Arab families from urban areas. Around 22 March, the Arab governments agreed that their consulates in Palestine would issue entry visas only to old people, women, children and the sick. On 29–30 March the Haganah Intelligence Service (HIS) reported that "the AHC was no longer approving exit permits for fear of [causing] panic in the country." The Haganah was instructed to avoid spreading the conflagration by stopping indiscriminate attacks and provoking British intervention. On 18 December 1947 the Haganah approved an aggressive defense strategy, which in practice meant a limited implementation of "Plan May" also known as "Plan Gimel" or "Plan C" ("Tochnit Mai" or "Tochnit Gimel"), which, produced in May 1946, was the Haganah master plan for the defence of the Yishuv in the event of the outbreak of new troubles the moment the British were gone. Plan Gimel included retaliation for assaults on Jewish houses and roads. In early January the Haganah adopted Operation Zarzir, a scheme to assassinate leaders affiliated to Amin al-Husayni, placing the blame on other Arab leaders, but in practice few resources were devoted to the project and the only attempted killing was of Nimr al Khatib. The only authorised expulsion at this time took place at Qisarya, south of Haifa, where Palestinian Arabs were evicted and their houses destroyed on 19–20 February 1948. In attacks that were not authorised in advance, several communities were expelled by the Haganah and several others were chased away by the Irgun. According to Ilan Pappé, the Zionists organised a campaign of threats, consisting of the distribution of threatening leaflets, "violent reconnaissance" and, after the arrival of mortars, the shelling of Arab villages and neighborhoods. Pappé also wrote that the Haganah shifted its policy from retaliation to offensive initiatives. During the "long seminar", a meeting of Ben-Gurion with his chief advisors in January 1948, the main point was that it was desirable to "transfer" as many Arabs as possible out of Jewish territory, and the discussion focussed mainly on the implementation. The experience gained in a number of attacks in February 1948, notably those on Qisarya and Sa'sa', was used in the development of a plan detailing how enemy population centers should be handled. According to Pappé, plan Dalet was the master plan for the expulsion of the Palestinians.. However, according to Gelber, Plan Dalet instructions were: In case of resistance, the population of conquered villages was to be expelled outside the borders of the Jewish state. If no resistance was met, the residents could stay put, under military rule. Palestinian belligerency in these first few months was "disorganised, sporadic and localised and for months remained chaotic and uncoordinated, if not undirected". Husayni lacked the resources to mount a full-scale assault on the Yishuv, and restricted himself to sanctioning minor attacks and to tightening the economic boycott. The British claimed that Arab rioting might well have subsided had the Jews not retaliated with firearms. Overall, Morris concludes that during this period the "Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish—Haganah, IZL or LHI—attacks or fear of impending attack" but that only "an extremely small, almost insignificant number of the refugees during this early period left because of Haganah or IZL or LHI expulsion orders or forceful 'advice' to that effect." In this sense, Glazer quotes the testimony of Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine, who reported that "the exodus of the Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. Almost the whole of the Arab population fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation." April–June 1948. By 1 May 1948, two weeks before the Israeli Declaration of Independence, nearly 175,000 Palestinians (approximately 25%) had already fled. The fighting in these months was concentrated in the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv area, On 9 April, the Deir Yassin massacre and the rumours that followed it spread fear among the Palestinians. Next, the Haganah defeated local militia in Tiberias. On 21–22 April in Haifa, after the Haganah waged a day-and-a-half battle including psychological warfare, the Jewish National Committee was unable to offer the Palestinian council assurance that an unconditional surrender would proceed without incident. Finally, Irgun under Menachim Begin fired mortars on the infrastructure in Jaffa. Combined with the fear inspired by Deir Yassin, each of these military actions resulted in panicked Palestinian evacuations. The significance of the attacks by underground military groups Irgun and Lehi on Deir Yassin is underscored by accounts on all sides. Meron Benvenisti regards Deir Yassin as "a turning point in the annals of the destruction of the Arab landscape". Haifa. Palestinians fled the city of Haifa en masse, in one of the most notable flights of this stage. Historian Efraim Karsh writes that not only had half of the Arab community in Haifa community fled the city before the final battle was joined in late April 1948, but another 5,000–15,000 left apparently voluntarily during the fighting while the rest, some 15,000–25,000, were ordered to leave, as was initially claimed by an Israeli source, on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee. Karsh concludes that there was no Jewish grand design to force this departure, and that in fact the Haifa Jewish leadership tried to convince some Arabs to stay, to no avail. Walid Khalidi disputes this account, saying that two independent studies, which analysed CIA and BBC intercepts of radio broadcasts from the region, concluded that no orders or instructions were given by the Arab Higher Committee. According to Morris, "The Haganah mortar attacks of 21–22 April [on Haifa] were primarily designed to break Arab morale in order to bring about a swift collapse of resistance and speedy surrender. [...] But clearly the offensive, and especially the mortaring, precipitated the exodus. The three-inch mortars "opened up on the market square [where there was] a great crowd [...] a great panic took hold. The multitude burst into the port, pushed aside the policemen, charged the boats and began to flee the town", as the official Haganah history later put it". According to Pappé, this mortar barrage was deliberately aimed at civilians to precipitate their flight from Haifa. The Haganah broadcast a warning to Arabs in Haifa on 21 April: "that unless they sent away 'infiltrated dissidents' they would be advised to evacuate all women and children, because they would be strongly attacked from now on". Commenting on the use of "psychological warfare broadcasts" and military tactics in Haifa, Benny Morris writes: Throughout the Haganah made effective use of Arabic language broadcasts and loudspeaker vans. Haganah Radio announced that "the day of judgement had arrived" and called on inhabitants to "kick out the foreign criminals" and to "move away from every house and street, from every neighbourhood occupied by foreign criminals". The Haganah broadcasts called on the populace to "evacuate the women, the children and the old immediately, and send them to a safe haven". Jewish tactics in the battle were designed to stun and quickly overpower opposition; demoralisation was a primary aim. It was deemed just as important to the outcome as the physical destruction of the Arab units. The mortar barrages and the psychological warfare broadcasts and announcements, and the tactics employed by the infantry companies, advancing from house to house, were all geared to this goal. The orders of Carmeli's 22nd Battalion were "to kill every [adult male] Arab encountered" and to set alight with fire-bombs "all objectives that can be set alight. I am sending you posters in Arabic; disperse on route." By mid-May 4,000 Arabs remained in Haifa. These were concentrated in Wadi Nisnas in accordance with Plan D whilst the systematic destruction of Arab housing in certain areas, which had been planned before the War, was implemented by Haifa's Technical and Urban Development departments in cooperation with the IDF's city commander Ya'akov Lublini. Further events. According to Glazer (1980, p. 111), from 15 May 1948 onwards, expulsion of Palestinians became a regular practice. Avnery (1971), explaining the Zionist rationale, says, I believe that during this phase, the eviction of Arab civilians had become an aim of David Ben-Gurion and his government... UN opinion could very well be disregarded. Peace with the Arabs seemed out of the question, considering the extreme nature of the Arab propaganda. In this situation, it was easy for people like Ben-Gurion to believe the capture of uninhabited territory was both necessary for security reasons and desirable for the homogeneity of the new Hebrew state. Based on research of numerous archives, Morris provides an analysis of Haganah-induced flight: Undoubtedly, as was understood by IDF intelligence, the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during or in the immediate wake of military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before the Haganah/IZL assault... The closer drew the 15 May British withdrawal deadline and the prospect of invasion by Arab states, the readier became commanders to resort to "cleansing" operations and expulsions to rid their rear areas. [R]elatively few commanders faced the moral dilemma of having to carry out the expulsion clauses. Townspeople and villagers usually fled their homes before or during battle... though (Haganah commanders) almost invariably prevented inhabitants, who had initially fled, from returning home... Edgar O'Ballance, a military historian, adds, Israeli vans with loudspeakers drove through the streets ordering all the inhabitants to evacuate immediately, and such as were reluctant to leave were forcibly ejected from their homes by the triumphant Israelis whose policy was now openly one of clearing out all the Arab civil population before them... From the surrounding villages and hamlets, during the next two or three days, all the inhabitants were uprooted and set off on the road to Ramallah... No longer was there any "reasonable persuasion". Bluntly, the Arab inhabitants were ejected and forced to flee into Arab territory... Wherever the Israeli troops advanced into Arab country the Arab population was bulldozed out in front of them. After the fall of Haifa the villages on the slopes of Mount Carmel had been harassing the Jewish traffic on the main road to Haifa. A decision was made on 9 May 1948 to expel or subdue the villages of Kafr Saba, al-Tira, Qaqun, Qalansuwa and Tantura. On 11 May 1948 Ben-Gurion convened the "Consultancy"; the outcome of the meeting is confirmed in a letter to commanders of the Haganah Brigades telling them that the Arab legion's offensive should not distract their troops from the principal tasks: "the cleansing of Palestine remained the prime objective of Plan Dalet." The attention of the commanders of the Alexandroni Brigade was turned to reducing the Mount Carmel pocket. Tantura, being on the coast, gave the Carmel villages access to the outside world and so was chosen as the point to surround the Carmel villages as a part of the Coastal Clearing offensive operation in the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. On the night of 22–23 May 1948, one week and one day after the declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, the coastal village of Tantura was attacked and occupied by the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade of the Haganah. The village of Tantura was not given the option of surrender and the initial report spoke of dozens of villagers killed, with 300 adult male prisoners and 200 women and children. Many of the villagers fled to Fureidis (previously captured) and to Arab-held territory. The captured women of Tantura were moved to Fureidis, and on 31 May Brechor Shitrit, Minister of Minority Affairs of the provisional Government of Israel, sought permission to expel the refugee women of Tantura from Fureidis as the number of refugees in Fureidis was causing problems of overcrowding and sanitation. A report from the military intelligence SHAI of the Haganah titled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948", dated 30 June 1948, affirms that: At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations. To this figure, the report's compilers add the operations of the Irgun and Lehi, which "directly (caused) some 15%... of the emigration". A further 2% was attributed to explicit expulsion orders issued by Israeli troops, and 1% to their psychological warfare. This leads to a figure of 73% for departures caused directly by the Israelis. In addition, the report attributes 22% of the departures to "fears" and "a crisis of confidence" affecting the Palestinian population. As for Arab calls for flight, these were reckoned to be significant in only 5% of cases... According to Morris's estimates, 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians left Israel during this stage. "Keesing's Contemporary Archives" in London place the total number of refugees before Israel's independence at 300,000. In Clause 10. (b) of the from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General of 15 May 1948 justifying the intervention by the Arab States, the Secretary-General of the League alleged that "approximately over a quarter of a million of the Arab population have been compelled to leave their homes and emigrate to neighbouring Arab countries." July–October 1948. Israeli operations labeled Dani and Dekel that broke the truce were the start of the third phase of expulsions. The largest single expulsion of the war began in Lydda and Ramla 14 July when 60,000 inhabitants (nearly 10% of the whole exodus) of the two cities were forcibly expelled on the orders of Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin in events that came to be known as the "Lydda Death March". According to Flapan (1987, pp. 13–14) in Ben-Gurion's view Ramlah and Lydda constituted a special danger because their proximity might encourage co-operation between the Egyptian army, which had started its attack on Kibbutz Negbah, near Ramlah, and the Arab Legion, which had taken the Lydda police station. However, the author considers that Operation Dani, under which the two towns were seized, revealed that no such co-operation existed. In Flapan's opinion, "in Lydda, the exodus took place on foot. In Ramlah, the IDF provided buses and trucks. Originally, all males had been rounded up and enclosed in a compound, but after some shooting was heard, and construed by Ben-Gurion to be the beginning of an Arab Legion counteroffensive, he stopped the arrests and ordered the speedy eviction of all the Arabs, including women, children, and the elderly." In explanation, Flapan cites that Ben-Gurion said that "those who made war on us bear responsibility after their defeat." Rabin wrote in his memoirs: Flapan maintains that events in Nazareth, although ending differently, point to the existence of a definite pattern of expulsion. On 16 July, three days after the Lydda and Ramlah evictions, the city of Nazareth surrendered to the IDF. The officer in command, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, had signed the surrender agreement on behalf of the Israeli army along with Chaim Laskov (then a brigadier general, later IDF chief of staff). The agreement assured the civilians that they would not be harmed, but the next day, Laskov handed Dunkelman an order to evacuate the population, which Dunkelman refused. Additionally, widespread looting and several cases of rape took place during the evacuation. In total, about 100,000 Palestinians became refugees in this stage according to Morris. October 1948 – March 1949. This period of the exodus was characterized by Israeli military accomplishments; Operation Yoav, in October, this cleared the road to the Negev, culminating in the capture of Beersheba; Operation Ha-Har that same month which cleared the Jerusalem Corridor from pockets of resistance; Operation Hiram, at the end of October, resulted in the capture of the Upper Galilee; Operation Horev in December 1948 and Operation Uvda in March 1949, completed the capture of the Negev (the Negev had been allotted to the Jewish State by the United Nations) these operations were met with resistance from the Palestinian Arabs who were to become refugees. The Israeli military activities were confined to the Galilee and the sparsely populated Negev desert. It was clear to the villages in the Galilee, that if they left, return was far from imminent. Therefore, far fewer villages spontaneously depopulated than previously. Most of the Palestinian exodus was due to a clear, direct cause: expulsion and deliberate harassment, as Morris writes "commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering". During Operation Hiram in the upper Galilee, Israeli military commanders received the order: "Do all you can to immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be helped to leave the areas that have been conquered." (31 October 1948, Moshe Carmel) The UN's acting Mediator, Ralph Bunche, reported that United Nations Observers had recorded extensive looting of villages in Galilee by Israeli forces, who carried away goats, sheep and mules. This looting, United Nations Observers reported, appeared to have been systematic as army trucks were used for transportation. The situation, states the report, created a new influx of refugees into Lebanon. Israeli forces, he stated, have occupied the area in Galilee formerly occupied by Kaukji's forces, and have crossed the Lebanese frontier. Bunche goes on to say "that Israeli forces now hold positions inside the south-east corner of Lebanon, involving some fifteen Lebanese villages which are occupied by small Israeli detachments." According to Morris altogether 200,000–230,000 Palestinians left in this stage. According to Ilan Pappé, "In a matter of seven months, five hundred and thirty one villages were destroyed and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied [...] The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape and [the] imprisonment of men [...] in labor camps for periods [of] over a year." Contemporary mediation and the Lausanne Conference. UN mediation. The United Nations, using the offices of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation and the Mixed Armistice Commissions, was involved in the conflict from the very beginning. In the autumn of 1948 the refugee problem was a fact and possible solutions were discussed. Count Folke Bernadotte said on 16 September: UN General Assembly Resolution 194, passed on 11 December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since, was the first resolution that called for Israel to let the refugees return: Lausanne Conference of 1949. At the start of the Lausanne Conference of 1949, on 12 May 1949, Israel agreed in principle to allow the return of all Palestinian refugees. At the same time, Israel became a member of the U.N. upon the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 on 11 May 1949, which read, in part, Instead Israel made an offer of allowing 100,000 of the refugees to return to the area, though not necessarily to their homes, including 25,000 who had returned surreptitiously and 10,000 family-reunion cases. The proposal was conditional on a peace treaty that would allow Israel to retain the territory it had captured which had been allocated to the Arab state by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and, contrary to Israel's UN acceptance promise, on the Arab states absorbing the remaining 550,000–650,000 refugees. The Arab states rejected the proposal on both legal, moral and political grounds, and Israel quickly withdrew its limited offer. Benny Morris, in his 2004 book, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited", summarizes it from his perspective: Debate on the causes of the Palestinian exodus. Initial positions. In the first decades after the exodus, two diametrically opposed schools of analysis could be distinguished. "Israel claims that the Arabs left because they were ordered to, and deliberately incited into panic, by their own leaders who wanted the field cleared for the 1948 war," while "The Arabs charge that their people were evicted at bayonet-point and by panic deliberately incited by the Zionists." Alternative explanations had also been offered. For instance Peretz and Gabbay emphasize the psychological component: panic or hysteria swept the Palestinians and caused the exodus. The dominant Israeli narrative was presented in the publications of various Israeli state institutions such as the national Information Center, the Ministry of Education (history and civic textbooks) and the army (IDF), as well as in Israeli-Jewish societal institutions: newspapers, memoirs of 1948 war veterans, and in the studies of the research community. However, a number of Jewish scholars living outside of Israel – including Gabbay and Peretz – since the late 1950s presented a different narrative. According to this narrative, some Palestinians left willingly while others were expelled by the Jewish and later Israeli fighting forces. Changes in the Israeli Representation of the Causes for the Exodus – Late 1970s. The dominance in Israel of the willing-flight Zionist narrative of the exodus began to be challenged by Israeli-Jewish societal institutions beginning mainly in the late 1970s. Many scholarly studies and daily newspaper essays, as well as some 1948 Jewish war veterans' memoirs have begun presenting the more balanced narrative (at times called onwards a "post-Zionist"). According to this narrative, some Palestinians left willingly (due to calls of Arab or their leadership to partially leave, fear, and societal collapse), while others were expelled by the Jewish/Israeli fighting forces. Changes after the advent of the "New Historians" – Late 1980s. The Israeli-Jewish societal change intensified in the late 1980s. The publication of balanced/critical newspaper essays increased, the vast majority, along with balanced 1948 war veterans' memoirs, about a third. At the same time, Israeli NGOs began more significantly to present the balanced and the Palestinian narratives more significantly in their publications. Moreover, Israel opened up part of its archives in the 1980s for investigation by historians. This coincided with the emergence of various Israeli historians, called New Historians, who favored a more critical analysis of Israel's history. The Arab/Palestinian official and historiographical versions hardly changed, and received support from some of the New Historians. Pappé calls the exodus an ethnic cleansing and points at Zionist preparations in the preceding years and provides more details on the planning process by a group he calls the "Consultancy." Morris also says that ethnic cleansing took place during the Palestinian exodus, and that "there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing... when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing." According to Ian Black, Middle East editor for The Guardian newspaper, the Palestinian exodus is "widely described" as having involved ethnic cleansing. Not all historians accept the characterization of the exodus as ethnic cleansing. Israeli documents from 1948 use the term "to cleanse" when referring to uprooting Arabs. Efraim Karsh is among the few historians who still consider that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs, despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay. He says that the expulsions in Lod and Ramle were driven by military necessity. When an Israeli NGO Akevot managed to lift the censorship governing sections of Ben-Gurion's diary in 2021, it emerged that in 1949, responding to attempts by the Palestinians driven out of Lod and Ramle to return, Ben-Gurion advised that they be pushed towards Jordan: “We have to ‘pester’ them relentlessly…We need to pester and motivate the refugees in the south to move eastward as well, since they won’t go towards the sea and Egypt won’t let them in.' Pappé's scholarship on the issue has been subject to severe criticism. Benny Morris says that Pappé's research is flecked with inaccuracies and characterized by distortions. Ephraim Karsh refers to Pappé's assertion of a master plan by Jews to expel Arabs, as contrived. Results of the Palestinian exodus. Economic damage. As towns and villages were either conquered or abandoned in the conflict, looting by Jewish forces and residents was so widespread that, in the aftermath, David Ben-Gurion remarked on 24 July 1948: 'It turns out that most of the Jews are thieves.' Netiva Ben-Yehuda, a Palmach commander likened the pillaging she observed in Tiberias to the classic behavior seen by their oppressors during anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe: “Such pictures were known to us. It was the way things had always been done to us, in the Holocaust, throughout the world war, and all the pogroms. Oy, how well we knew those pictures. And here – here, we were doing these awful things to others. We loaded everything onto the van – with a terrible trembling of the hands. And that wasn’t because of the weight. Even now my hands are shaking, just from writing about it.' Abandoned, evacuated and destroyed Palestinian localities. Several authors have conducted studies on the number of Palestinian localities that were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed during the 1947–1949 period. Based on their respective calculations, the table below summarises their information. According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and BADIL, Morris's list of affected localities, the shortest of the three, includes towns but excludes other localities cited by Khalidi or Abu Sitta. The six sources compared in Khalidi's study have in common 296 of the villages listed as destroyed or depopulated. Sixty other villages are cited in all but one source. Of the total of 418 localities cited in Khalidi, 292 (70 percent) were completely destroyed and 90 (22 percent) "largely destroyed". COHRE and BADIL also note that other sources refer to an additional 151 localities that are omitted from Khalidi's study for various reasons (for example, major cities and towns that were depopulated, as well as some Bedouin encampments and villages "vacated" before the start of hostilities). Abu Sitta's list includes tribes in Beersheba that lost lands; most of these were omitted from Khalidi's work. Another study, involving field research and comparisons with British and other documents, concludes that 472 Palestinian habitations (including towns and villages) were destroyed in 1948. It notes that the devastation was virtually complete in some sub-districts. For example, it points out that 96.0% of the villages in the Jaffa area were totally destroyed, as were 90.0% of those in Tiberias, 90.3% of those in Safad, and 95.9% of those in Beisan. It also extrapolates from 1931 British census data to estimate that over 70,280 Palestinian houses were destroyed in this period. In another study, Abu Sitta shows the following findings in eight distinct phases of the depopulation of Palestine between 1947–1949. His findings are summarized in the table below: Palestinian refugees. On 11 December 1948, 12 months prior to UNRWA's establishment, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 was adopted. The resolution accepted the definition of Palestinian refugees as "persons of Arab origin who, after 29 November 1947, left territory at present under the control of the Israel authorities and who were Palestinian citizens at that date" and; "Persons of Arab origin who left the said territory after 6 August 1924 and before 29 November 1947 and who at that latter date were Palestinian citizens; 2. Persons of Arab origin who left the territory in question before 6 August 1924 and who, having opted for Palestinian citizenship, retained that citizenship up to 29 November 1947" UNRWA was established under UNGA resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. It defines refugees qualifying for UNRWA's services as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli conflict" and also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The UNRWA mandate does not extend to final status. The final 1949 UNRWA estimate of the refugee count was 726,000, but the number of registered refugees was 914,000. The U.N. Conciliation Commission explained that the number was inflated by "duplication of ration cards, addition of persons who have been displaced from area other than Israel-held areas and of persons who, although not displaced, are destitute," and the UNWRA additionally noted that "all births are eagerly announced, the deaths wherever possible are passed over in silence," as well as the fact that "the birthrate is high in any case, a net addition of 30,000 names a year." By June 1951, UNWRA had reduced the number of registered refugees to 876,000 after many false and duplicate registrations had been weeded out. Today the number who qualify for UNRWA's services has grown to over 4 million, one third of whom live in the West Bank and Gaza; slightly less than one third in Jordan; 17% in Syria and Lebanon (Bowker, 2003, p. 72) and around 15% in other Arab and Western countries. Approximately 1 million refugees have no form of identification other than an UNRWA identification card. Prevention of Infiltration Law. Following the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem after the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, many Palestinians tried, in one way or another, to return to their homes. For some time these practices continued to embarrass the Israeli authorities until they passed the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which defines offenses of armed and non-armed infiltration to Israel and from Israel to hostile neighboring countries. According to Arab Israeli writer Sabri Jiryis, the purpose of the law was to prevent Palestinians from returning to Israel, those who did so being regarded as infiltrators. According to Kirshbaum, over the years the Israeli Government has continued to cancel and modify some of the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, but mostly it has added more as it has continued to extend its declared state of emergency. For example, even though the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954 is not labelled as an official "Emergency Regulation", it extends the applicability of the "Defence (Emergency) Regulation 112" of 1945 giving the Minister of Defence extraordinary powers of deportation for accused infiltrators even before they are convicted (Articles 30 & 32), and makes itself subject to cancellation when the Knesset ends the State of Emergency upon which all of the Emergency Regulations are dependent. Land and property laws. Following its establishment, Israel designed a system of law that legitimised both a continuation and a consolidation of the nationalisation of land and property, a process that it had begun decades earlier. For the first few years of Israel's existence, many of the new laws continued to be rooted in earlier Ottoman and British law. These laws were later amended or replaced altogether. The first challenge facing Israel was to transform its control over land into legal ownership. This was the motivation underlying the passing of several of the first group of land laws. Initial "Emergency Laws" and "Regulations". Among the more important initial laws was article 125 of the "Defence (Emergency) Regulations" According to Kirshbaum, the Law has as effect that "no one is allowed in or out without permission from the Israeli Military." "This regulation has been used to exclude a land owner from his own land so that it could be judged as unoccupied, and then expropriated under the 'Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953)'. Closures need not be published in the Official Gazette." Absentees' Property Laws. The Absentees' Property Laws were several laws, first introduced as emergency ordinances issued by the Jewish leadership but which after the war were incorporated into the laws of Israel. As examples of the first type of laws are the "Emergency Regulations (Absentees' Property) Law, 5709-1948 (December)", which according to article 37 of the "Absentees Property Law, 5710-1950" was replaced by the latter; the "Emergency Regulations (Requisition of Property) Law, 5709-1949", and other related laws. According to COHRE and BADIL (p. 41), unlike other laws that were designed to establish Israel's "legal" control over lands, this body of law focused on formulating a "legal" definition for the people (mostly Arabs) who had left or been forced to flee from these lands. The absentee property played an enormous role in making Israel a viable state. In 1954, more than one third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in urban areas abandoned by Arabs. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property. The absentee property law is directly linked to the controversy of parallelism between the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries and the Palestinian exodus, as advocacy groups have suggested that there are strong ties between the two processes and some of them even claim that decoupling the two issues is unjust. However, al-Husseini, Palestinian governor of East Jerusalem in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), has said that the Israeli law "is racist and imperialistic, which aims at seizing thousands of acres and properties of lands". Laws enacted. A number of Israeli laws were enacted that enabled the further acquisition of depopulated lands. Among these laws were: Israeli purge of documents. The Israeli government has systematically scoured Israeli archives to remove documents evidencing Israeli massacres of Palestinian villagers in 1947 and 1948 that led to the Palestinian exodus. Israeli resettlement program. Following the Six-Day War, Israel gained control over a substantial number of refugee camps in the territories it captured from Egypt and Jordan. The Israeli government attempted to resettle them permanently by initiating a subsidized "build-your-own home" program. Israel provided land for refugees who chose to participate; the Palestinians bought building materials on credit and built their own houses, usually with friends. Israel provided the new neighborhoods with necessary services, such as schools and sewers. The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolutions 31/15 and 34/52, which condemned the program as a violation of the refugees' "inalienable right of return", and called upon Israel to stop the program. Thousands of refugees were resettled into various neighborhoods, but the program was suspended due to pressure from the PLO. Role in the Palestinian and Israeli narratives. Palestinian narrative. The term "Nakba" was first applied to the events of 1948 by Constantin Zureiq, a professor of history at the American University of Beirut, in his 1948 book "Ma'na al-Nakba" (The Meaning of the Disaster) he wrote "the tragic aspect of the Nakba is related to the fact that it is not a regular misfortune or a temporal evil, but a Disaster in the very essence of the word, one of the most difficult that Arabs have ever known over their long history." The word was used again one year later by the Palestinian poet Burhan al-Deen al-Abushi. In his encyclopedia published in the late 1950s, Aref al-Aref wrote: "How Can I call it but Nakba? When we the Arab people generally and the Palestinians particularly, faced such a disaster (Nakba) that we never faced like it along the centuries, our homeland was sealed, we [were] expelled from our country, and we lost many of our beloved sons." Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari also used the term Nakba in the title of his book "Sir al Nakba" (The Secret behind the Disaster) written in 1955. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Zureiq wrote another book, "The New Meaning of the Disaster", but the term Nakba is reserved for the 1948 war. Together with Naji al-Ali's "Handala" (the barefoot child always drawn from behind), and the symbolic key for the house in Palestine carried by so many Palestinian refugees, the "collective memory of that experience [the Nakba] has shaped the identity of the Palestinian refugees as a people". The events of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War greatly influenced the Palestinian culture. Countless books, songs and poems have been written about the Nakba. The exodus is usually described in strongly emotional terms. For example, at the controversial 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, prominent Palestinian scholar and activist Hanan Ashrawi referred to the Palestinians as "a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba, as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, "apartheid, racism, and victimization" (original emphasis). In the Palestinian calendar, the day after Israel declared independence (15 May) is observed as Nakba Day. It is traditionally observed as an important day of remembrance. In May 2009 the political party headed by Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman introduced a bill that would outlaw all Nakba commemorations, with a three-year prison sentence for such acts of remembrance. Following public criticism the bill draft was changed, the prison sentence dropped and instead the Minister of Finance would have the authority to reduce state funding for Israeli institutions that hold the commemorations. The new draft was approved by the Knesset in March 2011. Ghada Karmi writes that the Israeli version of history is that the "Palestinians left voluntarily or under orders from their leaders and that Israelis had no responsibility, material or moral, for their plight." She also finds a form of denial among Israelis that Palestinians bear the blame for the Nakba by not accepting the UN's proposed partition of Palestine into separate ethnic states. Perry Anderson writes that "the Nakba was so swift and catastrophic that no Palestinian political organization of any kind existed for over a decade after it." Israeli narratives. The approach of the State of Israel and of Israeli-Jews to the causes of the exodus are divided into two main periods: 1949-late 1970s, late 1970s-nowadays. In the first period, state institutions (the national Information Center, IDF and the Ministry of Education) and societal ones (the research community, newspapers, and 1948 war veterans' memoirs) presented for the most part only the Zionist narrative of willing flight. There were some exceptions: the independent weekly Haolam Hazeh, the Communist Party's daily/weekly Kol HaAm and the socialist organisation Matzpen presented the Palestinian and the balanced/critical narratives. In the second period there was a split. Regarding Israeli state institutions, at least until 2004, the IDF and the Information Center continued to present the Zionist narrative. The situation in the Ministry of Education, though, was somewhat different. While until 1999 its approved history and civics textbooks presented, by and large, the Zionist narrative, since 2000, however, they have presented the Critical one (at least until 2004). Similarly, in 2005, the Israeli National Archive published a book describing the expulsion of Palestinians from the cities of Lydda and Ramla in 1948. In other words, in the second period, the state institutions continued to present the Zionist narrative: some until the early 2000s, and some even onwards. From the late 1970s onward, many newspaper articles and scholarly studies, as well as some 1948 war veterans' memoirs, began to present the balanced/critical narrative. This has become more common since the late 1980s, to the fact that since then the vast majority of newspaper articles and studies, and a third of the veterans' memoirs, have presented a more balanced narrative. Since the 1990s, also textbooks used in the educational system, some without approval of the Ministry of Education, began to present the balanced narrative. In March 2015, Shai Piron, Yesh Atid party MK, and former education minister of Israel, called for Israel to have all schools include the Nakba in their curriculum. "I'm for teaching the Nakba to all students in Israel. I do not think that a student can go through the Israeli educational system, while 20% of students have an ethos, a story, and he does not know that story." He added that covering the topic in schools could address some of the racial tensions that exist in Israeli society. His comments broke a taboo in the traditional Israeli narrative, and conflicts with efforts on the part of some Israeli lawmakers to defund schools that mark Nakba. Comparisons with Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was the departure, flight, migration, and expulsion of 800,000–1,000,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, mainly from 1948 onwards. The reasons for the exodus included push factors, such as state and non-state sanctioned persecution, antisemitism, political instability, poverty, disenfranchisement and expulsion; together with pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings or find a secure home in Europe or the Americas. Professor Ada Aharoni, chairman of The World Congress of the Jews from Egypt, argues in an article entitled "What about the Jewish Nakba?" that exposing the truth about the expulsion of the Jews from Arab states could facilitate a genuine peace process, since it would enable Palestinians to realize they were not the only ones who suffered, and thus their sense of "victimization and rejectionism" will decline. The US Congress supported this narrative with 2007-12 resolutions (, , ) which recommend that any "comprehensive Middle East peace agreement to be credible and enduring, the agreement must address and resolve all outstanding issues relating to the legitimate rights of all refugees, including Jews, Christians and other populations displaced from countries in the Middle East", and encouraged the Barack Obama administration to mention Jewish and other refugees as well, when mentioning Arab refugees from Palestine at international forum. Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath has rejected the comparison, arguing that the ideological and historical significance of the two population movements are totally different and that any similarity is superficial. Porath says that the immigration of Jews from Arab countries to Israel, expelled or not, was from a Jewish-Zionist perspective the fulfilment of "a national dream" and of Israeli national policy in the form of the One Million Plan. He notes the courageous efforts of Israeli agents working in Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen, and Morocco to assist a Jewish "aliyah", and that the Jewish Agency had agents, teachers, and instructors working in various Arab countries since the 1930s. Porath contrasts this with what he calls the "national calamity" and "unending personal tragedies" suffered by the Palestinians that resulted in "the collapse of the Palestinian community, the fragmentation of a people, and the loss of a country that had in the past been mostly Arabic-speaking and Islamic". Israeli academic Yehouda Shenhav has written in an article entitled "Hitching A Ride on the Magic Carpet" published in the Israeli daily "Haaretz" regarding this issue. "Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists." Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri stated that the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were in fact responsible for the Palestinian displacement and that "those Jews are criminals rather than refugees". This came after Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, stated that Jewish refugees fleeing Arab lands because of persecution was a fabrication and that they "voluntarily and collectively left". In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."

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The 2009–10 season was Stoke City's second season in the Premier League and the 54th in the top tier of English football. After a successful first season in the Premier League, Stoke were looking to establish themselves in the top tier and spent just over £20 million on Diego Arismendi, Danny Collins, Robert Huth, Tuncay and Dean Whitehead. Stoke began the season with victories over Burnley, Sunderland, and West Ham United, and a 1–0 win at Tottenham Hotspur in October. Their form dropped off in December as they managed just a point and two goals in five matches. Stoke began 2010 in fine form going eleven matches unbeaten, which included wins against Fulham, Blackburn Rovers and Portsmouth, whilst draws were earned against Liverpool and Manchester City. The run also included FA Cup wins against York City, Arsenal and Manchester City before City lost to Chelsea in the quarter final stage. Stoke had no relegation battle to be concerned with and finished the campaign in 11th position with 47 points. Pre-season. Stoke began their preparation for the 2009–10 season with two Stoke XIs playing matches simultaneously against local non-league sides Newcastle Town and Nantwich Town. Both matches were surprisingly lost, 2–1 at Newcastle and 2–0 at Nantwich. Stoke then spent a week at a training camp in Austria where they played twice. Firstly against German side St Pauli in Irdning, Dave Kitson scoring in a 3–1 defeat. The other match was against Israeli side Hapoel Tel Aviv where Stoke had to play in a green strip due to a colour clash, Salif Diao scored Stoke's goal in a 1–1 draw, a lob from 40-yards. On their return to England, Stoke completed the signing of Sunderland midfielder Dean Whitehead for a fee of £5 million. Two goals from Neil Mellor saw Preston North End beat Stoke 2–1 with Richard Cresswell scoring for the Potters against his former employers. Stoke then played back to back games against East Midlands opposition. Firstly they drew 1–1 at Nottingham Forest on 29 July with Dave Kitson cancelling out a strike from Nathan Tyson. Then against Derby County despite taking the lead twice via Liam Lawrence and Ricardo Fuller goals from Stephen Pearson and Arnaud Mendy earned Derby a 2–2 draw. Stoke's final match of pre-season was against Spanish side Real Valladolid at the Britannia Stadium where they made a bright start scoring through Abdoulaye Faye after two minutes before Dave Kitson converted a 32nd-minute penalty. However goals from Borja and Alberto Bueno saw that match end in a 2–2 draw and leave Stoke without a victory in pre-season. On 14 October 2009 a Stoke City XI lost 1–0 in a friendly against American sister club Austin Aztex at Nantwich Town's Weaver Stadium. Premier League. August. For the season opener against Burnley Stoke gave new signing Dean Whitehead his debut. Newly promoted Burnley started brightly and went close through Robbie Blake. However City soon took control of the match and went in front after 19 minutes through Ryan Shawcross, before a trademark Rory Delap long throw-in was glanced into his own net by defender Stephen Jordan to put Stoke into a 2–0 lead. The away side improved in the second half but failed to trouble Sorensen and Stoke could have added a third with Dave Kitson hitting the post and Richard Cresswell narrowly shooting wide. Stoke travelled to Liverpool for three away games back to back. Stoke line up in an unusual 4-5-1 formation in an attempt to stop the threat of Liverpool's attacking full-backs. The change in tactics backfired as Liverpool comfortably won the game 4–0 with the goals coming from Fernando Torres, Dirk Kuyt, Glen Johnson and David N'Gog. Another newly promoted side were next opponents for Stoke in the form of Birmingham City at St Andrew's. Stoke suffered an early blow as James Beattie was forced to come off due to injury, meaning that Dave Kitson would have a chance to impress. There were few chances during the match with both sides cancelling each other out and the match finished 0–0. New signings from Middlesbrough Robert Huth and Tuncay were on the bench for the visit of Steve Bruce's Sunderland at the end of August. Stoke opened the scoring just before half time through a goal mouth scramble which Kitson managed to put past Craig Gordon. Both sides continued to create chances in the second half but Stoke were the stronger of the two teams and were able to see out the win. September. For the visit of Chelsea Pulis decided to play a 5-3-2 formation with new signing Danny Collins making his debut. Stoke suffered an early setback as James Beattie again was forced to come off after falling awkwardly. Stoke took the lead after 32 minutes after a mix up in the Chelsea defence allowed captain Abdoulaye Faye to head into an empty net. Stoke were dealt another injury this time 'keeper Sorensen, who was replaced by Simonsen. Chelsea equalised in stoppage time in the first half through a goal by Drogba. Chelsea dominated the second half without troubling Simonsen and it looked that it would finish all level but Malouda gave Chelsea the three points deep into injury time to leave Stoke with a sense of deja vu as Chelsea beat in them in the same fashion last season. Stoke then made the trip to the Reebok Stadium looking to avenge last seasons 3–1 defeat in what was City's first game in the Premier League. Stoke were the better side in the first half as they dominated possession and created a number of half chances, Bolton on the other hand were awful and were booed off at half time. Stoke took the lead early in the second half through the improving Kitson, Wanderers then brought on Ricardo Gardner and Ivan Klasnić to try and rescue a point for the home side. They did get a draw via the penalty spot after Danny Collins carelessly tripped Sam Ricketts in the final minute. Following the epic 4–3 League Cup win over Blackpool Stoke faced the league champions, Manchester United. Pulis decided to go with the same formation and system he used against Chelsea, however the change didn't work as the visitors were able to claim a comfortable 2–0 win. October. Stoke reverted to their usual formation for trip to Everton and gave a surprise start to Salif Diao after the midfielder's injury. Everton were the better team in the first 45 minutes without troubling Sorensen, Stoke improved in the second period and took the lead through Robert Huth's powerful header, his first goal for the club. The lead didn't last long as Leon Osman scored from long range and the match ended all square. The next match was against Gianfranco Zola's West Ham United at the Britannia Stadium. James Beattie scored twice for Stoke in a 2–1 win. The first came via the penalty spot after Etherington had been brought down in the area by Julien Faubert. West Ham levelled though a Matthew Upson header before Beattie tapped in from close range following good work by Fuller. Huth was given a retrospective three-match ban by the FA after video footage showed him hitting Upson in the face. Stoke then made the trip to White Hart Lane to face Tottenham and were handed a blow before kick off with Thomas Sorensen unable to play meaning that number two Steve Simonsen started in goal. Tottenham were also hit by injuries with Jonathan Woodgate being forced off after 14 minutes. Tottenham dominated the match and had numerous chances to open the scoring but they were repeatedly denied by Simonsen. With the match looking to heading to a goalless draw, Stoke scored via a counter-attack with Glenn Whelan curling a shot past Heurelho Gomes to secure a 1–0 victory. In the match against local rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers, Stoke dominated the first half and scored through Beattie and a volley by Matthew Etherington his first league goal for the club put Stoke 2–0 up before half time. In the second half Wolves were the dominant side and also scored twice with two identical goals from former City player Jody Craddock as the match ended in a 2–2 draw. November. Stoke made the trip to Hull looking for a second consecutive away win; despite a slow start City took the lead through Etherington's powerful drive past Matt Duke. Stoke could have extended their lead through Shawcross but his header clipped the crossbar. Hull then equalised through former City player Seyi Olofinjana and Stoke were on the back foot even more when Abdoulaye Faye was sent off for two bookable offences meaning Tuncay who had just come on had to be replaced by Wilkinson in order to fill in the gap in defence. However Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink scored in the final minute to condemn Stoke to a disappointing defeat. Paul Hart's relegation threatened side, Portsmouth were next to arrive in Staffordshire and had the chance to take the lead early on after Delap had fouled Aruna Dindane but Kevin-Prince Boateng's penalty was saved by Sorensen. It turned out to be a very poor game and Stoke scored the only goal through a well worked move resulting in Fuller scoring his first goal of the season. Stoke travelled to Blackburn and had a number of chances to win the match with Whitehead and Beattie both missing from just 5 yards, Blackburn were also guilty of poor finishing and the match ended in a 0–0 draw. December. The first match in December came away against Arsenal; Stoke started the match brightly and looked comfortable but Delap again gave away a penalty after fouling Andrey Arshavin in the area but Sorensen saved Fabregas' spot kick. However Arsenal were not to be denied and went on to win the match 2–0 with goals from Arshavin and Aaron Ramsey. The results was however overshadowed by media reports of a dressing room argument between Pulis and Beattie. Stoke then faced Wigan Athletic in an early kick-off at the Britannia Stadium it what turned out to be an entertaining match. Wigan took the lead in confusing circumstances, Emmerson Boyce headed the ball past Sorensen taking out the keeper in the process and Salif Diao unavoidably kicked Boyce in the head and the referee belatedly awarded the goal. Stoke equalised through Tuncay's first goal for the club just before half time. Wigan went back in front through via a 50-yard strike by Maynor Figueroa but Stoke scored instantly through a Shawcross header. Wigan had the chance to win the match in the final minute when Huth was adjudged to have fouled Jordi Gomez despite the Wigan player being offside, however Sorensen saved Hugo Rodallega's spot kick. City travelled to Villa Park and thought they had taken the lead through Mama Sidibé out-jumped Stephen Warnock but referee Lee Probert gave a free-kick to Villa. Stoke were the better side and created a number of chances to score but were unable to find the net. Villa claimed all three points when John Carew headed past Sorensen. The boxing day fixture saw Stoke make the trip to Manchester City where Roberto Mancini was taking his first game in charge for the home side. His new side made a bright start and two goals from Martin Petrov and Carlos Tevez gave Man City a 2–0 win. City ended 2009 on a disappointing note as they were defeated 1–0 by Birmingham City at home. Stoke were the dominant team throughout the match and only some top class saves from Joe Hart kept Stoke out. Birmingham took advantage through a scrappy goal from Cameron Jerome. January. The first league match of 2010 was the re-arranged fixture against Fulham; the match went ahead despite heavy snow. Sorensen failed to recover from an injury he picked up in the win over York City at the weekend, meaning that Simonsen started and youngster Danzelle St Louis-Hamilton appeared on the bench. Stoke controlled the first half and Fulham the second. Stoke opened the scoring 13 minutes when Tuncay met Robert Huth's flick on from Etherington's corner and powered the ball beyond Mark Schwarzer from 3-yards to put the hosts into the lead. A rampant City side didn't have to wait long to double their advantage though as skipper Faye was on hand to tap the ball into an empty net after Etherington's deep corner evaded a packed out 6-yard box. The majority of the Britannia Stadium had barely recovered from their celebrations by the time Sidibé had fired the Potters into a three-goal lead just three minutes later. The Malian international striker latched onto Higginbotham's clever flick on, as the Potters laid siege to the Fulham penalty area, and smashed the ball into the roof of the net with a clinically taken half volley to put Stoke into a 3–0 lead. In the second half Fulham scored twice through Damien Duff and Clint Dempsey. A weak Liverpool side were next to arrive at the Britannia and were content to sit back and play for a draw. Stoke suffered an early injury problems with both Abdoualye Faye and Rory Delap being forced to come off. Liverpool took a surprise lead through Greek defender Sotirios Kyrgiakos in the second half, Stoke then applied intense pressure on the Liverpool goal and in the 90th minute Robert Huth scrambled in the equaliser. February. After five home games in a row City finally had an away game at Sunderland. However the match was a very disappointing affair and finished in a poor 0–0 draw. Stoke were back at home for the visit of Blackburn Rovers on a day dedicated to Sir Stanley Matthews. Stoke produced a fitting performance to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the wizard of dribble by producing arguably City's best performance in the top flight since winning promotion in May 2008. Stoke opened their account through Danny Higginbotham after eight minutes with the left back volleying an Etherington corner. City made it two just before half time after Mama Sidibé tapped in from close range and Etherington finished of a man of the match outing by skilfully beating Robinson to make the score line 3–0, Stoke's largest Premier League win and biggest top flight win since 1984. After the match it was reported that a visiting Blackburn Rovers supporter had died at the match. His death was later ruled as 'misadventure' by the coroner after eyewitnesses stated that he had 'headed' a 25lb bin. In the next away game at the DW Stadium Wigan made a bright start and took the lead through Paul Scharner after 14 minutes. Stoke improved greatly in the second half and equalised via a header from Tuncay and the match finished one apiece. Following the FA Cup draw against Man City at the weekend, they were again the opposition this time at the Britannia Stadium in the League. Stoke made a confident start dominating the match and should have opened the scoring in the first half but the scores were level at half time. Stoke were reduced to ten men early in the second half when Abdoulaye Faye brought down Adebayor, Man City then took control but Stoke surprisingly took the lead through a volley from Glenn Whelan. Man City drew level via a scrappy goal from Gareth Barry, City thought they won the match with seconds left when Shawcross headed in a Delap throw in but Alan Wiley wrongly disallowed the goal. Stoke then made the long trip south to face relegation bound Portsmouth at Fratton Park. Pompey were the better side in the first half and took the lead through the Frédéric Piquionne after 35 minutes. Stoke were better in the second half and Robert Huth levelled just after the half time break before Andy Wilkinson was sent off for a second bookable offence. With Pompey looking for a vital winner City snatched the win right at the death with Salif Diao scoring his first goal in seven years. Following Stoke's FA Cup replay win over Man City at the Britannia, Arsenal were next to arrive and City took the lead through Danny Pugh via another Delap throw in, however Nicklas Bendtner equalised just before half time. In the second half Shawcross was sent-off for a tackle on Aaron Ramsey, which left the Arsenal midfielder with a broken leg. Arsenal made full used of their numerical advantage with goals from Cesc Fàbregas and Thomas Vermaelen. March. After their FA Cup exit at Chelsea, Stoke faced struggling Burnley in the re-arranged match at Turf Moor. The match was a keenly contested affair and the result was a fair 1–1 draw with goals from Tuncay and Dave Nugent. Stoke then had a hard-fought goalless draw with Aston Villa at the Britannia Stadium and both sides could have easily won the match. Following a lethargic opening 45 minutes against Tottenham Hotspur the second half exploded into action as Eiður Guðjohnsen fired the visitors ahead just 30 seconds after the interval, before Dean Whitehead was dismissed by referee Mike Dean three minutes later for an innocuous looking challenge on Luka Modrić. The Potters had to stand firm to soak up some heavy Spurs' pressure, but managed to pull themselves back into the game on the hour mark when Etherington calmly converted from the penalty spot, after David Kitson had been dragged to the ground by Benoît Assou-Ekotto. Ricardo Fuller then spurned a glorious opportunity to turn the game on its head as he blazed over from 6-yards, before the Londoners ensured all three points would be theirs with little over ten minutes remaining as Croatian international Niko Kranjčar lashed home after Assou-Ekotto teed him up. Stoke then made the trip to West Ham and came away with all three points thanks to a piece of individual piece of brilliance from substitute Ricardo Fuller. He had only been on the pitch two minutes by the time he beat two men and rifled the ball beyond Robert Green with little over twenty minutes of the game remaining. Prior to his introduction chances had been few and far between for both sides, with Egyptian Mido going closest for the Hammers, whilst Liam Lawrence had spurned the visitors best chance early on after blazing over from 12-yards. The Potters had to soak up a late onslaught from the desperate hosts, but they managed to hold on for all three points and elevate themselves up to tenth place in the league table; moving to within one point of the magic '40-point target'. April. Relegation threatened Hull were next at the Britannia Stadium and Stoke came away with a comfortable 2–0 win. Fuller struck in the sixth minute to give the Potters a flying start against Iain Dowie's men before Liam Lawrence slotted home the second in the final minute to ease his side to the three points. There was great excitement for highly awaited derby against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux prior to the match, however the game was a total anti-climax and finished in a drab 0–0 draw. City's penultimate home match saw Bolton Wanderers make the short trip south. Stoke dominated the match for 80 minutes and took the lead through Dave Kitson after 13 minutes. However Matthew Taylor somehow managed to score twice in the final few minutes to condemn Stoke to a surprise defeat. In the next away match at Chelsea Stoke suffered early setbacks with both Faye and Sorensen being taken off injured. Everything seemed to go wrong for Stoke and Chelsea scored seven goals without reply. May. In the final home match of the season Stoke picked up a well-earned point against in-form Everton. Neither side were able to find a breakthrough throughout the clash as Delap missed City's best opportunity in the second half whilst the Toffees thought they had won it through Phil Jagielka, only for Howard Webb to chalk it off for an infringement by Victor Anichebe late on. Stoke's penultimate game of the season was against UEFA Europa League finalists Fulham at Craven Cottage. Stoke won the match 1–0 with Matthew Etherington scoring the only goal in the 83rd minute. Stoke finished off the 2009–10 season with a 4–0 loss against Manchester United at Old Trafford. FA Cup. Stoke were drawn at home to Conference Premier side York City at home in the third round of the FA Cup. The non-league side started the better side despite arriving late for kick-off and took a shock lead through Neil Barrett. However Stoke quickly turned the game around with two Rory Delap throws which led to Daniel Parslow putting through his own net and Ricardo Fuller scoring a minute later. Stoke sealed their place in the fourth round when Matthew Etherington curled in a free-kick just before the hour mark. Arsenal were the next opponents for City and they made the perfect start, another Rory Delap throw caused panic in the Arsenal penalty area and Fuller took advantage. Arsenal slowly came back into the game and equalised through a lucky deflected Denílson free-kick just before half-time. In the second half both sides were attacking and after 78 minutes Fuller got his second of the game heading in a Mamady Sidibé cross. Dean Whitehead then got his first goal for Stoke confirming a fifth round tie. Stoke were handed a tough test against Manchester City in round five. At a surprisingly sparse City of Manchester Stadium Man City took an early lead after Shaun Wright-Phillips took advantage of some awful Stoke defending. Stoke struggled in the first half and their cause was not helped by injuries to Matthew Etherington and his replacement Liam Lawrence. In the second half Stoke became more threatening and the equaliser came after 57 minutes after a Rory Delap thrown was headed in by Fuller. Both sides could have won afterwards but it finished 1–1 meaning that a replay would be needed. In the replay Man City made a flying start putting the Stoke defence under a considerable amount of pressure with Emmanuel Adebayor, Craig Bellamy and Pablo Zabaleta missing good chances. In the second half it was Stoke who began to take control of the match and took the lead through Dave Kitson ten minutes from full-time. However Bellamy equalized moments later sending the tie into extra time. Man City were reduced to ten men when Adebayor was shown a red card after an altercation With Shawcross. Stoke re-took the lead through a Shawcross header from a Delap thrown and then Tuncay finished the game with a fine solo goal. Stoke made into the Quarter Final of the FA Cup for the first time since 1971 and were drawn away at the holders and favourites Chelsea. Stoke made a good start almost taking the lead through Dean Whitehead after ten minutes. This was as good as it got for City as Chelsea produced a commanding display and took their place in the semi-final with goals from Frank Lampard and John Terry. League Cup. Stoke started their League Cup campaign away to Leyton Orient. It was the first time the two sides have met in the League Cup and the first time since 1993. Stoke made 11 changes to the side that drew 0–0 with Birmingham City as manager Tony Pulis kept with his normal League cup side. Ryan Shotton made his first Stoke start and on the bench a number of youngsters such as Dave Parton and Matthew Lund appeared for the first time. In the first half Orient had the best chance when Adrian Pătulea should have scored but failed. Richard Cresswell should have done the same before Dave Kitson headed against the bar. With both teams failing to break the deadlock the match went into extra time. The winning goal came from Kitson a brilliant 35-yard strike his first in Stoke colours, sent City to the Third round to play Blackpool. In the Third round against Blackpool two of Stoke's summer signings Diego Arismendi and Tuncay made their first starts. Blackpool scored the game's opening goal just before half time when ex-Crewe player David Vaughan was allowed to run and shot to put the Tangerines in front. It got worse for City as after half-time Billy Clarke one of the smallest players on the pitch managed to out jump a static Stoke defence and but Blackpool 2–0 up. That goal seemed to lift Stoke as they went all out to get back in the game. Alex Baptiste fouled Tuncay in the area and Liam Lawrence took the spot kick which was easily save by Matthew Gilks. Higginbotham pulled one back before Etherington scored his first goal for Stoke. Fuller and Tuncay combined to put Stoke in front however minutes later Ben Burgess made it 3–3 and it looked like it was going to extra time before Andy Griffin sealed a 4–3 win for Stoke. In the Fourth round Stoke were handed an unwanted trip to Portsmouth. Stoke took the decision to fly to the South coast to avoid the long journey. It didn't have the desired effect, as Portsmouth with the help of some comic Stoke defending easily won the match 4–0. It didn't get any better as on the flight back the aircraft had to make an emergency landing due to an oil leak.

dominant half

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6031809

Phytophthora sojae is an oomycete and a soil-borne plant pathogen that causes stem and root rot of soybean. This is a prevalent disease in most soybean growing regions, and a major cause of crop loss. In wet conditions the pathogen produces zoospores that move in water and are attracted to soybean roots. Zoospores can attach to roots, germinate, and infect the plant tissues. Diseased roots develop lesions that may spread up the stem and eventually kill the entire plant. "Phytophthora sojae" also produces oospores that can remain dormant in the soil over the winter, or longer, and germinate when conditions are favourable. Oospores may also be spread by animals or machinery. "Phytophthora sojae" is a diploid organism with a genome size of 95 Mbp (Millions of base pairs). The natural chemical farinomalein (a metabolite from entomopathogenic fungus "Paecilomyces farinosus") has shown potent and selective inhibition (0.15-5 μg/disk) against eight isolates of plant pathogenic "Phytophthora sojae". These results suggest that farinomalein might be useful as a candidate pesticide for the treatment of "Phytophthora" stem rot in soybean. "Phytophthora sojae" is so similar to "Phytophthora megasperma" that they're often mistaken for each other. In the early years of research, "Phytophthora sojae" and "Phytophthora medicaginis" were respectively known as "Phytophthora megasperma" f. sp. "glycines" and "Phytophthora megasperma" f. sp. "medicaginis". Recent discoveries about their molecular structure, however, proved that they were indeed unambiguous species. Hosts and symptoms. "Phytophthora sojae" infects soybean plants "(Glycine max)" and many members of the genus "Lupinus". They have the ability to infect soybeans at any point during its development process, including during seed development. They cause seed decay and pre- and postemergence damping off when the soil is flooded after planting. Seedling roots may appear to have light brown soft rot as soon as the seedlings begin to sprout from the soil. It also causes root and stem rot and the severity of the infection depends on how susceptible or tolerant the plant is to pathogens. In a highly-tolerant soybean plant, the root rot will simply cause the plant to be stunted and slightly chlorotic instead of killing the plant. In contrast, infection of a low-tolerant soybean plant will most likely lead to the death of the plant. Infection initiates in the roots and then progresses several nodes up the stem, turning the root and the stem brown and the leaves yellow. As the pathogen progresses, the entire plant transforms into an orange-brown color. The wilted leaves bend towards the plant and remain attached as it succumbs to death. Foliar blight is also a symptom of "Phytophthora sojae", especially when the plant has recently experienced heavy rain. The soybean plant has an age-related resistance in which the older leaves are not susceptible to foliar blight. Soybean fields infected with "Phytophthora sojae" can be easily spotted by looking for stunted soybean plants or looking for empty patches where the soybean seed had been planted. Microscopic identification of an oospore that measure around 40 micrometers in diameter from a soybean plant sample is a definite sign of "Phytophthora sojae". Oospores, in general, measure around 20-45 micrometers in diameter and have very thick cellulose cell walls for overwintering. Disease cycle. "Phytophthora sojae" overwinters in plant debris and soil as oospores. Oospores are made after the male gamete, antheridium, and female gamete, oogonium, undergo fertilization and then sexual recombination (meiosis). They possess thick cell walls with cellulose that enables them to survive harsh conditions in the soil without germinating for several years. They begin to germinate once the environmental condition is favorable during spring (see § Environment) and produce sporangia. They can either germinate directly or indirectly. In direct germination, sporangia directly penetrate the host cells at the plant's root tips (if it's within reach). Indirect germination involves sporangia releasing zoospores (if the root is at a farther distance from the sporangia) which encyst on the host plant cells and germinate. Zoospores are biflagellate asexual motile spores. They are dispersed by water flow in the soil and are able to inoculate the roots of plants or seeds. Chemicals such as daidzeins and genistein are released at the tip of the plant roots which attract the liberated zoospores. Once zoospores have made contact with the host root, they encyst on the surface, break down the plant cell wall with proteolytic enzymes and begin to germinate. Their hyphae will begin to grow through the intercellular space of the plant cells. After establishing its haustoria for nutrients, more oospores will begin to form in the cortical cells of the root. The host plant will begin to exhibit secondary symptoms such as stem canker, wilting, and chlorosis as "Phytophthora sojae" continue to reproduce. This continuous reproduction renders the plant dead at the end of the season. The oospores are then left to overwinter in the dead plant's debris and the soil. The cycle is repeated once again in the spring when environmental conditions are favorable (see § Environment). The disease is mostly localized where zoospores initially infected the host plant. "Phytophthora sojae" is considered to be a monocyclic pathogen and has one effective infection in its cycle. This is because the oospores don't germinate together at the same time; rather they each have their own distinct favorable condition in which they'll initiate their germination. Environment. "Phytophthora sojae" favor fields that are poorly drained or highly-susceptible to flooding. Solving it only by creating optimal drainage does not restrict the pathogen because the field may be subject to continuous heavy rain which induces flooding. Similar to other "Phytophthora", warm soil, intermittent rain (including the rain splashes that results from rain), and windy weather are favorable conditions for development and the spread of the disease respectively. The optimum temperature for its disease development is above . Management. Host resistance is the primary method of control for "Phytophthora sojae". There are three types of resistance: R gene mediated resistance, root resistance, and partial resistance. Currently there are 14 "Rps" genes, meaning 14 different single-resistance genes, which have been identified for R-gene mediated resistance and mapped in the soybean genome. Effectively, the most damage that the oomycete can induce is a lesion. Root resistance is inherited and is generally expressed in the roots. In this case, the stem of a germinating seedling is most susceptible. Once the first leaves begin to emerge, the partial resistance of the plant is expressed. Colonization is reduced and lesions are smaller in comparison. This management prevents the zoospores from germinating in the root tip and therefore unable to produce hyphae, which it needs to survive. "Phytophthora sojae" can also be controlled using fungicides. For example, Metalaxyl, a fungicide that is specifically used for oomycetes, is used for treating soybean seeds. It's used to prevent seed decay and pre-emergence damping off. This fungicide has been observed to be more effective on highly-tolerant soybean plants. Metalaxyl is most effective when applied to the soil as it allows the plant to take it up through the roots and elongate the control period in comparison to a seed application. Metalaxyl prevents the spores of "Phytophthora sojae" from entering the soybean plant tissues. As with all fungicides, Metalaxyl is effective for prevention only and should be applied before the disease has established itself inside the tissues of the soybean plant. Replanting must be done once severe pre-emergence damping off is observed. Improving field drainage and soil tillage are cultural practices that can help minimize the effect of "Phytophthora sojae". Improving soil tillage can help eliminate oospores from the soil. Oospores are very sturdy and can remain stagnant in the soil for a long time and therefore crop rotation alone is not effective. Proper field drainage prevents flooding and therefore inhibit zoospore movement towards the host. Importance. "Phytophthora" root and stem rot of soybean was first observed in the United States in Indiana in 1948 and its causal agent, "Phytophthora sojae", first identified in 1958. In the 1970s, soybean plants only had one single-resistance gene, meaning they were more susceptible to an infection. Eventually plants with this gene were killed by new races of "Phytophthora sojae". As a result, several states suffered significant yield losses particularly in the state of Ohio, which lost 300,000 acres of soybean plants in a year. Soon thereafter, a variety of new disease prevention methods were implemented and as a result this disease is currently one of the well-managed and well-known soybean diseases in the USA. Origin. Recently there's been evidence that soybean plants from South Korea and China had a diversity of resistance that is much higher in these countries compared to other soybean-cultivating nations. This indicates that soybean plants have been around in these areas longer and thus had more time to develop resistance against a variety of diseases including "Phytophthora sojae".

above-ground water removal

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39510236

The Archipelago Museum (or Rönnäs-museum) in Rönnäs, Loviisa in Finland, is dedicated to coastal areas and the archipelagos and their specific life. It is run by a local trust from the start in 1985. The museum holds one of Finland's largest collections of traditional peasant boats. The basic exhibition located in the basement of the main building, stresses the impact of human life in the nature of the archipelagos by describing the initial colonization of the barren areas, as well as of the introduction of agrarian occupation. In addition to the maritime occupation such as seal hunting, fishery and seabird hunting, also coastal navigation and pilotage are presented in the exhibition. The boat occupies the central position in being the prime tool of the population. The upper floor of the main building presents an exhibition of wooden boats and boat building. Here we find work boats and boats of bygone days, as well as a presentation of wooden boat building along clinker and cravel-techniques. In addition to permanent exhibitions here mentioned the museum annually presents a selected theme connected to the maritime culture. In the wooden shed, opposite the main building, the visitor will find a collection of marine engines, inboard as well as outboard, possibly the most important in Finland. The upper floor of this shed houses an exhibition on summer life in the skerries in bygone days including pleasure boats. The museum trust also publishes a journal concerned with the archaeology and ethnology of boats.

chosen subject

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16358251

William Ray Collins Jr. (September 21, 1961 – March 6, 1984) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1981 to 1983. His career was cut short after his final fight when he sustained serious injuries against Luis Resto in their ten-round bout. Aided by his trainer Panama Lewis, Resto used illegal, tampered gloves with an ounce of the gloves' cushioning removed, along with hand wraps which had been soaked in plaster of Paris. Professional career. Billy Collins was born to a working-class Irish family in Antioch, Tennessee. His father (whose mother was native American) was a former welterweight professional boxer who had once fought world champion Curtis Cokes. He trained his son to follow in his footsteps since before kindergarten. Also a welterweight, Collins won his first 14 fights as a professional, among them a decision over future world title challenger Harold Brazier. Final fight against Luis Resto. Collins was matched against Puerto Rican journeyman Luis Resto at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 16, 1983, on the undercard of the Roberto Durán vs. Davey Moore light middleweight title fight. Collins entered the fight as a betting favorite but took a heavy beating and lost by a unanimous decision. At the end of the fight, Collins' father and trainer, Billy Sr., noticed that Resto's gloves felt thinner than normal and demanded that they be impounded. A subsequent investigation by the New York State Boxing Commission concluded that Resto's trainer, Panama Lewis, had removed an ounce of padding from each glove. It made Resto's punches harder and more damaging to Collins. The fight result was changed to a no contest. Lewis' New York boxing license was permanently revoked, effectively banning him from any official role in American boxing for life. Resto was suspended indefinitely and never fought again. In 1986, Lewis and Resto were tried and convicted of assault, conspiracy, and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (Resto's plaster of paris wraps); prosecutors felt that Lewis' actions made the fight an illegal assault on Collins. Both served 2 years in prison. Injuries and auto accident. In the Resto fight, Collins' eyes were swollen shut. He suffered a torn iris and permanently blurred vision, which left him unable to box again. On March 6, 1984, Collins was killed when the car in which he and his best friend were driving crashed into a culvert near his home in Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. The autopsy showed he died a short time later at the scene of the accident. Many commentators, as well as Collins' family, believe that the loss of his livelihood broke him emotionally and physically. Legal action. In July 1983, Collins and his family sued Lewis, Resto, fight promoter Top Rank Boxing, the inspectors, the bout's referee and Everlast (the manufacturer of Resto's gloves) for gross negligence and loss of income. The suit against Everlast was dismissed by the Federal Court which found that there was no liability since the gloves had been tampered with after they were delivered by Everlast. Collins, Sr. and Collins' widow Andrea then sued the New York State Boxing Commission for failing to protect Collins. The commission argued that the term "inspection" was so broad that there was no way to determine whether the fight's inspectors could have done more than they did. It also claimed that Top Rank actually hired the inspectors and bore more responsibility for their behavior. A court ruled in favor of the commission, and the court also noted that Collins' death ended any potential future damages. However, Collins' widow, now known as Andrea Collins-Nile, attempted to reopen the suit. The request was denied. The state subsequently changed its rules to prevent a repeat of what happened to Collins. The Collins family never saw any restitution. Further revelations by Resto. In 2007, Resto made a tearful apology to Collins-Nile for his role in the scheme unexpectedly during the making of an HBO documentary about the fight. He also admitted that his hand wraps had been soaked in plaster of Paris before the fight. This caused them to harden into plaster casts like those used to set broken bones. The hand wraps were never confiscated and did not figure into the official investigation of the tampering incident. However, the combined effect of the plaster casts and unpadded gloves meant that Resto was effectively striking Collins with rocks. At a 2008 press conference, Resto not only admitted to knowing that Lewis had tampered with the gloves, but had done so at least twice before. The 1983 incident and subsequent aftermath is covered in the 2008 HBO documentary "Assault in the Ring".

joint action

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18880

Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that there are many producers competing against each other, but selling products that are differentiated from one another (e.g. by branding or quality) and hence are not perfect substitutes. In monopolistic competition, a firm takes the prices charged by its rivals as given and ignores the impact of its own prices on the prices of other firms. If this happens in the presence of coercive government, monopolistic competition will fall into government-granted monopoly. Unlike perfect competition, the firm maintains spare capacity. Models of monopolistic competition are often used to model industries. Textbook examples of industries with market structures similar to monopolistic competition include restaurants, cereal, clothing, shoes, and service industries in large cities. The "founding father" of the theory of monopolistic competition is Edward Hastings Chamberlin, who wrote a pioneering book on the subject, "Theory of Monopolistic Competition" (1933). Joan Robinson published a book "The Economics of Imperfect Competition" with a comparable theme of distinguishing perfect from imperfect competition. Further work on monopolistic competition was undertaken by Dixit and Stiglitz who created the Dixit-Stiglitz model which has proved applicable used in the sub fields of international trade theory, macroeconomics and economic geography. Monopolistically competitive markets have the following characteristics: The long-run characteristics of a monopolistically competitive market are almost the same as a perfectly competitive market. Two differences between the two are that monopolistic competition produces heterogeneous products and that monopolistic competition involves a great deal of non-price competition, which is based on subtle product differentiation. A firm making profits in the short run will nonetheless only break even in the long run because demand will decrease and average total cost will increase. This means in the long run, a monopolistically competitive firm will make zero economic profit. This illustrates the amount of influence the firm has over the market; because of brand loyalty, it can raise its prices without losing all of its customers. This means that an individual firm's demand curve is downward sloping, in contrast to perfect competition, which has a perfectly elastic demand schedule. Characteristics. There are six characteristics of monopolistic competition (MC): Product differentiation. MC firms sell products that have real or perceived non-price differences. Examples of these differences could include physical aspects of the product, location from which it sells the product or intangible aspects of the product, among others. However, the differences are not so great as to eliminate other goods as substitutes. Technically, the cross price elasticity of demand between goods in such a market is positive. In fact, the XED would be high. MC goods are best described as close but imperfect substitutes. The goods perform the same basic functions but have differences in qualities such as type, style, quality, reputation, appearance, and location that tend to distinguish them from each other. For example, the basic function of motor vehicles is the same—to move people and objects from point to point in reasonable comfort and safety. Yet there are many different types of motor vehicles such as motor scooters, motor cycles, trucks and cars, and many variations even within these categories. Many firms. There are many firms in each MC product group and many firms on the side lines prepared to enter the market. A product group is a "collection of similar products". The fact that there are "many firms" means that each firm has a small market share. This gives each MC firm the freedom to set prices without engaging in strategic decision making regarding the prices of other firms (no mutual independence) and each firm's actions have a negligible impact on the market. For example, a firm could cut prices and increase sales without fear that its actions will prompt retaliatory responses from competitors. How many firms will an MC market structure support at market equilibrium? The answer depends on factors such as fixed costs, economies of scale and the degree of product differentiation. For example, the higher the fixed costs, the fewer firms the market will support. Freedom of entry and exit. Like perfect competition, under monopolistic competition also, the firms can enter or exit freely. The firms will enter when the existing firms are making super-normal profits. With the entry of new firms, the supply would increase which would reduce the price and hence the existing firms will be left only with normal profits. Similarly, if the existing firms are sustaining losses, some of the marginal firms will exit. It will reduce the supply due to which price would rise and the existing firms will be left only with normal profit. Independent decision making. Each MC firm independently sets the terms of exchange for its product. The firm gives no consideration to what effect its decision may have on competitors. The theory is that any action will have such a negligible effect on the overall market demand that an MC firm can act without fear of prompting heightened competition. In other words, each firm feels free to set prices as if it were a monopoly rather than an oligopoly. Market power. MC firms have some degree of market power, although relatively low. Market power means that the firm has control over the terms and conditions of exchange. All MC firms are price makers. An MC firm can raise its prices without losing all its customers. The firm can also lower prices without triggering a potentially ruinous price war with competitors. The source of an MC firm's market power is not barriers to entry since they are low. Rather, an MC firm has market power because it has relatively few competitors, those competitors do not engage in strategic decision making and the firms sells differentiated product. Market power also means that an MC firm faces a downward sloping demand curve. In the long run, the demand curve is highly elastic, meaning that it is sensitive to price changes although it is not completely "flat". In the short run, economic profit is positive, but it approaches zero in the long run. Imperfect information. No sellers or buyers have complete market information, like market demand or market supply. Inefficiency. There are two sources of inefficiency in the MC market structure. First, at its optimum output the firm charges a price that exceeds marginal costs, The MC firm maximizes profits where marginal revenue = marginal cost. Since the MC firm's demand curve is downward sloping this means that the firm will be charging a price that exceeds marginal costs. The monopoly power possessed by a MC firm means that at its profit maximizing level of production there will be a net loss of consumer (and producer) surplus. The second source of inefficiency is the fact that MC firms operate with excess capacity. That is, the MC firm's profit maximizing output is less than the output associated with minimum average cost. Both a PC and MC firm will operate at a point where demand or price equals average cost. For a PC firm this equilibrium condition occurs where the perfectly elastic demand curve equals minimum average cost. A MC firm's demand curve is not flat but is downward sloping. Thus in the long run the demand curve will be tangential to the long run average cost curve at a point to the left of its minimum. The result is excess capacity. Problems. Monopolistically competitive firms are inefficient, it is usually the case that the costs of regulating prices for products sold in monopolistic competition exceed the benefits of such regulation. A monopolistically competitive firm might be said to be marginally inefficient because the firm produces at an output where average total cost is not a minimum. A monopolistically competitive market is productively inefficient market structure because marginal cost is less than price in the long run. Monopolistically competitive markets are also allocative-inefficient, as the firm charges prices that exceed marginal cost. Product differentiation increases total utility by better meeting people's wants than homogenous products in a perfectly competitive market. Another concern is that monopolistic competition fosters advertising. There are two main ways to conceive how advertising works under a monopolistic competition framework. Advertising can either cause a firm’s perceived demand curve to become more inelastic; or advertising causes demand for the firm’s product to increase. In either case, a successful advertising campaign may allow a firm to sell either a greater quantity or to charge a higher price, or both, and thus increase its profits. This allows the creation of brand names. Advertising induces customers into spending more on products because of the name associated with them rather than because of rational factors. Defenders of advertising dispute this, arguing that brand names can represent a guarantee of quality and that advertising helps reduce the cost to consumers of weighing the trade-offs of numerous competing brands. There are unique information and information processing costs associated with selecting a brand in a monopolistically competitive environment. In a monopoly market, the consumer is faced with a single brand, making information gathering relatively inexpensive. In a perfectly competitive industry, the consumer is faced with many brands, but because the brands are virtually identical information gathering is also relatively inexpensive. In a monopolistically competitive market, the consumer must collect and process information on a large number of different brands to be able to select the best of them. In many cases, the cost of gathering information necessary to selecting the best brand can exceed the benefit of consuming the best brand instead of a randomly selected brand. The result is that the consumer is confused. Some brands gain prestige value and can extract an additional price for that. Evidence suggests that consumers use information obtained from advertising not only to assess the single brand advertised, but also to infer the possible existence of brands that the consumer has, heretofore, not observed, as well as to infer consumer satisfaction with brands similar to the advertised brand. Examples. In many markets, such as toothpaste, soap, air conditioning, smartphones and toilet paper, producers practice product differentiation by altering the physical composition of products, using special packaging, or simply claiming to have superior products based on brand images or advertising.

midpoint expenditure

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62009293

The Homophiles of Penn State, also known as HOPS, was a student organization founded in 1971 at Pennsylvania State University on the University Park Campus. The club aimed to "change attitudes on homosexuality through legal reform, public education and individual counseling." They wanted to tackle issues on campus, like "lack of information available in the library and classroom, hostile attitudes of the psychiatric clinic and discriminatory administration policies." HOPS planned meeting activities included "speakers, movies, poetry readings, short plays, tapes, etc," as well as "dances and picnics". History. Campus gay scene. Before the conception of queer organizations on campus, there were not many places for homosexuals to meet or gather. For those of age, the bar scene was one option, yet most felt that such a location was too public, while some others were simply not interested in such a place. Many wanted a place outside the bar scene to gather. The Free University Organization. In the fall of 1970, one such student approached the university chaplain, who pointed him to a discussion group which had met the previous spring. They agreed to meet again, but this time wanted to be more public. They approached The Free University Organization, an organization of students, faculty, and community members, and offered classes which were open to everyone. They offered a class entitled "Homosexuality: A Growing Subculture", which grew from a handful of attendants to around 50 after a few sessions. It was in these meetings that discussed the need to create a group sanctioned by the university. They then created a steering committee to work on the creation of the club. They submitted their constitution on March 17, 1971 with the name The Other Vision: Homophiles of Penn State. They were granted a charter for the 1971-1972 school year on April 20, 1971. Membership. Membership was not limited to Penn State students—people in the surrounding area were encouraged to join the organization. HOPS also welcomed members of all sexualities — they were open to homosexuals and allies alike. They state that the word homophile means "anyone...who advocates the end of discrimation against homosexuals." Charter Controversy. HOPS' legality questioned. Shortly after admittance of the charter, members of the Penn State administration expressed concerns with the admittance of a charter for the group. Vice president for student affairs, Raymond O. Murphy, stated that they wanted to look into the "legalities of this type of organization on a state-related campus." On May 7, 1971, the club's charter was suspended while they could review the legality of the organization. HOPS fights back. In February, students of Penn State filed a civil action against the university in Common Pleas Court of Centre County for revoking the charter. It was based on the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. Campus support. HOPS was not alone in its struggle against the university. They found support across campus. One such place was in the New University Conference, "a group of radical faculty and graduate students". The group condemned the revoking of the charter, stating that it "blatantly violated civil liberties of all Pennsylvanians, especially of students and faculty at University Park." Acanfora Case. One of the students plaintiffs was Penn State education major Joe Acanfora. During the case, Acanfora was student teaching, and when word got out about both his involvement in the case and his homosexuality, he was removed. He was later reinstated. Campus response. Acanfora received support from a variety of sources on campus, one of which was faculty. In the spring of 1972, professor Ursula Mueller quit due to Acanfora's removal. Mueller, assistant professor of mathematics, was the advisor of HOPS. She stated that she was "appalled by the blatant repressive tactics used by the administration in preventing homosexuals from expressing their full humanity." He also received support from HOPS. In February 1972 they held a rally for Acanfora. Since their charter was still not reinstated at the time, though, the rally had to be formally sponsored by Women's Liberation. News coverage. The issue was widely covered in various papers, including campus publications like the Daily Collegian and those belonging to wider areas like The Pennsylvania Mirror. These newspapers followed the issue closely, offering daily updates, rocketing this issue into the spotlight. The club, because of their charter issue and Acanfora's removal, gained publicity and visibility.

a single location

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1256189

A password policy is a set of rules designed to enhance computer security by encouraging users to employ strong passwords and use them properly. A password policy is often part of an organization's official regulations and may be taught as part of security awareness training. Either the password policy is merely advisory, or the computer systems force users to comply with it. Some governments have national authentication frameworks that define requirements for user authentication to government services, including requirements for passwords. NIST guidelines. The United States Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has put out two standards for password policies which have been widely followed. 2004. From 2004, the “NIST Special Publication 800-63. Appendix A,” advised people to use irregular capitalization, special characters, and at least one numeral. It also recommended changing passwords regularly, at least every 90 days. This was the advice that most systems followed, and was "baked into" a number of standards that businesses needed to follow. 2017. However, in 2017 a major update changed this advice, particularly that forcing complexity and regular changes. The key points of these are: NIST included a rationale for the new guidelines in its Appendix A. Aspects. Typical components of a password policy include: Password length and formation. Many policies require a minimum password length. Eight characters is typical but may not be appropriate. Longer passwords are generally more secure, but some systems impose a maximum length for compatibility with legacy systems. Some policies suggest or impose requirements on what type of password a user can choose, such as: Other systems create an initial password for the user; but require then to change it to one of their own choosing within a short interval. Password block list. Password block lists are lists of passwords that are always blocked from use. Block lists contain passwords constructed of character combinations that otherwise meet company policy, but should no longer be used because they have been deemed insecure for one or more reasons, such as being easily guessed, following a common pattern, or public disclosure from previous data breaches. Common examples are Password1, Qwerty123, or Qaz123wsx. Password duration. Some policies require users to change passwords periodically, often every 90 or 180 days. The benefit of password expiration, however, is debatable. Systems that implement such policies sometimes prevent users from picking a password too close to a previous selection. This policy can often backfire. Some users find it hard to devise "good" passwords that are also easy to remember, so if people are required to choose many passwords because they have to change them often, they end up using much weaker passwords; the policy also encourages users to write passwords down. Also, if the policy prevents a user from repeating a recent password, this requires that there is a database in existence of everyone's recent passwords (or their hashes) instead of having the old ones erased from memory. Finally, users may change their password repeatedly within a few minutes, and then change back to the one they really want to use, circumventing the password change policy altogether. The human aspects of passwords must also be considered. Unlike computers, human users cannot delete one memory and replace it with another. Consequently, frequently changing a memorized password is a strain on the human memory, and most users resort to choosing a password that is relatively easy to guess (See Password fatigue). Users are often advised to use mnemonic devices to remember complex passwords. However, if the password must be repeatedly changed, mnemonics are useless because the user would not remember which mnemonic to use. Furthermore, the use of mnemonics (leading to passwords such as "2BOrNot2B") makes the password easier to guess. Administration factors can also be an issue. Users sometimes have older devices that require a password that was used before the password duration expired. In order to manage these older devices, users may have to resort to writing down all old passwords in case they need to log into an older device. Requiring a very strong password and not requiring it be changed is often better. However, this approach does have a major drawback: if an unauthorized person acquires a password and uses it without being detected, that person may have access for an indefinite period. It is necessary to weigh these factors: the likelihood of someone guessing a password because it is weak, versus the likelihood of someone managing to steal, or otherwise acquire without guessing, a stronger password. Bruce Schneier argues that "pretty much anything that can be remembered can be cracked", and recommends a scheme that uses passwords which will not appear in any dictionaries. Sanction. Password policies may include progressive sanctions beginning with warnings and ending with possible loss of computer privileges or job termination. Where confidentiality is mandated by law, e.g. with classified information, a violation of password policy could be a criminal offense. Some consider a convincing explanation of the importance of security to be more effective than threats of sanctions. Selection process. The level of password strength required depends, among other things, on how easy it is for an attacker to submit multiple guesses. Some systems limit the number of times a user can enter an incorrect password before some delay is imposed or the account is frozen. At the other extreme, some systems make available a specially hashed version of the password, so that anyone can check its validity. When this is done, an attacker can try passwords very rapidly; so much stronger passwords are necessary for reasonable security. (See password cracking and password length equation.) Stricter requirements are also appropriate for accounts with higher privileges, such as root or system administrator accounts. Usability considerations. Password policies are usually a tradeoff between theoretical security and the practicalities of human behavior. For example: A 2010 examination of the password policies of 75 different websites concludes that security only partly explains more stringent policies: monopoly providers of a service, such as government sites, have more stringent policies than sites where consumers have choice (e.g. retail sites and banks). The study concludes that sites with more stringent policies "do not have greater security concerns, they are simply better insulated from the consequences from poor usability." Other approaches are available that are generally considered to be more secure than simple passwords. These include use of a security token or one-time password system, such as S/Key, or multi-factor authentication. However, these systems heighten the tradeoff between security and convenience: according to Shuman Ghosemajumder, these systems all improve security, but come "at the cost of moving the burden to the end user." Enforcing a policy. The more complex a password policy, the harder it may be to enforce, due to user difficulty in remembering or choosing a suitable password. Most companies will require users to familiarize themselves with any password policy, much in the same way a company would require employees to be aware of Health & Safety regulations, or building fire exits, however it is often difficult to ensure that the relevant policies are actually being followed without systems in place that automatically enforce the policy. Many systems, such as Microsoft Windows, require passwords have built-in methods of enforcing the set policy. This is the only reliable way to ensure that the policy is being followed.

credible statement

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11642904

The National Touch League is a national-wide domestic competition for the sport of Touch Football in Australia. The annual four-day competition allows thirteen regional permits from across Australia to compete in twelve divisions including Open, Mixed and Senior categories. The competition is split into a Seniors competition (over-age divisions from over 30s to over 50s) and an Open competition (not restricted by age, other than for the under 20s divisions). Prior to the formation of the NRL Touch Premiership in May 2018, the competition was the pinnacle of Australian domestic touch football, and the primary selection event for national representative teams. Divisions. The 12 divisions contested at the National Touch League from 1997 to 2007 were In 2008 until 2011, under the revised format, these divisions were altered to From 2012 until 2018, the NTL consisted of the following divisions: History. The National Touch League was created to replace the 'Australian Nationals' which featured the seven Australian states. The finals of this competition were traditionally played between Queensland and New South Wales, the two most dominant touch playing states, with the Australian Capital Territory also performing strongly. The National Touch League increased representative opportunities for players from these states, while providing a more level playing field for competitors from the non-rugby league playing states. The first National Touch League was played in 1997. While the format of the competition has had some minor amendments during the past 10 years of competition the stability of the event has led to the development of fierce rivalries between regions. The traditionally strong Touch Football regions have maintained their dominance of the competition. At the time of its introduction the NTL was seen as being a move away from the past and step forward in the future development of Touch in Australia. Each of the 12 permit holders was to represent an equal number of registered players, making for a fairer, more competitive tournament. The playing talent is spread far more evenly and it was to give a larger number of players an opportunity to impress for higher representative honours. The NTL was also to provide the players with an important intermediate competition between local and state or national teams. The NTL was also seen as being a marketing tool that would have significant value as a promotional vehicle. The first NTL opened up merchandising and sponsorship opportunities, and was televised on regional television networks and the Optus Vision cable network. The NTL was also expected to deliver a strong national club structure which would engender regional identity and lead to further grass roots development within the sport. Format and Focus. The competition was initially established to provide wide exposure to the elite competition in open divisions. As the competition evolved between 1997 and 2007 its popularity, especially with senior players, has led to the original focus being broadened to include participation. The 1997 National Touch League was held from on 17–19 October. The divisions contested were Open Men, Women and Mixed and under-20 Men and Women. Most of the 12 permit holders fielded Men's, Women's and Mixed teams. The tournament finals were broadcast on WIN Television, NBN Television and Optus vision while NBN as the host broadcaster also ran 50 television commercials to promote the 1997 event. The 1998 NTL ran from in October. The competition was run as two separate competitions, the Open divisions and the Seniors divisions. This format would persist until 2008. The 2008 NTL saw a significant restructuring with the Open and Senior competition being run concurrently. The Seniors competition was run from the 12th to 14 March 2008, and for the first time in the events history, the Opens competition overlapped the Seniors competition, starting on the 13th and running until 15 March. The under-20s divisions were removed from the Open competition and were held in conjunction with the National 18s competition, to become the Touch Football National Youth Championships held from the 17th to 20 September. They later returned to the NTL. 2010 became the biggest NTL in history, when it was opened up to incumbent NTL permits and regions / minor states in their own rights. In 2012, an Elite 8 division was created for elite touch football players. The division featured eight men's and eight women's teams. The Elite 8 division lasted until 2018, when it was incorporated into the newly launched NRL Touch Premiership. Results for the Open Divisions. Up to and including 2010. Awards. Following each NTL a Player of the Series and a Player of the Final are recognised for each division. This award is chosen by the Australian Selectors and Coaches for each division.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46493906

Google Fi (pronounced ), formerly Project Fi, is a MVNO telecommunications service by Google that provides telephone calls, SMS, and mobile broadband using cellular networks and Wi-Fi. Google Fi uses networks operated by T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular. Google Fi is a service for US residents only, as of late 2019. The service was launched for the Nexus 6, by invitation only, on April 22, 2015. The service was opened to the public on March 7, 2016, and support for additional devices, including the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, was introduced on October 4, 2016. On November 28, 2018, Google rebranded Project Fi as Google Fi and added support for more phones, including iPhones. History. Google Fi was announced exclusively for the Nexus 6 smartphone on April 22, 2015, with support for Sprint and T-Mobile. Due to high demand at launch, the service required that users receive invitations, which were gradually released throughout summer 2015. The invitation system was dropped on March 7, 2016. U.S. Cellular was added on June 8, 2016. Three was added on July 12, 2016. In October 2016, Google added support for the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, and later introduced a Group Plan, letting subscribers add extra members to their plans. On January 17, 2018, Google Fi announced bill protection which caps the charge for data at $60. If the data used is greater than 15GB, then Fi may slow the data speed to 256kbps. The user can avoid the slowdown by paying full price for the data used at $10 per GB. Bill protection also works with group plans, with a maximum charge of $85 for two people, $120 for three people, and $140 for four people. The rate for unlimited calls and texting is not affected by bill protection. Features. Google Fi automatically switches between networks depending on signal strength and speed. It can automatically connect to open Wi-Fi hotspots while securing data with encryption through an automatic VPN. Phone calls will seamlessly transition to a cellular network if Wi-Fi coverage is lost. Google Fi users can use Google Hangouts on any phone, tablet, or computer to call and text. Google Fi also supports VoLTE as part of a staged rollout. A data-only SIM card can be used on supported tablets, smartphones, and car modems (e.g., Volvo). A data-only sim will have access to data, but will not be able to make calls or transmit texts across cellular networks Plans. Monthly plans start at $20 per month and are flat fee–based, paid at the beginning of each monthly billing cycle. All plans include unlimited calls and messaging. Money for unused data is credited back to the user's account, while overuse of data results in a charge of $10 per gigabyte. When outside the United States, cellular phone calls cost $0.20 per minute, data costs the same $10 per gigabyte (i.e. there are no extra data charges outside of the US), and texting is free. Data is free at full speeds between 6GB to 15GB for the duration of the billing cycle with Bill Protection. After 15GB, data continues to be free but will be throttled to unspecified speeds. A data-only SIM card can be used on tablets and other compatible devices, including the 2013 Nexus 7, Nexus 9, and iPad Air 2. The devices must be compatible with the T-Mobile network, and users can add up to 4 data-only SIM cards in one account (before July 2019 the limit was 9 data-only SIM cards in one account). A Group Plan, which allows users, referred to as "managers", to add other people, referred to as "members", to their subscription, costs an additional $15 per user. Group Plans let managers view data usage by member, set data notifications, add monthly allowances, and pause members' data usage. In June 2017, Group Plans were updated to feature "Group Repay", in which Project Fi automatically calculates each of the members' individual shares of the bill and allows for easy payments. Such payments can be a fixed amount, an individual's total usage, or only for data usage above the standard data allotment. Google Fi offers an 'Unlimited' Plan for its users for a flat rate of $70 per month with up to 22GB of high speed data. After 22GB, speeds are throttled to 256kbit/s. On both plans, users can pay an additional $10 per 1GB until their next billing cycle. Fi's 'Unlimited' plan also includes 100 GB of Google One storage at no additional cost. Reception. Nicole Lee of "Engadget" praised the service's plans, writing that "In the course of six months, I've barely touched my monthly 2 GB data allotment and frequently receive money back each month from unused data. I found myself paying a little more than $20 a month for Fi, which is the least I've paid for a cell phone service, ever." Lee liked the service's transition between Wi-Fi and cellular data. JR Raphael of "Computerworld" also praised the pricing strategy and network transitions. Raphael also wrote that "Fi's customer support is [...] actually a pretty good experience", elaborating that "if you need extra help, both interfaces offer the ability to get 24/7 support from a real person via phone or email."

added money

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39281815

Ami Aar Amar Girlfriends is a 2013 Indian Bengali language film directed by Mainak Bhaumik. The story of the film revolves around the friendship of three Bengali girls, and their world. Plot. "Ami Aar Amar Girlfriends" is an out of the bracket tale of about three women, who belong to different spheres of the society professionally. The film showcases them having once in a lifetime trip and sharing their experiences and realizations of life from the dimension in which they have faced it. Previously on numerous occasions audience have witnessed stories friendship and bonding among men onscreen, but this is the first opportunity to take a dive inside women's world and the rhythm of their heartbeat. Theme. The story of the film revolves around friendship of three Bengali girls, an academic counsellor, another a radio jockey. Parno Mittra told about the theme of the movie— "It was a girls' world. Paro-ninda-paro-charcha was our primary activity on the sets, very characteristic of an all-girl-gang. But we would also drag Mainak into our PNPC sessions".

main pastime

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=857927

Yelena Nikolayevna Baturina (; born 8 March 1963) is a Russian billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist, based in London, and was married to Yury Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow (from 1992 to 2010), until his death in 2019. She founded (1991) and for two decades served as president of Inteco, an investment and construction company. Her assets are now invested in Baturina's Investment Group. The Group's commercial activities cover a hotel chain (in Ireland, the Czech Republic and Russia), a membrane construction and engineering enterprise (Germany), a renewable energy project (Greece, Cyprus and Italy), a development project (Cyprus) and investments in a number of real estate investment funds focused on residential and commercial construction and development in Europe and the US. Baturina is the founder of the Be Open foundation. According to "Forbes", with a fortune of $1.2 billion, she was the richest woman in Russia, until Tatyana Bakalchuk overtook her spot in February 2020 with $1.4 billion. Biography. Baturina is a Moscow native who began working as a design-technician at the (where her parents worked) after graduating from high school. She later got a degree, graduating from the Moscow-based S. Ordzhonikidze State University of Management in 1986. Baturina met her future husband, Yury Luzhkov, in 1987 when they were both serving at Mosgorispolkom, a Soviet-era municipal commission. At the period of their co-working the relationships were purely professional. In one of her interviews Baturina remembers: "We never even thought about anything like that when we were working together, it all happened much later". Baturina and Luzhkov married in 1991. The next year he became mayor of Moscow. In 2010 he was dismissed by President Dmitry Medvedev amidst still unproven accusations of corruption and mismanagement voiced on state run television. Yury himself had at one time been tipped to run for president, though he never did. After her husband's dismissal Baturina moved to London. She explains the choice of the city by the fact that her two daughters decided to study in London In November 2010 Luzhkov gave an interview to the Telegraph newspaper stating that the couple was sending their daughters to study in London to protect them from possible persecution from the Russian authorities. He also said that a house had been bought in the west of the city for them and that he and his wife intend to visit them regularly. Luzhkov also claimed that the Russian authorities were planning to break up Baturina's business empire and that the couple would fight the attempt: "We will not give up. My wife will battle for her business and for her honour and self-worth. That is for sure". In September 2009 The Sunday Times erroneously stated that Witanhurst, a large house in Highgate, North London, had been bought by Baturina, via an offshore front company. Baturina sued the papers owners, Times Newspapers, a subsidiary of News International. Times Newspapers apologized for the story and paid damages to her in October 2011. Baturina is one of many "Russian oligarchs" named in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017. The report was "not a sanctions list," the US administration pointed out though. The US Treasury report just listed every senior member of the political administration at the Kremlin, and every wealthy Russian with a net worth of $1 billion or more. So it did not impose any effect on Baturina. Career. Inteco. In 1989 Baturina launched her first enterprise with her elder brother Victor, primarily dealing with computer software and hardware. In 1991 Baturina founded her company, Inteco ("Inteko" (Интеко) in Russian), which focused on construction though it began as a plastics business. In 1994 Inteco purchased a plastic factory. In 1998 the company won the contract for producing 85,000 seats for Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow's largest stadium. The critics claimed that the decision was affected by Luzhkov as Mayor of Moscow, though Inteco stated that their price was 50% less than their nearest competitor's. In the middle of 1990s Inteco entered the construction business focusing on development of advanced materials and technologies for facade work, cement, brick and poured concrete construction, architectural design and real estate business. In 2001 Inteco acquired from a private person the controlling stake in one of the leading house-building factories in Moscow DSK-3. Following modernization the construction plant provided 500,000 square meters of housing per year. This acquisition, according to Baturina's interviews, became the starting point for the company's major construction activity. "DSK-3 is my first real step into construction. I had been viewing the market for a long time. I saw how quickly and dynamically it was developing, how many opportunities it was offering. Still the deal took place sort of accidentally. The lawyers of the former main owner’s widow came to me and said that some unfriendly entities were questioning her property rights and trying to simply rob her of her stake. And the frightened woman had decided to sell all the shares to Inteco on the condition that we defend her rights in court. We have successfully managed that and just like that, almost by accident, became the owners of the plant." At one point Inteco was said to control 20% of construction in the capital. However, according to experts, quoted by media, from 2000 to 2010 of construction activities Inteco's share in the state order was no more than 2%. While the main contractors for the implementation of the Moscow government orders were construction companies MFS-6 (24.5%) Glavmosstroy (20.7%), SU-155 (13.7%) and MSM-5 (12.2%). In 2002 Inteco created a subsidiary "Strategy Construction Company", whose main objective was the construction of monolithic buildings. Such cement plants as "Podgorensky cementnik" and "Oskolcement", one of the largest cement producers in the central Russia, were also bought at that time. In 2005 Inteco sold its cement works for estimated US$800 000 to Eurocement Group in order to consolidate financial and administrative recourses that the company needed for the implementation of perspective construction programs. Shortly Inteco sold DSK-3, a producer of prefabricated buildings, as well and fully concentrated on the construction of monolithic housing and commercial real estate. Part of the proceeds from the sale of these assets were directed by Baturina to buying some high-yield "blue chips" of the largest Russian companies such as Gazprom and Sberbank. This step allowed the visionary businesswoman to later sell the shares in the crisis year of 2009 at a significant profit and return Inteco's earlier business development bank loans ahead of schedule, which allowed to keep the businesses afloat. The interest rate on loans at that time sprang up from 10.8 to 18 percent, which led to the ruin of a significant number of Russian developers. At the same time, as part of a new cement project, Inteco purchased Verkhnebakansky Cement Plant and the Atakaytsement cement factory located in the Krasnodar region. As of 2007, the company owned such entities as Inteko Plast (55%), Bistro Plast (50%), construction firms SK DSK-3 (100%), Styre (100%), Inteco CENTER (100%), Inteco Chess (Elista, 100%), Intekostroy (70%). The company also owned enterprises in the city of Sochi - Park (100%), The Matrix (100%), Sochi AO (75.58%), Horizont (50%), Selectioner (Belgorod region., 100%) and Uspensky Agromashplast (Moscow reg., Uspensky, 38%). Inteco Group also included Russian Zemelny Bank and trading house Moscow River involved in the supply of grain. In 2007, the company's revenue, according to its own data, amounted to $1 billion. At the end of 2008, along with Gazprom and Russian Railways, Inteco was included into the list of 295 strategic enterprises of the country. In 2009, the company begins cooperating with an outstanding Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill as part of the programme aimed at creating fundamentally new systems for mass housing in Russia. In 2010 Inteco launched the construction of the second academic building for the Moscow State University named after Lomonosov. In 2010, Baturina was named one of the largest taxpayers in Russia, the taxes to the state budget for 2009 amounted to 4 billion rubles. As of 2009, 99% of the company is owned by Baturina, 1% is on the balance sheet of the Company itself. The project development portfolio is more than 7,000,000 square meters, the cement capacities exceed 0.6 million tons per year. At the end of 2010 Baturina sold its Russian Zemelny Bank (RZB) to foreign investors. The most significant completed projects of Inteco in Moscow (in the period of company Baturina's ownership) are: the residential quarter "Shuvalov" (270,000 square meters), the residential quarter "Grand Park" (400,000 square meters), the residential site "Volga" (400,000 square meters), the multifunctional complex "Fusion Park" with the "Autoville" - museum of unique cars from private collections (100,000 square meters), the Fundamental Library (60,000 square feet), and the academic building for Humanities (100,000 square meters) of the Moscow State University. After her husband's resignation Baturina starts selling her assets in Russia. The best offer was filed by Mikail Shishkhanov and Sberbank Investments. They bought the 95% and 5% shares of Inteco correspondingly. The exact amount of the transaction was never disclosed, but the report of Sberbank stated that according to the experts that participated in the preparation of the deal, the market value of Inteco, its projects and structures was around 1.2 billion dollars. The deal did not include the cement plants of Inteco. One of them was later sold to Lev Kvetnoy for estimated 17 billion rubles. Hotel business. The first development in the new hotel chain was the five-star Grand Tirolia Golf & Ski Resort, located in the heart of the Eichenheim golf club in Kitzbühel, Austria. Construction, which was completed in 2009, cost in the region of €35-40 million. The hotel is located in the center of the golf club Eichenheim, together they make Grand Tirolia Golf & Ski Resort. In 2009 the hotel achieved honorary status as the "Home of Laureus" in Austria, and became the official venue for the annual ceremony of the prestigious international award that those in the field call the "Oscar" of sports journalism. In 2018 the hotel was sold to the Austrian investor, presumably for €45 million. In 2010, Baturina opened the New Peterhof Hotel in Saint Petersburg, which received a number of architectural awards. In 2012, following major reconstruction work, Baturina opened the Quisisana Palace in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Housed in a late 19th century building, the hotel combines elements of Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Gothic styles. The restoration of the historic building required significant investment. The hotel is a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World association. In 2013 Baturina opened the Morrison Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. She bought it from NAMA in early 2012 for €22 million. The 138-room hotel on Dublin's Lower Ormond Quay has undergone a €7 million refurbishment. Morrison Hotel, Dublin. Acquired in March 2012 for €20 million, fully refurbished in 2013 for €7 million. 7 more rooms added in 2015 with an additional investment of €1.25 million. Currently, the hotel has 145 rooms, 5 conference rooms, a gym, two restaurants and a bar. Reopened on 1 February 2013, under the DoubleTree by Hilton franchise. The hotel is in the top 10% of Hilton properties annually, according to Hilton Quality Assessments. The hotel employs 118 people. Grand Tirolia Hotel and Resort, Kitzbühel. The first development in the hotel chain, located in the heart of the Eichenheim golf club in Kitzbühel, Austria. Its construction was completed in 2009. The hotel has 82 rooms of 9 categories, a spa with an outdoor pool, meeting rooms and conferences halls. In 2015, Grand Tirolia was named the best golf hotel in Austria, Golf Club Eichenheim - the best golf course in Austria. World Golf Awards was awarded to it in 2014 and 2015. In 2018 the hotel was sold to the Austrian investor. Quisisana Palace, Karlovy Vary. Quisisana Palace is a restored 19th-century building turned boutique hotel with 19 guest rooms and suites, a restaurant and a wellness centre. It opened in September 2012. Quisisana was awarded Hotel of the Year 2014 by Czech Hotels Awards, and is a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World Association. The hotel employs 22 people. New Peterhof, St. Petersburg. New Peterhof Hotel opened in June 2010 and has 150 rooms, 2 restaurants, 7 meeting rooms, and a spa. The hotel welcomes more than 15 thousand guests annually and employs 98 people. Baturina has announced her intentions to the press to continue to expand her hotel chain. "In the future, we think of making up hotel clusters in those regions where we are already present. These are Ireland - United Kingdom, Northern Italy - Austria - Germany, the Baltic States - Russia - Kazakhstan," Baturina said in her interview to "Sobesednik". Development business. In late 2015, Baturina launched a development business in New York with an initial investment of US$10 million. The first set of commercial buildings she acquired is located in central Brooklyn, the third largest business centre of the city after Lower and Midtown Manhattan. The company is considering transferring the land they are located on to a category suitable for residential construction, so that a large-scale development project can be realised. In November 2016 Baturina's structures launched a construction and development project in Europe. Her company acquired a land plot on the coastline in a primary area of Limassol, Cyprus, intended for constructing high-end residential properties. The overall investment into the project will amount to EUR 40 million, and the completion of the construction is planned for 2021. Membrane Construction. In Autumn 2015, Baturina's structures became a strategic investor of Hightex GmbH, a global membrane construction company based in Rimsting, Germany, having acquired 75% of the company. Her involvement gave the project the necessary impetus to restructure its operations and future development. 25% of the company belongs to its founder Klaus-Michael Koch, one of the pioneers of membrane construction. Hightex is a systems engineering company, which designs, fabricates and installs large area, light weight membrane roofs and façades worldwide, including cable and retractable systems. The membranes are typically used in roofs and façades for sporting stadiums and arenas, airport terminals, train stations, shopping malls and other buildings. In April 2017 Hightex announced the launch of two new international projects in Qatar and the US. Hightex will be responsible for the membrane construction of the roof and façade of the Al Bayt Stadium in Qatar. A total of 200,000 square meters of the stadium's roof and façade will be covered in a lightweight membrane structure. In the US, Hightex has been commissioned to install the membrane elements for the "Canopy of Peace" a landmark in New Orleans. Renewable energy. Since 2014 Baturina's Investment Group has been developing a project to generate, use and market renewable energy in Europe. The venture is responsible for the construction and commercial operation of solar parks in the south and south-east of Europe. The total investment into the project by Baturina's structures could reach €20 million in the coming year. Currently the company owns solar parks in the south of Italy and in Greece. The next acquisitions under consideration are in Greece and Cyprus. The company is developing a subproject that consists in applying the technology that allows saving the energy obtained from renewable sources, which constitutes a whole new system of wise energy consumption. Another trend within the energy project is constructing and servicing individual solar parks located mostly on the roofs of enterprises – the consumers of energy. In 2018 Baturina's enterprise has launched the first ESCO (Energy Services Company) project in Cyprus. The project consists in energy-consumption optimization at a client enterprise or a production. All the necessary technological decisions have been designed by Baturina's company in partnership with Cyprus company Energy & Beyond, the affiliated enterprise of GDL Green Energy Group. The first project realised will be the optimization of energy consumption at one of the largest manufacturers of meat in Cyprus, Paradisiotis Ltd. In 2019 the number of investments into the alternative energy sector and into the energy-efficiency increase will reach €40 million. Veedern Group. In 1999 Baturina became chairman of the Equestrian Federation of Russia, and in 2000 acquired the "Veedern" estate in the Suvorovka village of the Kaliningrad Region. Here she planned to revive two-centuries old traditions of horse breeding of the Trakehner horses. In 2011 the retired Yury Luzhkov took up the management of the estate. He conducted reconstruction of the historical buildings, launched a few innovative cattle-breeding and agricultural projects. Today the estate breeds, trains, rents and sells Hanoverian and Trakehner horses. Brother. In 2007 Viktor Baturin, Baturina's brother, with whom she founded Inteco, sued Inteco for US$120 million for wrongful dismissal. Allegations of Criminal Links. According to secret cables published by WikiLeaks, the US ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, reported allegations that Baturina had links to major criminal groups, particularly Solntsevskaya Bratva. The full text of the cable makes clear that Mr Beyrle is simply repeating gossip and allegations conveyed to him by journalist Sergei Kanev. Beyrle writes, 'Kanev told us that Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, definitely has links to the criminal world, and particularly to the Solntsevo criminal group'. Beyrle stated that her husband Yury Luzhkov sat on top of a "pyramid of corruption". "Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behaviour," wrote Beyrle. "Analysts identify a three-tiered structure in Moscow's criminal world. Luzhkov is at the top. The FSB, MVD and militia are at the second level. Finally ordinary criminals and corrupt inspectors are at the lowest level." Beyrle also suggested that much of Luzhkov's business empire had been acquired using municipal finances to invest in "less than transparent" projects with former Soviet republics. The couple denied the accusations as "total rubbish". Personal wealth. In February 2020, Forbes announced that Baturina's position as the richest woman in Russia was overtaken by Tatyana Bakalchuk, the founder of Wildberries, with a net worth of $1.4 billion. In the 2019 ranking of The World's Billionaires, Baturina with $1,2 billion remains for the 14th consecutive year the richest woman of Russia. In the 2018 ranking of The World's Billionaires, published by "Forbes" on 6 March, Baturina with $1,2 billion was for the 13th consecutive year the richest woman of Russia, and the only Russian female billionaire. Baturina is also the only independent self-made woman entrepreneur in the construction section of the Forbes list; she is number 55 of 56 self-made women billionaires who have built their fortune from scratch. Altogether there are 227 women on the list, over 75% of them have inherited their wealth from family. According to Forbes, Baturina's net worth was US$4.2 billion in 2008, up from US$3.1 billion in 2007, US$2.3 billion in 2006 and US$1.1 billion in 2004. According to magazine Finans, her wealth fell during the credit crunch to just US$1 billion in February 2009, causing her to ask the Russian government for a bailout for Inteko. Her wealth, as of 2012, was listed as US$1.1 billion. Baturina has a diverse portfolio. She owns hotels in the Black Sea tourist resort of Sochi, a hotel in Dublin through a private foundation in Austria, other hotels in Austria and the Czech Republic, over 72,000 hectares of agricultural land in the Belgorod Oblast, and also a factory that produces a million cans of sweetened condensed milk each year. But now all the assets except for the hotel in Dublin are no longer associated with Baturina. 2013 - 98th place, and $1.1 billion, still the richest business woman in the country. In 2013 the Sunday Times included Baturina into the annual Sunday Times Rich List, the list of the wealthiest people in Britain. The Russian entrepreneur took the 122nd 12th in the women list. Afterwards a few British journalists pointed out that if you discount the number of women who made the list due to "family wealth" (which they may have contributed towards to a greater or lesser degree), inheritance or divorce — the first self-made female richlister is Baturina. "Money is like cement in construction. Money is not a goal but a means to reach the goal, the opportunity to do the things you want to do. The more money I have, the more large scale tasks I can solve. But I think you will agree that not everyone who owns a lot of money ever sets himself any tasks". Honours and awards. Baturina won the State Prize of the Russian Federation for Science and Technology in 2003. Inteco and its projects have won numerous awards and competitions, including: the "Russian Building Olympus" prize for "Architecture and Design Planning" (2008); "Brand of the Year/EFFIE 2007"; national prize for "Construction and Real Estate" (2008); International Star of Leadership award for quality at the 13th Business Initiative Directions (BID) international convention (Paris, 2009), "Company of the Year" national prize for business for "The Best Investment and Construction Company in Russia in 2009" (2009); International Award for Technology & Quality (Madrid, 2010); International Construction Award (France, 2011). In 2015 due to her public activity Baturina was selected an international ambassador for the WE-Women social initiative set up during the World EXPO in Milan. As an ambassador Baturina spoke of the need of state and public support for women balancing family and professional responsibilities. Community involvement. In 2006, Baturina was appointed Deputy Head for the inter-ministerial group under the national project "Affordable and Comfortable Housing for Russian citizens." Baturina was the only representative of the construction industry in the group. In connection to the project Inteco formed a special commission that was inspecting various regions in Russia in order to evaluate the state of the local construction enterprises, to determine the demand for construction materials and to collect demographic and sociological data. As a result, the commission developed the concept of the federal target program "Development of the construction industry". Later on, the Government of the Russian Federation based its "Strategy of development of building materials industry up to 2020" on that program. In 2010, Baturina became one of the first business leaders to provide support to the victims of fires in the Tula region. Among other projects, Inteco also fully sponsored a construction of a nursery school. In addition, Baturina addressed the leaders of other construction companies in Russia and urged them to follow the example. Support of sport. Golf. Inteco has sponsored Russian Open Golf Championship, one of the stages of the PGA European Tour, as well as provided assistance to members of the Russian junior team during their participation in international competitions. In addition, Baturina supported charity golf tournament for the Russian Federation President Cup and «Rotary Golf World Championship» in Kitzbühel, Austria. Equestrian sport. From 1999 to 2005, Baturina served as President of the Equestrian Federation of Russia. During this period, the Federation began arranging international competitions for young sportsmen, formed teams of riders of respective age categories that were qualified for participation in the European championships. In Moscow the Federation held multiple competitions, including the Moscow Mayor Cup, one of the stages of the World Cup. Baturina succeeded in raising funds for developing equestrian sport in Russia to the sufficient level for such competition. The sponsoring was directed not only to support adult tournaments, but to the development of youth and junior sports schools as well. Many equestrian sport bases underwent reconstruction, too. Arts and culture. "Russian seasons" in Europe. The first "Russian Season" organized by Baturina took place in Kitzbühel, Austria in 2008 - that was a celebration of Russian Orthodox Christmas with classical Russian musicians and Russian folklore ensembles. The following "Russian Seasons" were held not only in Austria but in several other European countries. Jazza Nova. Baturina organised the international music festival Jazza Nova in Kitzbühel, which featured headliners such as Stevie Wonder and Carlos Santana, Liquid Soul and Brazzaville, "Turetsky Choir", Sergey Zhilin, etc. Entry was free of charge by invitation, which were distributed through public and charity foundations. "Noosphere". Baturina is the founder of the charity foundation "Noosphere" designed to support education and to promote tolerance in society. It provides training courses, information and leisure centers, grant and scholarship programs. The "Noosphere" foundation is the initiator and one of the main organizers of the educational festival "Team of Tolerance" in Moscow. Noosphere implements an astronomic initiative 'Discovery within a Week' in London in cooperation with the Mayor's Fund for London. Housing charity. Baturina initiated a charity project called "Revival of Russian tradition of collective house construction". This project was to bring together business organizations, individuals and administrative workers in various regions of Russia in order to address the housing needs of people in dire need of better housing conditions. Within that project Inteco presented flats to a number of families in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don and Saint Petersburg. BE OPEN Foundation. In the recent years, Baturina has been realizing most of her philanthropic initiatives through the BE OPEN Foundation she set up in 2012. It is a cultural and social initiative which aims to become a bridge between the great minds of our time – philosophers, sociologists, designers, architects, artists, publishers, writers, businessmen and opinion leaders – and the promising new minds of the next generation through a system of conferences, competitions, exhibitions, master classes and art events.<ref name="At Design Miami/Basel, the new Be Open think tank focused on design schools: Inside the Academy was the second edition of an initiative which fosters creativity and innovation. "></ref> BE OPEN has been actively cooperating with the world renown designers, international brands, educational and cultural institutions, and state bodies in various countries of the world. Among them: the Government of India, Mayor of London and Greater London Authority, the Municipality of Milan and the EXPO Universal Exposition, and many others. BE OPEN is currently working in close partnership with the Mayor's Fund for London, the Mayor's Office and GLA on a London youth employment programme titled "Creativity Works" and being a Lead Partner in the London Curriculum for Primary Schools programme. Elena Baturina served as a trustee for the Mayor's Fund for London from 2017 to 2019. In 2017 a City Pitch project was launched by Mayor's Fund for London in partnership with BE OPEN – the programme gives young Londoners an opportunity to plan and launch a social action project, whilst helping them to develop their leadership, project management and communication skills. In 2018, in partnership with  SBID (Society of British and International Design) BE OPEN held a national student competition named 'Designed for Business'  It was the first collaboration across the UK universities, and its aim was to specifically connect the students with their potential employers. Hundreds of students from 93 universities submitted their works to one of five categories: Product Design; Art & Design; Fashion; Interior Design and Interior Decoration. The entries were judged by a panel of top names from the creative industries including key representatives from companies including Sebastian Conran Associates, Amazon UK, Christie's Education, John Lewis, Amara, HG Designworks and VitrA, as well as creative educators from a number of leading universities. The student awards ceremony was held on 29 November 2018 in the Members' Dining Room at the House of Commons, London. The overall winner got the life-changing £30,000 provided by Elena Baturina, the category winners received £1,000 each. Maggie’s Centres. Mrs Baturina is a member of Maggie's London Board which is responsible for the coordination of all Maggie's fundraising activity in London. Maggie's Centres provides emotional and practical support to anyone with cancer and their family and friends through 18 Centres throughout the UK. Reported association with Hunter Biden. In 2020, in the midst of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign against challenger Joe Biden, two committees of the majority-Republican US Senate jointly released a report which stated that Hunter Biden had received 3.5 million dollars from Baturina. Baturina had wired that money in 2014 as payment for a "consultancy agreement" to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, which is a consortium combining the Massachusetts-based Thornton Group and the investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners; the latter was co-founded by Hunter Biden and others in 2009. The consortium's current connection with Hunter Biden is not clear. Personal life. In 1991 Baturina married Yury Luzhkov. In 1992 their first daughter, Elena, was born, followed in 1994 by Olga. In November 2010 Luzhkov gave an interview to the "Telegraph" newspaper stating that the couple were sending their daughters to study in London to protect them from possible persecution by the Russian authorities. It is understood that the family owns a home in the affluent Kensington area of London, purchased in 2013 through an offshore company domiciled in Gibraltar. The property, near Holland Park, was reported in 2018 to be worth at least £25 million. In her interviews Baturina often said that she and Luzhkov were very lucky, as they still loved each other. She enjoys cooking his favourite dish, borscht, and claims that a traditional "Soviet upbringing" made a good housewife of her. Baturina has an older brother, Viktor Baturin, who is also a businessman. In 2007 Viktor Baturin tried to sue his sister's company Inteco for US$120 million for wrongful dismissal, but lost the case. Baturina has had no contacts with her brother since a public conflict on business issues that occurred in 2007 and resulted in mutual lawsuits, that later were settled. She is involved in a libel case against a former financial director for her brother. After failing to appear before a court in December 2019, the court declared Baturina a "fugitive". The subpoena was rescinded in late January by Elista City Court. Allegedly, the subpoena was issued under instruction from the A1 investment company as part of its financial claim to Elena Baturina. Hobbies and interests. Baturina enjoys horseriding, and has invested significant money into equestrian sport in Russia. She owns the "Veedern" horse breeding estate founded in the 18th century. After a major reconstruction the estate is now successfully breeding Hanoverian and Trakehner horses. Baturina has said: "You should put a man on a horse to see how he will behave in a team: will he become a leader or not, will he be a dictator or is he ready to compromise. Generally it is easier for men to handle horses. They have a strong hand and they can easily stop the animal. For example, Luzhkov can handle any horse". Baturina also enjoys mountain skiing, and it was the main reason for her setting up the first hotel of her chain in Tyrol. She is also fond of golf which she plays together with her husband. She claims to own one of the largest private collections of Russian Imperial porcelain, preferring the porcelain of the era of Nicholay I. In April 2011, Yelena Baturina donated about 40 pieces of art – a part of her collection of rare porcelain – to the "Tsaritsyno" museum in Moscow.

total funding

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1101651

Lithops is a genus of succulent plants in the ice plant family, Aizoaceae. Members of the genus are native to southern Africa. The name is derived from the Ancient Greek words (), meaning "stone," and (), meaning "face," referring to the stone-like appearance of the plants. They avoid being eaten by blending in with surrounding rocks and are often known as pebble plants or living stones. The formation of the name from the Ancient Greek "-ops" means that even a single plant is called a Lithops. Description. Individual "Lithops" plants consist of one or more pairs of bulbous, almost fused leaves opposite to each other and hardly any stem. The slit between the leaves contains the meristem and produces flowers and new leaves. The leaves of "Lithops" are mostly buried below the surface of the soil, with a partially or completely translucent top surface known as a leaf window which allows light to enter the interior of the leaves for photosynthesis. During winter a new leaf pair, or occasionally more than one, grows inside the existing fused leaf pair. In spring the old leaf pair parts to reveal the new leaves and the old leaves will then dry up. "Lithops" leaves may shrink and disappear below ground level during drought. Lithops in habitat almost never have more than one leaf pair per head, presumably as an adaptation to the arid environment. Yellow or white flowers emerge from the fissure between the leaves after the new leaf pair has fully matured, one per leaf pair. This is usually in autumn, but can be before the summer solstice in "L. pseudotruncatella" and after the winter solstice in "L. optica". The flowers are often sweetly scented. The most startling adaptation of "Lithops" is the colouring of the leaves. The leaves are fenestrated, and the epidermal windows are patterned in various shades of cream, grey, and brown, with darker windowed areas, dots, and red lines, according to species and local conditions. The markings function as remarkable camouflage for the plant in its typical stone-like environment. As is typical of a window plant, the green tissue lines the inside of the leaves and is covered with translucent tissue beneath the epidermal windows. "Lithops" are obligate outcrossers and require pollination from a separate plant. Like most mesembs, Lithops fruit is a dry capsule that opens when it becomes wet; some seeds may be ejected by falling raindrops, and the capsule re-closes when it dries out. Capsules may also sometimes detach and be distributed intact, or may disintegrate after several years. Distribution. "Lithops" occur naturally across wide areas of Namibia and South Africa, as well as small bordering areas in Botswana and possibly Angola, from sea level to high mountains. Nearly a thousand individual populations are documented, each covering just a small area of dry grassland, veld, or bare rocky ground. Different "Lithops" species are preferentially found in particular environments, usually restricted to a particular type of rock. "Lithops" have not naturalised outside this region. Rainfall in "Lithops" habitats ranges from approximately 700 mm/year to near zero. Rainfall patterns range from exclusively summer rain to exclusively winter rain, with a few species relying almost entirely on dew formation for moisture. Temperatures are usually hot in summer and cool to cold in winter, but one species is found right at the coast with very moderate temperatures year round. Cultivation. "Lithops" are popular house plants and many specialist succulent growers maintain collections. Seeds and plants are widely available in shops and over the Internet. They are relatively easy to grow if given sufficient sun and a suitable well-drained soil. Normal treatment in mild temperate climates is to keep them completely dry during winter, watering only when the old leaves have dried up and been replaced by a new leaf pair. Watering continues through autumn when the plants flower and then stopped for winter. The best results are obtained with additional heat such as a greenhouse. In hotter climates "Lithops" will have a summer dormancy when they should be kept mostly dry, and they may require some water in winter. In tropical climates, "Lithops" can be grown primarily in winter with a long summer dormancy. In all conditions, "Lithops" will be most active and need most water during autumn and each species will flower at approximately the same time. "Lithops" thrive best in a coarse, well-drained substrate. Any soil that retains too much water will cause the plants to burst their skins as they over-expand. Plants grown in strong light will develop hard strongly coloured skins which are resistant to damage and rot, although persistent overwatering will still be fatal. Excessive heat will kill potted plants as they cannot cool themselves by transpiration and rely on staying buried in cool soil below the surface. Commercial growers mix a mild fungicide or weak strength horticultural sulfur into the plant's water to prevent rotting. Lithops are sensitive to watering during hot weather, which can cause the plants to rot; in habitat the plants are often dormant when the temperatures are high, doing most of their growing during the cool months of the year. Low light levels will make the plants highly susceptible to rotting and fungal infection. In the United Kingdom the following species have gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit:- Propagation. Propagation of "Lithops" is by seed or cuttings. Cuttings can only be used to produce new plants after a plant has naturally divided to form multiple heads, so most propagation is by seed. "Lithops" can readily be pollinated by hand if two separate clones of a species flower at the same time, and seed will be ripe about 9 months later. Seed is easy to germinate, but the seedlings are small and vulnerable for the first year or two, and will not flower until at least two or three years old. History. The first scientific description of a "Lithops" was made by botanist and artist William John Burchell, explorer of South Africa, although he called it "Mesembryanthemum turbiniforme". In 1811 he accidentally found a specimen when picking up from the ground a "curiously shaped pebble". Unfortunately his description is not detailed enough to be sure which "Lithops" he had discovered and the name "Lithops turbiniformis" is no longer used, although for many years it was applied to what is now known as "Lithops hookeri". Several more "Lithops" were published as "Mesembryanthemum" species until in 1922 N E Brown started to split up the overly large genus on the basis of the capsules. The genus "Lithops" was created and dozens more species were published in the following decades. Brown, Gustav Schwantes, Kurt Dinter, Gert Nel, and Louisa Bolus continued to document "Lithops" from across southern Africa, but there was little consensus on the relationships between them, or even which populations should be grouped as species. As recently as the 1950s, the genus was little known in cultivation and not well understood taxonomically. In the 1950s, Desmond and Naureen Cole began to study "Lithops". They eventually visited nearly all habitat populations and collected samples from approximately 400, identifying them with the Cole numbers which have been used ever since and distributing Cole numbered seed around the world. They studied and revised the genus, in 1988 publishing a definitive book (Lithops: Flowering Stones) describing the species, subspecies, and varieties which have been accepted ever since. Because their camouflage is so effective, new species continue to be discovered, sometimes in remote regions of Namibia and South Africa, and sometimes in well-populated areas where they simply had been overlooked for generations. Recent discoveries include "L. coleorum" in 1994, "L. hermetica" in 2000, and "L. amicorum" in 2006. Taxonomy. Many of the species listed have named subspecies or varieties and some have many regional forms identified by old names or habitat locations. Identification of species is primarily by flower colour and leaf patterns.

at least one duo

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61272761

The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards. Some American citizens were also wrongfully detained. The United States has a history of detaining migrants from Central America since the 1970s under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, with boat migrations from the Caribbean resulting in detentions from the 1980s onwards, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Since the 2000s, prosecutions of migrants who illegally crossed the border became a priority under the presidency of George W. Bush and the presidency of Barack Obama. The Trump administration took a harsher approach than previous administrations regarding migrant detentions, by allowing no exemptions for detention unlike the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Background. Statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) showed that the number of migrants detained at the United States-Mexico border in 2017's financial year was around 300,000, the lowest number since 1971. In 2018's financial year the number was around 400,000. From the financial years of 2000 to 2008, the number was always higher than 600,000, with the highest being in 2000's financial year, with over 1.6 million migrants detained. From the financial years of 2009 to 2018, the number was always lower than 600,000. Reasons for migrants to enter the United States include escaping violence and poverty in their country. The responsibility for long-term detention of migrants falls under the purview of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not CBP. Improper entry into the United States can result in a federal jail sentence of up to 180 days. Repeat offenders can be jailed up to two years, with extra years added if such a migrant has previous criminal convictions. At the time of the Trump administration, the state of immigration laws of the United States gives the executive branch significant leeway to decide which immigrants can be detained or released pending their hearings. History of immigration to the United States. The United States has been described by many as a "nation of immigrants", but has not always treated immigrants well historically: for example, from 1790 to 1952, American law restricted naturalization to white immigrants. Around the 1910s (with the occurrence of World War I), Ellis Island, formerly an immigration conduit for migrants arriving by sea, became a detention and deportation center for migrants. Immigration from Mexico was nearly unrestricted in the United States until the late 1920s. Despite American nativist and xenophobic sentiments since the 1880s that Mexicans were of an inferior race, the need for labor temporarily trumped that sentiment. In 1929, the United States passed Section 1325 of Title 8 of the United States Code, that made crossing the U.S.-Mexican border without authorization a federal crime. Also, 1929's stock market crash and increasing unemployment led to "repatriation drives" by local and federal officials, active campaigns and raids through the 1930s by Americans that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants being deported, even if many (and their children) were by that time American citizens or had entered the U.S. legally. The post-World War II Bracero Program of 1944 to 1964 allowed for legal immigration from Mexico as laborers, but resulted in an increase in illegal immigration. As such, 1954's Operation Wetback to deport millions of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico was enacted, with periodic deportation drives continuing in the years ahead. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 resulted in the establishment of a quota for immigration to the U.S. from the Western Hemisphere, which resulted in an increase in illegal immigration from Mexico. Expanding agricultural and service sectors in the United States spurred even higher illegal immigration from Mexico and other countries of the Western Hemisphere in the 1980s and 1990s. Trump administration actions. In January 2017, Trump declared that 11 million immigrants in the United States would be targeted for detentions and deportation, including legal migrants who had previously committed a crime but not been arrested. In January 2019, Trump made 8 claims in 12 days that human traffickers transport women across the Mexico-U.S. border by putting them in vehicles and taping their mouths. He said that this was a common scenario, but experts attested no knowledge of such matters occurring. There have also been no news reports of such matters. After Trump made these claims, Border Patrol leadership asked their agents to speedily provide "any information" on Trump's claims. Also in January 2019, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders falsely stated that CBP had apprehended almost 4,000 known or suspected terrorists "that came across our southern border." 3,755 known or suspected terrorists were indeed apprehended in the fiscal year of 2017, but this included those who entered from airports and seaports (the majority of those apprehended were at airports). NBC News reported that from October 2017 to March 2018, the Trump administration only apprehended 41 known or suspected terrorists at the southern border, of which 35 were American citizens or lawful permanent residents. In 2017, the State Department had reported that there is "no credible evidence terrorist groups sent operatives via Mexico into the United States". Questioned on Sanders' false claims, Vice President Mike Pence said that "3,000 special interest individuals, people with suspicious backgrounds that might suggest terrorist connections were apprehended at our southern border". Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made a similar claim. However, special interest aliens refer to people coming from a country that has produced terrorists – special interest aliens not necessarily suspected terrorists themselves. In February 2019, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, attributing it to an influx of migrants who would commit criminal activities in the United States. Maria Sacchetti of the "Washington Post" responded that in that month, more than 60% of the immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal history. In June 2019, the United States Senate passed 84–8 a bipartisan bill providing around $4.6 billion of funds, including $1.1 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to improve facilities and care for migrants, and around $2.9 billion for United States Department of Health and Human Services to improve conditions for migrant children in their case. Also that month, the United States House of Representatives passed 305–102 the same version of the bill as the Senate, despite objections from Democrats wanting more protections for migrant children and more means to ensure accountability for the funds. Comparison with past administrations. Professor Kevin Johnson, writing in the "Santa Clara Law Review" in 2017, described that defenders of the Trump administration's immigration policies have claimed that the policies were a continuation of the previous administration's policies under Barack Obama. Johnson refuted this by asserting that the Trump administration's policies "differ in important respects" from the Obama administration's. Immigration policies under Obama featured both "tough enforcement" and some "generosity". Trump has employed "systematic efforts to dramatically escalate immigration enforcement", while his administration has reduced or possibly removed "more generous treatment of immigrants subject to possible removal from the United States". Professor Johnson and Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor wrote for "Wake Forest Law Review" in May 2019 that the Trump administration's immigration policies are "tougher" than that of previous administrations under "any modern president". While the Reagan and Obama administrations employed detention of migrants, the Trump administration had mandatory detention, and "no previous administration resorted to the separation of families as a device to deter migration from Central America". Rebecca Torres, published in 2018's "Gender, Place & Culture", described that the Trump administration is "the most anti-refugee" and anti-immigrant administration "in recent U.S. history", with an increase in immigrant detentions and "unprecedented" actions taken against refugees and immigrants. It followed the Obama administration, which had featured a record number of deportations, as well as policies aimed at deterring Latin Americans from moving to the United States. Robert Farley, Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson of "Factcheck.org" responded to an April 2018 claim by President Trump that there were "ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release". They wrote that Trump's claim "distorts the facts". There were no laws instituted to mandate the practice of catch and release (which releases some migrants into the United States pending their immigration hearings, instead of detaining them), however, it was indeed a policy under previous administrations, due to exemptions to detention granted to certain children, families and asylum seekers. Under the Clinton administration in 1997, the legal case of the Flores Settlement Agreement resulted in the policy that unaccompanied migrant minors can only be detained for a maximum of 20 days before release. Under the Obama administration in 2015, a federal judge ruled that families with minors must be released as soon as possible. Additionally, migrants applying for asylum may also be released from detention under "humanitarian parole". However, other than these exemptions, the George W. Bush administration instituted a policy in 2006 that all other illegal immigrants crossing the border are to be detained until deportation, which was also continued under the Obama administration. As covered by D'Angelo Gore of "Factcheck.org" in May 2018, President Trump falsely claimed that family separations with adult detentions were because of "bad laws that the Democrats gave us." In fact, it was Trump's own administration who that month instituted the policy of zero tolerance resulting in family separations, because the George W. Bush and Obama administrations detained families together. Gore noted that in 2008, George W. Bush, a Republican president, signed a bipartisan bill, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, mandating that unaccompanied migrant minors must be passed to American relatives or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, but this law does not mandate family separations, as the migrant parents are not required to be detained when their children are released. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear of "The New York Times" wrote in June 2018 that the two administrations before Trump's, which were those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, did not "embrace" detaining migrant families separately, unlike the Trump administration. George W. Bush's administration had in 2005 implemented Operation Streamline in parts of Texas, which would imprison and prosecute all illegal immigrants entering the country, with an eye for quick deportations. However, they also wrote that the George W. Bush administration "generally" allowed exemptions for children, families with minor children, as well as ill migrants. The Obama administration at one point reenacted Operation Streamline, but without prioritizing first-time illegal immigrants, and it detained families together in administrative detention, not criminal detention. Miriam Valverde of Politifact assessed in November 2018 that Trump had falsely claimed that the Trump administration "had the exact same policy as the Obama administration" for family separations with adult prosecutions. There was no such policy under the Obama administration, whereas the Trump administration had the zero tolerance policy resulting in family separations. Although there were indeed some family separations under the Obama administration, Valvarde wrote that they were "relatively rare and nowhere near the scale under the Trump administration". Judith Greene, stated in 2018's "Social Justice" that the Trump administration was no longer implementing "national detention standards" established in 2000 (under the Clinton administration) and improved upon by the Obama administration. Jenna Loyd and Alison Mountz, writing in March 2019 for the "NACLA Report on the Americas", state that the United States has "the world's largest system of deterrence, detention, and deportation", and that the Trump administration's immigration policies have "roots" leading back to the 1970s. The Carter administration detained migrants from Haiti in jails, while the Reagan administration "cemented and expanded" such methods to boat migrations arising from the Caribbean (including Cuba), a policy which remained even into the Trump administration. The Clinton administration held Haitian migrants seeking asylum in tents at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Under the administration of George H. W. Bush, migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador were given Temporary Protected Status, but under the Trump administration, such statuses were revoked for Haitians and people of other countries. Furthermore, the Trump administration has taken extra steps in attempting to remove processes for legal asylum claims via changing procedures of the Executive Office of Immigration Review. Bea Bischoff of "Slate" wrote in June 2019 that "many of the current immigration enforcement actions that are receiving criticism under Trump were in place during the Obama administration." However, Bischoff wrote that the Trump administration's "policy changes and focus" on maximum deportations exacerbated the problem and resulted in "all-out chaos". Leandra H. Hernández and Sarah De Los Santos Upton, in a July 2019 article for "Frontiers in Communication", state that immigrants in the United States face "an ever more dismal horizon of rightlessness": the "immigration violation excesses" of the George W. Bush administration was continued by more "aggressive" border enforcement under the Obama administration, culminating in the Trump administration's detainment of children, family separations, and sexual abuses of migrant women and children. Ricciardelli et al., writing for "Critical Social Work" in July 2019, describe that the Obama administration already "heightened" the usage of detention and deportations for migrants, but then the Trump administration took it to a "considerably" higher level. Funding. On July 29, 2018, it was reported that the pension funds of Scotland’s public service workers managed by finance firms, GEO Group and CoreCivic held at least £138 million in investment firms backing the detention centres. Upon this being known it was heavily criticised. Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats said that: "The managers of these funds must think extremely carefully about who they hand their money to. Pension provision should not come at the expense of a system of abuse". Dave Watson, head of policy and public affairs at the Unison union, said: "Scottish local government pension funds need to do more to support ethical investment than bland policy statements. They need to look harder at where the money is going, including pooled that can mask bad practice. The workers who contribute to their pension funds expect their hard-earned contributions to be invested responsibly, in line with the values they live and work by." The Geo Group and Corecivic had previously donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee. The GEO Group is currently being sued for alleged use of forced labour. On August 27, 2019, it was announced that the government would move $271 million in funds from the Department of Homeland Security to pay for migrant detention and courts. This decision was criticsed by U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard who said in a statement that: "Once again, DHS has ignored the negotiated agreement with Congress by vastly exceeding the amount appropriated for immigration enforcement and removal operations". House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi also criticised it, saying that: "Stealing from appropriated funds is always unacceptable, but to pick the pockets of disaster relief funding in order to fund an appalling, inhumane family incarceration plan is staggering – and to do so on the eve of hurricane season is stunningly reckless". In 2019 Congress appropriated $2.8 billion to pay for 52,000 beds. Family separations. The Trump administration has separately detained migrant families, with adults being separated into criminal detention for prosecution, while the children were treated as unaccompanied alien minors. On May 5, 2019, the Trump administration officially began a "zero tolerance" policy towards illegal immigration, declaring that it would detain and prosecute every illegal immigrant, in contrast to a common previous practice (catch and release) of releasing migrants into the country while their immigration cases were processed. On June 20, 2019, President Trump issued an executive order that migrant families should be detained together; at that time, families were only supposed to be detained for a maximum of 20 days. Legal cases. In April 2018, a lawsuit was filed by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law which alleged that migrant children detained at Texas' Shiloh Treatment Center were forcibly medicated with several psychotropic drugs. In July 2018, a federal judge from the United States District Court for the Central District of California refused the Trump administration's request to change the Flores settlement and extend the allowed detention time of migrant children from 20 days to indefinite. In June 2019, Trump administration official Sarah Fabian argued (in an appeal to a July 2017 verdict) that the "Flores agreement" mandating "safe and sanitary" conditions for detained migrant children was "vague" and it was not compulsory for the government to provide toothbrushes, soap or adequate bedding to them. Deaths. From December 2018 to July 2019, at least six child migrants have died while being detained by the Trump administration. Facilities. Cecilia Ayón, writing for "Race and Social Problems", stated that the 2018 family separation policy, followed by the 2018 executive order to detain families together, "occurred on the heels of a booming growth in private detention facilities." For the financial year of 2017, two businesses (CoreCivic and GEO Group) that collectively operate more than half of private prison contracts (including immigration detention facilities) collected revenues of over $4 billion. David Rubenstein and Pratheepan Gulasekam, writing for the "Stanford Law Review Online" in March 2019, depict the Trump administration as dramatically increasing privatized immigration detention "beyond its already inflated level". Already, most immigrants in the United States are detained in privately-owned facilities, with the private detention industry being worth billions of dollars. Conditions. Government reports. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General carried out spot-checks of migrant detention centers from June 26 to 28, 2018. It published a report in September 2018, which was publicized in October 2018. It reported that CBP "in many instances" was violating federal guidelines by detaining migrant children for over 72 hours before passing them to the Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. Instead, the children were left for up to 25 days in facilities "not designed to hold people for long periods of time." At the facilities checked, 237 of 855 migrant children (28%) who were unaccompanied when entering the United States had been detained for periods of time over the federal limit. Furthermore, according to CBP data, during the period where the Trump administration zero tolerance policy was officially active (May 5, 2018 to June 20, 2018), there were 861 migrant children separated from their families from the Rio Grande Valley sector and the El Paso sector (around 40%) who had been detained for over 72 hours. The Office of Inspector General reported that this figure could be lower than the actual number because CBP used days of entry and exit for its time calculations, not specific hours. The Office of Inspector General's September 2018 report additionally stated that despite the Trump administration's encouragement for migrants to enter the United States through ports of entry, the flow of crossing at the ports of entry were regulated to a slow rate. As a result, this created backlogs of people waiting at the ports of entry, and "likely resulted in additional illegal border crossings" according to the report. Regarding the conditions that unaccompanied migrant children had been detained, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released another report in September 2018 detailing that during their spot-checks from June 26 to 28, 2018, the facilities visited by them were in compliance with federal standards for food, water and hygiene, with "the exception of inconsistent cleanliness of the hold rooms". Although these were not mandatory, three of nine facilities visited had "trained medical staff", while four of nine facilities visited had shower facilities. In May 2019, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released a report finding "dangerous overcrowding" at the El Paso Del Norte Processing center, where up to 900 migrants had been detained. The official capacity of the center is 125. The report stated: "Border Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had been held in standing-room-only conditions for days or weeks", and with "limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks". Many cells reportedly smelled of "what might have been unwashed bodies/body odour, urine, untreated diarrhea, and/or soiled clothing/diapers", while some detainees had to stand on the toilets in the cells "to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets". 66% of detainees at the center during the May 7, 2019 inspection had been there for more than 72 hours. Also in July 2019, the Office of Inspector General continued to find "dangerous overcrowding" at migrant detention facilities, after inspecting such facilities at Rio Grande Valley in June 2019. Some adults were housed in standing-room conditions for a week. The Office of Inspector General also reported "prolonged detention of children and adults". Of the roughly 8,000 migrants, there were around 3,400 (42%) being detained longer than the 72 hours CBP guideline for detention. With 2,669 children detained, 826 (31%) were detained longer than the 72 hours guideline. Some of the facilities also violated CBP standards by not granting children access to showers or hot meals. Due to overcrowding, CBP could not meet their standards of providing a shower for adults after 72 hours: "most single adults had not had a shower in CBP custody despite several being held for as long as a month". Additionally, "most single adults" were not given any change of clothing despite prolonged detention. Another violation of CBP standards occurred when "many single adults" were only fed bologna sandwiches for meals, resulting in some requiring medical assistance. Visits to facilities. On June 17, 2018, human rights advocates and journalists toured an old warehouse where hundreds of children were being kept in wire cages. The Associated Press reported that the children had no books or toys, overhead lighting was kept on around the clock, and the children were sleeping under foil sheets. There was no adult supervision and the older children were caring for the toddlers. As part of those visiting the facility, a ProPublica reporter recorded the crying of some of the children that were being kept in one of the cages. On June 18, as reporters waited for a briefing by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, ProPublica posted the recording of crying children begging for their parents just after being separated from them, which the reporters listened to as they waited for her to speak. Nielsen arrived and spoke, blaming Congress for the administration's policy of separating parents from their children and saying that there would be no change in policy until Congress rewrote the nation's immigration laws. At one point during the briefing, a "New York" magazine reporter played the tape. Nielsen refused to answer any questions about the material in the tape, such as "How is this not child abuse?" On June 22, 2018, First Lady Melania Trump visited a migrant detention facility for minors aged 12–17 in McAllen, Texas. She said that she "was very impressed with the center and the hardworking staff and leadership there", with the minors being "in good spirits". She called for Congress to pass "immigration reform that secures our borders and keeps families together". Trump drew media attention and speculation from the press because when she boarded the plane for Texas she wore a jacket with the graffiti-style wording "I really don't care Do U?" on the back of her jacket. In July 2018, United States Representative Salud Carbajal, an immigrant himself, visited a migrant detention facility for migrant children in Tornillo, Texas. Carbajal said that a "basic level of care" was being provided, but it was still "basically violating their human rights", being woken at 5 a.m. each day, having less than 5 minutes to shower, and less than 10 to 15 minutes of recreation once or twice a day. In June 2019, a legal team inspected (per the "Flores settlement") a facility in Clint, Texas, (near El Paso) where 250 infant, child and teenage migrants were detained. The lawyers accused the government of neglecting and mistreating the young migrants. The relatively older minors had to take care of the younger ones. The children said they were not fed fruits or vegetables and had not bathed or changed their clothes in weeks. The children were "essentially being warehoused, as many as 300 children in a cell, with almost no adult supervision." The children were "malnourished", there were outbreaks of flu and lice, and "children sleeping on the floor". Professor Warren Binford of the Willamette University was one of the inspectors. She declared that in her years of inspections, this was "the worst conditions" she had ever seen. She also said that the children at Clint were claiming asylum. In response to the situation at Clint, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declared: "our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis." Also that month, Dolly Lucio Sevier, a board-certified doctor, visited the largest CBP detention center in the United States, the Ursula facility in McAllen, Texas which held migrant minors. Her visit came after a flu outbreak at the facility that resulted in five infants requiring to enter a neonatal intensive care unit. Sevier wrote that a medical declaration that the "conditions within which [the migrant minors] are held could be compared to torture facilities ... extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food." All of the 39 children she assessed showed signs of trauma. Under federal law, the migrant minors were supposed to be detained for a maximum of 72 hours. At both the facilities in Clint and McAllen, many children said that they had been detained for three weeks or more. On July 1, 2019, several Democratic congressmen visited migrant detention centers in Texas, in a tour organized by Border Patrol agents at 48 hours' notice, and gave comments afterwards. Representative Marc Veasey said Border Patrol "went out of their way to show us facilities that were mostly empty", but the migrant detainees inside "described being deprived of daily showers and certain other rights". Representative Madeleine Dean labelled the situation as "a human rights crisis": 15 "women in their 50s- 60s sleeping in a small concrete cell, no running water. Weeks without showers. All of them separated from their families". Representative Lori Trahan said she saw women "sobbing in a crowded cell because they were separated from their kids." Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Judy Chu and Joaquin Castro alleged that Border Patrol had told detained migrant women to drink out of a toilet for water. Castro also said that he had met between 15 and 20 mothers who had been detained for more than 50 days, some of whom had been separated from their children. Representative Joe Kennedy III said that Border Patrol had been uncooperative, attempting to confiscate the congressmen's phones, and blocking the taking of pictures and videos. Activists who had gathered at the facility chanted support for President Donald Trump and directed racist comments towards Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim. On July 12, 2019, a group of Republican congressmen visited a migrant detention centers in Texas along with Vice President Mike Pence. Senator Lindsey Graham was one of those who made the visit. Graham said that he saw 900 illegal immigrants in a facility meant for 385, resulting in an extra tent being put up. Graham elaborated that this was "not a concentration camp" but "a facility overwhelmed". He praised Border Patrol officers as "brave men and women who are doing an incredible job". On July 13, 2019, another group of Democratic lawmakers visited migrant detention centers in McAllen, Texas, including a detention center that Vice President Pence had just visited the day before. Representative Jim McGovern tweeted that the migrants had not showered in 40 days, were sleeping on concrete with the lights on, and some migrants said they had not been given enough food. Representative Jackie Speier said that she saw parents with young children, "many of them listless, many were sick ... They had this kind of vacant look on their faces." Speier released photos of her tour; the Representatives had been allowed to bring their phones with them. Representative Annie Kuster said that she saw detained adult men "jammed into cells so that they couldn't even lay down". Kuster also stated some men "have not washed in 40 days, they have not brushed their teeth". Kuster described detained migrants having various illnesses: skin conditions, flu and meningitis. With the lights in the facility being always on, Kuster said that the migrants "don't know the difference between day or night". Photos and videos. In June 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection released photos of detained migrant children in a Texas immigration facility. Also that month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released photos (that showed no migrants) of a tent city for teenage boys in Tornillo, Texas. Aerial photos taken by Reuters that month of the Tornillo tent city showed migrants walking in a line through the city. In May 2019, Reuters took photos (from a helicopter) of makeshift camps for migrants by the Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas. The photos showed the migrants using reflective blankets as makeshift awnings for shade, migrants "sleeping in a shaded area of a parking lot and crowded around a military tent." Cases of American citizens detained. American citizens have been detained on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. In March 2019, Customs and Border Protection detained an American brother-and-sister minors while they were travelling to school from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Ysidro, San Diego in the U.S. The 9-year old girl was detained for 32 hours while CBP were processing her identification. CBP accused the girl of having "provided inconsistent information during her inspection". According to the girl, CBP personnel said that she did not look like the person in her passport picture, and accused her of really being her cousin. According to their mother, officers threatened the 14-year old brother with charges of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and made him sign a document alleging that the girl was really his cousin. The boy said he did sign the document so that he could see his sister again. The Mexican consulate assisted in arranging the release of the siblings. In June 2019, an 18-year old American male was detained after CBP stopped a group consisting of himself, his brothers and his friends at a checkpoint in Falfurrias, Texas. The teenager's family said that he had given CBP personnel his Texas state identification, a copy of his birth certificate, and his social security card, but that CBP had rejected all of them. As a result, the teenager was detained for 23 days. He said that he was kept together with 60 other people, had no access to showers, tooth brushing, beds, calls to his family or a calls to a lawyer. He also stated he lost 26 pounds as a result of the detention. The teenager's 17-year old brother, an illegal immigrant, was also detained, but voluntarily deported himself so that he could inform his family about the situation. The teenager is suing the government for the incident. Reactions. The Trump administration. President Donald Trump. On July 3, 2019, President Donald Trump declared that U.S. Border Patrol was doing a "great job": "Many of these illegals aliens are living far better now than where they came from, and in far safer conditions ... If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!" On July 7, 2019, Trump said that detained migrants "are very happy with what's going on because, relatively speaking, they're in much better shape right now" than compared to the "unbelievable poverty" in their home countries. On July 14, 2019, Trump wrote that a McAllen, Texas facility visited by Vice President Mike Pence had "adult single men areas were clean but crowded – also loaded up with a big percentage of criminals". Trump cited no evidence to back up his claim. Journalist Josh Dawsey of "The Washington Post", who had visited the facility at the same time as Pence, responded to Trump that the detained men "hadn't showered in many days" and that the "stench was horrific". Vice President Mike Pence. Vice President Mike Pence argued in June 2019 that while the Trump administration believes that while soap and toothbrushes should be provided for migrant children, "it's all a part of the appropriations process", and "Congress needs to provide additional support". On July 12, 2019, Pence visited first a migrant detention facility for families and children in Donna, Texas, and second a migrant detention facility for single adults in McAllen, Texas. Pence described that at the Donna facility, "excellent care [was] being provided" to migrant families and children. At the McAllen facility, 384 adult men were caged together. The federal agent in charge of the facility said that many of the men had not bathed in 10 to 20 days, and that some of the men had been held for over 30 days. Agents at the facility wore face masks. A journalist on the same visit said that the "stench was overwhelming". Pence reacted: "I was not surprised by what I saw ... This is tough stuff." Pence later criticized media outlet CNN for focusing on the worse conditions at the McAllen facility, compared to the better conditions of the Donna facility. Pence also said that "allegations of heartless mistreatment by Customs and Border Protection" were false and "slanderous". Pence also accused "many" of the men in the McAllen facility as having multiple arrests. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In May 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared: "If you don't want your child separated, then don't bring them across the border illegally." On June 5, 2018, Sessions claimed that detained migrant children "are being well taken care of". He also stated that these children would be passed over from detention to Health and Human Services "within 72 hours". On June 21, 2018, Sessions claimed that the Trump administration "never really intended to" separate families while the parents are detained, despite that being an effect Sessions previously acknowledged would occur when the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy was implemented. Other officials. Matthew Albence, a senior official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified to Congress in July 2018 that migrant detention centers for families were like "summer camp": "24/7 food and water ... educational opportunities ... recreational opportunities ... exercise classes". Kevin McAleenan, the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in March 2019 that there was a "border security and a humanitarian crisis" at the Mexico-U.S. border. By July 2019, McAleenan had become the Acting Homeland Security Secretary. He said that funding provided by Congress in June 2019 "meets immediate acute needs at the border and has already improved conditions for children". International reactions. Experts of the United Nations' Human Rights Council in June 2018 criticized that the Trump administration was detaining child migrants "as a deterrent to irregular migration", stating that detaining children "severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture". Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, said in June 2018 that regarding the detention of migrants in the United States, "pictures of children being held in what appear to be cages are deeply disturbing", and that the United Kingdom disagreed with such actions. The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, was in July 2019 "deeply shocked" at the conditions that the migrant children were reported to have been subjected to, with concerns about overcrowding, food, sleep, hygiene and healthcare. On 9 November 2020, the United States faced a review at the UN’s Human Rights Council session of 3.5 hours, citing the unexplained detentions of migrant children and the killings of unarmed Black people, during the Trump administration’s tenure, among other main issues. Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia and China were among the countries that questioned and scrutinised the United States’ record on human rights. Academic sources. Mary Grace Antonym, writing for the "Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies", interviewed former volunteers at migrant family detention centers and analysed news reports from July 2017 to August 2017. Antonym concluded that "moral disengagement" had a key role "rationalising detention", with detained migrants being ultimately perceived as "little more than monetary units". During the study, Antonym also noted that the Trump administration was attempting to increase total migrant detention facility capacity to 80,000. Mónica Verea, writing for "Norteamérica" in December 2018, stated that the Trump administration had "considerably" increased the numbers of "non-criminal undocumented migrants" detained. Han Seunghan and Choi Hyunkyung wrote in 2018 for a Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference that detentions and family separations are "traumatizing events" for child and young adult migrants, which may cause them to have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Susan Schmidt, writing for "Social Work" in January 2019, stated that the Trump administration's treatment of migrant children at the Mexico-U.S. border violated the standards for American children passed by Congress and Trump in the Family First Prevention Services Act of February 2018. Schmidt argued that the Trump administration's lack of priority in reunifying child migrants with their parents resulted in more "trauma" being inflicted. David Hernández, writing for "NACLA Report on the Americas", wrote in May 2019 that "migrant detention is a punitive incarceration system rife with lawful forms of corruption." Detention corporations engage in unregistered lobbying, including through the American Legislative Exchange Council. They have also donated to Trump's inauguration fund, hired a former leader of the Trump inauguration committee, and moved their annual conference from their own facility to a Trump resort. Kevin Johnson and Rose Cuison-Villazor wrote for "Wake Forest Law Review" in May 2019 that the President Trump's changing policies on migrant detention "struggled to establish a policy that goes to the legal limits". The administration's tough approach to immigration with mandatory detention ignored that "the vast majority" of families putting bonds to be released while waiting for hearings eventually did return to attend their hearings. Johnson and Cuison-Villazor argue that the Trump administration had alternatives to mandatory detentions, with the possibility of "catch and release" for non-flight risks and non-dangerous migrants, or even ankle bracelets for tracking. Emily Ryo, in 2019's "Annual Review of Law and Social Science", credited the "media storm" over 2018's Trump administration family separation policy resulted in "unprecedented public awareness about immigration detention" in the United States. "Concentration camp" label controversy. Historian Waitman Wade Beorn declared in "The Washington Post" in June 2018 that the detention centers for migrant children were concentration camps. Beorn specializes in Holocaust and genocide studies, according to the Post, and he is the author of "Marching into Darkness", a history of the German army's role in the Holocaust. Beorn wrote that the best historical comparison for these detention centers was the Camp de Rivesaltes, a French concentration camp operated from 1939 through 1967, and then from 1985 to 2007. At various points in time, the camp hosted Spanish refugees, Jewish refugees, prisoners-of-war, Algerians, and other migrants. To explain this comparison, Beorn stated that the Camp de Rivesaltes was "a temporary, insufficiently conceived facility designed to prevent foreigners from entering the country", and "officials have no real plan" with how to handle the migrants, just like the American detention centers. As reported by "Newsweek" in June 2019, several other academics also labelled the migrant detention centers as concentration camps. These include American studies professor Rachel Ida Buff of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, sociology professor Richard Lachmann of the University at Albany, and also Amy Simon, the Michigan State University chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History. A different view was proposed by history professor Jay Geller of the Case Western Reserve University, who instead labelled the migrant detention centers as internment camps. Meanwhile, history professor Anika Walke of the Washington University in St. Louis rejected the notion that the term of "concentration camp" can only be restricted to the case of Nazi concentration camps. Wayfair. In mid-June 2019, Wayfair employees learned that an order for about $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture was placed by the global nonprofit BCFS Health and Human Services, which operates migrant facilities for the Department of Health and Human Services. In a letter sent to senior management on June 21, 2019, more than 500 Wayfair employees demanded that the company "cease to do business with BCFS and establish a code of ethics that empowers employees 'to act in accordance with our core values.'" In further protest, employees staged a walkout on June 26, 2019 at the company's headquarters in Boston. The protesters called for the company to donate all profits made from the sale of the furniture to RAICES, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to immigrants. Those profits total $86,000, according to the Twitter account wayfairwalkout The protest received praise from American congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who described the walkout as "what solidarity looks like". Niraj Shah, the CEO of Wayfair, generated additional controversy after he rejected the demands and donated to the Red Cross, which doesn't provide support to migrants detained at the border. Airlines. In June 2018, US airlines spoke out against the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy that resulted in the separation of migrant children from their families. American Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines all asked the federal government not to use their planes to transport migrant children after they're taken from their parents. Walmart. In June 2018, Walmart also became embroiled when one of its former Brownsville, Texas, locations was turned into a shelter last year. “We’re really disturbed by how our former store is being used,” the company said. “When we sold the building in 2016 we had no idea it’d be used for this.”

corrupt behavior

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33081036

Red List Building Materials contain chemicals that have been designated as harmful to living creatures, including humans, or the environment. There are many "Red Lists" that have been developed specifically for building materials. These lists have primarily been developed by green building rating system developers and architecture firms. They are typically developed from chemical hazard lists published by government agencies, such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), European Union Commission on Environment (European Commissioner for the Environment), and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. Living Building Challenge Red List. The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) has developed the following red list of chemicals that may not be included in materials used in construction that seeks to meet the criteria of the Living Building Challenge (LBC). According to ILFI, the list is composed of materials that should be phased out of production due to health concerns. The list is updated as new science emerges. The most recent update came in May 2014. The LBC red list is shown directly below. This list includes both chemicals and chemical groups. In 2014, ILFI published a spreadsheet that represents the full list of chemicals, as this spreadsheet expands these chemical groups into the individual chemicals of which they are composed. As of May 2014, this spreadsheet contained 815 individual chemicals. In addition to this red list, LBC criteria mandate that petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides cannot be used during the certification period or be used in operations and maintenance. The Red List and the Living Building Challenge The Living Building Challenge includes seven performance categories, titled as petals. The red list falls under the materials petal. A building project may not contain any of the Red List chemicals or chemical groups. There is an exception for small components in complex products. Each of these exceptions must include a written explanation. These exceptions will only be approved with a copy of the letter sent to the manufacturer stating that the product purchase does not ensure an endorsement. In addition, the final documentation must include a statement that asks the manufacturer to stop using the red list material or chemical. There are also temporary red list exceptions for numerous red list items for which viable alternatives are not yet commercially available. Declare Product Label Declare is a product labeling program that relies on the LBC Red List as its primary basis for material evaluation. In creating a Declare label for a product, a manufacturer must disclose all of that product's intentionally added constituent chemicals to the designated 100 parts per million (ppm) reporting threshold. Additionally, the manufacturer must report the extent to which that product is compliant with the Red List. The three compliance levels are: (1) LBC Red List free, which means that the product is free of all red list ingredients; (2) LBC compliant, which means that the product contains some chemicals that ILFI has designated as temporary red list exceptions; or (3) declared, which means that the product is not compliant with the Red List or its temporary exceptions. Products with Declare labels are included in the ILFI's Declare Product Database. A project compliant with the Living Building Challenge must include at least one Declare product for every 500 m2 (5382 ft2) of gross building area and must send Declare program information to at least 10 manufacturers not yet using Declare. Other Building Industry Red Lists. Several other entities in the building industry have developed chemical red lists that operate in a similar manner to the LBC Red List. Three of them are described below. Cradle to Cradle Banned Chemicals List. The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII) is a non-profit group that develops and administers the Cradle-to-Cradle Certified Product Standard. This multi-attribute standard evaluates a product's performance in five impact categories: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness. In this product standard, the material health evaluation criteria include compliance with a banned chemical list for bronze level certification. Certified products may not contain listed chemicals as intentionally added ingredients above 1000 ppm. According to C2CPII, chemicals are selected for inclusion on the list due to their tendency to accumulate in the biosphere and lead to irreversible negative human health effects. Additionally, several substances were selected due to the hazards associated with their manufacture, use, and disposal. Perkins and Will Transparency List. The Perkins and Will Transparency List includes substances commonly found in the built environment that regulatory entities have classified as being harmful to human and/or environmental health. Because these regulatory designations are constantly evolving, the list is updated as new information is published. The tool is fundamentally grounded in the concept of the Precautionary Principle. LEED Pilot Credit 11: Chemical Avoidance in Building Materials. In 2011, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) piloted a credit for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system that intended to reduce the quantity of indoor contaminants that are harmful to the comfort and well-being of installers and occupants. This pilot credit, which was not included in LEED Version 4, required that specific interior building materials and products not contain listed chemicals for all applicable materials. The list includes halogenated flame retardants and phthalates.

edifice segment

2974-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35046700

A by-election for the Hougang Single Member Constituency in Singapore was held on 26 May 2012 because of the expulsion of Yaw Shin Leong from the Workers' Party of Singapore on 15 February 2012, which he decided not to appeal. On 22 February 2012, the Speaker Michael Palmer declared the seat vacant, effective from the date of expulsion, as required by the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore. This was the 16th by-election since the first election, and the first by-election after over 19 years since 1992. This was the first by-election in Singapore since the new millennium and the 21st Century. Nomination day was held on 16 May 2012, while polling day was on 26 May 2012. 23,368 people were eligible to vote. WP's candidate Png Eng Huat was declare candidate-elect with 62.08% of valid votes cast. Background. This by-election was the result of the expulsion of Yaw Shin Leong, Member of Parliament (MP) for Hougang Single Member Constituency, from the Workers' Party of Singapore (WP). This caused Yaw to lose his responsibility as the WP treasurer. Under Article 46(2)(b) of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, an MP's Parliamentary seat falls vacant if the MP is expelled from the party under whose banner he or she stood for election. The last MP to have been expelled from his party was Chiam See Tong, who was ousted from the Singapore Democratic Party in 1993 (but reinstated in December the same year after a ruling by the High Court). At a media conference on 15 February 2012, the Workers' Party announced the expulsion of Yaw. According to the party chairman Sylvia Lim, she said that Yaw has been accused of several indiscretions in his private life while being asked many times to come forward and explain himself to the party but he did not do so, resulting in him committing a party misconduct and lost faith, trust and expectations of the party and the residents of the Hougang SMC. The announcement came after weeks of speculation and rumours that Yaw had an alleged extramarital affair with a fellow party member. Within 30 minutes of 20:37, news reports detailed the mixed reactions among Hougang residents to Yaw Shin Leong's expulsion, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's comment that there is no fixed time within which a by-election must be called, and People's Action Party Chairman Khaw Boon Wan's quote that Hougang voters have been misled by the WP. On 17 February 2012, the Clerk of the Parliament gave Yaw ten days to reply to the expulsion, but two days later, he wrote a letter that he chose not to appeal against the party's decision; the Speaker Michael Palmer, then announced the vacancy of the seat as of the date of the expulsion. In the days following the announcement, a war of words ensued between Aljunied GRC MP Low Thia Khiang, former MP Ho Kah Leong and government press secretary Foo Kok Jwee in the letters columns of the "Lianhe Zaobao" and "The Straits Times" over the degree to which the situation compared to the last by-election in 1992 and whether or not the expulsion of Yaw was an "abuse of the democratic system" to save the party's integrity. Commentator Eugene Tan, assistant professor of law at the Singapore Management University School of Law, discussed how the Parliamentary Elections Act applied to the situation. Tan stated that although it was the President who issued the writ for election, it was the Prime Minister who advised on the matter, and that it was thus Lee who effectively controlled the election date. Tan argued that although the Constitution did not impose a timeframe within which a by-election had to be held, it was not the intent that this should allow elections to be postponed indefinitely. The fact that the Constitution is silent on exactly when by-elections should be called should not be taken as permission not to call them at all. "In short," he wrote, "the 'default' position should be that a by-election should be automatic, although there is no hard and fast rule on the timing." Tan also opined that the Workers' Party should field as its candidate in the by-election someone not already in Parliament, rather than a Non-constituency MP. Chee Soon Juan, Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party, stated that it was his party's "primary concern that Hougang remains in the hands of the opposition", declaring that it would therefore not field a candidate that would split the vote. Other WP MPs had been covering Yaw's former duties in Hougang SMC. Mr Tan argued that this state of affairs should not continue for the projected remaining term of the current Parliament of four and a half years. "[...] the cardinal principle of representation is crucial: A stand-in MP is not the same as an MP for whom the majority had voted. Not calling a by-election would undermine the importance of representation in our maturing parliamentary democracy", he wrote. Confirmation of by-election. On 9 May 2012, President Tony Tan Keng Yam issued a writ of election for the electoral division of Hougang. Nominations were held on 16 May at Serangoon Junior College and polls are conducted on 26 May. Candidates. On 10 May 2012, the PAP announced in a press conference that Desmond Choo would be their candidate. This is the second time Choo is contesting in the Hougang ward. Later, at about 4 pm, the WP announced in a press conference that Png Eng Huat would be the candidate; Png previously contested for the East Coast Group Representation Constituency in the 2011 general elections. Two other potential candidates had originally also signalled their intent to run, having collected their political donation certificates, a prerequisite for contesting. They were Poh Lee Guan, a WP member who eventually dropped out by not submitting his nomination papers; and Zeng Guoyan, an independent candidate who filed his nomination papers but was disqualified for having a public offence on police record. In July 2012, Poh was expelled by WP for his actions, as he had not consulted the party council prior to collecting the certificates. Results. At 10.30pm (SGT), results were announced by Returning Officer Yam Ah Mee at Holy Innocents' High School where WP's Png retained Hougang SMC with 62.08% of the valid votes, beating PAP's Choo with 37.92%.

important standard

14849-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37773622

In 2014, China ranked 37th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's Gender Inequality Index (GII). Among the GII components, China's maternal mortality ratio was 32 out of 100,000 live births. In education 58.7 percent of women age 25 and older had completed secondary education, while the counterpart statistic for men was 71.9 percent. Women's labour power participation rate was 63.9 percent (compared to 78.3 percent for men), and women held 23.6 percent of seats in the National People's Congress.However, in 2019, China ranked 106 out of the 153 countries surveyed this year. Before the 1949 revolution. Before the 1949 Maoist revolution, women were generally restricted to the traditional gender roles of wives, concubines, or prostitutes. Female oppression stemmed partly from Confucian beliefs about gender roles in society (such as filial piety), ideas which remain influential. Wives were expected to be subservient to their husbands, kowtowing to their husbands. Concubines had less choice than married women, and were kept as mistresses by men for sexual services or to produce children. Prostitution frequently resulted from women being sold into brothels by their parents. Legal during the Qing Dynasty, there were few laws regulating prostitution; as a result, prostitutes were similar to slaves and lacked legal rights. Marriage was defined loosely and encompassed wives, concubines, and slaves. Men were free to pursue sex from women in any of these three categories of "extended family". Women were prohibited from having sex with family slaves, a crime punishable by decapitation. Men were frequently polygamous (allowed one wife and an unlimited number of concubines), but women were permitted only one husband. This relationship between men and women in the household illustrated the power held by men in the family and their greater freedom compared with women. Women, for example, would generally lose social standing due to an extramarital affair. However, Qing laws punished both parties equally for premarital sex. Foot binding. A noted repressive practice was foot binding. Foot binding originated during the Song Dynasty, and was practiced by the wealthiest members of society in the 11th century. Over time, the practice increased and spread to the peasantry. Foot binding was intended to differentiate between upper and lower classes; it was considered attractive, with bound feet known as "golden lotuses". It aimed to limit the growth of girls' feet, and began at age three. Foot binding eventually resulted in the arch of the foot becoming so angled that a woman was in constant pain and had limited ability to walk. Foot binding subordinated women to men in a number of respects. It was an essential component of marriage eligibility, since women often bound their feet to increase their chance of finding a better marriage partner. Men used foot binding to force women to be dependent; due to pain associated with walking, women were limited to household activities. Women with bound feet had considerable difficulty carrying out simple tasks (such as standing up from a chair without assistance) and a lower functional reach than women with normal feet. Foot binding encouraged the sexual objectification of women, since it fulfilled men's sexual desires and fantasies. It reinforced the ideology that women were useful only in sexualized, sedentary roles to satisfy men's desires. Foot binding was such an established part of Chinese culture that the Emperor K'ang Hsi was unable to suppress the practice in 1650. Widespread anti-foot binding sentiment began during the late 19th century, and gained in popularity until the practice was outlawed in 1912. In 1997, the feet of 38 percent of Beijing women over 80 years of age and 18 percent of women aged 70–79 were deformed by foot binding. Women's education. The purpose of women's education was to reinforce their subordinate status and ensure that they obeyed rules made by men. Women were taught social norms which restricted their rights and behavior. Only middle-class and wealthier women would receive an education, indicating a family's superiority. Women were educated at home by teachers who followed social norms. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, four books were used for women's education: "Nü sishu" (including "Nüjie") by Ban Zhao, "Nü lunyu" by Song Ruoxin, "Nüxun" by Empress Renxiao, and "Nüfan jielu" by Ms. Liu. These books reinforced norms which harmed women and restricted their daily activities. The three obediences and four virtues which were adopted by many women are part of "Nüjie". The three obediences were "obey father before marriage", "obey husband during marriage" and "obey sons during widowhood", illustrating the subordination of women to men throughout their lives. The four virtues were "female virtues", "female words", "female appearance" and "female work", designed to fulfill the needs of men and society. Women's desires and needs were trivialized, and education became a tool to maintain male control of women. A woman's personality was also restricted by this education. Women were taught to be weak and subordinate, respecting the men who dominated them. The physical differences between men and women as well were emphasized; men were seen as yang, and women were seen as yin. Yin and yang are the opposite of each other, and women were not allowed to physically interact with men outside of marriage. Women (as yin) were considered a negative element, reinforcing their inferior status, and were sometimes forbidden from leaving their room to demonstrate their loyalty. Obedience to men and elder relatives was the essential element of women's education. Women were powerless to resist, since society would not accept women who challenged men. As a socializing agent, women's education played an important role in shaping their image and maintaining their subordinate status for many dynasties. Mao era. During the planned-economy era of (1949-1978, also known as the Mao Zedong era), the Communist Party sought to make Chinese women legally and socially equal to men. The Communist government attempted to challenge Confucian beliefs, and one of its main goals was to improve the social position of women by promoting their entry into the labour force. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which was enacted in 1954, stated that women and men should have equal rights. To promote gender equality, the Communist Party promoted the slogan "Women hold up half the sky" to illustrate the importance of women to China's economic success. The party and the government implemented policies ensuring equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for men and women. In practice, however, wage inequality still existed during this era due to occupational and industrial segregation by gender. Enterprises typically divided their jobs into two groups (primary and secondary); men were more likely to be given primary jobs, and women secondary jobs. While women were entering the labour market, they were still expected to look after their homes and families. As a result, women were said to bear "a double burden" of work during the Mao era. State feminism. State feminism refers to the state's support of women's equality in the public and work sectors through legislation, often progressive state laws to ensure gender equality. This state-supported feminism promoted employment opportunities for women in the public sector and provided benefits such as maternity leave and day care to female workers. State feminism also enforced laws prohibiting polygamy, the buying and selling of women, arranged marriage and prostitution. Yang stated in her article, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference", that state feminism during the Mao era liberated "women from the traditional kinship patriarchy, but although women were catapulted into the public sphere of labour and politics, the feminist agenda was forgotten with the decline of gender salience and women's transformation into state subjects in a new masculine state order". According to Lisa Rofel, an American anthropologist studying feminism and gender studies, "The status of unfortunate widows (and their daughters) of poor families changed dramatically from 'broken shoes' to 'labour models' after 1949". Although state feminism provided some legal protection to women, it did not achieve gender equality. Gail Hershatter agreed: "The communist revolution didn't change the work women did. Women had always worked. What the revolution changed is the work environment and the social interpretation of working outside of familial context." Post-Mao era. Economic reforms and labour market. Changing employment policy was a major part of China's reforms after the Mao era. Under Mao China formed the Tong Bao Tong Pei employment system, a centralised system which created government-guaranteed jobs. Due to widespread unemployment after the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party and the government phased out guaranteed employment and reformed the employment system as part of larger economic changes. Reform took place in three stages. During the first stage (1978–1991), the existing framework was adapted: maintaining planned employment as the primary form of employment and adding a two-track system permitting government and private-sector employment. In the second stage (1992–2001), additional reforms continued to promote the market-oriented employment system while maintaining a degree of planned employment. In the third stage (after 2001), the reform process was accelerated to generate a market-oriented employment system in which private-sector employment was primary. Market reforms took China away from central economic planning and towards a system based on capitalist market mechanisms. Although women gained significantly greater opportunities for work under the economic reform, they have borne a disproportionate share of its costs. China's market-oriented economic reforms undermined workplace gender equality by using migrant women as a cheap, flexible labour force. Migrant women make up a large proportion of factory workers, maids, and domestic workers, jobs which are prone to exploitation due to a lack of public scrutiny. However, migrant women are essential to the success of China's free-market economy; without their inexpensive labour, the country could not compete successfully in the global manufacturing market. Lacking strict government regulations protecting women's rights (partially due to the degree of corruption in China), gender inequality in the labor market continues to be an issue plaguing the country's free market system. Since the economic reforms, the average real earnings of male professional workers have grown by 350 percent. Although women have gained working opportunities, the unparalleled growth in male salaries have widened the gender wage gap. The greatest ( and broadest) increases in the wage gap occurred during the late 1990s, as the labour market shifted from an administratively-regulated wage system to a market-oriented one. One-child policy and gender disparity. Introduced in 1979, China's one-child policy set a limit on the number of children parents could have. Because parents preferred sons, the incidence of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide substantially increased. This has led to male overpopulation in China; in 2005, men under age 20 outnumbered women by more than 32 million. Workplace inequality. Wage inequality. Gender-based wage stratification has become a major issue in post-reform China. A 2013 study found that women are paid 75.4 percent of what men are paid (an average of RMB 399 per month, compared to RMB 529 per month for men). These statistics are in line with previous findings; a 1990 wage survey found that women earned 77.4 percent of male income in urban areas (RMB 149.6, compared to RMB 193.2 for men) and 81.4 percent of male income in rural areas (an annual average of RMB 1,235 for women and RMB 1,518 for men). These findings indicate that the income gap has not been closing in China, and wage inequality may be on the rise. Two-thirds of this differential has been attributed to unequal pay for the same work. Part of the difference results from higher-quality skills acquired by men through better educational opportunities, managerial positions, and previous work experience. Since women have limited opportunity to develop the education or skills necessary to obtain higher-level jobs, they are often paid less for their work; female entrepreneurs are denied access to the networking opportunities of their male counterparts. A number of factors have contributed to the rise in wage inequality in China. Educational background and profession have been identified as two main factors of an increased gender wage gap, and regional impacts have been recognized as a major cause of the increasing wage inequality. Women in the workplace still face discrimination, and are discouraged from applying for managerial and highly-paid jobs. The high end of most sectors is still male-dominated, and business events often include the sexual objectification of women. In Chinese business culture, deals and partnerships are made through evenings of banqueting, going to KTV bars and drinking. Female hostesses (and sometimes prostitutes) play an important role in the success of these gatherings, highlighting the businessmen's masculinity. Due to the sexualized nature of these events, female entrepreneurs are frequently discouraged from (or uncomfortable attending) these networking evenings. As a result, businesswomen have less access to the networks of government officials, business partners, and underworld organizations which are crucial to entrepreneurial success in China. A main factor in the Hong Kong gender wage gap is age. More men achieve superior positions in a job because women leave the job market earlier to take care of their family. Men remain in the job market longer, allowing for more raises and better jobs. Women in their 30s earn 11 per cent less on average than their male counterparts, and the gap increases with age; women over 60 earn an average of HK$322,000, about half the HK$618,000 earned by men. Although the wage gap has narrowed, there is room for improvement. Gender-based wage inequality will be a major factor in pay decisions because of inclusion and diversity (I&D) programs; thirteen percent of Asia-Pacific employers have I&D programs. Occupational segregation. Feminization of informal sector employment and devaluation of female-dominated occupations are two new labor-market trends since China's economic reforms. A survey of seven provinces and eleven cities found that gender segregation increased in forty-four out of fifty-one examined occupations between 1985 and 2000, and women were restricted from entering a larger number of professional occupations based on their gender. They were barred from more white-collar jobs than blue-collar ones, demonstrating the difficulty women have in obtaining higher-level jobs. One impact of gendered jobs is lower wages for women, illustrated by the lower average incomes of female-dominated enterprises compared to male-dominated ones. During the early 1990s, an increase in the number of female employees in the sales and service industries was accompanied by a reduction in the average income of these sectors. Data from the same time period indicates an inverse relationship between the proportion of women employed at an institution and the average wage of the institution's employees. Beauty economy. The "beauty economy" refers to companies using attractive young women to increase profits. The women used to promote goods and services are generally known as pink-collar workers. These women can be found at car shows and company booths at conventions, and in publishing, insurance, and real-estate development. The beauty economy is a marked shift from Mao-era attitudes in which sexuality was subdued to promote gender equality. In 21st-century China, sexuality is promoted in capitalist endeavors. Although many women involved in the beauty economy hold relatively-mundane jobs, others are involved in legally-complicated endeavors as "grey women": mistresses and hostesses who cater to a rich clientele. These women are selling their sexuality (sometimes including their bodies) as a consumable good in the capitalist economy. The close relationship between hypersexualized grey women and the business world has made extramarital affairs common amongst Chinese businessmen. This highly publicized trend has created a new market for aging wives of products to remain youthful and (ideally) keep their husbands faithful. In 2004, China had the world's eighth-largest cosmetics market in the world and Asia's second-largest. The beauty economy has set high standards for physical appearance, encouraging women to consume youth-preserving products and promoting ageism. Unemployment. During the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms of the late 1990s, women were laid off in greater numbers and received larger pay cuts than men. Female-dominated industries, such as textiles and other light industry, were affected greatly by the reforms and many women lost their jobs; employees in secondary jobs were laid off in greater numbers than those in primary jobs. Since women occupied a high proportion of secondary jobs, they were the first to be laid off during the economic downturn; women were also forced to retire at a younger age than men. The government-mandated retirement age for women was generally five years younger than that for men, but internal retirement ages (determined by individual enterprises) were even lower for women. Enterprises which laid off the most workers had performed poorly and were unable to survive in the new market economy; they also employed a larger proportion of women than men. When the companies went under, larger numbers of women than men were unemployed. Hiring discrimination. During the market-oriented reforms, there was widespread evidence of employment discrimination in hiring. Sexism in recruitment takes two forms: explicit and hidden. Explicit gender discrimination refers to directly-stated restrictions on women in the recruitment process, and hidden discrimination occurs primarily in the preferential hiring of men. Contemporary China has three general types of gender-based hiring discrimination. Gender restrictions on careers and jobs create an environment where women are only welcomed into careers which match traditional female roles: primarily domestic, secretarial, or factory work. Gender discrimination also affects women of reproductive age, who are frequently passed over due to a potential future loss of productivity resulting from pregnancy. Ageism affects many women, especially those working in the service industry (where youth is a key component of workplace success). In this sector, women over age 30 are frequently denied jobs. Female job-seekers over age 40 are especially subject to ageism in most industries, despite being past child-bearing age. The age limit for men is more relaxed, usually 40 or 45 years of age. Although laws are in place to prevent hiring discrimination, there is little enforcement. Impact of foreign direct investment on wages. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has significantly impacted employment in China. The number of employees hired by foreign direct investment enterprises in the country's urban areas increased steadily from 1985 to 2005; between 2002 and 2005, the number of employees hired by FDI enterprises in urban China increased by 5.95 million. FDI is mainly driven by China's low cost of labor. A considerable number of foreign-invested enterprises are based in labor-intensive industries such as the garment industry, electronics manufacturing, and the food and beverage processing industry. FDI has disproportionately affected women, who frequently hold low-skill, low-paying factory jobs funded by foreign investment. A 2000 study found that 62.1 percent of FDI-employed workers were female. Wages by gender have been inconsistently affected by FDI, with pay equality in FDI industries increasing in 1995 and decreasing in 2005. This shift may be caused by increased FDI investment in production, resulting in additional low-paying factory jobs which are predominantly filled by women. Confucianism and gender. Confucianism provided a framework which judged individuals by their faithfulness and adherence to social norms dictated by ancient customs. Men were evaluated according to how well they fulfilled their social positions as husbands, fathers, sons or servants. Correspondingly, women were valued based on their conduct as wives, mothers and daughters. Mainly assigned household activities, women were considered less important and therefore inferior. During the late 12th century, neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi advocated the "three bonds" between ruler and subject, father and son, and husband and wife. Husbands were granted power over their wives through the Confucian emphasis on sexual differentiation as key to maintaining societal harmony. While husbands ruled the "external world", women operated in the "internal world" by running the household; however, women lacked power in society. Although women held executive power in the household, their influence rarely rivaled that of men in the public sphere. Confucian values indicated, and reinforced, a clear hierarchy. Women were subordinate to men—particularly young women, who were on the lowest level of this hierarchy. In Confucian Chinese culture, women's identities were often oppressed; the deeply-rooted Confucian teachings which shaped Chinese culture and values reinforced a patriarchal family unit that devalued women. A daughter was seen as a temporary member of her father's side of the family, since she would leave the family at marriage. This notion of family abandonment is reflected in Magarey Wolf's statement in "Uterine Families and the Women's Community" that "when a young woman marries, her formal ties with the household of her father are severed ... that she, like the water, may never return". In Chinese Confucian society, a woman's identity is subordinated and she is barely recognized as a person. Influence in contemporary China. For Chinese women, discovering personhood and kinship is challenging because Confucian culture can be an obstacle. Confucianism highlights the ideal of "men manage outside; women manage inside" (), reflecting female subordination by encouraging women to remain in the household while their husbands are the breadwinners in the outside world. According to Wang's 2012 article, "Goodbye Career, Hello Housekeeping", "80 percent of husbands in China hope their wives will become full-time homemakers" to stabilize their marriage and take care of their families. Under the Confucian influence, it has been the norm for women to quit their outside job to fulfill their obligations as wives while men remain in control outside the household and remain in their profession. It is rare in Chinese society to challenge the idea of women sacrificing their professional career, because Chinese society has a "relative[ly] ambiguous boundary between public and private spheres". This ambiguity may be a vital obstacle to gender equality. A women's sense of self in Chinese society includes her husband, her inner circle and her family by marriage, broadening (and complicating) her definition of personhood. Women's dedication and sacrifices are justified by a societal norms and a Confucian culture which increase female subordination. According to Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, "Sacrificing the family for one's own interests, or the lineage for the interests of one's household, is in reality a formula, with this formula, it is impossible to prove that someone is acting selfishly". <en are in an advantageous position, since this differential mode of association legitimizes women's sacrifice of their professional career as a normal social pattern for the benefit of the family; a husband's preference for his wife to stay home while he keeps his career is not seen as selfishness. Male selfishness is justified by the differential mode of association which "drives out social consciousness". Wives who sacrifice their "lineage for the sake of [their] family, [they are actually projected as] performing a public duty". Family pressure and marriage. Women face significant pressures from their families during their mid- to late twenties to quit working and get married. In rural northwestern China, some mothers still consider education less important for their daughters since they are expected to marry and leave home. There is an insignificant gender gap in educational investments in rural northwestern China, however, indicating progress in educational gender equality. Although work can be a way for women to postpone marriage, failure to marry is socially unacceptable for Chinese women. Fewer Chinese women remain working past marriage, and those who do often struggle to balance work and familial expectations. By relinquishing income generation to their husbands and staying home, many Chinese women lose autonomy and authority. Societal adherence to strict Confucian values about filial piety and women's obedience to men, intended to create hierarchies in the home which produce harmony in society, produces a patrilineal, patriarchal system which discourages gender equality. Marriage pressures stem from Confucian values which promote the necessity for women to marry to continue the family lineage by bearing a son. Family pressure has been, and continues to be, a main driving force of Chinese marriages. Although society has progressed from traditional values, heterosexual marriages remain the most socially-accepted form of union. This leads to struggles for LGBTQ marriages to be accepted, leading to contract or cooperative marriages ("hezuo hunyin" or "xingshi hunyin"). Cooperative marriages are an extreme form of heterosexual pretence, typically consensual relationships between a lesbian ("lala") and a gay man. Cooperative marriages are the result of strong family pressure to conform to societal expectations of a heterosexual marriage, underpinning the inequality of same-sex marriages. Further examples of family pressure in Chinese society are flash marriages. A flash (or blitz) marriage is a union between partners who have known each other for less than a month. This form of union has become increasingly popular in China due to economic and social factors. Men and women perceive happiness as a result of stability in contemporary China, particularly in the relationship and family spheres. However, financial stability and successful careers have also become predominant aspirations amongst young professionals. Young professionals (particularly women) are often still expected to marry at a relatively-young age, and if they fail to do so they are known as "sheng nu" (leftover women). Strong family pressure reinforces this ideology, and the focus on career development often leads to less time for individual personal lives (resulting in flash marriages). "Surplus women". Women who resist family pressure and do not marry by their late twenties risk being stigmatized as "sheng nu" (剩女, leftover women). Due to the prevalence of marriage in China, these unmarried women are often seen by potential employers as overly particular or otherwise flawed. The "surplus women" perception promotes gender inequality in the workplace by characterizing unmarried women as inferior. Older women frequently struggle to find jobs, due to discrimination against their marital status. In response to the surplus-women issue, many urban parents pursue partners for their older unmarried daughters in matchmaking corners. These corners are essentially marriage markets; parents place their daughter or son's name and personal information on a card for others to see as they look for a potential match. Although the success rate for matchmaking corners is low and parents are ashamed of resorting to them, many desperate parents continue to visit the corners on their children's behalf. A frequent complaint from parents of daughters is a lack of quality men nationwide, despite a surplus of men. Matchmaking corners illustrate the importance of marriage and the lengths to which parents will go to ensure that their daughters do not become "surplus women". Due to parental anxiety, women are pressured to marry young (even a flash marriage, at the cost of career and independence) before they see themselves as too old to find a quality husband. SK-II, a Japanese skincare brand, released a video about "leftover women". The video encourages them to live the life they want to live and not let their future be determined by what their parents want or what they have been raised to believe is a good life. Telling the story of several Chinese women over age 27 and their families, it ends with their families' support and calls China's unmarried men "leftover men". The video illustrates the issue's prevalence in China and female resentment of it. Gendered social mobility. Hukou system. Originally developed during the Communist era to inhibit mobility between the countryside and the cities (increasing government control), the Hukou system (household registration system) remains influential. Under this system, families are registered in a specific region and can only use schools and healthcare in that region. Since hukou is tied to the maternal line, the system disproportionately affects social mobility for women. Although rural women can travel to cities for work, these migrants have no access to healthcare (due to their rural registration) and limited ability to marry and bear children in the city. When migrant women have children in the cities, their children have no access to education unless they return home or they pay out of pocket. Many migrant women are forced to return to the countryside to have children, sacrificing their urban jobs and temporarily separated from their husbands. Families with urban registration have significant advantages over those with rural registration. School-age children from urban families with parental incomes, education, and jobs similar to rural families generally receive two additional years of schooling at higher-accredited and better-funded schools. Since hukou is passed through the maternal line, the system prevents rural women from giving their children social mobility and perpetuates gender and rural-urban inequality. Family role and job mobility. Studies of gender differences in contemporary China have indicated that family concerns affect men's and women's job mobility differently. Women tend to be negatively affected in employment by marriage and family, and a significant job-mobility gender gap exists in urban China. An urban study of job changes found that women tend to experience family-oriented job changes and involuntary terminations, and men tend to experience career-oriented job changes. Women are expected to prioritize family and marriage, and men are expected to prioritize their career. The study noted employer discrimination against, and fewer career opportunities for, married women (who, it is believed, have lower productivity and commitment to work due to family obligations). Another study of the urban Chinese labour market demonstrates that the presence of children under age five negatively affects women's employment status and income, but not men's. Women are expected to take care of children and housework, and their roles as wives, mothers and caregivers cause work-family conflicts and constrain job choices. Many women seek a work-family balance by choosing family-friendly jobs ("female-typical" jobs, with lower pay and less opportunity for career advancement) to fulfill their expected responsibilities from work and family. A study of unemployment duration among urban Chinese women indicated that married women have a higher layoff rate, longer unemployment periods and less opportunity to be re-employed than married men. In the traditional Chinese view, women are expected to be family caregivers and men are expected to be family breadwinners. Employers (mostly male) tend to protect men's employment and consider it more acceptable to lay off women, who can "take back" their responsibilities in the family after the retreat from employment. Access to assets. The traditional Chinese family is patriarchal. This view regulates gender roles and divisions of labor in the family, and affects resource allocation in the family and any family business. Men usually control valuable resources and assets such as land, property, and credit, and can accumulate capital and start a business more easily than women. In a family business, women are usually unpaid labor and entrepreneurial rights and opportunities are reserved for men. Women are expected to be family caregivers. In contemporary China, women are also expected to financially contribute to the family (especially in rural China, where economic development is relatively low). In many rural families, men and women will migrate to urban areas to support their rural family. A study of migrant workers in southern China found that women usually spend less and send a larger proportion of their wages back to their rural family than men do. Extracurricular self-development. Institutions and activities for self-improvement have emerged in China, particularly in urban centers. These training activities may foster skills relevant to the job market or focus on self-realization. Many women in China participate such activities, particularly those related to emotional well-being and psychotherapy. However, access to these activities is limited by gender. Women often consider their self-improvement as limited to their lives before marriage, since after marriage (unlike men) their main role is caring for children or parents. Media. Framing of women's issues. Much of mainstream media has featured marriage and private life as women's issues, rather than gender discrimination and inequality. A study indicated that "delaying marriage and relationship" was the most-frequently-discussed topic in mainstream media. It has focused on women's personal lives, such as marriage and romantic relationships, while gender issues such as "gender discrimination" and "traditional expectations" have often been ignored. "Nüzhubo". "Nüzhubo" (female broadcasters) are female performers who stream themselves performing on live-streaming sites, mostly by singing, dancing, video-game commenting, or eating (mukbang). "Livestream viewing has become a mainstream pastime with more than 200 active livestreaming platforms and millions of concurrent viewers every day in contemporary China." The live-streaming industry in China is dominated by women, and the growth of the industry is built on the popularity of "Nüzhubo". "Nüzhubo" earn a living by receiving virtual gifts from followers, and are subject to "constructions of the male gaze" by media and the public. With fierce competition for viewers and followers, most try to attract viewers (especially male viewers) with their appearance. Some are criticized by local and foreign media for their use of sexual content to increase popularity. See also. Selection of children by gender:

nonsymmetrical amount

2482-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13407

This article is about the demographic features of the population of Hong Kong, including population density, ethnicity, education level, the health of the populace, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with an overall density of some 6,300 people per square kilometre. At the same time, Hong Kong has one of the world's lowest birth rates—0.869 per woman of child-bearing age as of 2020, far below the replacement rate of 2.1. It is estimated that 26.8% of the population will be aged 65 or more in 2033, up from 12.1% in 2005. Hong Kong recorded 8.2 births per 1,000 people in 2005–2010. Ethnically, Hong Kong mainly consists of Han Chinese who constitute approximately 92% of the population. Of these, many originate from various regions in Guangdong. There are also a number of descendants of immigrants from elsewhere in Southern China and around the world after the end of World War II. Terminology. People from Hong Kong generally refer to themselves, in Cantonese, as "Hèung Góng Yàhn" (); however, the term is not restricted to those of Chinese descent, owing to Hong Kong's roughly 160-year colonial history that saw the civil servants and traders of British, Indian, Russian and other ethnic groups stationed in Hong Kong. In English, the term 'Hongkongers' (or sometimes 'Hong Kongers') is also used to refer to Hong Kongese people, while the term 'Hongkongese' is sometimes used as an adjective to describe people or things related to Hong Kong. Population density. The following census data is available for Hong Kong between the years 1841–2011. In 2011, Hong Kong had a population of just over 7 million, with a density of approximately 6,300 people per square kilometer. This makes Hong Kong the fourth most densely populated region in the world, after Macau, Monaco, and Singapore. Ethnicity. Chinese. According to the 2016 by-census, 92% of the Hong Kong population is ethnic Chinese. The Hong Kong census does not currently categorise Han Chinese subgroups, although in the past the census would collect information on language and dialect use which can be used to ascertain proportions of the population's ethnicity. However, the majority of Hongkongers of Chinese descent trace their ancestry to various parts of Southern China: the Guangzhou area, followed by Siyi (a region of four counties neighbouring Guangzhou), Chaoshan (a region of North Guangdong home to Teochew speakers), Fujian, and Shanghai. Some Cantonese people also originate from Hakka-speaking villages in the New Territories. Most Teochew-speaking migrants immigrated to Hong Kong between the late 1940s and early 1970s, while migrants from Fujian (previously Southern Min speakers, and increasingly more Central Min and Northern Min speakers) have constituted a growing number of migrants since 1978. Many Taishanese and Cantonese also migrated after 1949. Currently, the major Chinese groups include the Punti, Hakka, Cantonese (including Toishanese), Hoklo, and Tanka (). The Punti, and Tanka people in Hong Kong are largely descendants of the indigenous population, while the Hakka and Hoklo groups are composed of both indigenous groups and more recent migrants. Ethnic minorities. 8% of the population of Hong Kong are categorised as "ethnic minorities", including a large number of Filipinos and Indonesians, who together make up approximately 4.6% of the population. Circa 2018 there were about 2,000 people of African origins with about 800-1,000 in Yuen Long. Chungking Mansions is another area of settlement and employment. Some Africans seeking to asylum travelled to Hong Kong as of June 2020. According to Lingnan University professor Lisa Leung Yuk-ming, African settlement began in the 1990s. The Hong Kong African Association (香港非洲人協會) is an ethnic association for those people. Nationality. Due to its history as trading, business, and tourism hub, a large number of expatriates live in Hong Kong, representing 9.4% of the population. The following lists ethnic groups with significant presence in Hong Kong in alphabetical order by category: Age groups. United Nations data. According to United Nations estimates from 1 July 2013, Hong Kong's population is distributed in the following age ranges, with the largest age group represented being 50–54 years: Hong Kong government data. The Hong Kong government provides the following estimates for mid-2013: "Median age": 45.0 (2013 est.) Language. As a former British colony, Hong Kong has 2 official languages: English, and Chinese, although the specific variety of Chinese is not specified. The majority of the population uses Cantonese as their usual spoken language. However, due to Hong Kong's role as an international trade and finance hub, there are also a wide variety of minority groups speaking dozens of languages present in the territory. However, a very large proportion of the population in Hong Kong are able to communicate in multiple languages. The school system is separated into English-medium and Chinese-medium school, both of which teach English and Mandarin. Sex ratio. According to The World Factbook in 2013, the Hong Kong population was divided into the following male/female ratios: Education level. According to The World Factbook estimates in 2002, 93.5% of the population over the age of 15 had attended schooling, including 96.9% of males and 89.6% of females. Health and mortality. The following table shows birth rates and mortality rates in Hong Kong between 1950 and 2019. At the end of the 20th century, Hong Kong had one of the lowest birth rates in the world. However, the number of births doubled in the decade between 2001 and 2011, largely due to an increase in the number of children born in Hong Kong to women with residence in Mainland China. In 2001 there were 7,810 births to Mainland women (16%) out of a total of 48,219 births. This increased to 37,253 births to Mainland women (45%) out of a total of 82,095 births. Infant mortality rate. According to The World Factbook in 2013, the infant mortality rate in Hong Kong was 2.89 deaths/1,000 live births. Life expectancy. According to The World Factbook in 2013, the average life expectancy for the total population was 82.2 years; 79.47 years for males and 85.14 years for females. Hong Kong is the territory with the world's highest life expectancy according to the United Nations. Source: "UN World Population Prospects" Marriage and fertility. According to The World Factbook in 2006, the average marriage age in Hong Kong was 30 years for males and 27 years for females, and the population was subdivided into the following categories: Fertility rate. The World Factbook in 2013 reported that the fertility rate in Hong Kong was 1.11 children born/woman. Religion. Over half of all people (56.1% as of 2010) are not religious. Religious people in Hong Kong follow a diverse range of religions, among which Taoist and Buddhist (specifically Chinese Buddhism) faiths are common for people of Chinese descent. Confucian beliefs are popular in Hong Kong, but it is arguable whether Confucianism can be considered as a religion. As such, Confucianism is excluded in some studies. Christian beliefs (Protestantism and Catholicism together) are also common, as well as non-organised Chinese folk religions, whose followers may state that they are not religious. Traditional religions including Chinese Buddhism were discouraged under British rule, which officially represented Christianity. The handover of sovereignty from Britain to China has led to a resurgence of Buddhist and Chinese religions.

particular assortment

11901-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2160093

"Anne" is the third season premiere of the WB Television Network's drama television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It was written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon, and first broadcast on September 29, 1998. The episode marks a significant emotional journey for Buffy as she has cast off her slayer identity along with her friends in Sunnydale. In the episode, Buffy - living a secluded life away from her previous life - helps some unknown strangers find their lost loved ones. Meanwhile, Buffy has to decide whether she is ready to find herself again. This episode forms part of a larger study of personal and alternate identities which characterises all seven seasons of the show. Plot. Due to her expulsion from school, the murder of her boyfriend Angel and fighting with her mother, Joyce, Buffy has left Sunnydale and moved to Los Angeles where she works as a diner waitress under her middle name, "Anne". She serves Lily and Rickie, a young couple living on the streets, who have just gotten a complementary set of distinctive tattoos. As Buffy walks the street a homeless woman is muttering "I'm no-one". Later that evening Lily approaches Buffy and reveals that she remembers her from Sunnydale and a time when Lily was known as "Chanterelle". As they talk, a man bumps through and mutters "I'm no-one" as he walks out into traffic and is nearly hit by a car, only saved by Buffy's quick response. Buffy encounters a man named Ken, who comments on her "lost" state and offers to befriend her. The next day Lily tells Buffy that Rickie has disappeared. Buffy reluctantly agrees to help find him. In her search, she finds the body of an elderly homeless man with Rickie's tattoo. Buffy reports her findings to Lily, who doesn't believe that the body could be Rickie's. On the street Lily meets Ken, who claims to know Rickie, so she eagerly goes with him. Buffy interrogates a blood bank worker who has been acting suspiciously, and learns that the woman has been giving Ken the names of healthy homeless people who come in to donate blood. Meanwhile, Ken has prepared Lily for a "cleansing," which entails stepping into a bath in the floor. Lily hesitates, as the bath looks like black oil. At the door, Buffy attempts to pass herself off as a sinner wanting a new chance, but ends up kicking her way into the building in time to see Lily dragged into the pool. Buffy and Ken wrestle and they both fall in, coming out below in a huge factory. Ken's human mask falls off, revealing him to be a demon. Buffy and Lily are now amongst many other slave laborers of varying ages. Ken tells Buffy and Lily that they are in a hell dimension where time passes very quickly: a hundred years there equals only one day in Los Angeles. Since he only picks people who no one will miss, they will have worked themselves to a used-up death of old age without anyone noticing their absence. He tells Lily that Rickie remembered her, even after he had forgotten his own name. Lily resigns herself to ending up in hell, and accepts her fate passively. Ken lines the captives up and each one is asked, "Who are you?" and then bludgeoned unless they answer "I'm no-one." When it is Buffy's turn, she says her name with pride and a battle ensues until Ken threatens Lily at knifepoint. Ken delivers a speech, but Lily pushes him off the ledge onto a concrete floor. Lily then leads the captives back up through the pool as Buffy dispatches Ken. Once all of the humans are out of the demonic dimension, the pool gateway closes. Back in her apartment, Buffy packs her bag, ready to return to Sunnydale. She gives Lily her "Anne" identity. On her arrival back at the family home, Buffy is embraced by her relieved mother. Reception. Noel Murray of "The A.V. Club" described "Anne" as "a very clever meditation on adolescent identity". The scene where Anne asserts her identity as Buffy was frequently used as a promotional clip for reruns of the series on the FX channel.

correlative group

2929-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=113509

AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transmissions, but also on the longwave and shortwave radio bands. The earliest experimental AM transmissions began in the early 1900s. However, widespread AM broadcasting was not established until the 1920s, following the development of vacuum tube receivers and transmitters. AM radio remained the dominant method of broadcasting for the next 30 years, a period called the "Golden Age of Radio", until television broadcasting became widespread in the 1950s and received most of the programming previously carried by radio. Subsequently, AM radio's audiences have also greatly shrunk due to competition from FM (frequency modulation) radio, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), satellite radio, HD (digital) radio and Internet streaming. AM transmissions are much more susceptible to interference than FM or digital signals, and often have lower audio fidelity. Thus, AM broadcasters tend to specialise in spoken-word formats, such as talk radio, all news and sports, with music formats primarily for FM and digital stations. History. Early broadcasting development. The idea of broadcasting — the unrestricted transmission of signals to a widespread audience — dates back to the founding period of radio development, even though the earliest radio transmissions, originally known as "Hertzian radiation" and "wireless telegraphy", used spark-gap transmitters that could only transmit the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. In October 1898 a London publication, "The Electrician", noted that "there are rare cases where, as Dr. [Oliver] Lodge once expressed it, it might be advantageous to 'shout' the message, spreading it broadcast to receivers in all directions". However, it was recognized that this would involve significant financial issues, as that same year "The Electrician" also commented "did not Prof. Lodge forget that no one wants to pay for shouting to the world on a system by which it would be impossible to prevent non-subscribers from benefiting gratuitously?" On January 1, 1902, Nathan Stubblefield gave a short-range "wireless telephone" demonstration, that included simultaneously broadcasting speech and music to seven locations throughout Murray, Kentucky. However, this was transmitted using induction rather than radio signals, and although Stubblefield predicted that his system would be perfected so that "it will be possible to communicate with hundreds of homes at the same time", and "a single message can be sent from a central station to all parts of the United States", he was unable to overcome the inherent distance limitations of this technology. The earliest public radiotelegraph broadcasts were provided as government services, beginning with daily time signals inaugurated on January 1, 1905, by a number of U.S. Navy stations. In Europe, signals transmitted from a station located on the Eiffel tower were received throughout much of Europe. In both the United States and France this led to a small market of receiver lines designed geared for jewelers who needed accurate time to set their clocks, including the Ondophone in France, and the De Forest RS-100 Jewelers Time Receiver in the United States The ability to pick up time signal broadcasts, in addition to Morse code weather reports and news summaries, also attracted the interest of amateur radio enthusiasts. Early amplitude modulation (AM) transmitter technologies. It was immediately recognized that, much like the telegraph had preceded the invention of the telephone, the ability to make audio radio transmissions would be a significant technical advance. Despite this knowledge, it still took two decades to perfect the technology needed to make quality audio transmissions. In addition, the telephone had rarely been used for distributing entertainment, outside of a few "telephone newspaper" systems, most of which were established in Europe. With this in mind, most early radiotelephone development envisioned that the device would be more profitably developed as a "wireless telephone" for personal communication, or for providing links where regular telephone lines could not be run, rather than for the uncertain finances of broadcasting. The person generally credited as the primary early developer of AM technology is Canadian-born inventor Reginald Fessenden. The original spark-gap radio transmitters were impractical for transmitting audio, since they produced discontinuous pulses known as "damped waves". Fessenden realized that what was needed was a new type of radio transmitter that produced steady "undamped" (better known as "continuous wave") signals, which could then be "modulated" to reflect the sounds being transmitted. Fessenden's basic approach was disclosed in U.S. Patent 706,737, which he applied for on May 29, 1901, and was issued the next year. It called for the use of a high-speed alternator (referred to as "an alternating-current dynamo") that generated "pure sine waves" and produced "a continuous train of radiant waves of substantially uniform strength", or, in modern terminology, a continuous-wave (CW) transmitter. Fessenden began his research on audio transmissions while doing developmental work for the United States Weather Service on Cobb Island, Maryland. Because he did not yet have a continuous-wave transmitter, initially he worked with an experimental "high-frequency spark" transmitter, taking advantage of the fact that the higher the spark rate, the closer a spark-gap transmission comes to producing continuous waves. He later reported that, in the fall of 1900, he successfully transmitted speech over a distance of about 1.6 kilometers (one mile), which appears to have been the first successful audio transmission using radio signals. However, at this time the sound was far too distorted to be commercially practical. For a time he continued working with more sophisticated high-frequency spark transmitters, including versions that used compressed air, which began to take on some of the characteristics of arc-transmitters. Fessenden attempted to sell this form of radiotelephone for point-to-point communication, but was unsuccessful. Alternator transmitter. Fessenden's work with high-frequency spark transmissions was only a temporary measure. His ultimate plan for creating an audio-capable transmitter was to redesign an electrical alternator, which normally produced alternating current of at most a few hundred (Hz), to increase its rotational speed and so generate currents of tens-of-thousands Hz, thus producing a steady continuous-wave transmission when connected to an aerial. The next step, adopted from standard wire-telephone practice, was to insert a simple carbon microphone into the transmission line, to modulate the carrier wave signal to produce AM audio transmissions. However, it would take many years of expensive development before even a prototype alternator-transmitter would be ready, and a few years beyond that for high-power versions to become available. Fessenden worked with General Electric's (GE) Ernst F. W. Alexanderson, who in August 1906 delivered an improved model which operated at a transmitting frequency of approximately 50 kHz, although at low power. The alternator-transmitter achieved the goal of transmitting quality audio signals, but the lack of any way to amplify the signals meant they were somewhat weak. On December 21, 1906, Fessenden made an extensive demonstration of the new alternator-transmitter at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, showing its utility for point-to-point wireless telephony, including interconnecting his stations to the wire telephone network. As part of the demonstration, speech was transmitted 18 kilometers (11 miles) to a listening site at Plymouth, Massachusetts. An "American Telephone Journal" account of the December 21 alternator-transmitter demonstration included the statement that "It is admirably adapted to the transmission of news, music, etc. as, owing to the fact that no wires are needed, simultaneous transmission to many subscribers can be effected as easily as to a few", echoing the words of a handout distributed to the demonstration witnesses, which stated "[Radio] Telephony is admirably adapted for transmitting news, stock quotations, music, race reports, etc. simultaneously over a city, on account of the fact that no wires are needed and a single apparatus can distribute to ten thousand subscribers as easily as to a few. It is proposed to erect stations for this purpose in the large cities here and abroad." However, other than two holiday transmissions reportedly made shortly after these demonstrations, Fessenden does not appear to have conducted any radio broadcasts for the general public, or to have even given additional thought about the potential of a regular broadcast service, and in a 1908 article providing a comprehensive review of the potential uses for his radiotelephone invention, he made no references to broadcasting. Because there was no way to amplify electrical currents at this time, modulation was usually accomplished by a carbon microphone inserted directly in the antenna wire. This meant that the full transmitter power flowed through the microphone, and even using water cooling, the power handling ability of the microphones severely limited the power of the transmissions. Ultimately only a small number of large and powerful Alexanderson alternators would be developed. However, they would be almost exclusively used for long-range radiotelegraph communication, and occasionally for radiotelephone experimentation, but were never used for general broadcasting. Arc transmitters. Almost all of the continuous wave AM transmissions made prior to 1915 were made by versions of the arc converter transmitter, which had been initially developed by Valdemar Poulsen in 1903. Arc transmitters worked by producing a pulsating electrical arc in an enclosed hydrogen atmosphere. They were much more compact than alternator transmitters, and could operate on somewhat higher transmitting frequencies. However, they suffered from some of the same deficiencies. The lack of any means to amplify electrical currents meant that, like the alternator transmitters, modulation was usually accomplished by a microphone inserted directly in the antenna wire, which again resulted in overheating issues, even with the use of water-cooled microphones. Thus, transmitter powers tended to be limited. The arc was also somewhat unstable, which reduced audio quality. Experimenters who used arc transmitters for their radiotelephone research included Ernst Ruhmer, Quirino Majorana, Charles "Doc" Herrold, and Lee de Forest. Vacuum tube transmitters. Advances in vacuum tube technology (called "valves" in British usage), especially after around 1915, revolutionized radio technology. Vacuum tube devices could be used to amplify electrical currents, which overcame the overheating issues of needing to insert microphones directly in the transmission antenna circuit. Vacuum tube transmitters also provided high-quality AM signals, and could operate on higher transmitting frequencies than alternator and arc transmitters. Non-governmental radio transmissions were prohibited in many countries during World War I, but AM radiotelephony technology advanced greatly due to wartime research, and after the war the availability of tubes sparked a great increase in the number of amateur radio stations experimenting with AM transmission of news or music. Vacuum tubes remained the central technology of radio for 40 years, until transistors began to dominate in the late 1950s, and are still used in the highest power broadcast transmitters. Receivers. Unlike telegraph and telephone systems, which used completely different types of equipment, most radio receivers were equally suitable for both radiotelegraph and radiotelephone reception. In 1903 and 1904 the electrolytic detector and thermionic diode (Fleming valve) were invented by Reginald Fessenden and John Ambrose Fleming, respectively. Most important, in 1904–1906 the crystal detector, the simplest and cheapest AM detector, was developed by G. W. Pickard. Homemade crystal radios spread rapidly during the next 15 years, providing ready audiences for the first radio broadcasts. One limitation of crystals sets was the lack of amplifying the signals, so listeners had to use earphones, and it required the development of vacuum-tube receivers before loudspeakers could be used. The dynamic cone loudspeaker, invented in 1924, greatly improved audio frequency response over the previous horn speakers, allowing music to be reproduced with good fidelity. AM radio offered the highest sound quality available in a home audio device prior to the introduction of the high-fidelity, long-playing record in the late 1940s. Listening habits changed in the 1960s due to the introduction of the revolutionary transistor radio, (Regency TR-1, the first transistor radio released December 1954) which was made possible by the invention of the transistor in 1948. (The transistor was invented at Bell labs and released in June 1948). Their compact size — small enough to fit in a shirt pocket — and lower power requirements, compared to vacuum tubes, meant that for the first time radio receivers were readily portable. The transistor radio became the most widely used communication device in history, with billions manufactured by the 1970s. Radio became a ubiquitous "companion medium" which people could take with them anywhere they went. Early experimental broadcasts. The demarcation between what is considered "experimental" and "organized" broadcasting is largely arbitrary. Listed below are some of the early AM radio broadcasts, which, due to their irregular schedules and limited purposes, can be classified as "experimental": Organized broadcasting. Following World War I, the number of stations providing a regular broadcasting service greatly increased, primarily due to advances in vacuum-tube technology. In response to ongoing activities, government regulators eventually codified standards for which stations could make broadcasts intended for the general public, for example, in the United States formal recognition of a "broadcasting service" came with the establishment of regulations effective December 1, 1921, and Canadian authorities created a separate category of "radio-telephone broadcasting stations" in April 1922. However, there were numerous cases of entertainment broadcasts being presented on a regular schedule before their formal recognition by government regulators. Some early examples include: Radio networks. Because most longwave radio frequencies were used for international radiotelegraph communication, a majority of early broadcasting stations operated on mediumwave frequencies, whose limited range generally restricted them to local audiences. One method for overcoming this limitation, as well as a method for sharing program costs, was to create radio networks, linking stations together with telephone lines to provide a nationwide audience. United States. In the U.S., the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was the first organization to create a radio network, and also to promote commercial advertising, which it called "toll" broadcasting. Its flagship station, WEAF (now WFAN) in New York City, sold blocks of airtime to commercial sponsors that developed entertainment shows containing commercial messages. AT&T held a monopoly on quality telephone lines, and by 1924 had linked 12 stations in Eastern cities into a "chain". The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), General Electric and Westinghouse organized a competing network around its own flagship station, RCA's WJZ (now WABC) in New York City, but were hampered by AT&T's refusal to lease connecting lines or allow them to sell airtime. In 1926 AT&T sold its radio operations to RCA, which used them to form the nucleus of the new NBC network. By the 1930s, most of the major radio stations in the country were affiliated with networks owned by two companies, NBC and CBS. In 1934, a third national network, the Mutual Radio Network was formed as a cooperative owned by its stations. United Kingdom. A second country which quickly adopted network programming was the United Kingdom, and its national network quickly became a prototype for a state-managed monopoly of broadcasting. A rising interest in radio broadcasting by the British public pressured the government to reintroduce the service, following its suspension in 1920. However, the government also wanted to avoid what it termed the "chaotic" U.S. experience of allowing large numbers of stations to operate with few restrictions. There were also concerns about broadcasting becoming dominated by the Marconi company. Arrangements were made for six large radio manufacturers to form a consortium, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), established on 18 October 1922, which was given a monopoly on broadcasting. This enterprise was supported by a tax on radio sets sales, plus an annual license fee on receivers, collected by the Post Office. Initially the eight stations were allowed regional autonomy. In 1927, the original broadcasting organization was replaced by a government chartered British Broadcasting Corporation. an independent nonprofit supported solely by a 10 shilling receiver license fee. A mixture of populist and high brow programmes were carried by the National and Regional networks. "Golden Age of Radio". The period from the early 1920s through the 1940s is often called the "Golden Age of Radio". During this period AM radio was the main source of home entertainment, until it was replaced by television. For the first time entertainment was provided from outside the home, replacing traditional forms of entertainment such as oral storytelling and music from family members. New forms were created, including radio plays, mystery serials, soap operas, quiz shows, variety hours, situation comedies and children's shows. Radio news, including remote reporting, allowed listeners to be vicariously present at notable events. Radio greatly eased the isolation of rural life. Political officials could now speak directly to millions of citizens. One of the first to take advantage of this was American president Franklin Roosevelt, who became famous for his fireside chats during the Great Depression. However, broadcasting also provided the means to use propaganda as a powerful government tool, and contributed to the rise of fascist and communist ideologies. Decline in popularity. In the 1940s two new broadcast media, FM radio and television, began to provide extensive competition with the established broadcasting services. The AM radio industry suffered a serious loss of audience and advertising revenue, and coped by developing new strategies. Network broadcasting gave way to format broadcasting: instead of broadcasting the same programs all over the country, stations individually adopted specialized formats which appealed to different audiences, such as regional and local news, sports, "talk" programs, and programs targeted at minorities. Instead of live music, most stations began playing less expensive recorded music. In the late 1970s, spurred by the exodus of musical programming to FM stations, the AM radio industry in the United States developed technology for broadcasting in stereo. Other nations adopted AM stereo, most commonly choosing Motorola's C-QUAM, and in 1993 the United States also made the C-QUAM system its standard, after a period allowing four different standards to compete. The selection of a single standard improved acceptance of AM stereo, however overall there was limited adoption of AM stereo worldwide, and interest declined after 1990. With the continued migration of AM stations away from music to news, sports, and talk formats, receiver manufacturers saw little reason to adopt the more expensive stereo tuners, and thus radio stations have little incentive to upgrade to stereo transmission. In countries where the use of directional antennas is common, such as the United States, transmitter sites consisting of multiple towers often occupy large tracts of land that have significantly increased in value over the decades, to the point that the value of land exceeds that of the station itself. This sometimes results in the sale of the transmitter site, with the station relocating to a more distant shared site using significantly less power, or completely shutting down operations. The ongoing development of alternative transmission systems, including Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), satellite radio, and HD (digital) radio, continued the decline of the popularity of the traditional broadcast technologies. These new options, including the introduction of Internet streaming, particularly resulted in the reduction of shortwave transmissions, as international broadcasters found ways to reach their audiences more easily. AM band revitalization efforts in the United States. The FM broadcast band was established in 1941 in the United States, and at the time some suggested that the AM band would soon be eliminated. In 1948 wide-band FM's inventor, Edwin H. Armstrong, predicted that "The broadcasters will set up FM stations which will parallel, carry the same program, as over their AM stations... eventually the day will come, of course, when we will no longer have to build receivers capable of receiving both types of transmission, and then the AM transmitters will disappear." However, FM stations actually struggled for many decades, and it wasn't until 1978 that FM listenership surpassed that of AM stations. Since then the AM band's share of the audience has continued to decline. Fairness Doctrine repeal. In view of the longterm decline in AM station listeners, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made a variety of efforts to enhance AM station competitiveness. One major change was the elimination of its Fairness Doctrine requirement in 1987, which meant that talk shows, which were commonly carried by AM stations, could adopt a more focused presentation on controversial topics, without the distraction of having to provide airtime for any contrasting opinions. In addition, satellite distribution made it possible for programs to be economically carried on a national scale. The introduction of nationwide talk shows, most prominently Rush Limbaugh's beginning in 1988, was sometimes credited with "saving AM radio". However, these stations tended to attract older listeners who were of lesser interest to advertisers, and AM radio's audience share continued to erode. AM stereo and AMAX standards. In 1961 the FCC adopted a single standard for FM stereo transmissions, which was widely credited with enhancing FM's popularity. Developing the technology for AM broadcasting in stereo was challenging due to the need to limit the transmissions to a 20 kHz bandwidth, while also making the transmissions backward compatible with existing non-stereo receivers. In 1990 the FCC authorized an AM stereo standard developed by Magnavox, but two years later revised its decision to instead approve four competing implementations, saying it would "let the marketplace decide" which was best. The lack of a common standard resulted in consumer confusion and increased the complexity and cost of producing AM stereo receivers. In 1993 the FCC again revised its policy, by selecting C-QUAM as the sole AM stereo implementation. In 1993 the FCC also endorsed, although it did not make mandatory, AMAX broadcasting standards that were developed by the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) with the intention of helping AM stations, especially ones with musical formats, become more competitive with FM broadcasters by promoting better quality receivers. However, the stereo AM and AMAX initiatives had little impact, and a 2015 review of these events concluded that "Initially the consumer manufacturers made a concerted attempt to specify performance of AM receivers through the 1993 AMAX standard, a joint effort of the EIA and the NAB, with FCC backing... The FCC rapidly followed up on this with codification of the CQUAM AM stereo standard, also in 1993. At this point, the stage appeared to be set for rejuvenation of the AM band. Nevertheless, with the legacy of confusion and disappointment in the rollout of the multiple incompatible AM stereo systems, and failure of the manufacturers (including the auto makers) to effectively promote AMAX radios, coupled with the ever-increasing background of noise in the band, the general public soon lost interest and moved on to other media." Expanded band. On June 8, 1988 an International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-sponsored conference held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil adopted provisions, effective July 1, 1990, to extend the upper end of the Region 2 AM broadcast band, by adding ten frequencies which spanned from 1610 kHz to 1700 kHz. At this time it was suggested that as many as 500 U.S. stations could be assigned to the new frequencies. On April 12, 1990 the FCC voted to begin the process of populating the expanded band, with the main priority being the reduction of interference on the existing AM band, by transferring selected stations to the new frequencies. It was now estimated that the expanded band could accommodate around 300 U.S. stations. However, it turned out that the number of possible station reassignments was much lower, with a 2006 accounting reporting that, out of 4,758 licensed U.S. AM stations, only 56 were now operating on the expanded band. Moreover, despite an initial requirement that by the end of five years either the original station or its expanded band counterpart had to cease broadcasting, as of 2015 there were 25 cases where the original standard band station was still on the air, despite also operating as an expanded band station. HD radio. HD Radio is a digital audio broadcasting method developed by iBiquity. In 2002 its "hybrid mode", which simultaneously transmits a standard analog signal as well as a digital one, was approved by the FCC for use by AM stations, initially only during daytime hours, due to concerns that during the night its wider bandwidth would cause unacceptable interference to stations on adjacent frequencies. In 2007 nighttime operation was also authorized. The number of hybrid mode AM stations is not exactly known, because the FCC does not keep track of the stations employing the system, and some authorized stations have later turned it off. But as of 2020 the commission estimated that fewer than 250 AM stations were transmitting hybrid mode signals. On October 27, 2020, the FCC voted to allow AM stations to eliminate their analog transmissions and convert to all-digital operation, with the requirement that stations making the change had to continue to make programming available over "at least one free over-the-air digital programming stream that is comparable to or better in audio quality than a standard analog broadcast". FM translator stations. Despite the various actions, AM band audiences continued to contract, and the number of stations began to slowly decline. A 2009 FCC review reported that "The story of AM radio over the last 50 years has been a transition from being the dominant form of audio entertainment for all age groups to being almost non-existent to the youngest demographic groups. Among persons aged 12-24, AM accounts for only 4% of listening, while FM accounts for 96%. Among persons aged 25-34, AM accounts for only 9% of listening, while FM accounts for 91%. The median age of listeners to the AM band is 57 years old, a full generation older than the median age of FM listeners." In 2009 the FCC made a major regulatory change, when it adopted a policy allowing AM stations to simulcast over FM translator stations. Translators had previously been available only to FM broadcasters, in order to increase coverage in fringe areas. Their assignment for use by AM stations was intended to approximate the station's daytime coverage, which in cases where the stations reduced power at night, often resulted in expanded nighttime coverage. Although the translator stations are not permitted to originate programming when the "primary" AM station is broadcasting, they are permitted to do so during nighttime hours for AM stations licensed for daytime-only operation. Prior to the adoption of the new policy, as of March 18, 2009 the FCC had issued 215 Special Temporary Authority grants for FM translators relaying AM stations. After creation of the new policy, by 2011 there were approximately 500 in operation, and as of 2020 approximately 2,800 of the 4,570 licensed AM stations were rebroadcasting on one or more FM translators. In 2009 the FCC stated that "We do not intend to allow these cross-service translators to be used as surrogates for FM stations". However, based on station slogans, especially in the case of recently adopted musical formats, in most cases the expectation is that listeners will primarily be tuning into the FM signal rather than the nominally "primary" AM station. A 2020 review noted that "for many owners, keeping their AM stations on the air now is pretty much just about retaining their FM translator footprint rather than keeping the AM on the air on its own merits". Additional activities. In 2018 the FCC, led by then-Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, proposed greatly reducing signal protection for 50 kW Class A "clear channel" stations. This would allow co-channel secondary stations to operate with higher powers, especially at night. However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) expressed concerns that this would reduce the effectiveness of emergency communications. Technical information. AM radio technology is simpler than later transmission systems. An AM receiver detects amplitude variations in the radio waves at a particular frequency, then amplifies changes in the signal voltage to operate a loudspeaker or earphone. However, the simplicity of AM transmission also makes it vulnerable to "static" (radio noise, radio frequency interference) created by both natural atmospheric electrical activity such as lightning, and electrical and electronic equipment, including fluorescent lights, motors and vehicle ignition systems. In large urban centres, AM radio signals can be severely disrupted by metal structures and tall buildings. As a result, AM radio tends to do best in areas where FM frequencies are in short supply, or in thinly populated or mountainous areas where FM coverage is poor. Great care must be taken to avoid mutual interference between stations operating on the same frequency. In general, an AM transmission needs to be about 20 times stronger than an interfering signal to avoid a reduction in quality, in contrast to FM signals, where the "capture effect" means that the dominant signal needs to only be about twice as strong as the interfering one. To allow room for more stations on the mediumwave broadcast band in the United States, in June 1989 the FCC adopted a National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC) standard that limited maximum transmitted audio bandwidth to 10.2 kHz, limiting occupied bandwidth to 20.4 kHz. The former audio limitation was 15 kHz resulting in bandwidth of 30 kHz. Another common limitation on AM fidelity is the result of receiver design, although some efforts have been made to improve this, notably through the AMAX standards adopted in the United States. Broadcast band frequencies. AM broadcasts are used on several frequency bands. The allocation of these bands is governed by the ITU's Radio Regulations and, on the national level, by each country's telecommunications administration (the FCC in the U.S., for example) subject to international agreements. The frequency ranges given here are those that are allocated to stations. Because of the bandwidth taken up by the sidebands, the range allocated for the band as a whole is usually about 5 kHz wider on either side. Longwave broadcasting. "Longwave" (also known as Low frequency (LF)) (148.5 kHz – 283.5 kHz) Broadcasting stations in this band are assigned transmitting frequencies in the range 153 kHz – 279 kHz, and generally maintain 9 kHz spacing. Longwave assignments for broadcasting only exist in ITU Region 1 (Europe, Africa, and northern and central Asia), and is not allocated elsewhere. Individual stations have coverage measured in the hundreds of kilometers, however there are only a very limited number of available broadcasting slots. Most of the earliest broadcasting experiments took place on longwave frequencies, however complaints about interference from existing services, particularly the military, led to most broadcasting moving to higher frequencies. Medium-wave broadcasting. "Medium wave" (also known as Medium frequency (MF)), which is by far the most commonly used AM broadcasting band. In ITU Regions 1 and 3, transmitting frequencies run from 531 kHz to 1602 kHz, with 9 kHz spacing (526.5 kHz - 1606.5 kHz), and in ITU Region 2 (the Americas), transmitting frequencies are 530 kHz to 1700 kHz, using 10 kHz spacing (525 kHz - 1705 kHz), including the ITU Extended AM broadcast band, authorized in Region 2, between 1605 kHz and 1705 kHz, previously used for police radio. Shortwave broadcasting. "Shortwave" (also known as High frequency (HF)) transmissions range from approximately 2.3 to 26.1 MHz, divided into 14 broadcast bands. Shortwave broadcasts generally use a narrow 5 kHz channel spacing. Shortwave is used by audio services intended to be heard at great distances from the transmitting station. The long range of shortwave broadcasts comes at the expense of lower audio fidelity. Most broadcast services use AM transmissions, although some use a modified version of AM such as Single-sideband modulation (SSB) or an AM-compatible version of SSB such as "SSB with carrier reinserted". VHF AM broadcasting. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the United States evaluated options for the establishment of broadcasting stations using much higher transmitting frequencies. In October 1937, the FCC announced a second band of AM stations, consisting of 75 channels spanning from 41.02 to 43.98 MHz, which were informally called "Apex". The 40 kHz spacing between adjacent frequencies was four times that of the 10 kHz spacing used on the standard AM broadcast band, which reduced adjacent-frequency interference, and provided more bandwidth for high-fidelity programming. However, this band was eliminated effective 1 January 1941, after the FCC determined that establishing a band of FM stations was preferable. Other distribution methods. Beginning in the mid-1930s, starting with "The Brown Network" at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, a very low power broadcasting method known as carrier current was developed, and mostly adopted on U.S. college campuses. In this approach AM broadcast signals are distributed over electric power lines, which radiate a signal receivable at a short distance from the lines. In Switzerland a system known as "wire broadcasting" ("Telefonrundspruch" in German) transmitted AM signals over telephone lines in the longwave band until 1998, when it was shut down. In the UK, Rediffusion was an early pioneer of AM radio cable distribution. Hybrid digital broadcast systems, which combine (mono analog) AM transmission with digital sidebands, have started to be used around the world. In the United States, iBiquity's proprietary HD Radio has been adopted and approved by the FCC for medium wave transmissions, while Digital Radio Mondiale is a more open effort often used on the shortwave bands, and can be used alongside many AM broadcasts. Both of these standards are capable of broadcasting audio of significantly greater fidelity than that of standard AM with current bandwidth limitations, and a theoretical frequency response of 0–16 kHz, in addition to stereo sound and text data. Microbroadcasting. Some microbroadcasters, especially those in the United States operating under the FCC's Part 15 rules, and pirate radio operators on mediumwave and shortwave, achieve greater range than possible on the FM band. On mediumwave these stations often transmit on 1610 kHz to 1710 kHz. Hobbyists also use low-power AM (LPAM) transmitters to provide programming for vintage radio equipment in areas where AM programming is not widely available or does not carry programming the listener desires; in such cases the transmitter, which is designed to cover only the immediate property and perhaps nearby areas, is connected to a computer, an FM radio or an MP3 player. Microbroadcasting and pirate radio have generally been supplanted by streaming audio on the Internet, but some schools and hobbyists still use LPAM transmissions.

lawful acceptance

2892-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7097917

"Little Problems" is an episode of the BBC sit-com, "Only Fools and Horses". It was the final episode of series 6, and was first screened on 12 February 1989. John Sullivan's idea for the script came from a drink with David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst one evening, which they then made into this episode. Synopsis. With his wedding to Cassandra coming up, Rodney is miserable as he believes that he will never receive his diploma in computing, having apparently failed his exam again, and also has the problem of needing to find £2,000 for the couple's new flat. However, Del Boy states that he will take care of these problems, as he announces that he's giving Rodney the £2,000 as a wedding present. He then hands over Rodney's diploma, telling him that his teacher had been delayed in marking some of the diplomas. After Rodney leaves, Del admits to Uncle Albert that Rodney had in fact completely failed his exam, and his teacher required a £150 bribe in order to give a passing grade. In addition, Del will either need to sell his stock of mobile phones or get Boycie to pay up for the broken VCRs that Del had sold him a few months previously (in "Danger UXD") to raise the £2,000. The following night, Del has no luck in selling his phones, and Boycie claims to have no money, thanks to the combination of a slump in the used-car market and medical bills for his wife Marlene's pregnancy. The situation gets darker when Mickey Pearce and Jevon enter the Nag's Head with one arm in plaster and a neck collar respectively to inform Del that local crime bosses Tony and Danny (the Driscoll Brothers), are hunting him, and that it was in fact the Driscolls who had supplied Del's phones. The Driscolls enter the pub prompting Del, Mickey, Jevon and Trigger to hide in the upstairs function room. The Driscolls search the room but find nothing. Just as it looks like they're safe, Trigger accidentally activates the antenna in Del's cordless phone, causing it to extend up Del's nose, giving away their hiding place. The Driscolls demand Del to pay them £2,000, but Del manages to extend time on the payment by reminding them that he had looked after their mother when they got themselves jailed for their early crimes. Having seen the Driscolls enter, an intimidated Boycie enquires whether Del had bought the VCRs off them and Del, seeing a chance to get his payment, says he did. The "skint" Boycie then suddenly produces £3,000 from his jacket pocket, giving Del the money that he needs. At Rodney's stag night, the Driscoll Brothers show up again looking for Del, who suddenly remembers that he had promised Rodney £2,000 for his flat. He goes off to talk to the Driscoll Brothers and leaves Rodney alone with Denzil, who believes that Del will use the money to pay the Driscolls off. Rodney returns to the flat late that night, scolding Del, who is in the bathroom. Del informs Rodney that his money is on the table. Del is then shown cleaning up his cuts and bruises, unable to stand up straight, having taken a beating from the Driscoll Brothers rather than break his promise to his younger brother. On the day of Rodney and Cassandra's wedding, Del is the best man and Rodney is embarrassed as the minister reveals his middle name to be Charlton (named after Charlton Athletic according to Del, as their mum was a fan). Cassandra's parents Alan and Pamela also attend, although Pam fears that Alan will get drunk at the reception. At the reception at the Nag's Head, Rodney thanks Del for his support, and leaves with Cassandra on their honeymoon. Marlene approaches Del and the two talk about past years, and Marlene asks Del why he never got married despite always being engaged when he was younger. Del tells her back then none of the women he went out with were willing to care for Rodney, and he refused to put his brother into care. As a result, he broke up with them because Rodney meant more to him. The two share a heartfelt goodbye, and Del is left alone to think about life and come to terms with Rodney's new-found happiness, while Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years" plays in the background. He takes the groom topper from the wedding cake before leaving. A few weeks later, Del returns home to the flat from the market, followed shortly by Rodney, dressed in a three-piece suit. Rodney asks Del what is for dinner, then Del offers Rodney some advice: "You don't live here no more." Realising his mistake, Rodney exits the flat hurriedly, leaving Del laughing, as he now understands that Rodney will always be with him.

coat pouch

13006-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3090296

Penrith railway station is a heritage-listed railway station located on the Main Western line in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith in the City of Penrith local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by New South Wales Government Railways and the 1863 building was built by M. and A. Jamison and D. Forest. It is also known as Penrith Railway Station group. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. The station is served by Sydney Trains T1 Western Line services and NSW TrainLink Blue Mountains Line, "Central West XPT" and "Outback Xplorer" services. History. The single track line opened on 19 January 1863 as the terminus of the Main Western line when it was extended from St Marys. The line was extended to Springwood on 11 July 1867. The line was duplicated in 1886. As soon as the line was extended over the Blue Mountains, Penrith became an important railway centre where locomotives and crews were changed and passengers took refreshments. Trains were assisted in both directions from Penrith with additional locomotives but the status of Penrith locomotive depot diminished between 1913 and 1916 when new depots were opened at Valley Heights and Enfield. Penrith was closely associated with Driver John Heron and The Heron train was a daily commuter train to and from Sydney that was named after him. The Platform 3 building dates from 1863. Additions were made in 1880 by contractor, F. Goodsell. In 1881 the original timber platform was replaced with an earth-filled structure. In 1895 the Railway Refreshment Room at the Sydney end was substantially expanded and further altered in 1906, 1917, 1929 and 1952, and closed in 1957. In 1901 a telegraph office was added. The posted verandah was replaced in 1955 with a cantilevered awning. Further upgrading took place in 1957, 1959, 1980 and 2003. Although many alterations have been made, there is a considerable amount of extant fabric both internally, externally and in the sub-floor area. In 2000, substantial alterations were made to the road elevation. There is a dock platform behind Platform 3, which although raised in height, was also provided in 1863. The Station Master's residence at Penrith was constructed in 1878. It was a common practice not to provide an official residence until an officer or a senior officer was appointed to the station. In this case, the residence was not provided until 15 years after the station opened. However, by this time, the station was very busy as locomotives were changed at Penrith and additional helper locomotives were added to trains crossing the Blue Mountains as well as pushing trains towards Sydney. In the history of structures erected for the NSW Railways, buildings higher than one level were extremely rare. Out of a total of approximately 5,000 railway buildings in NSW, less than 50 were more than one level in height. This included offices, stations and residences. Penrith and Emu Plains became one of two locations where two-storey residences were built at adjoining stations. However, Penrith was built as a stand-alone residence, while Emu Plains was a combined office/residence building. The only other known metropolitan examples of standard two-storey residences were constructed at Lithgow, Newcastle and Lavender Bay demonstrating the importance of these locations as major terminus stations on the network. Its symmetrical style and lack of adornments indicates a balance between an expression of status and financial restraint. They also reflect the railway residential style before 1880. The Platform 1 & 2 building dates from c.1890. The building was partly converted to a Railway Refreshment Room in 1895, altered in 1917 and 1926, and closed in 1957. A new control room was added in 1989 and new meal room in 1990. The pitched roof was replaced with a flat roof but the 1890 posted verandah is extant. This was one of the last uses of posted verandahs on the NSW rail system. In the 1890s, the turntable at Penrith was replaced by the present facility. The existing is an imported turntable in length and is cast steel and was a standard design imported from the American firm of William Sellers and co. Inc. at Philadelphia, who supplied large numbers of such items to the NSW Railways in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was fitted in 1896 in the locomotive depot at its present site and it is likely that the sandstone support wall was re-used from the earlier turntable. In 1926 it was strengthened with steel bracing and continued in service after the 1956 electrification of the line to serve those locomotives using the coal stage until at least 1970, even though the main depot had by then closed. In more recent years it has been disconnected from the sidings and presently is out of service. All remnants of the locomotive depot have been removed except the turntable, which is now physically isolated from the remainder of the network of tracks in the yard. There is a water tank built in 1921, at the Sydney end of the station. It was built in the Newcastle PerWay Workshop and is one of 82 extant tanks in NSW but one of only three in Sydney (2009). The water tank was erected to serve the expanding traffic needs for the Penrith Station, an important locomotive service stop prior to the Blue Mountains ascent. It was part of a series of water tanks at Penrith, with smaller ones for older locomotives replaced by this tank, while other earlier ones were still used at the Loco Depot until it was phased out. The steel beam footbridge at Penrith was erected in 1953 and has been substantially altered. The Platform 1 track was extended around the platform in 1955. There is a water column at the end of Platforms 2 & 3, which was built in 1955. It is built to a design only used in electrified areas and is one of the only extant electrified types. This spout continued the tradition of filling the tender tanks of steam locomotives beside the platforms of railway stations using a modified design developed in the 1940s as the electrification system expanded and required a safer method of transferring water from the storage tanks into the tenders. This example was part of the last series of new water columns to be erected on the NSW rail system to serve locomotives with a relative few to follow on the Lithgow line in 1957 and along the Main North line to Newcastle some years later. The spout now has direct water main connection. Since it has been used by excursion steam locomotives. The brick, elevated signal box was opened in 1956. It was among the last brick signal boxes constructed on the NSW rail system. Description. The complex comprises Platforms 1/2 building (). External: A third-class road side station building with corrugated metal hipped roof over the central building and the later wings on both ends. The original central building remains relatively unchanged and maintains its wide awning supported on cast iron turned posts and decorative brackets though roofing has been replaced with metal sheeting. The original timber joinery survive only on the central section of the building. The remaining joinery is relatively new. Interior: Interiors of the building has been significantly modified with no evidence of earlier finishes visible. The floor layout remains essentially the same and used for staff meal and communication purposes with ticket office on the Up end of the building. Platform 3 building (1863). External: A large second-class roadside brick building with corrugated metal hipped roof and a brick double chimney with corbelled top. The building has been significantly modified with changes to its openings including reducing width of double doors into single doors and converting windows into door openings. Some timber door joinery survives. A corrugated metal awning supported on steel column & cantilevered beams replaced the original post supported timber decorative awning on rail side of the building. A flat roofed brick wing is attached to the Down end of the main 1863 station building and accommodates staff toilets and appears to have been an early addition. The roadside elevation of the building is asymmetric and is characterised by a series of tall multi-paned window openings with cement rendered decorative architraves around and a group of two arched windows on the projecting bay, and a pitched timber framed awning supported on timber post to the recessed bay. The roadside elevation of the building is rendered with paint finish while the other elevations are painted brick finish. Interior: The Platform 3 building accommodates the Station Master's office, ticket offices and a large waiting/ticket window hall (formerly parcels and ticket offices). The interior of the waiting hall has been modified with only two corner columns with moulded plaster capitals and a cast iron turned post remaining from the original features. Large rectangular openings have been created on both side walls of the hall for easy circulation. Signal box (1956). Exterior: A two-storey face brick elevated signal box with polygonal signal tower and flat roofed stepped down wing. The box presents a design more like an airport control tower than a signal box. The lower floor level of the box features regularly placed metal framed windows with three horizontal panes while the control room of the tower features multi-paned glazing to Up, Down and rail side elevations. A polygonal hipped and tiled roof with wide eaves provides sun protection to the control room. The signal box is located at the Down side of Platform 1/2 of Penrith Station and is accessible from the platform side elevation of the tower. Internal: The signal box is relatively intact with its equipment including CTC panel, communication and control desk, and staff instruments. A narrow timber stair with carpet finish provides access to the control room. The internal finishes are of typical 1950s design with plasterboard panelled ceiling and timber cornices for hidden lighting. Station master's residence (1878). Exterior: Constructed in 1878 the Penrith Station Master's residence is a two-storey English bond brickwork residence with paint finish and double corrugated metal hipped roof. It presents symmetrical fenestration to both street elevations with no decorative elements or embellishments. Two brick chimneys with corbelled tops are the distinctive features of the residence's roofscape. The Belmore Street (front) elevation has a centrally located entrance door with transom above and two vertically proportioned double-hung sash timber windows with rendered sills on both sides. A corrugated metal ogee style timber framed veranda, supported on timber square posts with moulded tops over timber board flooring, covers the entire ground floor elevation. The upper floor level features two windows that match and align the ground floor windows. The Station Street elevation of the residence is also similar to the front elevation in its symmetrical fenestration and window and door joinery as well as the ogee style veranda. The differences are the additional central window on the first floor level, and the L-shaped ogee verandah turned around eastern elevation with timber board enclosure featuring a small ticket window on the Belmore Street elevation. The verandah floor is concrete slab. Two of the side elevations of the residence are secondary and utilitarian in nature. Interior: The residence has a square-shaped floor layout with three similar sized rooms and kitchen, and an external skillion roof toilet on the ground floor, and four bedrooms with a bathroom on the upper level. The overall original features include fireplaces with timber surrounds (decorative mantels to ground floor fireplaces and simple mantels to upper level), timber architraves and spandrel of the timber staircase. The upper level fireplace grates are generally damaged and some of the ground floor fireplaces are either boarded or modified with shelf insertions. A number of later wall board linings and fibrocement ceiling panels exist on the upper level. The majority of the rendered walls show significant paint deterioration and flaking indicating rising damp issues in some rooms. The timber balustrade and handrail of the staircase are not original. No original bathroom, kitchen or light fittings survive. All windows have been fitted with security grills from the inside. Platforms (roadside - 1863 & island - ). Concrete faced roadside (Platform 3) and island (Platform 1/2) platforms with concrete deck and asphalt finish. Modern station furniture including timber bench seating, lighting, glass and metal canopies supported on steel columns with concrete footings, vending machines and aluminium fencing are other features of the Platforms. A newsagency/kiosk is located below the stairs of the footbridge on Platform 3. Access to the footbridge concourse is provided by a set of stairs and lifts from each platform. Footbridge (2000s). A new steel beam and column structure spanning over the platforms and the tracks. It is unclear if any of the original 1953 footbridge structural elements have been maintained within the new footbridge. The existing footbridge is essentially a contemporary design glass and steel structure with overhead concourse and stairs and lifts to each platform and amenities below. Water column and Filler spout (1955). A 9" Water Column with Filler Spout is located at the Up end of Platform 1/2. They are a 1950s adaptation of traditional design and were installed to cater for the electrified overhead wiring installed as part of electrification of the metropolitan rail network. Essentially it has 2 main parts - a cast iron vertical pipe that curves over the top to discharge into a lighter steel fabricated trough and swivel spout designed to reduce vertical splashing. A raised timber platform allows an operator to move the swivel spout. Designed by New South Wales Government Railways and built by New South Wales Government Railways Per Way Workshops, Newcastle. Water tank (1921). An unused large standard railway water tank and stand. It consists of cast iron with a storage capacity single tier tank forming the top of the tower. The tank is elevated on steel posts with central nogging and two levels of steel cross wind bracing. The cast iron segmented tank fabricated from flat plates with radiused castings on the corners and bases all fastened with bolts. The tank is placed on steel beams and it is likely to have concrete lining internally possibly for additional strength. Two water columns that once pumped water into the tank are attached to the underside of the tank. A steel inspection ladder is located on the west side of the tower that enabled access to the tank for maintenance purposes. The steel posts are fixed into the concrete footings. Turntable (1896). Access to the rail corridor for inspection of the Turntable was not possible (2009). However, study of the current aerial images of the railway yard provides enough evidence that the turntable is still in the similar form of its last inspection made in 2001. The turntable is not operational. It is a cast iron and steel manual operation turntable centrally pivoted with each end moving on a circular rail line. It supports one set of a standard gauge railway line on hardwood sleepers flanked by timber decking and timber balustrades along each side. The turntable is long and revolves within a cement paved dish having sandstone edge walls. The end locking plates are stamped "TT17". At each end are the stub ends of 2 railway tracks. Presently the turntable is isolated from the network and secured with a low steel mesh fence. Landscape/garden features. The SM's residence is located within an unmaintained garden featuring mid-size trees and small shrubs. The residence is currently unoccupied and its allotment boundaries with the exception of Belmore Street boundary have been secured by wire mesh and pipe fencing. Condition. The overall integrity of the station group has been relatively reduced by the later addition of canopies and an overhead bridge although the individual buildings remain relatively intact. The residence is intact externally, however, the interiors have been modified significantly and therefore has low integrity internally. The water tank, filler spout and water column possess a high degree of integrity. While losing its historical context with the removal of the loco depot structures, the turntable itself is virtually intact with a significant sandstone wall. Transport Links. Penrith Station has a large bus interchange located on the southside of the station. Busways is the primary operator of routes around the Penrith area. Stand A Stand B Stand C Stand D Stand E Stand F Heritage listing. As at 18 October 2010, Penrith Railway Station is of state significance as an early railway site with buildings dating from the 1860s and as a former terminus for a number of years during the extension of the railway line over the Blue Mountains. The 1860s and 1890s station buildings are relatively intact examples of Victorian second-class and third-class station buildings and remain as important landmarks in the townscape of Penrith. The station was instrumental in the development of the main western railway line across the mountains and an important terminus for changing locomotives to cross the Blue Mountains as well as pushing trains towards Sydney. The Penrith station master's residence is of state significance for its long association with Penrith station since 1878 and as only one of four known two storey residences constructed in the metropolitan region demonstrating its importance as a major terminus station on the NSW network. The residence is of aesthetic significance as a landmark within the Penrith station precinct and the town centre of Penrith providing a tangible link with the establishment of Penrith as an important railway location. Its simple Victorian Georgian detailing and lack of embellishment demonstrate the design and construction techniques of late 19th-century railway residences where aesthetic qualities and embellishments were restricted due to a balance between status and financial restraint. The Penrith signal box is significant as evidence of Penrith station's role in assisting the railway traffic management between Sydney and the Blue Mountains since 1956. It is an unusual example of post World War II period Functionalist style railway signal boxes due to its polygonal signal tower presenting a design more like an airport control tower than a signal box. The signal box is a dominant feature within the station's setting when approached from the Down side. The turntable at Penrith is significant as a railway relic from the early days of the operation of the locomotive depot that once existed immediately west of the Penrith station until 1956 and as the last physical reminder of what was a large locomotive depot and later coaling facility. While dating from 1896, the turntable represents an important function that was in existence at the station opening in 1863 when it was an important terminus. The water tank, filler spout and water column are important surviving items of infrastructure supporting steam locomotive operation, denoting the close affiliation Penrith station has with steam train operations over the Blue Mountains. Penrith railway station was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 having satisfied the following criteria. The place is important in demonstrating the course, or pattern, of cultural or natural history in New South Wales. Penrith Station Group is of historical significance as an early railway site with buildings dating from the 1860s and as a former locomotive depot for a number of years during the extension of the railway line over the Blue Mountains. The Signal Box is historically important as evidence of Penrith Station's role in providing assistance to the management of the increased railway traffic between Sydney and the Blue Mountains since 1956. The Station Master residence is of historical significance as it was built for the accommodation of the Penrith Station Master in 1878 when the Station was instrumental in the changing of the locomotives of the trains to cross the Blue Mountains as well as pushing trains towards Sydney. The residence had served successive Station Master's for many years and has been used for various community operations until the early 2000s. The historical visual link between the station and the residence is important, which remains relatively intact today with some interruption by the adjoining ancillary building to the west. The water tank, filler spout and water column are important surviving steam locomotive supporting infrastructure dating from 1921, which denote the close affiliation Penrith Station has with steam train operations over the Blue Mountains, an association that started in 1863. Apart from the station buildings, the turntable is now the oldest item of railway structure remaining at Penrith dating from 1896. It is also the last item remaining from the former Penrith locomotive depot. The place has a strong or special association with a person, or group of persons, of importance of cultural or natural history of New South Wales's history. Penrith Station was closely associated with Driver John Heron and The Heron train was a daily commuter train to and from Sydney that was named after him. This association is considered to be of secondary significance. The place is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in New South Wales. The station buildings are good examples of second class and third class station buildings despite the changes made over the years. They feature typical design characteristics of such roadside railway station buildings in the 1860s and 1890s, such as a large central brick building flanked by attached wing, simple hip roofs with multiple brick chimneys, a symmetrical layout and platform awning supported on cast iron columns with decorative bracketing. The signal box is of aesthetic significance as a dominant feature within the station's setting presenting a design more like an airport control tower than a signal box. It is an unusual example of post World War II period Functionalist style railway signal boxes due to its polygonal signal tower and flat roofed stepped down wing featuring multi-paned glazing to Up, Down and rail side elevations of the control room of the tower, and a polygonal hipped and tiled roof with wide eaves. Penrith SM's residence is of aesthetic significance as a landmark within the Penrith station precinct and the historic town of Penrith. It is a simply detailed symmetrical building demonstrating the construction techniques of the late 19th-century "type 4" railway residences, where aesthetic qualities and embellishments were restricted due to a balance between status and financial restraint. The water tank, filler spout and water column are engineered structures of the steam industrial age that possess a robust functional aesthetic well suited to railway environs. The turntable is an excellent example of a 19th-century cast-iron turntable demonstrating technology of such structures at the time. The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group in New South Wales for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. The place has the potential to contribute to the local community's sense of place and can provide a connection to the local community's history. The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of the cultural or natural history of New South Wales. The signal box has a moderate degree of technical research potential as it retains its original communication and control desk, CTC panel and staff signalling equipment. These features, however, are found at many other signal boxes in the railway network. Penrith SM's residence has research potential in providing physical evidence on the construction techniques of a two-storey type 4 Station Master's residence built in the late 19th century. The water tank, filler spout and water column are of technical and research significance demonstrating the equipment used in providing large quantities of water very quickly to steam locomotives. The turntable is of technical and research potential demonstrating the equipment used in steam locomotive operations. The place possesses uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of the cultural or natural history of New South Wales. Penrith Station Group features a number of rare items including a filler spout and water column, which are one of a few such facilities remaining in operating condition on the system. The signal box is one of a series of five similar signal boxes built in the Functionalist style, the others being Granville, Clyde, Blacktown and Auburn. There are many good examples of Inter-War Functionalist style signal boxes in the railway network. Penrith SM's residence is only one of four known two-storey residences constructed in the metropolitan region demonstrating its importance as a major terminus station on the NSW network. However, better examples exist at Lithgow and other regional locations. Penrith turntable is one of a decreasing number of turntables on the system, and rare in the metropolitan network. The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural or natural places/environments in New South Wales. Penrith Station Group is a representative example of railway station arrangements combining a range of buildings and structures dating from the 1860s, 1890s and post-war period to the present day including Victorian second class and third class roadside station buildings, a signal box, water tower, water column and filler spout, footbridge and overhead booking office. The water tank is one of approximately 13 (2009) water tanks remaining in-situ in the Sydney metropolitan area, the others include Eveleigh and Cardiff although most are now unused. The signal box is representative of the style of signal box built on the Main Western Line after World War II. Penrith Station Master's residence is a representative example of a type 4 two-storey residences built in the late 19th century demonstrating the balance between the status and financial restraint at the time. The turntable is a good example of similar types surviving in rural centres.

increased reinforcement

11938-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33502113

Euboean vase painting was a regional style of ancient Greek vase painting, prevalent on the island of Euboea. The Iron Age pottery of Euboea is subdivided into four phases Subgeometric (1125-1050 BC), Protogeometric (1050-900 BC), Subprotogeometric (900-750 BC) and Late Geometric (750-700 BC). The finds from the cemeteries of Toumba, Skoubris and Palia, as well as from the settlements at Lefkandi and Xeropolis demonstrate the wealth of the island at that time. Although conditions changed several times, positively and negatively, afterwards, the pottery changed little. The Protogeometric style remained in existence until the mid-8th century. From about 825 BC onwards, an increased influence of Attic pottery is notable. The Geometric vases of Euboea were products of high quality. The centres of production were at Eretria and Lefkandi. Some pof the vessels were covered in a thick cream-coloured slip . Initially, the potter-painters followed Attic precedents, later also Corinthian ones. Around 750 BC, the Cesnola Painter, displaying strong Attic influence, was active. He introduced the Attic style of figural painting. Euboea was the only region to produce vessels decorated with suspended concentric semicircles. Also only here, white paint or slip were used to enclose or fill ornamental motifs. The Subgeometric style subsequently survived for a considerable duration; it took some time for the Orientalising style to become established. Once it had done so, floral and other ornaments were very popular. Some experimentation took place with added colours (red and white) and with figural motifs (animals and humans). The influences were more evidently Attic and East Greek than from the true centre of the orientalising style, Corinth. Euboean black-figure vase painting was influenced by Corinth and predominantly Attica. The distinction of Boeotian from Attic products is not always easy. Scholars assume that the bulk of the finds was produced in Eretria. Especially amphorae, "lekythoi", "hydriai" and plates were painted. Large format amphorae were normally used for mythological imagery, such as the adventures of Herakles and the Judgement of Paris. Very large amphorae, derived from shapes of the 7th century, had conical lips and often showed images related to weddings. They were probably funeral vases, made especially for children who died before marriage. Typical of Eretrian black-figure pottery is the restricted use of incision and the regular use of white paint for floral ornaments. Apart from images orientated on Attic tradition, there was also wilder imagery, such as the rape of a deer by a satyr, or Herakles with centaurs and daimons. Vases of the Dolphin Class were originally considered Attic by scholars, but are now recognised as Euboean. However, their clay does not resemble that from any known Eretrian sources, suggesting that they were made in Chalkis. For some black-figure styles, the origin is disputed. Thus, Chalkidian vase painting was initially considered Euboean, but is now usually assumed to be from Italy.

confined maneuver

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66905015

On February 25, 2021, the United States military carried out an airstrike on a site which it believes to have been occupied by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias operating from across the border in eastern Syria. The unilateral operation was in retaliation for multiple rocket attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq ten days prior and was the first known offensive military operation carried out under U.S. president Joe Biden. Background. The United States intervened in Iraq in 2014 as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, a U.S.-led coalition tasked with combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Iran intervened in the country as well, supporting Shia militias, a number of which are hostile to the U.S.-led coalition. Rocket attacks against U.S. forces in the country increased during the 2019–2021 Persian Gulf crisis. Iran has been involved in Syria's civil war since the onset of the conflict in 2011, initially advising pro-government elements there, while the U.S. has played an active role in the conflict reportedly since 2012 but only formally intervening as part of Inherent Resolve in 2014. On February 15, 2021, ten days prior to the airstrike, a rocket attack in the Iraqi city of Erbil killed an Operation Inherent Resolve coalition civilian contractor from the Philippines and injured six others, including one U.S. soldier. On February 20, 2021, another rocket attack targeted Balad Air Base in Iraq's Saladin Governorate, wounding one South African civilian contractor working for the U.S.-led coalition. Airstrike. The airstrike targeted a small cluster of buildings in al-Hurri village near Abu Kamal, believed by the United States Department of Defense to be occupied by members of the Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada militias. Seven 500lb bombs equipped with JDAM guidance kits were dropped from two U.S. F-15E fighter jets, destroying nine facilities and rendering two others uninhabitable. U.S. defense and Biden administration officials publicly emphasized the "limited" nature of the operation, saying the strike was aimed at impeding the militias' abilities to conduct future attacks. "The Wall Street Journal" later reported that a second strike was called off by Biden after "a woman and a couple of children" were spotted in the area. The death toll of the strike is unclear due to inconsistent reports from different entities. Reuters cited local reports that at least 17 had been killed, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 22 deaths. Kata'ib Hezbollah claimed that just one person was killed and four others were injured. Aftermath. Following the strikes, U.S. president Joe Biden warned Iran, saying "You can't act with impunity, be careful." Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called the airstrikes a "proportionate military response" to the prior rocket attacks while Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said it was he who recommended the operation to Biden. Iran condemned the strike as "a violation of Syria's sovereignty" and denied responsibility for rocket attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. U.S. Representative Michael McCaul regarded the airstrike as a "necessary deterrent" and said that attacks on U.S. interests "will not be tolerated." However, the operation was criticized by some in the U.S. Congress for potential unconstitutionality. Senators Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy called for a congressional briefing on the legality of the strikes and Representative Ro Khanna argued there was "no justification for a president to authorize a military strike that is not in self-defense against an imminent threat without congressional authorization," adding that the airstrike made Biden "the seventh consecutive US president to order strikes in the Middle East". The National Security Council said it notified Congress beforehand and Biden defended the operation in a letter to Congress on February 27, arguing for its constitutionality, citing Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and saying he ordered the airstrikes "to protect and defend our personnel and our partners" against future rocket attacks. Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, "Mick" Mulroy, commented that the strikes were likely conducted in Syria rather than Iraq in order to avoid issues for the Iraqi government.

commentaries from the area

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10116806

The threat of terrorism in Kazakhstan plays an increasingly important role in relations with the United States which in 2006 were at an all-time high. Kazakhstan has taken Uzbekistan's place as the favored partner in Central Asia for both Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan's counter-terrorism efforts resulted in country's 94th ranking among 130 countries in the 2016 Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute of Economics and Peace. The higher the position on the ranking is, the bigger the impact of terrorism in the country. Kazakhstan's 94th place puts it in a group of countries with the lowest impact of terrorism. Banned terrorist organizations. On 12 October 2006 the Supreme Court approved a revised list of banned terrorist organizations and the Prosecutor General released the list. The terrorist organizations the government has banned are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins, Islamic Party of Eastern Turkestan, Kurdistan Workers Party, Boz Kurt, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Social Reforms Society (in Kuwait), Asbat an-Ansar (in Israel), Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood. When the Supreme Court initially added the JCMA and six other organizations to its list in March 2006, critics said that the Muslim Brotherhood and Lashkar-e-Toiba do not operate in Kazakhstan on a level sufficient to justify inclusion in the list. Saulebek Zhamkenuly, press secretary for the Prosecutor-General's Office, said, "It doesn't mean all these organizations are active in Kazakhstan. The decision to ban them is a preventive measure. These organizations are considered as terrorist in the Russian Federation, the United States, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan." The Supreme Court added Aum Shinrikyo and the East Turkestan Liberation Organization to the list of banned terrorist organizations on 17 November 2006. Both organizations have members in Kazakhstan. Ties between designated terrorist organizations. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz government banned HuT after it declared a jihad against Kyrgyz police on 19 July 2006. Kyrgyz and Uzbek government officials say that there are ties between Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and the Islamic extremist group Akromiya. Kazakh Prosecutor-General Rashid Tusupbekov asked the Astana City Court to ban HuT because of its terrorist activities on 16 March 2005. Press secretary Zhamkenuly said it is "very probable that Hizb ut-Tahrir has connections with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups. Therefore, under the Kazakh law banning extremism, we have every reason to outlaw Hizb ut-Tahrir's activities on Kazakh territory." Aum Shinrikyo and East Turkestan Liberation Organization. Askar Amerkhanov, deputy chief of staff of Kazakhstan's counterterrorism center, asked the Prosecutor-General's Office and the Supreme Court to add Aum Shinrikyo and the East Turkestan Liberation Organization to the list of banned terrorist organizations on 15 September 2006. Amerkhanov said the National Security Committee (KNB) prevented an Aum Shinrikyo cell from forming in Kyzylorda. The Supreme Court added both organizations to the list on 17 November 2006. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. From 28 March-1 April 2004 two suicide bombers set off bombs in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The bombings killed 47 people, 33 of whom were militants and 14 who were bystanders and policemen. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Uzbek President Islam Karimov claimed the perpetrators were ex-members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The Uzbek security service's intelligence, according to "Pravda", proves the involvement of Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins members. Tashkent police found a mobile phone used by the terrorists at the site of one of the bombings. The police later found that the terrorists had called associates in Kazakhstan. Police from both nations agreed to work together in investigating the bombing. According to Tanya Costello, an analyst for Eurasia Group, the IMU has been nearly destroyed by the counter-terrorism efforts of the U.S., Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.Five Years After 9/11: Crackdowns Loom Behind Central Asia's War On Terror RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty</ref> While Al-Qaeda has never said it has a direct presence in Kazakhstan, journalists raised the issue in a press conference held in February 2004 following a meeting between U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Kazakh Defense Minister Mukhtar Altynbayev. The Government of Pakistan had recently arrested Abdallah Tohtasinovich Magrupov, a suspected terrorist of Kazakh ethnicity, and his citizenship was unclear. Altynbayev expressed skepticism over the presence of Al-Qaeda members, saying the situation is "seriously controlled by the special services." Hamas. The Union of Muslims of Kazakhstan invited Hamas leaders to Kazakhstan in 2006. Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Hizb-ut-Tahrir first appeared in Kazakhstan in the south in the 1990s. Beibut Saparaly, a cleric at the Astana-based Kaganat religious education center, said in March 2005 that the "idea to create a caliphate is supported by many youth. Some years ago, we heard that Hizb ut-Tahrir had support in Shymkent and in Pavlodar. But lately, particularly after Qurban-Ayt, we learned that [Hizb ut-Tahrir] leaflets had been distributed in all mosques in the southern capital of Almaty." Kazakh police have arrested HuT members in southern Kazakhstan for several years, but the first arrests of members in northern Kazakhstan were in 2004. "Novoye Pokoleniye" has attributed the popularity of Hizb-ut-Tahrir to the social and economic conditions of the populace. One journalist wrote that illiteracy, poverty, and the "proximity of trouble spots allow various types of 'teachers' to act very freely there." Additionally, as "one head cell is cut off," it is "replaced by several new ones." The Kazakh government found the first Hizb-ut-Tahrir cell in Kentai in 2000. The HuT presence in Kazakhstan then spread in the country, primarily in southern Kazakhstan. Rashid Tusupbekov, the Prosecutor General, asked the Supreme Court to add Hizb ut-Tahrir to the list of banned terrorist organizations on 17 March 2005, citing its ties to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Police arrested Kuanysh Bekzhanov, a 20-year-old student of law at the Humanitarian Institute, in November 2003 at Ordabasy square for distributing Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlets. Upon a further search police uncovered 200 Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets. Judge Adis Kerimshiyev of the Shymkent municipal court found Bekzhanov guilty on 4 August of violating part 2 of Article 164 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, "agitation of social, ethnic, clan, racial, or religious animosity," and Article 337, "creation or participation in the activities of illegal public associations." The court sentenced him to two years in prison. Bombings in Uzbekistan in the spring and summer of 2004 killed more than 50 people. The Uzbek government attributed the bombings to HuT terrorists. Suspects said they were trained at a terrorist camp in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh government denied the allegation, but said the defendants had at one point lived in the Shymkent Oblast, which they reached by illegally crossing the border. On 5 February 2005 police in Kentai, Kazakhstan found Hizb-ut-Tahrir books and leaflets in the attic of a resident's home. The books were written in Uzbek, Russian, and Kazakh. Police charged the resident with distributing extremist literature and encouraging religious strife. According to Marat Yermukanov of "Eurasia Daily Monitor", "reports say" the resident "bought these publications at the market... to distribute the teachings of Hizb-ut-Tahrir" in Kentai. Kentai is "fertile ground" for Hizb-ut-Tahrir because of the poor economy and the government's "indifference to their woes." Yermukanov said that most police raids targeted HuT cells. Three days later, on 8 February, Almaty police shut down an HuT printing facility, taking 12,400 leaflets and 53 booklets from an apartment building. Hibratulla Doskaliyev, head of the South Kazakhstan Region interior department, criticized the government's handling of Hizb ut-Tahrir's growing popularity in August 2006. Doskaliyev said, "This is a very serious issue and only 14 [officers] are dealing with it. This is totally insufficient." The department subsequently increased personnel monitoring Hizb ut-Tahrir activity. Beksultan Sarsenov, first deputy head of the CIS Anti-Terrorist Center, said Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Uyghur nationalists were the greatest threats to Kazakhstan's security. Sarsenov said that a "small group" of religious bigots and nationalists "think the country is only for Kazakhs" and "nationalist Russians who are convinced that they have the right to certain part of Kazakhstan's territory" threaten Kazakhstan. In December 2005 the KNB extradited Rustam Chagilov, a suspected terrorist, to Russia. KNB officials detained an ethnic Uzbek and alleged member of HuT in Taraz, South Kazakhstan in April 2006. The KNB accused him of organizing an HuT cell Qoqon, Uzbekistan and extradited him to Uzbekistan. Kenzhenbulat Beknazarov, spokesman for the KNB announced on 22 December 2006 in Astana that an HuT cell-network active in multiple towns had been shut down. Beknazarov said, "Computers, more than 25,000 pamphlets, some 70 copies of religious extremist books and advanced printing equipment were confiscated during our searches." Routes used to smuggle in extremist literature and foreign funding were also shut down. Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins. In 2004 National Security Committee (KNB) officials claimed they had shut down the Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins. However, in 2006, they again claimed to have foiled a terrorist plot orchestrated by JCAM members. 2004. Vladimir Bozhko, first deputy chairman of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB), announced in a press conference on 11 November 2004 that the KNB had dismantled the Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins, arresting nine citizens of Kazakhstan and four of Uzbekistan. Police confiscated weapons, forged documents, a videotape of a speech given by Osama Bin Laden, and what "Radio Free Europe" called "extremist propaganda." Four women, trained as suicide bombers, were detained. The government discovered that JCAM recruited 50 citizens of Uzbekistan and 20 of Kazakhstan since mid-2002. JCAM is, like the IMU, affiliated with Al Qaeda. Zhakshybek Biimurzaev, headed JCAM's operations in Kazakhstan while Ahmad Bekmirzaev, headed operations in Uzbekistan. Both served in the IMU. Biimurzaev has been arrested by Uzbek police and the National Security Service of Kyrgyzstan. Uzbek police killed Bekmirzaev in a shoot-out near Tashkent on 30 March. Biimurzaev is reported as having said, "This year there were three terror attacks in Tashkent in July. I organized them on the instruction of my amir Usman. Three Kazakh citizens took part in them. I was opposed to this, but the amir ordered it." Usman later ordered Biimurzaev to assassinate what "Radio Free Europe" referred to as a "high-ranking Uzbek official." Uzbek officials said Avaz Shoyusupov, a Kazakh citizen, is one of the suicide bombers who died in the 30 July attacks. Bekmirzaev's wife, Makhira Ibragimova, and Isa Eruov, Kazakh citizens, killed themselves in suicide bombing attacks in Uzbekistan in spring 2004. Police caught Aidos Usmonov, an Uzbek citizen and an aide of Biimurzaev, in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Usmonov had recently returned from Russia, where he allegedly recruited for JCAM. The Kazakh government extradited Uzbek terrorist suspects arrested in Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. "Deutsche Welle" and the Uzbek government reported that 15 suspects charged in relation to the Tashkent bombings were trained in terrorist camps in South Waziristan, Pakistan and in "private apartments" in Shymkent, and other cities, in Kazakhstan. Deputy Chairman Bozhko disagreed, saying "there were no camps and bases for training terrorists on the territory of our country." 2006. President Nazarbayev on 18 April 2006 said the KNB needed to do more to protect the nation's security. Sergei Minenkov, National Security Committee member in charge of counter-terrorism, announced the day after that a KNB-Interior Ministry operation had prevented a major terrorist attack with assistance from the security services of an unnamed foreign nation and again shut down JCAM, calling it a "criminal gang set up for terrorist activities." Some interpreted Minenkov's statements as a response to Nazarbayev's criticism. Minenkov said the plot involved bombing the offices of security officials, government buildings, and public safety facilities. The ten suspects, who allegedly acted on instructions from a foreign nation, were charged with 'instigating religious strife' and illegal possession of firearms. When the operation took place, JCAM members were, according to "ISN Security Watch", "monitoring Kyrgyz political activities." 10 JCAM members in Almaty were arrested and police confiscated weapons and extremist books and tapes. The suspects were recruiting Kazakh citizens and establishing terror bases when they were arrested. Minenkov said, "Foreign ideologists of terrorism recommended attacking public places and strategically important infrastructure facilities" in letters found by police. Seized documents included instructions on explosive construction and maps of targets. Serikbai Alibayev of For a Just Kazakhstan opposition coalition said, "The National Security Committee's accusation against the opposition—that it could have joined the terrorist group—is nothing less than blame based on nothing. According to our laws and the constitution, law-enforcement agencies immediately should open a case against the National Security Committee and start an investigation. They should be brought to court for saying that—they are violating our constitution." Zauresh Battalova, also of For a Just Kazakhstan, said, "The National Security Committee is a tool in the hands of the authorities. Today, the National Security Committee is following the authorities' order to discredit those who really care about people in order to stop them. It's the National Security Committee that should be brought to justice. They have to answer for their activities, the activities of the special Arystan unit, and the deaths of Altynbek and Zamanbek. Problems cannot be solved by Dutbayev's resignation alone." The KNB discovered and disrupted a terror cell in Stepnogorsk on 16 November. They arrested eleven Islamic terrorists, who were planning on carrying out attacks to create an Islamist republic in Central Asia. One of the terrorists shot at police officers as they broke up the cell. On 27 December the KNB broke up the "Stepnogorsk zhamaat terrorist group," confiscating weapons and literature inciting terrorism. Members of the organization were planning on robbing businesses to fund assassinations of civil servants. In January 2006 convicted JMCA terrorists were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight to twenty-five years in prison. 2011. In July 2011, nine people suspected of involvement in the killing of two policeman in the northwestern Aktobe Province were killed in a firefight with policemen. A Kazakh special forces member was also killed. The region has seen a rise in militant Islamic activity, although there are also grievances involving the police and economic issues. The incident came a few weeks after the first suicide bombing in Kazakhstan in Aktobe. Rahimjan Makhatov blew himself up on May 17 inside the Aktobe offices of the National Security Committee, killing himself and injuring two others. Kazakh authorities said this was related to criminal activities rather than Islamic militancy. In November 2011, 4 police officers and a security guard and another civilian were killed by a suicide bomber in the city of Taraz. The security guard was killed in an attack on an armoury where two guns were stolen, then militant killed two police officers with these weapons and then blew it when he was arrested killing another police officer. Tablighi Jamaat. Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary organization that is banned in Uzbekistan and has alleged ties to Al-Qaeda, is not considered a terrorist organization by the Government of Kazakhstan, but some members have been fined and deported for violating Kazakhstan's laws on missionary activity. Askar Amerkhanov, head of the National Security Committee Secret Police's Anti-terrorism Center, said, "It is true that at first we did have suspicions that Tabligh was an extremist organisation. But having studied its teachings we have concluded that it is simply an Islamic missionary organisation. Tabligh's problem is that its supporters are preaching without having registered with the authorities." Kairat Tulesov, deputy head of the Justice Ministry's Religious Affairs Committee, said, "Tabligh supporters simply have to observe Kazakh law and then they can pursue their activities without hindrance." Russian separatism. In November 1999 the KNB arrested 22 people, 12 of whom were Russian citizens, in Öskemen for planning to overthrow the government and seized rifle cartridges and petrol bombs. On 8 June 2000 the Öskemen court sentenced 13 people, 11 Russians and 2 Kazakhs, convicted of planning to overthrow the local government and of illegal possession of weapons. The court sentenced the leader of the group, Vladimir Kazimirchuk, to 18-years imprisonment. Kazimirchuk allegedly planned to create an independent nation for ethnic Russians in eastern Kazakhstan. Alexander Shushannikov, a member of Ust-Kamenogorsk municipal council, criticized the sentencing, saying the men were not sentenced for "concrete actions. Their guilt was just their intentions." He called it a "show trial." Almaty airplane bomb. An airport worker discovered a bomb in a plant in the baggage compartment of a Boeing 737 that flew from Moscow, Russia to Almaty, Kazakhstan while unloading baggage on 12 May 2005. The bomb, which at the time of discovery ticked and had wires. Security officials destroyed the package without incident. State terrorism. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented three cases in which the Kazakh government has used harassment and intimidation to silence journalists. In 2000 "XXI Vek" and "SolDat", newspapers affiliated with the Republican People's Party of Kazakhstan, were shut down. The Kazakh government arrested Yermurat Bapi, editor of "Soldat", charged him with insulting the president. Political opposition leader Zamanbek Nurkadilov died on 17 November 2005, a month before presidential elections. Nurkadilov's friend and political ally Altynbek Sarsenbayev died on 13 February 2006. While opposition believes that Zamanbek Nurkadilov was murdered by KNB agents, the police proclaimed it as suicide. There were no official proofs provided, neither of the suicide theory nor of the assassination theory. Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Representatives from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey, and the United States met in Rabat, Morocco on 30–31 October 2006 to discuss the protection of nuclear materials and the prevention of theft by terrorists. One of the first steps of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism is to issue a statement of principles. Kazakhstan gave up its nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. An anonymous U.S. official said the goal of the initiative is for participating states to "build capacities to prevent the acquisition of sensitive materials by terrorist groups." Literature. The following extremist literature advocating terrorism has been confiscated in Kazakhstan: Cooperation with China. Kazakhstan has consistently extradited Uyghur terrorist suspects to China and in 2006 participated in a large-scale, joint counter-terrorism drill. Chinese delegation visit. Chinese President Hu Jintao led a 150-person delegation to Kazakhstan on 2 July 2005 after visiting Moscow, Russia for four days. The Chinese Government issued a press release saying the Chinese-Kazakh energy and security "relationship deepens constantly." Upon arriving Hu met with President Nazarbayev in an official ceremony. They discussed anti-terrorism, energy, and transportation. Tian-Shan-1 2006. The governments of China and Kazakhstan held an anti-terror drill, known as the "Tian-Shan-1-2006" drill, from 24–26 August 2006, starting in Almaty, Kazakhstan and ending in Xinjiang, China through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The drill is the first time China and Kazakhstan have held anti-terrorism maneuvers. The Collective Security Treaty Organization held exercises in the Caspian sea simultaneously. The simulation lasted for three days and involved Kazakh forces from border patrol, the Interior Ministry, and the Emergency Situations Ministry, and Chinese law enforcement forces and security services. 700 police officials used armed helicopters and anti-riot vehicles to force the 'enemy' into a narrow valley along the border of Kazakhstan and Xinjiang, China after rescuing 'hostages'. About 100 observers from other SCO nation-members attended the exercises. The first day of exercises began in Almaty and ended in Yining, a city in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. When officials of "Radio Free Europe" contacted the Foreign and Defense Ministries of both nations, inquiring about the exercises, Islam Dosmailuly, a spokesman for Kazakhstan's National Security Committee, told them he did not "know if [the exercises] will [take place] or not. I'm waiting for information. If [the information] gets here, we'll certainly comment on it. But, for now, I have no information." "Xinhua" reported that the policemen practiced freeing hostages. Some analysts said the simulation practiced securing the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline, which sends petroleum from Kazakhstan to refineries in Xinjiang. Kazakhstan sends about 3.5 million tons through the pipeline annually and wants to increase output to 20 million tons. Konstantin Syroyezhkin, a senior analyst at Kazakhstan's Strategic Studies and Research Institute, said "there are many common threats and these are [well-known] already. There is drug trafficking, [illegal] immigration, and religious extremism and political extremism. There are a number of threats. And these are counter-terrorism exercises, [against] international terrorism. Why should they not hold them? Look, there's a mess in Afghanistan; there must be some mutual cooperation in that matter. And anyway, it is not the first time they have held such exercises. Last year, or before last year, it was organized as a planned maneuver, there is nothing suspicious about that." Kazakhstan has held joint counter-terrorism exercises with NATO under the Partnership for Peace program and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Meng Hongwei, Chinese Vice-Minister of Public Security and commander of the Chinese troops for the drill, warned that the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism and increasing cross-border drug trafficking were affecting the region. Vice-Minister Hongwei said, "the exercise will help establish the SCO's active role in maintaining regional security and stability." SCO nation-members plan to hold another series of anti-terrorism exercises in Russia in 2007. Vladimir Boshko, first vice-chairman of the Committee of the National Security of Kazakhstan, said the drill would improve anti-terror cooperation among SCO nation-members. Cooperation with India. The Kazakh government condemned the 13 December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament saying terrorism is unjustifiable. President Nazarbayev and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee reaffirmed this message by issuing a joint declaration on 12 February 2002, when Nazarbayev visited India for a state visit, stating that "terrorism [can] not be justified in any form, for any cause or for any reason used as an excuse... the fight against terrorism has to be global, comprehensive and sustained for the objective of total elimination of terrorism everywhere." They agreed to establish a bilateral joint working group on counter-terrorism and expressed support for the Karzai administration and an end to terrorism in Afghanistan. During Nazarbayev's five-day visit, the first since 1996, he met with President K. R. Narayanan, Vice President Krishan Kant and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. Cooperation with international bodies. CICA Declaration on Eliminating Terrorism. Officials from member state of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia met in the first CICA conference in Almaty in June 2002. On 4 June they issued a "Declaration on Eliminating Terrorism and Promoting Dialogue among Civilizations." The Declaration condemns all acts of terrorism as "direct violations of human rights" and recognizes that "all religions of the world reject violence and terrorism." It also expresses support for UN Security Council Resolution 1373. Combating money laundering and terrorism financing workshop. The Kazakh government participated in a workshop on fighting money laundering and the financing of terrorism, along with officials, including legislators and police officers, from the Global Program against Money Laundering of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, Canada, Croatia, and the International Monetary Fund in 2002 from 30 September – 1 October in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and 2 October and 3 October in Astana, Kazakhstan. The workshop fulfilled part of an "Action Plan" agreed upon in December 2001 in a conference in Bishkek on security in Central Asia. In Astana the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on National Security of Kazakhstan advocated passing a law prohibiting money laundering in Kazakhstan per the United Nations' goal of banning money laundering in every country by 2003. Participants gave recommendations to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on changing legislation and bureaucracy to better fight illegal financing practices. International Conference on Peace and Harmony. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders met with the President Nazarbayev, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov, and senior government officials from Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and Turkey, in Almaty on 13 February 2003 for the International Conference on Peace and Harmony. President Bush said in a 12 February letter to Nazarbayev, "The United States strongly supports the Conference's objective of fostering peace and stability through dialogue among people of different nationalities and faiths. All peace-loving people share a deep interest in advancing religious liberty and tolerance, stemming hatred, and eliminating the threat of terrorism." Over 70 Jewish leaders participated, including Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman, and Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman, of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. Zuckerman expressed "gratitude to all present for your fight against all forms of terrorism and extremism." United States Senators Sam Brownback, Orrin Hatch, Mary Landrieu, and representatives Robert Wexler, Gary Ackerman, Henry Waxman, Joseph Pitts and others, signed separate letters of support for the conference, calling it "critical to worldwide efforts to counter extremism." It sent "a strong signal that the present and future course of the Muslim world will not be controlled by those that would propagate hate, fear and murder, such as Al Qaeda, but by those nations and people who respect and promote peace, tolerance and democracy." Participants in the conference established a permanent "Forum for Peace and Stability," with headquarters in Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev said the Forum laid the "foundation for creating a mechanism for permanent dialogue in the name of stability, security and peace in the 21st century. New realities require new approaches to thinking of new principles of solving the problems." President Rakhmonov said, "The basis for the dialogue of civilizations lies in the unity of values preached by all religions. We must not allow attempts to pit civilizations against each other to succeed." United Nations Terrorism Committee conference in Almaty. Officials from the United Nations Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee met in Almaty from 26–28 January 2005. The officials discussed terrorism, terrorism financing, money laundering, arms trafficking, illicit fund transfers, and fake charities in Central Eurasia. Andrei Denisov, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, chaired the conference. On 26 January he said, "the reality is that the threat of terrorism cannot be eradicated completely in the near future. It will continue to reproduce itself one way or the other. But nations can and should make every effort to limit the opportunities for this threat to realize itself, and this is what we are doing, and this is what we are going to discuss during our conference." He also said "terrorism has deep roots in Central Asia." President Nazarbayev 's said in his opening statement, "Kazakhstan's national security is closely linked to the security of the Central Asian region. And security in Central Asia should be considered an integral component of security in [Eurasia]. The Central Asian region should be part of a Eurasian security system that is part of a global security system." Boris Mylnikov, head of the CIS Antiterrorism Center, announced a list of terrorist organizations recognized by the CSTO and SCO. Human Rights Watch released an open letter to the CTC, calling on CTC nations to recognize the importance of respecting human rights while fighting terrorism. Rachel Denber, acting HRW director for Europe and Central Asia, expressed concerns about Human rights in Kazakhstan. HRW opposes the Kazakh government's extradition of Muslims to China because they may be sentenced to death. Cooperation with Russia. Yury Baluyevsky, First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the Russian General Staff, gave a speech to the chiefs of general staffs of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine in February 2006 prior to the fifteenth anniversary of the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. He called on them to cooperate in fighting against "terrorism, cross-border crime and the drug mafia." The governments of Georgia, Moldova and Turkmenistan chose to not send representatives to the meeting. At the same time Kazakhstan has extradited terrorist suspects to Russia. FSB and KNB agents caught Vakha Izmailov, suspected of involvement in the Beslan school attack and of other attacks in Ingushetia, in a joint operation in Kazakhstan. The Kazakh KNB then transferred him to the Russian FSB. Cooperation with Singapore. Oral Mukhamedzhanov, Speaker of Kazakhstan's Lower House of Parliament, met with Singaporean President Sellapan Ramanathan on 31 October 2006. They discussed international terrorism and increasing cooperation between the two nations in counter-terrorism. Speaker Mukhamedzhanov visited Singapore after Singaporean Parliament Speaker Abdullah Tarmugi invited him. Cooperation with the United Arab Emirates. Askar Musinov, Kazakhstan's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, met with Sayf Bin-Zayid al Nuhayyan, the Interior Minister of the UAE, on 29 November 2006. They discussed cooperation in fighting organized crime, drug trafficking, extradition of suspects, and terrorism. Cooperation with the United States. Cooperation with the United States in regional counter-terrorism and the U.S.-led War in Iraq elicited praise from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Conrad Burns, Congressman Dennis Rehberg, and other U.S. government officials. Response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sent a message to United States President George W. Bush expressing "indignation about terrorist acts that resulted in loss of numerous lives." The "civilized community must unite and take effective measures to fight international terrorism. All the Kazakhstan people sympathize with the American people in their grief and mourn aver the tragedy." Central Intelligence Agency officials met with Kazakhstan Security Council officials "to take all the necessary measures to protect U.S. citizens staying in Kazakhstan" in September 2001 following the attacks. KNB Chairman Marat Tazhin pledged the government would "[adopt] tougher measures to deport illegal migrants [in] Kazakhstan." According to the Center for Defense Information, the Kazakh government has been "extremely supportive [of] the U.S.-led war against terrorism." The government offered the use of a major airport for Operation Enduring Freedom. Over 800 U.S. flights over Kazakh territory were approved and went ahead. CDI's profile of Kazakhstan credits security forces for "step[ing] up efforts to protect U.S. government facilities and oil facilities with U.S. private investment" and pledging to "freeze the assets of terrorists identified on the U.S. designated terrorist asset-freeze list." The U.S. officially gave the Kazakh government USD $52,893,000 million in 2002, $47 million in 2003, and $36.2 million in 2004. In addition, U.S. Government agencies spent $92 million in assistance programs in Kazakhstan in 2003. Three Kazakh citizens, Yaqub Abahanov, Abdulrahim Kerimbakiev, and Abdallah Tohtasinovich Magrupov, all born in Semey, Kazakhstan, are held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba for alleged ties to the Taliban. Additionally, Uzbek citizen and Guantánamo prisoner Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev's birthplace is Abaye, Kazakhstan. In a speech given on 19 December 2001 at the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council during the Defence Ministers session, Mukhtar Altynbayev, the Kazakh Minister of Defense and General of the Kazakh Army, said the attacks "demonstrated that international terrorism has no borders and represents a threat to all the world community." He reaffirmed Kazakhstan's will to fight terrorism and the need to "punish" terrorists and their sponsors. Addressing the possibility, raised by North Atlantic Treaty Organization experts," of using Kazakh airfields for counterterrorist operations, he said there were "other practical issues under consideration," but that Kazakhstan would commit to providing humanitarian assistance to Afghans. United States air bases. In 2002 a Chinese diplomat accused the United States Government of trying to secure a defunct air base, originally used by the Soviet Union specifically for theoretical military operations against China, near Semey in eastern Kazakhstan. A high-ranking Kazakh Defense Ministry official said the U.S. Government, as part of its anti-terrorism operations in Central Asia, had requested the use of military bases in Taraz and Taldykorgan. Ibragim Alibekov, a journalist for "Radio Free Europe", characterized President Nursultan Nazarbayev's support for the "anti-terrorism campaign" as cautious and "hesitant on the implementation of concrete cooperation measures." However, the National Coalition Supporting Soviet Jewry applauds Kazakhstan for playing "a vital role in U.S.-led efforts to combat international terrorism." President Bush called Kazakhstan a "strategic partner of the United States in Central Asia" and said the United States wanted to expand anti-terrorism cooperation. Alleged U.S. attempts to acquire bases were criticized by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who said such actions were unjustifiable, and Russian State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev. An anonymous expert within the Kazakh Defense Ministry said that "of all the assistance [Kazakhstan] can offer towards military counter-terrorism operations—allowing use of our airfields, opening air corridors and sharing intelligence information—the last would be the least risky for Kazakhstan. Allowing the use of airfields means going into direct confrontation with the Taliban, and that is not a good scenario in our situation." An anonymous, high-ranking Foreign Ministry official said "the influx of refugees" created by U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan "is one problem, but the greater problem is that terrorists and militants might flee northward disguised as civilians." Professor Murat Abdirov, director of the International Relations Institute of Eurasian University, said, "Kazakhstan cannot stay away from the international anti-terrorism coalition, but we should proceed with caution." The Kazakh government did offer the use of a major airport for military operations, but three years later, with U.S. military operations against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan continuing, General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said on 3 May 2005 that the United States did not "expect to open a military base in Kazakhstan unless a tense situation emerges in the region, under which the Kazakh government requests the U.S. armed forces to do so." Cooperation with Uzbekistan. While the Uzbek government complained in 2004 that Islamic terrorists were training in southern Kazakhstan, an allegation the Kazakh government denied, cooperation between the two countries has been strong as both states face a common threat. Andijan massacre. Nazarbayev, while on a state visit to Uzbekistan, told Uzbek President Islam Karimov that the Uzbek government's actions in quelling unrest in the Uzbek city of Andijan on 12 and 13 May 2005 helped "protect the peace of 26 million Uzbekistanis. A different outcome would have destabilized the region today." He said that because terrorists had taken over government buildings and prisons, Karimov could not respond to the unrest differently, and other governments had responded similarly in the past. The Uzbek government attributed the unrest to Islamic extremist groups recognized as terrorist organizations in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek government estimated 187 people, made up of 94 terrorists, 60 civilians, 31 policemen, and two others died, and 76 terrorists were injured. Human rights groups dispute the government's estimate, accusing Uzbek security forces of killing about 700 civilians. Extradition of terrorist suspects. On 5 July 2005 Human Rights Watch called upon the Kazakh government to refrain from handing over Lutfullo Shamsudinov, the Andijan representative for the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, then held in Almaty, to the Uzbek government. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had given Shamsudinov refugee status and planned to resettle him when Kazakh authorities detained him on 4 July. Earlier that day President Karimov visited Kazakhstan along with other regional nations' representatives as part of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting. The Uzbek government requested Shamsudinov's extradition, charging him with five criminal charges including premeditated murder. Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said, "Kazakhstan should step forward and protect this brave man. Instead of that, the authorities seem ready to hand over a refugee to be tortured, in blatant violation of international law." In response to statements made by a representative for the Almaty city prosecutor's office, in which the representative called Shamsudinov a terrorist, Cartner said, "The terrorist accusation is a perversion of international concerns about terrorism and an attempt to block international support for Shamsudinov. In reality, he is someone who worked tirelessly towards the rule of law in Uzbekistan." Russia also deported an asylum seeker to Uzbekistan, Rustam Muminov, who Uzbek authorities accuse of involvement in the Andijan unrest and membership in a religious extremist organization, and Kyrgyzstan deported five Andijan-refugees—Jahongir Maqsudov, Yoqub Toshboev, Odiljon Rahimov, Rasuljon Pirmatov, and Fayoz Tojihalilov—to Uzbekistan in early August 2006. In March 1998 the Uzbek government accused Obidkhon Qori Nazarov, an Imam, of religious extremism, terrorism, and membership in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Nazarov fled to Kazakhstan, leaving behind his wife, son, and three brothers, all of whom have been imprisoned or disappeared, though his wife has been released. John MacLeod, a senior editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting who met Nazarov in 1996, disputed the charges. He said Nazarov is "really a part of an earlier phase of events in Uzbekistan when the state religion was entirely in confrontation with independent Imams and Mullahs such as Obidkhon and a number of others." Rao said, "If we had found him associated with terrorism or extremism we would have excluded him. We believe that he is a refugee needing an international protection. That's how we provided him the refugee status and protection." The UNHCR gave Nazarov refugee status when he contacted them in November 2006. Nazarov, along with some members of his family, were flown out of Kazakhstan to a secret location in Western Europe on 16 March 2006. Rao said, "The credit has to be given to the Kazakh authorities. Once we recognized [Nazarov] as a refugee, we informed them that he is under the protection of [the] UNHCR. So Kazakh authorities have honored their ... national obligation and let him stay in the country until the UNHCR organized the third-country settlement. And today, when he wanted to depart, the authorities let him leave the country." Security fence. Kazakh border officials began building a fence on the border with Uzbekistan on 19 October 2006. "The New York Times" reported that the fence will be "eight-foot-high [with] barbed-wire" and searchlights "along heavily populated towns and cities on the southern ridge" where drug smugglers operate. The area is a "flash point in a larger regional struggle against Islamic militants." The governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan first created national border guard forces in 1992 and January 1998 respectively, far earlier than other post-Soviet Union nations. The Kazakh government raised the force in status, ending the State Security Committee's control until the Committee regained control in 1998. Other Central Asian nations have had border disputes in the past. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had serious "issues" regarding their mutual border until May 2004. The Turkmen Foreign Ministry released a statement on 31 May saying disputes had been resolved. Erik Roslyakov, second in command of Kazakhstan's southern border, said the fence will cover the Sariaghash and Maktaaral districts. Larisa Dmitriyuk, spokeswoman for Kazakhstan's border administration, said the border patrol's "task will now be easier. We will be in a position to use our weapons, as it is the rule when one wants to catch [trespassers]." In addition to tightening security, Bruce Pannier of "Payvand" noted increased military spending to strengthen Kazakhstan's border with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Criticism. "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" interviewed Vyacheslav Kasymov, director of the executive committee of the Regional Anti-terrorist Center of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and published the interview on 7 February. In the interview Kasymov accused the Kazakh government of giving refuge to terrorist organizations, specifically Saudi Binladin Group, which operated in Astana. In November 2004 the Supreme Court ruled against the company's claim to 7 square kilometres of land in Astana. The Kazakh Foreign Ministry issued a statement two days later, on 9 February, calling Kasymov's statements "absolutely incompatible with the status of a head of the structure of a large international organization and casts a shadow of doubt on the reputation and position of the SCO in the contemporary world." The statement said the Kazakh government has signed 12 UN anti-terrorist conventions. The Kazakh Foreign Ministry has since characterized Kasymov's comments as "inappropriate" and "totally deprived of the spirit of the basic documents of [the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation]" because "There weren't and there are not any terrorists' bases or camps on the soil of Kazakhstan." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Human Rights Watch have criticized the Nazarbayev administration's policy of transferring terrorist suspects to neighboring countries, specifically Uzbekistan, where HRW says suspects face torture. The strongest criticism of the Nazarbayev administration's counter-terrorism operations comes from Harout Semerdjian of the University of California, Los Angeles. Semerdjian accuses the government of engaging in "semi-state terrorism" through unlawful arrests of journalists, arson, and other attacks on the press. The U.S. embassy criticized an act of arson in Kazakhstan in May 2002.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54420417

Bhadon is a village and Gram Panchayat located in Martinganj tehsil of the Azamgarh District in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, near the border with Jaunpur District. It is north-east of the district headquarters in Azamgarh and from the state capital of Lucknow. Bhadon is known for its mangoes, which are exported to many villages. Mihrawan Railway station is the nearest railway station to the village. Demographics. According to the 2011 census, Bhadon has a total population of 6,843 people (3,447 men and 3,396 women) living in about 882 houses. Most of the population is either Hindu (51%) or Muslim (49%). In 2011, there were 1,095 children aged 0–6, making up 16% of the total population. The average sex ratio was 985 which is higher than the Uttar Pradesh state average of 912. The child sex ratio for Bhadon as per census is 885, lower than the state average of 902. Bhadon village has a high literacy rate compared to the rest of Uttar Pradesh. In 2011, the literacy rate of Bhadon was 68.98% compared to 67.68% of Uttar Pradesh. In Bhadon, the male literacy rate was 77.15% while the female literacy rate was 60.86%. The official languages of Bhadon are Hindi and Urdu, which are spoken by the majority of the population, although Hindi is the most used for everyday communication. Geography. Bhadon has an average elevation of and a total area of . The closest town is Jaunpur, approximately away. The latitude 25.90 N and longitude 82.77 E. Festivals and Events. Bhadon is famous for Hindu festivals like Navratri, Vijayadashami mela, Ram Leela, Diwali, Raksha Bandhan, Basant Panchami, and Holi. Public processions are organised to celebrate the festivals. The primary Muslim festivals celebrated annually in the village are the ld-ul-fitr' (Ramzan), Bakrid, Mid-Sha'ban, Bara Wafat and Muharram. Education. There are many schools and Islamic Madrasas in Bhadon. The educational institutions are the main attraction for students from nearby cities such as Martinganj, Jamuhai and Purvanchal. Many of the schools are associated with Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Jaunpur. Education in Bhadon Sports. Cricket and Kabaddi is a popular sport in Bhadon. Temples. Hanuman temple, Ram Janki temple, and Shiv temple are revered. Agriculture. Agriculture is the main profession. The main crops are rice, maize, pigeon pea, pearl millet, blackgram wheat, onions, potato and chickpeas. Administration and politics. As per the Constitution of India and Panchyati Raaj Act, Bhadon village is administrated by a Sarpanch (head of the village) who is the elected representative of the village. In the 2014 general election, Neelam Sonkar of BJP became the Member of Parliament from the Lalganj constituency. In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, Sukhdev Rajbhar of BSP became the Member of Legislative Assembly from Didarganj (Assembly constituency). SP, BSP, and BJP are the major political parties in this area. Communication and media. Local media. Major English, Hindi and Urdu dailies including "The Times of India", "Hindustan Times", "The Hindu", "Dainik Jagran", "Amar Ujala", "Hindustan" and "Patrika" are available in Azamgarh. Almost all big Hindi TV news channels have stringers in the village. Communication networks. All prominent telecommunication network providers in India offer their services in Bhadon. Radio services. All radio services available in Bhadon.

leading occupation

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25159245

The siege of Esztergom occurred between 25 July and 10 August 1543, when the Ottoman army, led by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, besieged the city of Esztergom in modern Hungary. The city was captured by the Ottomans after two weeks. Background. The siege was part of a struggle between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans following the death of the ruler of Hungary, John Zápolya, on 20 July 1540. This is part of the "Age of castle wars" in Hungarian history. Suleiman had captured the cities of Buda and Pest in 1541, giving him a powerful control over central Hungary. The Province ("Beylerbeylik") of Buda was created in this occasion. As part of the Franco-Ottoman alliance, French troops were supplied to this Ottoman campaign in Hungary: a French artillery unit was dispatched in 1543-1544 and attached to the Ottoman Army. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean Sea, Suleiman had sent his fleet admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa to cooperate with the French, leading to the siege of Nice. Siege. The Siege of Esztergom followed the failed attempt by Ferdinand I of Austria to recapture Buda in 1542. It would be followed in turn by the capture of the Hungarian coronation city of Székesfehérvár in September 1543. Other cities that were captured during this campaign are Siklós and Szeged in order to better protect Buda. However, Suleiman refrained from moving further on to Vienna this time, apparently because he had no news of the campaigns of his French allies in western Europe and in the Mediterranean. After the successful Ottoman campaign, a first truce of one year was signed with Charles V in 1545, through the intermediary of Francis I of France. Suleiman himself was interested in ending the hostilities, as he had a campaign going on in Persia as well, the Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555). Two years later, Ferdinand and Charles V recognized total Ottoman control of Hungary in the 1547 Treaty of Adrianople, and Ferdinand even agreed to pay a yearly tribute of 30,000 gold florins for their Habsburg possessions in northern and western Hungary. Following these conquests, central Hungary was to remain under Ottoman control until 1686.

strong command

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62287827

Captain Harith Al-Sudani (199X–2017, arabic: حارث السوداني ) was an Iraqi militaryman, spy and war hero in the Iraq–ISIS war. Al-Sudani infiltrated ISIS, becoming a trustee and car-bombs driver, allowing the Iraqi military to neutralize around 30 car-bomb attacks. Al-Sudani have been described as "[Iraq]’s most successful spy" while operating within the secret intelligence unit called Al Suquor, or the Falcons Intelligence Cell, the counter-terrorism unit leading operations against ISIS. The Falcons have been praised by US services for infiltrating IS cells, killing or arresting leaders, preventing attacks and destroying weapons. Early life. Al-Sudani has grown up in Ramadi then Baghdad, within a strict disciplinarian family, working after school to his father small print shop. In university, he neglected his studies. Under pressure from family, he settled into an arranged marriage, returned to school to learn English and Russian, but eventually took a surveillance job for Iraq's oil infrastructures. The job didn't inspire Harith. Both Munaf al-Sudani and then Harith al-Sudani were recruited by the Falcons Intelligence Cell. Harith was hired in 2013, leveraging his computer and languages skills and assigned to monitor web traffic and telephone calls of terrorist suspects. Falcons recruit. In 2014, with the emergence and sudden rise of ISIS, the Falcons were commissioned to infiltrate the group with undercover agents. Harith volunteered, motivated against ISIS crimes and children killed in ISIS attacks. Harith al-Sudani was promoted Captain and started training to pose as a jihadist. His childhood and family origins from Ramadi, a Sunni regions at the core of ISIS' miscontenment and raise, allowed al-Sudani to adopt the Ramadi accent and pretend to be an disempowered Sunni. A Shia muslim, he trained himself into Sunni rituals, prayers, and favored Koran verses. He soon posed as Abu Suhaib, an unemployed sunni muslim from Baghdad. His assigned mission was to infiltrate ISIS lair in Tarmiya, a town known to be a major source of suicide bombers to the capital. As Abu Suhaib, he was quickly recruited by local ISIS members within a monitored Tarmiya's mosque. Infiltrated ISIS operative. ISIS leadership quickly valued his perceived quality of native from Baghdad, which would increase chances to pass through omniscient check points. First trained on explosives and religions, "Abu Suhaib" was put in charge of practical bombing operations, receiving Mosul's orders, selected suicide bombers sent from there, and picking up the explosive-loaded vehicles in preparation of ISIS attacks. Al-Sudani's counter terrorism operation typically involved key aspects. Undercover, al-Sudani would informing his Falcon team of his mission, driving bomb-cars to Baghdad. A Falcons' chase car would follow, equipped with jamming devices to prevent remote phone activation of the bomb. At a check-point or agreed stop, he would let the Falcons demining team to dismantle the bomb and replacing it with relevant pyrotechnic devices, or luring and neutralizing the suicide bomber he was transporting. Then, dropping the car at the target point, other Falcons agents would take place and act as victims of a light, controlled explosion. Photos and fake security briefs would be sent to news organisations to pretend a successful attack occurred. Captain al-Sudani would then be picked up by ISIS agents and get back to his infiltration mission. In mid-2016, following various military and intelligence defeats, ISIS increased his terror campaign. Al-Sudani was asked to scoot for new places to target. He used his longer presence in Baghdad to pay a visit to his family, receiving a worrying phonecall from ISIS operatives pointing out his GPS positions was not as he claimed. Last mission. Due to al-Sudani's GPS driving patterns likely monitored by ISIS and on-site damages not matching the explosives amount put into suicide-cars, ISIS grew suspicious of him. Mosul's leadership missioned him a car bomb for December 31, 2016, as part of a wider and coordinated multi-city bombing. Unknown to him, ISIS bugged their white Kia pickup with a microphone and GPS. When al-Sudani drove to his destination together with his explosive payload and started phone communication with the Falcons security team, ISIS secretly overhead the conversation, confirming al-Sudani infiltration within their ranks. When al-Sudani drove off toward the agreed meeting point with the demining team, he received a call from ISIS operative, pointing out his claimed position and GPS weren't matching, which he explained by a driving error. At a closer point, eight agents swiftly dismantled the vehicle's bomb made of a detonator, 26 bags of C4 explosive, ammonium nitrate, and ball bearings. Replaced with the relevant fake bomb, the car headed to its target, outside of Al Bayda Cinema in Baghdad al Jadeeda, and exploded as expected. Around midnight, news outlet reported an explosion with no casualties. Death. On January 17, 2017, Al-Sudani was called back into an unusual location in the countryside of Tarmiya. Contact with Captain al-Sudani was lost soon after his arrival. A rescue operation was mounted in 3 days, the time needed to plan an action into ISIS stronghold, but failed to find Captain al-Sudani while one special forces soldier was killed. Some intelligences suggested he was prisonner in Qaim, another ISIS stronghold, or taken to Syria. In August 2017, a video of his beheading was published. Three other men were also beheaded. The ISIS cell responsible for Al-Sudani's killing was bombed in Syria in December 2018. Capt. al-Sudani was captured in January 2017, after 16 months undercover, and died in August 2017 according to Iraqi intelligence. Recognition. The family of Captain al-Sudani only learnt of his critical anti-terrorism role after his death. As of August 2018, the al-Sudani family has been trying for a year to get recognition for Harith's role and claim the relevant pensions for his widow and three children. As al-Sudani was killed in ISIS territories, no body is available as proof to administratively confirm the serviceman's death in action. Both his Falcons Intelligence Cell and Iraqi's Joint Military Command announced his death in counter-terrorism operation. The initial August 12, 2018, "New York Times" coverage ignited numerous media coverage and popular reaction over al-Sudani action and heroism. On Monday 13th, according to Harith's father, an assistant of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi contacted the al-Sudani family in order to facilitate the family's requests. The official called the appropriate administrative court judges in order to issue a formal death certificate, while another official admitted this situation to be unfortunately typical. The family thanked the officials for mediating in their favor.

computer usage

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36964617

Dupilumab, sold under the brand name Dupixent, is a monoclonal antibody used for allergic diseases such as eczema (atopic dermatitis), asthma and nasal polyps which result in chronic sinusitis. Side effects include allergic reactions, cold sores, and inflammation of the cornea. It was developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi Genzyme. It received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis in 2017 and for asthma in late 2018. The FDA considers it to be a first-in-class medication. Medical uses. Dupilumab appears to be useful for moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis for which it is approved in the United States. It is also being evaluated for treatment of persistent asthma in adults and adolescents. In October 2019, the European Commission (EC) approved Dupixent in chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRSwNP). In September 2020, the FDA granted dupilumab breakthrough therapy status for the treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis. Side effects. Dupilumab can cause several side effects including allergic reactions, conjunctivitis, and keratitis. There is one reported case of dupilumab triggering hair growth in a patient with complete hair loss. This is being investigated as an unintended, but positive, side effect. One other case reports a possibility of chronic eosinophilic pneumonia associated with dupilumab. Some concern of potential worsened COVID-19 disease with patients taking dupilumab have been expressed, but according to one study all patients had mild course of disease. Pharmacology. Mechanism of action. Dupilumab binds to the alpha subunit of the interleukin-4 receptor (IL-4Rα), making it a receptor antagonist. Through blockade of IL-4Rα, dupilumab modulates signaling of both the interleukin 4 and interleukin 13 pathways. In clinical trials, specimens from people receiving dupilumab showed decreased levels of Th2 bio-markers. Pharmacokinetics. Dupilumab shows a non-linear rate in regard to the target. Dupilumab is also reported to have a bioavailability of 64%, with the average concentration occurring one week after injection. Development. Development of dupilumab was a joint effort by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi Genzyme, the latter of which provided 130 million dollars to Regeneron for research and development towards monoclonal antibodies. The United States Food and Drug Administration granted it priority review status. On March 28, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved dupilumab injection to treat adults with moderate-to-severe eczema. In October 2016, Regeneron completed a phase III trial comparing dupilumab with topical corticosteroids, in which subjects had a larger decrease in symptoms with both duplimab and topical steroids than with steroids alone. Phase III studies were also performed to evaluate the efficacy of dupilumab in combination with topical corticosteroids. In these trials 38% and 36% of patients respectively, met the primary efficacy goal of the trial, compared to 8% and 10% under placebo. Phase II trials for asthma treatment showed increased lung function for patients, showing increased forced expiratory volume.

a single published occurrence

1621-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6014323

Ramy Mohamed Ashour (born September 30, 1987, in Cairo, Egypt), known as Ramy Ashour (), is a retired professional squash player from Egypt, widely regarded as one of the best squash players in the history of the sport. He became the youngest player to reach number one in the world since the 1980s, as well as being the first ever two time World Junior Squash Champion. On April 22, 2019, at the age of 31, Ashour announced his retirement from professional Squash. Ramy is known for his unique playing style, often referred to as 'The Artist'; he is regarded by many squash pundits, former and current players, to be one of the most naturally gifted players to ever play the game. Mohamed El Shorbagy, the 2017 world champion, once commented after losing in two world finals to him, as Ashour being 'the best of the best'; Jonah Barrington, also one of the Squash greats, ranks him as equal to Pakistani legends Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan who dominated the game in the 1980s and 1990s. An unfortunate turn of events left Ashour plagued with a chronic hamstring problem in the twilight of his career. It almost certainly had an impact on his trophy cabinet, but Ashour himself took a characteristically philosophical approach to his injury, demonstrated in his various social media posts on the issue - citing his mental battle and desire for a full recovery. The injury itself came just after his 40+ match winning streak - where many players found it hard to play to his standard, which was defined by shorter rallies, reaction volleying and a unique insight into rally construction. Career overview. Ashour won his first major international title in 2004 at the age of 16, becoming the youngest player ever to win the Men's World Junior Squash Championship. The same year, he helped lead Egypt to a second-place finish in the team event, behind Pakistan. In July 2006, he became the first player in history to win the World Junior Championships for the second time, defeating fellow Egyptian Omar Mosaad. He also led Egypt to a 2–1 victory over Pakistan in the final of the team event; the Egyptian team captured the top three positions in the individual players' event as well as the team event title, a feat no other team had ever accomplished. In the same year he transitioned out of the junior division, Ashour reached his first major final at the Cathay Pacific Swiss Privilege Hong Kong Squash Open in 2006, where he lost to fellow Egyptian, Amr Shabana, who later would attain the number one ranking in the world. En route to the final, Ashour defeated world number ten John White, world number three Thierry Lincou, and world number two David Palmer. Ashour won his first major professional title in January 2007, by defeating Palmer in 32 minutes (11–7, 11–3, 11–4), in the final of the Canadian Squash Classic. In April 2007, Ashour won the Kuwait Open, the richest squash event in the world, by defeating Amr Shabana, 11–5, 11–3, 12–10, in 34 minutes, after facing a 10-6 deficit in the third set. He then won the Qatar Classic in Doha by again downing David Palmer, this time with a score of 8–11, 11–9, 11–9, 11–6, in 66 minutes. Also in 2007, Ashour was also invited to the ATCO World Series Squash Finals event, where he competed against the other seven top points earners of the season. The only player to go undefeated in all of his first three matches, he played French sensation Grégory Gaultier in the final. After a 62-minute battle, Ashour took the title 3–1 (12–10, 11–8, 4–11, 11–4). According to squash legend and writer Malcolm Willstrop, "Ramy Ashour is something else — his movement is better than anyone in the game, and allied to his unique racket skills and vision, he lights up the sport. Not only that, but his modesty and engaging smile make him a rare commodity." Ashour played Nick Matthew at the 2009 Saudi International Open, the outcome of which would determine not only the winner of the championship but also the next world number one. He won the match, his longest ever on the PSA tour, in a gruelling 110-minute, 5-game battle. After losing his world number one ranking to his English rival, Nick Matthew, in June 2010, Ashour reached the final of the new PSA World Series Australian Open in August. Two weeks later, he battled to a 10-12, 11-9, 11-9, 9-11, 11-9 victory in a 90-minute match against Gaultier in the Hong Kong Open final. The back-to-back victories returned Ashour to the top of the rankings in September 2010. He slipped behind Matthew again in early 2011, but Ashour then won the JP Morgan Tournament of Champions title for the second time since 2008, beating Matthew in the final match. This was his comeback tournament after recovering from a 2010 hamstring injury. A month later, Ashour played in a PSA World Series final at the North American Open in Virginia, losing to Matthew in a five-game match. At the 2011 Australian Open, Ashour beat Matthew, the tournament's defending champion, in another five-game match. The rivalry between the Egyptian and the Englishman continued when both played for their country in the WSF 2011 Men's World Team Squash Championships in Paderborn, Germany. Ashour (and Egypt) went on to win that encounter. Ashour furthered his attempt toward reclaiming his world number one ranking by defeating Matthew once more at the 2011 Rowe British Grand Prix, winning the match 3 games to 1. Ashour's 2012 campaign was arguably the most successful of his career, becoming the first player to make the final of every tournament in which he competed since Jansher Khan. After coming back from a long injury break in February 2012, Ashour made the final at the North American Open 2012, where he lost to the new world number one, James Willstrop. At the El Gouna International in April, Ashour won their rematch, collecting another major title in front of his home crowd after Willstrop pulled out of the final in the third game. At the Allam British Open in May, Ashour missed the opportunity to be the first Egyptian title holder, after Abou Taleb in 1966, by losing to his old rival and defending champion Matthew. Ashour then went undefeated in the second half of 2012, winning all four tournaments in which he took part. Specifically, he defended his Australian Open title in August, won the US Open title in October by defeating Grégory Gaultier, and took the Hong Kong Open title in November by beating Willstrop. This string of wins led up to his final victory of the year at the Qatar World Open in December. By beating Matthew in the semi-final, he would reclaim the world number one spot the following January, and by defeating his fellow countryman, Mohamed El Shorbagy, in the final after a gruelling five-game match, he gathered his second World Open title. Although he did not play in the ATCO World Series final because of a hamstring injury sustained at the Qatar World Open, Ashour retained the world number one ranking at the first world series event in 2013, the J.P. Morgan Tournament of Champions. With his right leg heavily strapped, Ashour made it to the final, where he recovered from a 2-0 deficit against Gaultier to stage an unlikely comeback. By claiming another TOC title after his previous one in 2011, he became only the third player to win the prestigious PSA series title thrice since Peter Nicol did it in 2004. Ashour added two PSA world tour titles to his resume within two weeks. He beat his long running rivals, Willstrop and Matthew, in the semi-final and final of the North American Open in Richmond, Virginia, claiming his second North American Open title. Twelve days later, Ashour won his 30th tour title by taking the Kuwait PSA Cup (formerly the Kuwait Open). He defeated defending champion Willstrop in the final, and extended his run of consecutive major PSA titles to seven. In May, Ashour clinched his first British Open championship, becoming the first Egyptian to win the tournament since Abou Taleb in 1966. He also extended his unbeaten run to 41 matches, with his last previous loss taking place at the 2012 British Open final in London, exactly a year previously. After the summer break, Ashour won his ninth PSA World Tour title in a row and extended his unbeaten tour run to 45 matches by taking down defending champion Grégory Gaultier in the Netsuite Open final. On November 21, 2014, Ashour won his third world title when he defeated fellow Egyptian Mohamad El-Shorbagy at the Squash World Championship in Doha, in a match that was described as "epic." Career statistics. Listed below. PSA titles (40). All Results for Ramy Ashour in PSA World's Tour tournament Note: (ret) = retired, min = minutes, h = hours Singles performance timeline. "To prevent confusion and double counting, information in this table is updated after the player's participation in the tournament has concluded." Note: NA = Not Available RAM Scoring System. On May 19, 2019, Ashour unveiled a new RAM scoring system at his first Ramy Ashour invitation at the CityView Racquet Club in Long Island City NY that he developed with Osama Khalifa. The rules of the game are as follows (taken from RAMscoring site): "Best of five games, where each game is three minutes long. The three minutes of game time refers exclusively to actual play time and not the downtime between rallies. Once the time is up, the clock stops, and the leading player must win one additional point in order to win the game. If the trailing player wins the point, then the game continues until either the leading player wins a final point, or the trailing player evens the score and wins an additional point to conclude the game. For example: If the score is 8-5 at expiration time, then the leading player must win an additional point (point 9) in order to win the game. If the trailing player were to win the point, then the score becomes 8-6 and the game continues until the leading player wins the game 9-6, or the trailing player evens the score and then wins an additional point. In the event of a tie at expiration time, a final “sudden death” point is played to determine the winner of the game. In the event that the time expires and the score remains at 0-0 (love-all), the 3-minute clock is then reset and the game resumes. Time shall not be reverted unless only one of the below scenarios occur: For a “let calls,” the clock reverts to the start time of that point (“Time Revert Rule”) If the 3-minute time expires and the score remains at 0-0, in which case the 3-minute clock is reset. There must be at least one referee and one “Time Keeper” to officiate the match. Players shall have 2 minutes of rest time between games. All other (Professional Squash Association) PSA and (World Squash Federation) WSF rules apply"

finish point

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31074766

The Swiss National Redoubt (; ; ; ) was a defensive plan developed by the Swiss government beginning in the 1880s to respond to foreign invasion. In the opening years of the Second World War the plan was expanded and refined to deal with a potential German invasion. The term "National Redoubt" primarily refers to the fortifications begun in the 1880s that secured the mountainous central part of Switzerland, providing a defended refuge for a retreating Swiss Army. The National Redoubt encompassed a widely distributed set of fortifications on a general east-west line through the Alps, centering around the major fortress complexes of St. Maurice, St. Gotthard, and Sargans. These fortresses primarily defended the alpine crossings between Germany and Italy and were outside the industrialized and populated regions of Switzerland. These regions were defended by the "Border Line", and the "Army Position" somewhat farther back. While not intended as an impassable barrier, these lines contained significant fortifications, but the National Redoubt was planned as a nearly impregnable complex of fortifications that would deny an aggressor passage over or through the Alps by controlling the major mountain passes and railway tunnels running north-to-south through the region. This strategy was intended to deter an invasion altogether by denying Switzerland's crucial transportation infrastructure to an aggressor. The National Redoubt has been the subject of debate in Swiss society, with many fortifications decommissioned by the early 21st century. Swiss Alps. The concept of "réduit" is a recurring theme in Swiss defense theory. Having stayed neutral during World War II, Switzerland retained the concept for its plans of resistance against a putative Soviet invasion during the Cold War, when it became a strong influence on the Swiss concept of neutrality. History. Fortification of the Swiss alpine region began in the 1880s, shortly after the opening of the Gotthard railway. Forts similar to those of Belgian military engineer Henri Alexis Brialmont were built at Airolo, the Oberalp Pass, Furka Pass, and Grimsel Pass, all in the Central Alps. Additional positions were constructed in the area of Saint-Maurice, using mining and tunneling techniques in the steep mountainsides of the glacial valley. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, there was little Swiss interest in further fortifications. However, during the 1930s, as France built the Maginot Line from the Swiss border to the Belgian border and Czechoslovakia built the Czechoslovak border fortifications, Switzerland re-examined its fixed defenses. At the same time, job creation programs became desirable as a result of the worldwide Great Depression. Design work began in 1935, and in 1937 construction began on the expanded Alpine fortifications, the Border Line, and the Army line fortifications. Guisan plan. General Henri Guisan developed a strategy for the defense of Switzerland that recognised its limited resources in equipment and manpower compared to its potential adversaries. Guisan proposed a delaying strategy in the broken terrain of the borders to keep an invading force out of the open country in the central plateau for as long as possible to allow an orderly retreat to the secured Alpine perimeter. Once the retreat to the Alps was complete, the Swiss government could remain in hiding for an extended time. Accordingly, border fortifications were improved, with major programs along the Rhine and at Vallorbe in the Jura. The strategic Alpine nodes of Saint-Maurice, Saint Gotthard, and Sargans were identified as the primary points of access to the Alpine redoubt for a potential aggressor. While Saint Gotthard and Saint-Maurice had been previously fortified, the area of Sargans was newly vulnerable because of a drainage program of former wetlands along the Rhine that would now provide easy access to the eastern Alpine gateway at Sargans. Debate continued over the extent of the redoubt under the Guisan Plan. A proposal was developed by officers from German-speaking cantons, advocating a more compact redoubt. That was overcome by a proposal, authored by Guisan's chief of staff, Colonel Samuel Gonard, whose plan ratified the Saint-Maurice - Saint Gotthard - Sargans strategy, prefaced by a defense in depth. Additional impetus was provided by the fall of France in June 1940. Two days after the French surrender, on 23 June, the border zones were reduced in priority in favor of the "advanced position" or Army Line. The army was shifted to the center of the country, leaving industries and population centres relatively unprotected. The final Guisan Plan, adopted on 12 July 1940, defined an organised retreat to the Alps in which supplies would be stocked for an indefinite resistance with no thought of further retreat. On 25 July 1940, the Swiss defensive plan was disseminated dictating a fallback to the Alps in the event of an Axis attack, focusing in particular on the Gotthard massif and destroying all access points as necessary once inside. The Redoubt strategy was emphasized on 24 May 1941. Until then, only about two thirds of the Swiss Army had been mobilized. After the swift overrunning of the Balkan countries by the Germans in April 1941, in which relatively-low mountains had proven to be little barrier to the mobile German forces, the entire Swiss army was mobilised. The Swiss, lacking a significant armored force, drew the conclusion that withdrawal to the redoubt was the only sound course. Any actions in the Central Plateau would be delaying actions only. The plan was revealed to the public after Switzerland was surrounded by German and Italian forces, with the so-called Rütli Report, a historic and highly-symbolic meeting of the Swiss Army staff and the entire officer corps at the founding site of the Swiss confederation. In case of attack, the Swiss would defend only the High Alps, including the important transalpine roads and rail links. As a last resort, the army would make the routes useless to the Axis by destroying key bridges and tunnels. The plan meant that the populated lowlands, including the economic centres of the country, would be effectively ceded to the Germans. The gold reserves of the Swiss National Bank in Zürich were moved farther away from the German border to the Gotthard Pass and Berne. World War II. The National Redoubt assumed great importance to the Swiss in 1940, when they were entirely surrounded by Axis powers and thus effectively at the mercy of Hitler and Mussolini. The National Redoubt was a way to preserve at least part of Swiss territory in the event of an invasion. The redoubt was to be manned by eight infantry divisions and three mountain brigades; the Swiss practiced for war by imitating the battles occurring around them. Switzerland's redoubt strategy during World War II was essentially one of deterrence. The idea was to make clear to Germany that an invasion would have a high cost. Simultaneously, economic concessions were made to Germany in the hope that the overall cost of a German invasion would be perceived to be higher than the potential benefits. However, it is clear that Hitler intended to invade eventually and that the Allied landing at Normandy and the difficulties faced in invading the Soviet Union were pivotal in merely delaying an invasion. Concessions included a national blackout and the destruction of a secret German radar system that had accidentally landed in Switzerland in exchange for a dozen aircraft. In its invasion plan, Operation Tannenbaum, Germany planned to capture Geneva and Lucerne, and Italy would capture the Alps; both countries would then divide Switzerland. Cold War. Swiss policy during the Cold War adopted a more aggressive defense of the borders that relied less on a retreat to the mountains. While Switzerland was again surrounded by an alliance, NATO was not considered a threat to Swiss national existence; but Warsaw Pact nations were considered threats. The Swiss strategy sought to exact a high price from any direct ground attack on Swiss territory. Control of the Alpine crossings remained a cornerstone of the Swiss strategy of neutrality. The dense network of passive and active barriers and large and small fortifications allowed considerable flexibility in the disposition of Swiss forces and represented an almost-optimal scenario of defence in depth. The strategic importance of the Alpine crossings had only increased since the Second World War, and any incursion by Warsaw Pact forces would require them to be taken or for terms for their use would need to be agreed upon to the satisfaction of Switzerland. In 1953, Swiss policy was formalized to place greater emphasis on the defense of the borders and population centers and to extend the concept of defense in depth, pioneered in the redoubt, to the entire Swiss territory. That corresponded to an unspoken reliance on co-operation with NATO to secure the flanks of Swiss territory and to resupply Swiss forces, which already purchased equipment from members of NATO. The redoubt, with its determinedly-neutralist connotations, lost priority. Many billions of francs have been invested in building the fortifications in the mountains, which are partly still used by the army. The most important buildings of the redoubt were the fortifications of Sargans, St. Maurice, and the Gotthard region. At the time, caverns in these areas were equipped with essential military infrastructure. Besides cannons and howitzers, the infrastructure consisted of dormitories, kitchens, field hospitals, rooms for the sick, bakeries, and enough space to accommodate 100 to 600 soldiers for up to several months. Because tensions between the West and the Soviet Union, which later fell, cooled down and bunkers became increasingly obsolete because of newer weapon systems, many of the buildings were closed after the Cold War, in the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2000s. Some of them have been reopened as museums and can be visited. Comparison with contemporary projects. The National Redoubt fortifications, when compared to contemporary French, Belgian, German, or Czech fortifications, were much more extensive and heavily armed than the Maginot Line, the Belgian border fortifications, the Siegfried Line, or the Czechoslovak border fortifications. While the Maginot fortifications were typically armed with short-barreled 75mm fortress howitzers or 120mm mortar/howitzers, the Swiss fortifications were armed with 75mm and 120mm guns, upgraded in the 1950s to 105mm and 150mm guns. The Swiss guns were typically casemate-mounted or turret-mounted long guns, not howitzers, and were more akin to naval guns than fortress guns. Because they were typically mounted on inaccessible cliffs or plateaus with an advantage of enfilade over any possible opposing force, they were not exposed to infantry attack or direct artillery fire and could afford to have exposed gun barrels. The French positions, which could be targeted by anti-tank weapons or infantry, avoided any exposed gun tubes. Fortress St. Gotthard. Airolo positions. Fort Airolo , also known as Forte di Airolo, was built between 1887 and 1890 at the southern end of the Gotthard Pass overlooking Airolo. The fort was a compact massif similar to a Brialmont fort, with an encircling ditch defended by caponiers and provided with a twin 120mm gun turret and four 53mm gun turrets for close defense, with five 84mm guns in casemates. A tunnel links Fort Airolo to the Gotthard Rail Tunnel. Abandoned by the military in 1947, the fort is maintained as a museum by a preservation group and may be visited. Battery Motto Bartola is located just up the hill from Fort Airolo and mounted an additional four 120mm guns. The fort, built between 1888 and 1890, also mounted four 84mm guns, with extensive underground galleries linking the firing positions. Battery Foppa Grande mounted one 105mm gun in a camouflaged turret above Motto Bartola, with three 20mm anti-aircraft guns. The position featured a mortar battery, installed in 1953. The position was deactivated in 1997 and classified as potentially historical. The position may be visited by prior arrangement. Fort San Carlo is an artillery fort Fort Stuei Saint Gotthard Tunnel South Portal monitored the original south entrance to the Gotthard Rail Tunnel. Portions of the original installation remain, but the tunnel entrance has been extended to the south and the historic portal no longer exists. These positions were built in 1886-87 and represent the first modern fortifications in Switzerland. A gallery (a long horizontal tunnel) links the main tunnel positions back to Fort Airolo. St. Gotthard Pass positions. Redoubt Hospiz , also known as Forte Ospizio, was built in 1894 and operated until 1947 near the summit of the Gotthard Pass. The fort mounted two single 120mm gun turrets. The fort is now operated as a museum and may be visited by the public. Fort Sasso da Pigna was built during the early part of World War II, becoming operational in 1943, effectively replacing Redoubt Hospiz. The fort consists of an eastern battery overlooking the Leventina valley and a western battery overlooking the Bedretto valley and the main pass. The main entrance is located just to the north of Fort Ospizio, with of galleries and four 105mm gun positions. A proposed addition of two more guns in the late 1950s never proceeded. The position was used until 1999. It opened to the public as a museum on 25 August 2012. "Infantry positions": A number of small infantry bunkers exist near the top of the pass, most notably Bunker No. 3. Construction took place in three stages: 1886-87, 1892–1920, and 1946-1973. These works exhibit a high quality of workmanship and integration into the landscape. Urseren Valley North. Fort Bühl Fortin Altkirch Fort Bäzberg Oberalp Pass. Fort Stöckli "Oberalp infantry positions" Fort Gütsch Furka Pass. Fort Galenhütten Fort Fuchsegg Fortress St. Maurice. Fortress Saint-Maurice encompasses the area around Saint-Maurice in the western, French-speaking portion of Switzerland. The Rhône leaves the central Alpine region through a narrow defile, between mountains to the south and mountains to the north. The only comparatively easy access to the upper Rhône valley, and thus to the western National Redoubt, is through Saint-Maurice. Fortress Saint-Maurice is a series of fortifications set into the mountains on either side of the valley, dominating the region as far as Lake Geneva with their artillery. The principal fortification is the enormous Fort de Dailly, supported by forts Savatan, Fort du Scex, and Fort de Cindey, as well as lesser positions. The extent of the area designated as Fortress Saint-Maurice is not clearly defined, but according to the Association Fort de Litroz, the Saint-Maurice sector comprises the Rhône narrows from just north of Saint-Maurice to Martigny, excluding Chillon and Champillon, as well as the fortifications of the lateral valleys. However, the effective control of the Saint-Maurice positions extended from Lac Léman to the Great Saint Bernard Pass. Fortress Sargans. Fortress Sargans comprises six major fortifications centered on the town of Sargans in St. Gallen canton. First Rhine Barrier Forts. Fort Schollberg Fort Anstein Major Forts. Fort Magletsch is as of 2012 still in use by the Swiss military. Shut down in 2017 Fort Castels is as of 2012 still in use by the Swiss military. Shut down in 2017 Fort Furggels Fort Passatiwand Southern Forts. Fort Molinära Fort Haselboden Second Rhine Barrier Forts. Fort Tschingel Fort Nusslock Fort Tamina Ragaz Modernization. The Redoubt positions and others in Switzerland were augmented by the Bison project, which involved the installation of anti-tank guns in new bunkers at key locations to provide a modernized pre-positioned force capable of defeating modern armor. A project to install automatic 120mm mortars was completed in 2003. Army strength reductions. In 1995, the Swiss army was reduced from 750,000 troops to 400,000. By 2004, army strength was 120,000, with 80,000 proposed by 2020. Fate. Debate continues over the usefulness of the Redoubt and other Swiss fortifications. In October 2010, Defense Minister Ueli Maurer proposed closing many of the positions after mitigating environmental issues and assuring permanent safety. A decommissioning program was expected to cost as much as a billion francs. In 2011, Maurer estimated costs to close down the system safely at more than $1 billion. Some of the facilities have been leased or sold as digital data repositories. Because the "Réduit" strategy was essentially one of deterrence, part of it was overt and public, and played a part in the so-called "intellectual defence of the homeland", or "Geistige Landesverteidigung" attempting to improve the morale and cohesiveness of the nation. The "Réduit" strategy's use as a deterrence/propaganda tool continued through the cold war. In 1964, the army's pavilion at the Swiss Fair (Landesausstellung) in Lausanne had the shape of a giant Czech hedgehog made of concrete. The "Réduit" features at the center of Swiss writer Christian Kracht´s 2008 dystopian novel "Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten".

ambitious safeguard

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2366703

The Serama (), also called the Malaysian Serama, is a bantam breed of chicken originating in Malaysia within the last 50 years. History. Serama originate in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, apparently through the crossing of Japanese and Malaysian bantams. Other stories of the birds derived from a gift of some small chickens by the King of Thailand to a local sultan in ancient times. Small chickens have always been popular pets in this area and are often referred to as "ayam katik" (pygmy chickens) and "ayam cantik" (pretty chickens). The modern breed is attributed to the efforts of Wee Yean Een from Kelantan, who named the breed "Serama" after Rama, the title of the Kings of Thailand. The breed was first exhibited in 1990. The breed was hit hard by the Asian bird flu epidemic in 2004 when many birds were culled amid government concerns.\ There are no written standards for the breed in its native country. However, they do now have an overall guide on scoring and judging for competitions in Malaysia. Many breeders have a style or type that they breed to, but often breeders keep several "styles". These styles are often names given by breeders to describe a blood line of a champion (e.g. Husin, Mat Awang), but may also be more general shape, characteristics or behaviour (e.g. slim, submarine, and dragon). Hence there is quite a lot of diversity in Malaysia, but an overall theme of a small brave chicken with a persona of fearless warrior or toy soldier. The shape, behaviour, temperament and size of the bird are the most important characteristics. They compete against each other in open table top competitions (often described as "beauty contests") and scored by several judges. The prize for the winning birds can be quite a bit of money. United States. The Serama is promoted by several organizations in the U.S. One is known as "The Serama Council of North America". This council helped to introduce the Serama to North America in various National Poultry shows. In the spring of 2004 a Serama-only show, known as the Cajun Classic, was held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The American Serama as put forth by the Serama Council of North America has now gained acceptance by the American Poultry Association and the American Bantam Association as of April 2011 with the White color variety being the first to be accepted. In early 2012, another group was formed to help gain APA and ABA acceptance of more varieties of serama. This group is known as the American Serama Association. Europe. Seramas were initially imported into the UK in 2004. Birds were imported from both America and directly from Malaysia. The foundation Serama flock in the UK consisted of only a few dozen birds. In 2005, a small group of Serama owners and enthusiast decided to form the "Serama Club of Great Britain", the first Serama club in the UK. They established the standard for the Serama breed for the UK. Eventually in 2008, the club was officially recognised as the affiliated breed club of the "Poultry Club of Great Britain". Seramas are still relatively rare and expensive in much of mainland Europe. The Netherlands probably has the largest number of Seramas outside the UK. Most of the stock in the Netherlands are descended from birds/eggs imported from America and from the UK. In France and other European countries they are increasing in popularity. They have 4 classes of seramas. General characteristics. The Serama are characterized by their upright posture, full breast, vertical tail feathers held upright and tight up to the body and vertical wings held down nearly touching the ground. In Malaysia they are described as brave warriors and archangel chickens, because of their very human like appearance. They are the smallest breed of chicken in the world. Typically under 500g, but with even smaller birds that are under 250g being bred in its native Malaysia. However, size alone does not define a Serama. A small chicken without the Serama "type" is not a Serama, but just another small bantam. The following describes the overall characteristics of "Malaysian type." The Americans and Europeans have defined variants thereof. Carriage and Temperament. Assertive with confident bold stance yet calm and manageable. Should be easily handled and show no aggression. The bird should pose readily and when viewed from the side should create a vase like or wide ‘V’ shape outline. They shake their wings and pose, walk with pride, pull their head back to reveal a large chest, lift the legs, and in some styles have neck/head vibrations similar to that of a pigeon. Body. The body is well muscled with breast carried high, full and well forward. From above the shape is somewhat elliptical, tapering towards the tail. The body should be short. Wings. Fairly large wings in proportion to the body they should be held in a vertical position just clearing the ground and leaving the feet partially visible. Shoulders should be set high on the bird. Primaries are long of medium width with secondaries moderately long and broad. Tail. Tail is full and carried high, pointing upwards and held close to the body of the bird with no space between the body and tail. The sickle feathers are relatively straight and spear like. A minimum of one inch longer than the other tail feathers, but ideally no more than a couple of inches above the head is desirable. The remaining tail feathers should ideally be no higher than the top of the comb when the bird is standing to attention. The Main tail feathers should be broad and should over lap neatly. The tail should be open and when viewed from behind should be open to an angle of 45 degrees creating an open ‘V’ shape. Head. Head should be small and carried well back. Head is required beyond the level of the feet and held in position of more than 90 degrees from the feet. The single comb is small to medium in size with a minimum of five serrations preferred. The comb should be straight smooth, free of folds or any deformities and tending towards flyaway type. Wattles are to complement the comb, smaller being preferred and free from folds and wrinkles. Legs and feet. The legs are of medium to long length, straight and set wide apart to allow for full and muscular body. They should be strong and stable. Thighs should be of medium length and well muscled with shanks of good thickness. They should not appear soft and weak. Feathers & Colour. Like some other Asiatic breeds, they are not colour bred in their native country. Only normal feathered birds are accepted in Malaysia. Feathers held tight against the body and should not be long or flowing. Silkied feathered birds are accepted in America and much of Europe. The silkied gene was believed to be carried by some birds imported from Malaysia. Other mutations (e.g. frizzled, rumpless and booted) have been introduced in America and some parts of Europe by crossing to other breeds. They can have a range of varieties in colour and structure. Breeding. Seramas are much like other Bantam breeds. After laying an egg it takes around 19 days for the chicks to develop and hatch. Chicks are more susceptible to cold temperatures compared to other breeds because of their relative small size. After hatching, it takes about 16–18 weeks for the chicks to mature and reach the point at which they themselves can begin laying eggs. One U.S. breeder of note was Mr. Brian Sparks of Wisconsin. Mr. Sparks advocated the Malaysian style of breeding. He was successful in recreating the strong type and small size seen in true Malaysian birds. Word got back to the serama's native country and top breeders. They took interest in his work and articles about his successes were published by Malaysian news sources.

tall height

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5609482

Lee Henry Hoiby (February 17, 1926 – March 28, 2011) was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism at a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned. His most well known work is his setting of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke", which premiered at the St Paul Opera in 1971. Biography. Hoiby was born in Madison, Wisconsin. A child prodigy, he began playing the piano at the age of 5. He studied at the University of Wisconsin under notable pianists Gunnar Johansen and Egon Petri. He then became a pupil of Darius Milhaud at Mills College. Hoiby became influenced by a variety of composers, particularly personalities in the twentieth century avant garde, including the Pro Arte String Quartet led by Rudolf Kolisch, brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg. During his youth, Hoiby played with Harry Partch's Dadaist ensembles. Following his studies at Mills College, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music where he was mentored in music composition by Gian Carlo Menotti, who introduced Hoiby to opera, and involved him in the Broadway productions of "The Consul" and "The Saint of Bleecker Street". Though at first he intended to pursue a career as a concert pianist, he eventually became more interested in composing. Hoiby died on March 28, 2011, aged 85, in New York City from metastatic melanoma. He was survived by his partner and longtime collaborator, Mark Shulgasser. Career. Hoiby's first opera, "The Scarf", a chamber opera in one act, which was produced by Menotti and premiered in 1957, was recognized by "TIME" and the Italian press as the hit of the first Spoleto Festival. His next opera, "Natalia Petrovna" (New York City Opera, 1964), now known in its revised version as "A Month in the Country", based on a play by Ivan Turgenev, was also praised by critics. Hoiby's setting of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke" is perhaps his most famous work. Its libretto is by Lanford Wilson, and it was premiered in 1971 by St Paul Opera, Minnesota, under the conductor Igor Buketoff. Among Hoiby's other operatic works are the one-act opera buffa "Something New for the Zoo" (1979), the musical monologue "The Italian Lesson" (1981, text by Ruth Draper) which was produced off-Broadway in 1989 with Jean Stapleton, "The Tempest" (1986), and a one-act chamber opera, "This Is the Rill Speaking" (1992), text by Lanford Wilson. He contributed the song, "The Darkling Thrush," with text by Thomas Hardy, to a 2006 multimedia opera, "Darkling". Elements of this song were used as source material for the opera's remaining solo and ensemble music, written by composer Stefan Weisman. Hoiby's last opera was a setting of "Romeo and Juliet" (2004), which awaits its world premiere. He continued his work with Bishop's poetry in a new chamber work, commissioned by American Opera Projects, with scenario by Mark Shulgasser for mezzo-soprano, baritone, piano and instrumental ensemble, lasting approximately one hour. An excerpt from the piece received its first reading in New York at New York City Opera's "VOX: Showcasing American Opera" program in May 2006. His three-movement "Summer Suite for Wind Ensemble" was premiered on February 25, 2008 by the Austin Peay State University Wind Ensemble under the direction of Dr. Gregory Wolynec. The composer elaborates on the history of the piece: Summer Suite is a transcription for concert band of one of my first orchestral works. The last movement is a rousing parade, and when the opportunity presented itself last year I decided to recast it for concert band. Greg Wolynec and his players at Austin Peay State University enjoyed it sufficiently to encourage me to work on the first two movements for them. Rethinking the first movement (which was originally titled Scherzo) was a challenge and education, particularly in dealing with the lack of high strings, and tempo considerations. The second movement was a piece of cake, and I'm especially pleased with the way the long theme fits the french horn. I feel like my twenty-six year old self has made a gift to my present self. Hoiby wrote "Last Letter Home" in 2006 to the words of U.S. PFC Jesse Givens, who died in an accident while serving in Iraq. Songs. Soprano Leontyne Price introduced many of his best known songs and arias to the public. His songs are known for being inspired by music from many time periods and cultures. He comments about songwriting "What I learned from Schubert came from a long, deep and loving exposure to his songs. A lot happens on a subconscious level, so it's hard to verbalize, but what I think his songs taught me have to do primarily with the line, the phrasing, the tessitura, the accentuations of speech, the careful consideration of vowels, the breathing required, and an extremely economical use of accompaniment material, often the same figure going through the whole song." One of the early proponents of Hoiby's songs in Europe was the soprano Juliana Janes-Yaffé, who, in the 1980s, recorded several of Hoiby's songs for Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, Germany (with conductor John Yaffé, at the piano). His choral music is widely performed throughout the USA and in Great Britain. Indeed, some of his most important works are in that form, including the Christmas cantata "A Hymn of the Nativity" (text by Richard Crashaw), the oratorio "Galileo Galilei" (libretto by Barrie Stavis), and a substantial group of works for chorus and orchestra on texts of Walt Whitman.

various epochs

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38397856

The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region Intercity Railway System (, abbreviated as PRDIR) is a regional higher-speed rail and commuter rail network being gradually constructed in the Pearl River Delta (Yuegang'ao Greater Bay Area), People's Republic of China. The project's goal is to have every major urban center in the Yuegang'ao Greater Bay Area to be within one-hour travel by rail to Guangzhou. On March 16, 2005, the State Council approved plans for a regional high-speed commuter rail network for the Jingjinji, Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. According to the plan, by 2020, the network will have a total route mileage of about . In September 2009, the plan was expanded to of routes split up into 23 lines. In the long term vision network length will reach by 2030. By then the network will provide basic coverage to the Pearl River Delta region. The Suishen ICR, Guanhui ICR and Guangfozhao ICR accept Alipay, avoiding the need to purchase tickets in advance. Operational lines. The system currently has 7 lines. Guangzhu ICR. The Guangzhou–Zhuhai Intercity Railway or Guangzhu Intercity Railway is a 116 km dedicated, grade-separated passenger railway linking New Guangzhou Station in Panyu, Guangzhou, and Zhuhai Airport in Zhuhai, via Shunde, Zhongshan and Jiangmen. Operation began in 2011. Guanhui ICR. The Guanhui Intercity Railway or Guanhui Urban Railway is a 14 station, 100 km long, regional rapid railway line that connects Dongguan to Huizhou. The line was originally planned to use subway type cars with Siemens technology. However it was plans changed partway through construction to use 8 car CRH6 EMUs capable of running up to . The line started construction in 2009 and was expected to open in late 2013. Construction was completed in June 2013 and test runs began in 2014, but the first segment of the line, from Xiaojinkou-Changping East did not open until 30 March 2016. Guangfozhao ICR. The Guangfozhao Intercity Railway or Fozhao Urban Railway is an 11 station long regional rapid railway line. It connects Guangzhou to Zhaoqing, via Foshan. Operation began on 30 March 2016. Suishen ICR. The Guangzhou–Shenzhen Intercity Railway, also known as the Suishen Intercity Railway () is a regional rapid railway line that runs roughly along the east bank of the Pearl River connecting the major cities of Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Shenzhen. It will use CRH6 EMUs with a top speed of . Operation began on 15 December 2019. Zhuji ICR. The Zhuji Intercity Railway is a high-speed railway connecting Gongbei Subdistrict in Zhuhai with Zhuhai Jinwan Airport via Hengqin. Phase 1 started operation on 18 August 2020. Phase 2 from to Zhuhai Airport will open in 2023. Lines under construction. Foguan ICR. Foshan–Dongguan Intercity Railway, also called the Foguan Intercity Railway, is a planned high-speed railway within Guangdong province, China between the cities of Foshan, via Guangzhou, to Dongguan. It will connect Panyu District, Guangzhou at the major Guangzhou South interchange, tunnelling under the Pearl River through Machong and Hongmei to providing connections via the Dongguan Rail Transit, the Guangzhou–Shenzhen intercity railway or the Dongguan–Huizhou intercity railway. The length of this railway is . Guangfo Circular ICR. Ring service around Guangzhou, mostly making use of trackage from other Metropolitan Region Intercity Railway Lines and existing freight railways. A new section under construction, known as the Guangfo Link, is a 35 km long railway line that connects Guangzhou South Railway Station to Foshan West Railway Station. It has a top speed of and will use 6 car CRH6 EMUs capable of running up to 2.5 minute frequencies. It is expected to start construction in late 2012 and completed in 2016 or 2017. Guangqing ICR. The Guangqing Intercity Railway is a high-speed railway connecting Guangzhou with Qingyuan. Approved Lines. In 2020, with the near completion of the initial batch of lines, the National Development and Reform Commission approved an additional 775 km of intercity railway projects. A number of them will start construction before 2022.

adequate transportation

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=548773

Domain name scams are types of Intellectual property scams or confidence scams in which unscrupulous domain name registrars attempt to generate revenue by tricking businesses into buying, selling, listing or converting a domain name. The Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom has outlined two types of domain name scams which are "Domain name registration scams" and "Domain name renewal scams". Domain slamming. Domain slamming (also known as unauthorized transfers or domain name registration scams) is a scam in which the offending domain name registrar attempts to trick domain owners into switching from their existing registrar to theirs, under the pretense that the customer is simply renewing their subscription to their current registrar. The term derives from telephone slamming. Prevention. In 2004, ICANN, the domain name governing body, made changes to its policy for transferring domains between registrars. They introduced a single protective measure that can help prevent unauthorized transfers: domain locking. Critics, although advising owners to apply the new feature, said that this was an "unnecessary and customer-unfriendly change". False offers to buy, or to find buyers. Scam methods may operate in reverse, with a stranger (not the registrar) communicating an offer to buy a domain name from an unwary owner. The offer is not genuine, but intended to lure the owner into a false sales process, with the owner eventually pressed to send money in advance to the scammer for appraisal fees or other purported services. By mimicking aspects of the legitimate sales process and agencies, the scheme appears genuine in the early stages. The prospect of an easy, lucrative sale disarms the owner's normal suspicion of an unsolicited offer from a stranger with no earnest value. Since an actual transfer through the registration system is never involved, legal safeguards built into the official transfer process provide no protection. Fake trademark protection. Although less common than domain slamming, another domain name scam primarily coming from registrars based in China involves sending domain owners an e-mail claiming that another company has just attempted to register a number of domains with them which contain the targeted domain owner's trademark or has many keyword similarities to their existing domain name. Often, these domains will be the same as the one(s) owned by the targeted individual but with different TLDs (top-level domains). The scammer will claim to have halted the bulk registration in order to protect the targeted individual's intellectual property, and if the email recipient doesn't recognize the entity attempting to register these domain names, that they should respond immediately to protect their trademark. If the scam target does respond by email or by phone, the scammer will then try to get them to register these domain names for several years upfront with the registrar running this scam. Other variations of this type of scam include registrars that target their own existing customers with similar made-up threats of another entity trying to register the same domain as theirs under different TLDs. As well, some domainers are known to search for available TLDs for already registered domains, then emailing the owner of the registered domain and offering to sell the unregistered variations to him/her for a marked up amount. If the target agrees to the deal, the domainer will then purchase the domains on the spot for the regular $7~20 registration fee and immediately sell it back to the victim for a few hundred dollars. Timeline. This section outlines reported domain scams as a timeline of events, showing how they have evolved, the companies involved and the outcome of complaints.

sign-up network

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5216804

Dow Crag is a fell in the English Lake District near Coniston, Cumbria. The eastern face is one of the many rock faces in the Lake District used for rock climbing. The name Dow Crag originally applied specifically to the eastern face which looks down upon the tarn of Goat's Water, the fell itself having no need for a name before the inception of hill walking in the 19th century. As with many fells the name of a prominent feature was then applied to the whole mass. Dow was originally named Doe and still locally pronounced as "Doe". Topography. The Coniston (or Furness) Fells form the watershed between Coniston Water and the Duddon Valley to the west. The range begins in the north at Wrynose Pass and runs south for around 10 miles before petering out at Broughton in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Alfred Wainwright in his influential "Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells" took only the northern half of the range as Lakeland proper, consigning the lower fells southward to a supplementary work "The Outlying Fells of Lakeland". Dow Crag is the last fell in the northern section of the range and therefore qualifies as one of the 214 Wainwrights. Later guidebook writers have chosen to include the whole range in their main volumes. The higher northern part of the range can be likened to an inverted 'Y' in plan. Brim Fell stands at the junction of the three arms with the northern branch continuing over Swirl How and Great Carrs. The south western branch traverses to Dow Crag and the south eastern to The Old Man of Coniston, with Goat's Water lying in a deep depression between the two. The connecting ridge from Dow Crag to Brim Fell crosses the depression of Goat's Hawse above the head of the tarn, the Dow Crag side in particular being steep and rough. South of Dow Crag the ridge steps down over the subsidiary tops of Buck Pike () and Brown Pike () to the Walna Scar Road. This is primarily a pedestrian route - the summit being at - although it has seen use from off-road vehicles, together with the attendant erosion. It provides a crossing from Coniston village to Seathwaite in the Duddon valley and was originally constructed both to facilitate local trade and to serve the many slate quarries on these fells. The first section at either end is paved although the remainder is a stony bridleway. Beyond the Walna Scar Road are the further tops of Walna Scar (), White Maiden () and White Pike (). Richards treats these as one fell (Walna Scar) in his recent Landranger guide. South of White Pike is a profound drop to an area of rough country before the shapely pyramid of Caw rises skyward. To the west long and gentle slopes run down from the summit of Dow Crag toward the Duddon, while further north on this flank is Seathwaite Tarn. The ground here also begins in a shallow descent, but turns steep above the tarn in a line of minor crags. Seathwaite Tarn is a reservoir in a side valley of the Duddon system. This was originally a much smaller waterbody, but was dammed early in the 20th century to provide drinking water for the Barrow in Furness area. The dam is almost long and is concrete cored with slate buttresses, the resulting depth being around . Water is not abstracted directly from the tarn, but flows some distance downriver to an off-take weir. By contrast Goat's Water retains its natural form. Much smaller and enclosed by steep ground on three sides it contains both trout and char. The outlet flows through a boulder field, becoming one of the headwaters of Torver Beck. This stream passes a disused quarry near the Tranearth climbing hut, keeping the workings topped up via an artificial but extremely picturesque waterfall. Torver Beck finally issues into Coniston Water to the south of Torver village. A second tarn to the east of Dow Crag stands in a small hollow below Brown Pike. This is Blind Tarn, so named because it has no visible inlet or outlet. About a hundred yards across and twenty feet deep, the tarn has a respectable population of trout. Whilst other theories are possible, it must be assumed they have been introduced for sport. Summit. The summit bears no cairn, being a rocky point perched directly above the crag. The view south and west to the coast is excellent, but much of Lakeland is blotted out by the flanks of the Coniston range. The Scafells are far enough west to put in an appearance and Skiddaw and the Helvellyn range can be seen through Fairfield and Levers Hawse. Ascents. The simplest direct routes begin at either end of the Walna Scar Road, making for the summit from the top of the pass. Ascents can be made from Seathwaite Tarn (pathless) or to the north of Goat's Hawse, but these give no clue to the grandeur of the crag on the eastern side of the ridge. For this the walker will leave the Walna Scar Road at The Cove, or climb to this point from Torver. From here Goat's Water is the next objective for a stunning view of Dow Crag. Two choices now present themselves- easy via Goat's Hause, or steep via the South Rake (see below). Many walkers will also reach the fell using the good paths from The Old Man of Coniston and Brim Fell. Rock climbing. Dow Crag is composed of rhyolite and has an approximately 100 metre rock face with over 100 recognised climbing routes including: South Rake is a scree filled gully towards the south of the crag, and is the easiest way up the crag, being a fairly easy scramble, especially for the less agile. Dow is noted for being particularly cold, bleak and exposed, especially in summer, typical of the Cumbrian season. Dow Crag is usually approached from the Walna Scar road which connects the Duddon Valley with Coniston. See UK Climbing crag database

sharp descent

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56611

Bandar Seri Begawan (Jawi: بندر سري بڬاوان ; ) (formerly known as Brunei Town; ) is the capital and largest city of Brunei. It is officially governed as a municipality (). Bandar Seri Begawan has an estimated population of 100,700, and including the whole Brunei-Muara District, the metro area has an estimated population of 279,924, over half the population of the country. Name. 'Bandar Seri Begawan' is derived from the official Malay name which is translatable as 'Seri Begawan City', with Seri Begawan being derived from Sanskrit ("śrī bhagavān") meaning 'the aura of the gods'. It was named after Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III, who was the previous Sultan of Brunei and the late father of the current Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. 'Seri Begawan' is part of the royal title bestowed on the late Sultan upon his abdication from the throne in 1967. The city was renamed in 1970 to commemorate his contribution to the development of the country during his reign, especially on the modernisation of Brunei in the 20th century. Prior to this, the city had been known as " (literally 'Brunei City') or 'Brunei Town'. The city is colloquially known by the local people as " which is the Malay word for '(the) Port'. However, the exact area that the name refers to may differ in conversational context: apart from referring to the same areas as the city's official jurisdiction, 'Bandar' may also refer exclusively to the Pusat Bandar (literally 'City Centre') area of the capital to distinguish from other named areas within the city, whereby they were not part of the capital prior to 2007. Meanwhile, it may sometimes extend beyond the city's proper area, encompassing its surrounding urbanised areas and even to the extent of covering the whole of Brunei-Muara District. The latter usage is common by residents who live outside of the district. History. Human settlement in Brunei can be traced back to the 6th and 7th century with a Malay trading centre and fishing port near the current site of the city. The first settlement on the banks of the Brunei River can be traced to the 8th century where there had been settlements similar to those in Kampong Ayer, near the present site of the Brunei Museum with the modern city on the opposite shore. During the Bruneian Empire period from 15th–17th century, the Sultanate ruled much part of Borneo including the southern part of the Philippines and its capital of Manila, with the water settlement near the city area became the third centre of the administration (after moving twice from Kota Batu and Kampong Ayer). When the Sultanate rule declined through the 18th century due to the arrival of Western powers such as the Spanish, Dutch, and the British, the settlement population decreased from its peak of 20,000 inhabitants. From 1888 until its independence in 1984, Brunei was a British protectorate and land development began in 1906 when the British resident encouraged the Sultanate citizens to move onto reclaimed land on the western bank of the inlet. In 1899, first oil well was drilled at Ayer Bekunchi near Kampung Kasat, Bandar Seri Begawan. Although the well was drilled to a depth of 259 metres (850 feet), no oil was found. Oil exploration in Brunei later shifted to Seria and Belait District in 1924. Sultan Muhammad Jamalul Alam II established a new palace on the west bank in 1909 after being persuaded by the British, along with the arrival of Chinese traders to boost the economy. A mosque and government buildings were built along the western shores in 1920. In the same year, the new settlement was declared the new capital of Brunei and became a municipal area. However, the city's prosperity was almost ended when it was captured by the Japanese in 1941, before being recaptured by the Allied forces in 1945. During the war, most infrastructure was destroyed by Japanese and Allied bombing. The British began reconstructing most of their possessions in Borneo at the end of 1945 with the restoration of law and order and the reopening of schools. In 1950, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III, upon his ascension to the throne, negotiated with the British for an increase in corporate taxes, growing from 10% to 30% in 1953. A M$1.2 million (US$0.39 million) allotment to Brunei for war damages during the Japanese occupation increased from M$1 million in 1946 to M$100 million (US$32.6 million) in 1952. A five-year development plan with a budget of M$100 million was also implemented in 1953, with infrastructure receiving the largest percentage (80%) and the rest going toward social programmes. Together with the expansion of the oil and gas industry, commercialisation began to transform Brunei's capital and a large number of public buildings were constructed, along with the development of a central business district in the 1970s and 1980s. On 1 August 2007, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah gave consent for the expansion of the city from to . Administration. City administration. The city is administered by the Bandar Seri Begawan Municipal Board within Bandar Seri Begawan Municipal Department, a government department within the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Municipal Board was established in 1921, originally as a Sanitary Board (') which was, and is still, responsible for maintaining the cleanliness to the then Brunei Town. It achieved the status of ' (municipality) in 1935 with the conversion of the Sanitary Board into the current Municipal Board (""). Bandar Seri Begawan is de facto a city but it is officially a municipality, thus has the same status as the towns of Tutong, Kuala Belait and Seria. The city is located in Brunei-Muara District, the smallest yet the most populous district in the country. The spatial jurisdiction of the city overlaps with the administrative divisions, namely mukims and villages (). Since 2007, the city's official area has been expanded from to and covers, either fully or partially, the following mukims: The mukims of Burong Pingai Ayer, Peramu, Saba, Sungai Kebun, Sungai Kedayan and Tamoi de facto constitute the areas of Kampong Ayer, that is the historical stilt settlement on the Brunei River in the heart of the capital. National government. Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital city of Brunei and the seat of the Brunei Government. It houses Istana Nurul Iman, whereby aside from the residential palace of Hassanal Bolkiah, the current Sultan of Brunei, it is also a seat of the Prime Minister's Office, in which the Prime Minister is also the Sultan himself. The Prime Minister's Office also has a second seat within the capital, that is located at Jalan Perdana Menteri. Bandar Seri Begawan also houses the headquarters of all government ministries and most departments and agencies. Geography. Bandar Seri Begawan is located at 4°53'25"N, 114°56'32"E, on the northern bank of the Brunei River. Climate. Brunei has an equatorial, tropical rainforest climate more subject to the Intertropical Convergence Zone than to the trade winds, and with rare cyclones. The climate is hot and wet. The city sees heavy precipitation throughout the course of the year, with the northeast monsoon blowing from December to March and the southeast monsoon from around June to October. The wettest day on record is 9 July 2020, when of rainfall was reported at the airport. Demography. Ethnicity and religion. The Bruneian Census 2011 Report estimated the population of Bandar Seri Begawan to be approximately 20,000, while the metropolitan area has around 279,924. The majority of Bruneians are Malays, with Chinese being the most significant minority group. Aboriginal groups such as the Bisaya, Belait, Dusun, Kedayan, Lun Bawang, Murut and Tutong also exist. They are classified as part of the Malay ethnic groups and have been given the Bumiputera privileges. Large numbers of foreign workers are also found within Brunei and the capital city, with the majority being from Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia (mostly Betawi, Batak, Ambon, Minahasa and Minangkabau) and the Indian subcontinent. Places of interest. Historical sites. The Royal Ceremonial Hall or Lapau. Located in Jalan Kianggeh, the Lapau (Royal Ceremonial Hall) is used for royal traditional ceremonies. It was here that the sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was crowned on 1 August 1968. The interior of the Lapau and sultan's throne are decorated in exquisite gold. Within the precincts of the Lapau is the Dewan Majlis where the legislative assembly used to sit. Official permission is required by visitors to enter this building. With the completion of the new legislative council building in Jalan Mabohai, the Lapau will soon become a symbol of the sultanate's constitutional history. The Royal Mausoleum (Kubah Makam Di Raja). Located away from the banks of Brunei River, behind the Freshco Shopping Centre at Mile One, Jalan Tutong, the Royal Mausoleum and the graveyard have been used by succeeding generations of sultans. Inside the Mausoleum itself are the remains of the last ten sultans, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin (1950–1967), who died in 1986, Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin (1924–1950), Sultan Muhammad Jamalul Alam II (1906–1924), Sultan Hashim (1885–1906), Sultan Abdul Momin (1852–1885), Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II (1828–1852), Sultan Muhammad Kanzul Alam (1807–1826), Sultan Muhammad Jamalul Alam I who ruled less than a year in 1804, Sultan Muhammad Tajuddin (1778-1804,1804-1807), and Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin I (1740–1778). Other members of the royal families from those times are also buried there. Dang Ayang Mausoleum. A legendary figure who was chased away from Kampong Ayer for committing adultery. Adultery was a taboo in Bruneian society. She died in what we know today as Pusat Bandar (Central City). However some sources say that she was a Queen of Brunei. Pulau Chermin Royal Cemetery. The Pulau Chermin Royal Cemetery () is a Royal burial ground located at Pulau Chermin, one of the islands on the Brunei River. The cemetery served as the resting place of Sultan Abdul Hakkul Mubin, the 13th Sultan of Brunei who ruled from 1660 to 1673. He was buried there along with members of his family who also perished during the outbreak of Brunei Civil War in 1660. They were killed there on the island during the final days of the civil war in 1673. The Royal Cemetery is gazetted as one of Brunei National Heritage Site under the Antiquities and Treasure Trove Act, 1967 revised 1984, 1990 and 2002, preserved by the Brunei Museums Department and protected by the government of Brunei Darussalam. Sultan Abdul Hakkul Mubin (died 1673) grave is located at the site. Luba Royal Mausoleum. The Luba Royal Mausoleum () is a former Royal burial ground located at Pulau Luba, Kampung Bunut, Brunei. The Mausoleum served as the resting place of Sultan Hussin Kamaluddin, the 16th Sultan of Brunei who was buried here in 1780. Before his death, Sultan Hussin Kamaluddin used to reside in Pulau Luba especially after his abdication from the Throne in 1740. He was well known in the history of Brunei as the only Sultan who abdicated twice from the Throne. Beside the Sultan, members of the Royal family were also buried in the compound. The Mausoleum is gazetted as one of Brunei National Heritage Site under the Antiquities and Treasure Trove Act, 1967 revised 1984, 1990 and 2002, preserved by the Brunei Museums Department and Brunei History Department and protected by the government of Brunei Darussalam. Istana Darussalam. This "istana", or palace, is located near the river. Among the oldest non-residential palaces in Brunei, this palace was where the Begawan sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III resided and where Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was born. It is not open to the public. Istana Nurul Iman. The Istana Nurul Iman palace is the residence of the sultan of Brunei. It is located 3 km southwest of the city centre. Its name is taken from Arabic, meaning "Palace of the Light of Faith." The palace was designed by Leandro V. Locsin and built by the Filipino firm Ayala Corporation, mixing Malay and Islamic elements in the building architecture. It contains 1,788 rooms, with 257 bathrooms, and a banquet hall that can accommodate up to 5,000 guests. The palace only opens to public during the yearly three-day Hari Raya Adilfitri celebration. Kampong Ayer. The city's suburb incorporates nearby Kampong Ayer (water village), in which houses were built on stilts. It stretches about along the Brunei River. Founded 1,000 years ago, the village is considered the largest stilt settlement in the world, with approximately 30,000 residents and 2,000 houses. The term "Venice of the East" was coined by Antonio Pigafetta in honour of the water village that he encountered at Kota Batu (just east of city's central business district). Pigafetta was on Ferdinand Magellan's last voyages when he visited Brunei in 1521. Parks and trails. The Waterfront. This latest addition to Bandar Seri Begawan strategically overlooks the historical Kampong Ayer. The approximately site took almost three years to be completed and was officially opened to the public on 28 May 2011. The Waterfront is accessible 24 hours a day for the public to enjoy sightseeing and visit outdoor cafes. Persiaran Damuan. This narrow strip of landscaped park between Jalan Tutong and the Sungei Brunei was created in 1986 as a "Square". It has a permanent display of the work of a sculptor from each of the original ASEAN countries. The -long park has pleasant walkways bordered by shrubs and the mangrove-fringed Pulau Ranggu, where two species of monkeys live, including the notable proboscis monkey only found in Borneo. The park also offers some of the best views of the Istana Nurul Iman. Jalan Tasek Lama. Located just a few minutes' walk from the city centre, this is a popular trekking trail for the city's residents. There are well-made walkaways through the small park, which has benches and picnic spots as well as a waterfall and ponds with water lilies. Bukit Subok Recreational Park. The park offers a great view of the Kampong Ayer and downtown Bandar Seri Begawan. There is a well-maintained wooden walkaway with viewing huts along the way. These huts provide good vantage points for Kampong Ayer and its surroundings. Transportation. Land. The capital is connected by Bus of Bandar Seri Begawan to the western part of the country by road. To get to the eastern part of Brunei (Temburong) it is necessary to travel through Sarawak which is in Malaysia, via the town of Limbang which is accessed by the Kuala Lurah Bus terminal. To get to Bandar Seri Begawan from the west, access is via Miri town in Sarawak via the Sungai Tujuh Bus terminal and then along the coastal highway. The main bus station in the city is located in Jalan Cator underneath a multi-story car park. There are six bus routes servicing Bandar Seri Begawan area; the Central Line, Circle Line, Eastern Line, Southern Line, Western Line and Northern Line. The buses operate from 6.30 am till 6.00pm except for Bus No. 1 and 20 which have extended to the night. All bus routes begin and terminate their journey at the main bus terminal. Buses heading to other towns in Brunei such as Tutong, Seria and Kuala Belait also depart from the main bus terminal and Taxicab. Air. Brunei International Airport serves the whole country. It is located from the town centre and can be reached in 10 minutes via the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Highway. Royal Brunei Airlines, the national airline, has its head office in the RBA Plaza in the city. Water. A water taxi service known as 'penambang' is used for transportation between downtown Bandar Seri Begawan and Kampong Ayer. Water taxis are the most common means of negotiating the waterways of Kampong Ayer. They can be hailed from the numerous "docking parts" along the banks of the Brunei River. Fares are negotiable. Regular water taxi and boat services depart for Temburong between 7:45 am and 4 pm daily, and also serve the Malaysian towns of Limbang, Lawas, Sundar and Labuan. A speedboat is used for passengers travelling to Penambang Ferry Service and from Bangar and Limbang. Economy. The city produces furniture, textiles, handicrafts, and timber. Shopping. Brunei has a number of shopping areas, including the following: Traditional markets. Tamu Kianggeh. The open market brings together numerous small entrepreneurs selling local vegetables, fruits, live chickens and fish, potted plants, assorted food and beverages. Pasar Pelbagai Barangan Gadong / Pasar Malam (night market). Located a few metres away from the Mall Gadong, the market brings together numerous small entrepreneurs just like in Tamu Kianggeh. However, it focuses more on selling foods such as sate, soto, national dishes like nasi katok and ambuyat, fruits and beverages, and wooden handicrafts. During the day, it is where local botanists sell their potted plants. Education. All levels of education are available in Bandar Seri Begawan from kindergarten to the tertiary level. Primary and secondary. There are several primary and secondary schools in Bandar Seri Begawan which may be government or private. Nevertheless, the curriculum in all of the schools, except Seri Mulia Sarjana International School, are standardised and set by the Ministry of Education, as with the schools elsewhere in the country. Religious. There are also several religious schools which provide Islamic education for the Muslim pupils. The schools that can be found in the capital include primary religious schools as well as Arabic preparatory schools, which provide preparatory education in Arabic medium for entry into the secondary level of the Arabic religious stream. There is also a specialised secondary religious school, "Institut Tahfiz Al-Qur'an Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah", which aims to produce local "hafiz". The curriculum in these schools is set by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Sixth form. There are two sixth form centres in the capital and they are government schools. Duli Pengiran Muda Al-Muhtadee Billah College provides sixth form in the general stream where as Hassanal Bolkiah Boys' Arabic Secondary School is for leavers of Arabic secondary religious schools. Universities and colleges. Technical and vocational. Technical and vocational education are available in the two campuses of the Institute of Brunei Technical Education () as well as the main campus of Brunei Polytechnic. The Business Campus and Sultan Saiful Rijal Campus, which are part of IBTE, were once separate schools, known as Business School ("Sekolah Perdagangan") and Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College ("Maktab Teknik Sultan Saiful Rijal") respectively. Vocational education is also available in a few private institutions, which provide diploma- and certificate-level courses. Higher. Two of the four national universities of the country can be found in the capital. Sultan Sharif Ali Islamic University, located in Gadong area, offers degree programmes in Islamic studies, where as Seri Begawan Religious Teachers University College is a teacher training college which produces teachers in Islamic religious education mainly for the religious schools in the country. The other two universities, University of Brunei Darussalam and University of Technology Brunei, are located in Tungku, which is not part of Bandar Seri Begawan but located on its outskirts. There are also two private colleges which offer bachelor programmes, namely International Graduate Studies College and Laksamana College of Business. International relations. Several countries have set up their embassies, commissions or consulates in Bandar Seri Begawan, including Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.

poultry that is alive

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5872

Bradycardia is a condition typically defined wherein an individual has a resting heart rate of under 60 beats per minute (BPM) in adults, although some studies use a heart rate of less than 50 BPM. Bradycardia typically does not cause symptoms until the rate drops below 50 BPM. When symptomatic, it may cause fatigue, weakness, dizziness, sweating, and at very low rates, fainting. During sleep, a slow heartbeat with rates around 40–50 BPM is common, and is considered normal. Highly trained athletes may also have athletic heart syndrome, a very slow resting heart rate that occurs as a sport adaptation and helps prevent tachycardia during training. The term "relative bradycardia" is used to refer to a heart rate that, although not actually below 60 BPM, is still considered too slow for the individual's current medical condition. The word "bradycardia" is from the Greek βραδύς "bradys" "slow", and καρδία "kardia" "heart". Classification. Sinus. Atrial bradycardias are divided into three types. The first, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, is usually found in young and healthy adults. Heart rate increases during inhalation and decreases during exhalation. This is thought to be caused by changes in the vagal tone during respiration. If the decrease during exhalation drops the heart rate below 60 BPM on each breath, this type of bradycardia is usually deemed benign and a sign of good autonomic tone. The second, sinus bradycardia, is a sinus rhythm of less than 60 BPM. It is a common condition found in both healthy individuals and those considered well-conditioned athletes. Studies have found that 50–85% of conditioned athletes have benign sinus bradycardia, as compared to 23% of the general population studied. The heart muscle of athletes has become conditioned to have a higher stroke volume, so requires fewer contractions to circulate the same volume of blood. The third, sick sinus syndrome, covers conditions that include severe sinus bradycardia, sinoatrial block, sinus arrest, and bradycardia-tachycardia syndrome (atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia). Atrioventricular junction. An AV-junctional rhythm, or atrioventricular nodal bradycardia, is usually caused by the absence of the electrical impulse from the sinus node. This usually appears on an electrocardiogram (EKG) with a normal QRS complex accompanied with an inverted P wave either before, during, or after the QRS complex. An AV-junctional escape beat is a delayed heartbeat originating from an ectopic focus somewhere in the AV junction. It occurs when the rate of depolarization of the SA node falls below the rate of the AV node. This dysrhythmia also may occur when the electrical impulses from the SA node fail to reach the AV node because of SA or AV block. This is a protective mechanism for the heart, to compensate for an SA node that is no longer handling the pacemaking activity, and is one of a series of backup sites that can take over pacemaker function when the SA node fails to do so. This would present with a longer PR interval. An AV-junctional escape complex is a normal response that may result from excessive vagal tone on the SA node. Pathological causes include sinus bradycardia, sinus arrest, sinus exit block, or AV block. Ventricular. Idioventricular rhythm, also known as atrioventricular bradycardia or ventricular escape rhythm, is a heart rate of less than 50 BPM. This is a safety mechanism when a lack of electrical impulse or stimuli from the atrium occurs. Impulses originating within or below the bundle of His in the AV node will produce a wide QRS complex with heart rates between 20 and 40 BPM. Those above the bundle of His, also known as junctional, will typically range between 40 and 60 BPM with a narrow QRS complex. In a third-degree heart block, about 61% take place at the bundle branch-Purkinje system, 21% at the AV node, and 15% at the bundle of His. AV block may be ruled out with an EKG indicating "a 1:1 relationship between P waves and QRS complexes." Ventricular bradycardias occurs with sinus bradycardia, sinus arrest, and AV block. Treatment often consists of the administration of atropine and cardiac pacing. Infantile. For infants, bradycardia is defined as a heart rate less than 100 BPM (normal is around 120–160 BPM) . Premature babies are more likely than full-term babies to have apnea and bradycardia spells; their cause is not clearly understood. The spells may be related to centers inside the brain that regulate breathing which may not be fully developed. Touching the baby gently or rocking the incubator slightly will almost always get the baby to start breathing again, which increases the heart rate. Medications (theophylline or caffeine) can be used to treat these spells in babies if necessary. Neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU) standard practice is to electronically monitor the heart and lungs for this reason. Causes. This arrhythmia can be underlain by several causes, which are best divided into cardiac and non-cardiac causes. Non-cardiac causes are usually secondary, and can involve recreational drug use or abuse; metabolic or endocrine issues, especially hypothyroidism; an electrolyte imbalance; neurologic factors; autonomic reflexes; situational factors such as prolonged bed rest; and autoimmunity. Cardiac causes include acute or chronic ischemic heart disease, vascular heart disease, valvular heart disease, or degenerative primary electrical disease. Ultimately, the causes act by three mechanisms: depressed automaticity of the heart, conduction block, or escape pacemakers and rhythms. In general, two types of problems result in bradycardias: disorders of the SA node, and disorders of the AV node. With SA node dysfunction (sometimes called sick sinus syndrome), there may be disordered automaticity or impaired conduction of the impulse from the SA node into the surrounding atrial tissue (an "exit block"). Second-degree sinoatrial blocks can be detected only by use of a 12-lead EKG. It is difficult and sometimes impossible to assign a mechanism to any particular bradycardia, but the underlying mechanism is not clinically relevant to treatment, which is the same in both cases of sick sinus syndrome: a permanent pacemaker. AV conduction disturbances (AV block; primary AV block, secondary type I AV block, secondary type II AV block, tertiary AV block) may result from impaired conduction in the AV node, or anywhere below it, such as in the bundle of His. The clinical relevance pertaining to AV blocks is greater than that of SA blocks. Beta blocker medicines also can slow the heart rate and decrease how forcefully the heart contracts. Beta blockers may slow the heart rate to a dangerous level if prescribed with calcium channel blocker-type medications. Bradycardia is also part of the mammalian diving reflex. Diagnosis. A diagnosis of bradycardia in adults is based on a heart rate less than 60 BPM, although some studies use a heart rate of less than 50 BPM. This is determined usually either by palpation or EKG. If symptoms occur, a determination of electrolytes may be helpful in determining the underlying cause. Management. The treatment of bradycardia is dependent on whether or not the person is stable or unstable. If oxygen saturations are low, supplemental oxygen should be provided. Stable. Emergency treatment is not needed if the person is asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic. Unstable. If a person is unstable, the initial recommended treatment is intravenous atropine. Doses less than 0.5 mg should not be used, as this may further decrease the rate. If this is not effective, intravenous inotrope infusion (dopamine, epinephrine) or transcutaneous pacing should be used. Transvenous pacing may be required if the cause of the bradycardia is not rapidly reversible. In children, giving oxygen, supporting their breathing, and chest compressions are recommended. Epidemiology. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2011 that 15.2% of adult males and 6.9% of adult females had clinically-defined bradycardia (a resting pulse rate below 60 BPM).

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14573900

Sir James Ware (26 November 1594 – 1 December 1666) was an Irish historian. Early life. Born at Castle Street, Dublin, James Ware was the eldest son of Sir James Ware and Mary Bryden, daughter of Ambrose Bryden of Bury St. Edmunds. Sir James Ware (the father) was born in Yorkshire, England on 26 November 1568 and came to Ireland in 1588 as the Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir William FitzWilliam. He was knighted by King James I, was elected M.P. for Mallow in 1613, served as auditor of Trinity College Dublin and assumed the relatively senior position in government as auditor-general for Ireland until his death on 14 May 1632, in which capacity he was succeeded by his son. A younger son Joseph was Dean of Elphin 1642-8. A daughter Martha married Sir William Piers and was the mother of Sir Henry Piers, 1st Baronet, who shared his uncle's antiquarian interests. James Ware (the historian) proceeded to Bachelor of Arts in Trinity College on 31 October 1611, and received an education in Latin and Greek. Becoming interested in Irish history, he began assembling a very fine collection of Irish manuscripts, and made transcriptions from works held in other collections including that of his close friend James Ussher, Bishop of Meath. In 1620, he married Elizabeth Newman, daughter of John Newman, one of the six clerks in the Irish Chancery. During the early 1620s he assisted his father in collating the findings for the royal commission of 1622 which gave a (damning) appraisal of the state of affairs in Ireland. Ware's research skills did not go unnoticed. In addition to working as an apprentice for his father he also caught the attention of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork who employed him to examine his family's history, as part of Cork's dynastic ambitions to integrate the Boyles with some of the established families in Ireland. With encouragement from Ussher, Ware returned to Trinity to pursue a postgraduate degree and he obtained his MA in 1628. Political life (1629-40). Ware's first break on the political scene was in 1629 when he was commissioned by Lords Justices Cork and Adam Loftus, 1st Viscount Loftus to attend King Charles I in London to discuss the financial crisis facing the Irish government. The success of his visit resulted in his knighthood in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin on 28 February 1630. He inherited the post of auditor general when his father died in 1632. Following the appointment of Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford as Lord Deputy of Ireland, Ware's political fortunes continued on an upward curve. He was elected Member of the Irish House of Commons (M.P.) for the University of Dublin in 1634 thanks to Wentworth's endorsement. He accompanied the lord deputy to Connacht as part of the government's attempts to extend its policy regarding plantations of Ireland. His knowledge and ownership of medieval Irish manuscripts was central in this regard, where he brought with him Irish annals to enable Wentworth prove royal claims to land in Connacht. In 1638 he obtained, with Sir Philip Perceval, the monopoly of granting licenses for the sale of ale and brandy, a lucrative deal that was no doubt reward for his efforts in making the Irish administration more efficient. Indeed, Ware was one of the few New English government officials who earned Wentworth's respect. Sure enough, he was given the highest honour in September 1640 when he was elevated to the Irish Privy Council. He was also elected M.P. for the Irish parliament of 1640-1 where he managed to escape the attention of vengeful parliamentarians intent of impeaching Wentworth's close associates, which included John Bramhall, bishop of Derry, Sir George Radcliffe, Lord Chancellor Richard Bolton and Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. Assessing Ware's political conduct under the dichotomous governments of Lords Justice Loftus and Cork (1629–32) and Lord Deputy Wentworth (1632–41) is not necessarily straightforward. But ultimately he was a royalist in the truest sense in that he did not necessarily share the same political views, or at least approve of Wentworth's style of governing (especially in regards to reforms for the Church of Ireland). Nevertheless, he was prepared to follow instructions if it meant benefiting the king's interest in Ireland. The Crisis of the 1640s and Exile. Ware remained firm to the royalist cause during the Irish Confederate Wars, which were part of the conflict known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, consuming much of Ireland and Britain during the 1640s. He was a strong supporter of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde. In 1644 he was sent to Oxford to advise Charles I of developments in Ireland. On his free time he studied in the Bodleian Library and was awarded a doctor of civil law from the University of Oxford in recognition of his scholarly achievements. Upon his return to Ireland in January 1646 he was captured by parliamentary forces and imprisoned in the Tower of London until October 1646. Following his release he returned to Dublin, only to be used as a prisoner and hostage upon the city's surrender to Colonel Michael Jones in June 1647. Ware was expelled in 1649 on account of his royalist sympathies and the threat he posed to the Cromwellian regime in Ireland. He departed Ireland in April 1649 staying primarily at the Protestant stronghold of Caen where Ormonde's influential wife, Elizabeth Butler, was living with her family. In October 1650 Ware obtained a licence to move to London, thanks to the intervention of Ussher, on condition that he refrained from engaging in politics. He would stay in the English capital until at least 1658 during which time he revived scholarly research and established intimate friendships with many of the leading English historians and antiquarians such as John Selden, Sir William Dugdale, and Sir Roger Twysden. Restoration. The restoration of Charles II saw Ware resume his position as auditor general which had been stripped from him by the Cromwellian regime. He was re-elected as M.P. representing the University of Dublin at the Irish parliament of 1661-6 and continued to be an active member of the privy council. More significantly, he was appointed one of the commissioners for the Irish land settlement - a lucrative position and reward for his unwavering loyalty to the Crown and Ormond during the 1640s. He remained on close terms with the duke, who frequently visited him for consultations at his home in Castle Street. Scholarly Research, 1626-39. Ecclesiastical Works Ware's first book, published in 1626, was "Archiepiscoporum Cassiliensium & Tuamensium Vitae", an impressive introduction into historical research which traced the archbishop of Cashel and Tuam from the twelfth to seventeenth century. To this, he appended a catalogue of the Cistercian abbeys in Ireland that had been founded between 1139 and 1260. This was followed by "De Praesulibus Lageniae" in 1628. A well informed and more detailed study, Ware's analysis of the bishops of Leinster included a thorough analysis of the prelates of Dublin, Kildare, Ferns, Leighlin, and Ossory. The episcopal catalogues were a remarkable achievement not only because they shed important light on Ireland's rich history but also because he fused Irish medieval manuscripts and state records to produce a reliable and detailed work. Among the notable sources he consulted for his work on the Leinster bishops included the Annals of Ulster, Annals of Connacht, Annals of John Clyn and Red Book of Ossory (to name but a few). Secular Works In 1633 he published one of his most famous works: "The Historie of Ireland, collected by three learned authors". This included Edmund Campion's 'Historie of Ireland', Meredith Hanmer's 'Chronicle of Ireland' and, notably, the controversial tract by Edmund Spenser, 'A View of the State of Ireland'. Contrary to what the title claimed, Ware also included the short work of the fifteenth-century chronicler, Henry Marlborough, whose 'Chronicle of Ireland' began at 1285 and thus suitably complemented Hanmer's work which ended in 1284. The work has received widespread attention from Irish historians for Ware's subtle editing of Spenser's political writings as well as its dedication to Lord Deputy Wentworth. His attempts to tone the text down was, as he admitted, an attempt to reflect the more peaceful times of the 1630s. At the same time it is hard to see the inclusion of the 'View' as nothing more than a reflection of political and colonial ambitions of the new government under Wentworth. Ware's fourth work was arguably his best to date. "De Scriptoribus Hiberniae", published in Dublin in 1639, was an exhaustive account of the writers of Ireland from the fourth to seventeenth century. It was divided into two books: the first considered Irish authors while the second provided information on 'foreign' writers commenting on Ireland. Rich in source material, one of the most striking features was Ware's ability to interconnect medieval Irish manuscripts with European printed works. The turmoil of the civil war in the 1640s, and his senior role under the government of James Butler meant it was to be his last published work for fifteen years. Return to scholarship. Ware's first new book since the 1630s was "De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus eius Disquisitones", published in London in 1654, and in a second edition in 1658. This was followed in 1656 by "Opuscula Sancto Patricio Adscripta". The year 1664 saw the publication of "Venerabilis Bedae Epistolae Duae" and "Rerum Hibernicarum Annales ab Anno Domini 1485 ad Annum 1558". In the following year, which saw the publication of "De Praesulibus Hiberniae Commentarius", he began a brief though fruitful collaboration with Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh. It was later stated that "He always kept in his House an Irish Amanuensis to interpret and translate the Language for him, and at the Time of his Death one Dubley Firbisse served him in that Office." Family, death and legacy. Ware had ten children by Elizabeth Newman, with only two surviving him: James (1622–89), Roger (1624–42), Mary (1625–51), Rose (1627–49), Elizabeth (1629–49), John (1631–50), Ann (1633–50), Arthur (1637–40), Robert (1639–96), and Joseph (1643–44). Ware's eldest son, James Ware, had one daughter Mary (1651–1722) who married firstly Alexander Fraser and secondly Sir John St Leger, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland): she was described as a lady of great wealth and "questionable virtue". This may have been based on the high profile rape case against a Mr James Shirley who tried to marry her when she was underage and against her will. A decree in the Dublin Consistory Court ensured that the marriage was dissolved. The episode was detailed in full and published in two tracts by Dudley Loftus in 1668 entitled: "Case of Ware and Shirly" and "The Case of Mrs Mary Ware and James Shirly". Sir James Ware's third child, also named Mary, married Sir Edward Crofton, 1st Baronet in 1647, he being a nephew of Thomas Crofton of Longford, Tireagh, Co. Sligo (another Thomas Crofton, of this family, killed Mac Fhirbhisigh in January 1671). A first cousin of Thomas Crofton of Longford was Catherine Crofton, daughter of John Crofton of Lisdorne, Co. Roscommon; Catherine was married to Reverend Joseph Ware, Dean of Elphin, a younger brother of Sir James. Mary and Crofton had no children, and after her death he remarried Susanna Clifford and had issue. Rose Ware married Richard Lambart, 2nd Earl of Cavan (d.1690). He was reportedly declared "(a lunatick)...deprived of his reason by a deep melancholy with which he was seized before, from a sense of the injuries put upon him by his younger brother Oliver, who by his father's will got the estate of the family.". Robert Ware struggled with epileptic fits in his youth but showed a keen interest in history and sought to emulate his father. As a consequence, his father left him his valuable manuscripts in his will to which Robert would subsequently gain notoriety for adding forgeries in the blank pages. The impact would be significant. Using his father's name to promote his own status, he recorded "imaginary conversations and plots, unhappily bedevilling sixteenth-century Irish ecclesiastical history for over 300 years." The sectarian insertions left a partial stain on Sir James Ware's reputation – whose research deliberately refrained from making highly sensitive religious comments – and the forgeries were not discovered for another two hundred years when Thomas E. Bridgett revealed irregularities in Sir James Ware's manuscripts in the late nineteenth century. Robert was not alone in distorting Sir James Ware's research for political and religious gain. Walter Harris, who married Robert's grand-daughter, also used Ware's work for anti-Catholic purposes. His translation of Ware's works in 1739 entitled, "The Whole Works of James Ware Concerning Ireland revised and Improved", "sought to resume Ussher's discussion of the antiquity of the Church of Ireland by imposing upon Ware's comparatively innocuous text the appearance of a study of Protestant lineage among its author's civilised antiquity." Harris's alterations were significant. "Just as Robert deceived his readers by claiming his forgeries were genuine because they came from his father’s manuscripts, Harris misled his audience by including material that had no connection with James’ investigations." In 1686 Robert sold his father's manuscripts to Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon who then passed them on to James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674–1744). Repeated attempts were made to purchase Ware's prized manuscripts, notably by Archbishop William King of Dublin and the famous satirist Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral Dublin. However, they were unsuccessful. Though the manuscripts were later sold and dispersed, a large part of Ware's collection were fortunately preserved. Following an auction of Chandos's library in 1747, several of Ware's manuscripts were purchased by Richard Rawlinson who subsequently deposited them in the Bodleian Library in 1755. Another large collection were donated to the British Museum (now British Library) in 1765 thanks to Jeremiah Milles, Dean of Exeter, who was executor for his cousin, the noted manuscript collector and Bishop of Ossory, Richard Pococke. Ware died on Saturday 1 December 1666, aged seventy-two. He was buried in St Werburgh's Church, Dublin. In 1879 the curate, Rev. J. H. McMahon, sought to solicit subscriptions to erect a mural table by way of paying tribute to "Ware’s vast merits as a reliable writer of Irish history, and as a real credit to Ireland, and to Dublin, his native city." Though McMahon's attempts proved futile it nevertheless served as a reminder of Ware's enduring legacy and esteem with which he was held two hundred years later.

ascending trajectory

8415-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=221477

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (also spelled Wyndam-Price and Wyndham-Price) is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". Played by Alexis Denisof, Wesley first appeared in the fourteenth episode of "Buffy"'s third season in 1999, appearing in nine episodes before moving over to spin-off series "Angel" where he became a main character for all five seasons. Following "Angel"'s final season, the character's story is continued in the 2007 canonical comic book series "". Wesley is introduced as a member of the Watchers' Council — an organization which trains Slayers to fight monsters such as vampires and demons. Created as an irritating foil for the character of Rupert Giles, he was intended to be killed off shortly after his first appearance, but the character was popular with his creators and television viewers, and was instead written into "Angel", in which he joined a supernatural detective agency. Over the course of "Angel", Wesley went through dramatic character developments, becoming darker and less comedic. Appearances. Television. Wesley is introduced in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" season three (1998–1999) episode "Bad Girls" as the new Watcher of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Faith (Eliza Dushku). Pompous and ineffective, he fails to elicit any respect from either his Slayers or his predecessor, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), all of whom frequently ridicule and undermine him. He develops a crush on high school senior Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), and their mutual flirting throughout the season culminates in a pair of awkward kisses in the finale "Graduation Day, Part Two". When Faith goes rogue after accidentally killing a human being, the Scooby Gang neglect to inform Wesley, and his subsequent interference ruins Faith's brief chance at redemption. When Wesley fails to convince the Watchers' Council to help save the life of her vampire lover Angel (David Boreanaz), an enraged Buffy severs all ties with them. Despite this, Wesley offers his assistance in the fight against the Mayor, proving entirely useless in battle when he is knocked down almost instantly. Wesley reappears in the first season (1999–2000) of spin-off show "Angel", in the episode "Parting Gifts". Introduced as a self-proclaimed "rogue demon-hunter", Wesley reveals that he was fired from the Watchers' Council for incompetence, but is soon accepted into supernatural detective agency Angel Investigations, working alongside Angel and Cordelia (effectively filling the gap left by the death of Doyle (Glenn Quinn). When Faith is hired by evil law firm Wolfram & Hart to assassinate Angel, Wesley is kidnapped and tortured by his former charge, until Angel forces Faith to take responsibility for her actions. Although still bitter towards her and doubtful of her chances at redemption, Wesley proves his loyalty to Angel by betraying his former colleagues at the Watchers' Council to protect Faith. In the second season (2000–2001), Wesley embarks on a romantic relationship with a woman named Virginia Bryce after helping to prevent her father from sacrificing her to a demon. When Angel descends into darkness and fires the team, Wesley continues Angel Investigations with Cordelia and Charles Gunn (J. August Richards). Having overcome his cowardice of earlier episodes, he gets himself shot trying to protect Gunn and spends the next two episodes in a wheelchair; this injury also leads to the demise of his relationship with Virginia, who becomes disturbed by his dangerous lifestyle. When Angel returns to the fold, Wesley is appointed team leader, but feels inferior due to his father's berating and Angel's habit of taking charge. However, when put in charge of a rebellion in the demon dimension Pylea, Wesley proves to be an effective, albeit ruthless, leader. In "Angel"'s third season (2001–2002), Wesley's path becomes filled with tragedies and difficult choices. Just as he starts developing romantic feelings for his teammate Fred (Amy Acker), he finds himself mystically influenced to kill her after a demon influences him to become homicidally misogynistic. While studying the birth of Angel's infant son Connor, Wesley discovers a prophecy which claims that Angel will kill the baby. Intending to take him to safety, Wesley betrays his friends and kidnaps Connor, a decision which has disastrous consequences when he has his throat slit and the baby is kidnapped into a hell dimension by Angel's sworn enemy, Holtz. Angel then attempts to kill him while he is in recovery at the hospital. Alienated from Angel Investigations, a recovered Wesley forms his own team to fight evil, but maintains an interest in his former friends' affairs. He also begins a sexual relationship with Wolfram & Hart lawyer Lilah Morgan (Stephanie Romanov), who tries to convince him to join the firm. In the fourth season (2002–2003), Angel is rescued and revived by Wesley after being sunk to the bottom of the ocean by his now-adolescent son Connor (Vincent Kartheiser). Wesley eventually returns to the team full-time to help them battle the Beast, making difficult decisions such as seeking the aid of Angel's evil alter ego Angelus and breaking Faith out of prison. Having developed genuine feelings for Lilah, he mourns her when she is killed by Cordelia, now possessed by the entity known as Jasmine (Gina Torres). In the season finale, following the defeat of Jasmine, Wesley joins the rest of Angel Investigations in taking over Wolfram & Hart in the hopes that they can turn it into a power for good. Season five (2003–2004) sees Wesley suffer yet more loss. In the episode "Lineage", Wesley's father makes his first appearance after being alluded to in earlier episodes. Roger Wyndam-Pryce (Roy Dotrice) is revealed to have sinister intentions when he tries to steal Angel's free will and threatens to murder Fred; Wesley responds by shooting him dead, only to discover he was not actually his father, but a cyborg copy. Despite the deception having been revealed, he is visibly shaken by his willingness to end his father's life to save another. After being in love with her for almost two seasons, Wesley finally gets together with Fred in the subsequent episode "Smile Time", only to watch her die in the next episode when she is taken over by the ancient demon Illyria. He retaliates by killing Knox, the man responsible for raising Illyria, and stabbing Gunn after discovering he played an indirect role in Fred's death. Descending into alcoholism, Wesley holds onto Illyria as the only thing he has left of Fred, helping her understand the human world she is unfamiliar with. He inadvertently restores his and his friends' memories of Connor when he smashes the Orlon Window, thinking that Angel had betrayed his trust. Wesley visibly feels guilty after remembering how he betrayed his friends by taking Connor from Angel and later apologizes to Gunn for stabbing him. Towards the end of the season, Angel proposes an attack against the Circle of the Black Thorn, a powerful group of demons under the employ of the Wolfram & Hart's Senior Partners. In the show's final episode, Wesley does battle with the warlock Cyvus Vail (Dennis Christopher) and is mortally wounded. He spends his dying moments with Illyria at his side, finally agreeing to let the demon take the form of Fred, thus allowing Wesley, in some way, to say goodbye to the woman he loved. Joss Whedon revealed in an interview that Wesley was originally intended to survive and appear in "Angel" season six, but he was inspired to kill Wesley off after being pitched the idea of his death scene by one of the script writers. Literature. Wesley appears in comic books and novels based on the "Buffy" and "Angel" television series. He appears in numerous "Angel" novels as a member of Angel Investigations, but has a more prominent role in some; in "Stranger to the Sun" he falls under a mystical slumber after receiving a mysterious package in the mail and becomes trapped in a nightmare, while "Book of the Dead" sees his love of reading get the better of him after being sucked into a book about the occult. The comic book "" focuses on Wesley's struggles to save the life of Fred's love interest and (unbeknownst to Wesley) future murderer, Knox. "The Lost Slayer" is a series of "Buffy" novels set in an alternate future where Wesley is Watcher to the current Slayer, Anna. "" (2007-2011), a canonical comic book continuation of the television series, reveals that Wesley was unable to move on after his death due to the standard perpetuity clause in his Wolfram & Hart contract. Now incorporeal, Wesley acts as the last remaining link to Senior Partners, who have sent Angel and all of Los Angeles to hell as punishment for their attack in season five. Following the destruction of the Wolfram & Hart building at the hands of a now vampiric Gunn, Wesley's ghost fades away. He convinces the White Room to send him back to Hell, where his sudden appearance causes Illyria to change back and forth between Illyria and Fred's personae. When Angel is confronted by Gunn, now a deluded vampire who believes he is the champion of the Shanshu prophecy, Wesley delivers Angel a vision from the Senior Partners explaining that the prophecy has always concerned Angel. When Angel realizes that the Senior Partners need him alive for their plans, he devises a plan to get himself killed, thus forcing them to rewind time to the last moment before Los Angeles was sent to hell. However, this would not reverse Wesley's death. Wesley is resigned to his fate, believing that he has nothing more to live for now that Fred is gone, and walks away, but not before asking Spike to take care of Illyria. In the new timeline, Angel names a wing of the Los Angeles public library in memory of Wesley and Fred. Concept and creation. Wesley was initially designed to be a foil for the character of Rupert Giles. Actor Alexis Denisof comments that Wesley and Giles come from very similar backgrounds, but have gone in different directions "with the tools that they had"; he was conceived as a "nemesis" for Giles and Buffy. Co-executive producer Doug Petrie, who wrote Wesley's first episode "Bad Girls", explains, "The way Faith is a reflection of Buffy, Wesley takes up a lot of the space that Giles traditionally occupies." He elaborates that, because Giles is usually the "stuffy guy from England who tells you to sit up straight and obey the rules", introducing Wesley, who embodies those traits "to the nth degree", allows Giles to become "subversive" and "cool". Writer Jane Espenson claims that the character was intended for viewers to have antipathy towards, since he was trying to undermine Giles. Alexis Denisof, who had been living in England before coming to L.A., was unaware of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" since it had not yet aired in Britain. When actor Tony Head found out that Mutant Enemy were looking for an actor to play Wesley, Head contacted Denisof, an old friend from England, to ask whether he would be interested in the role. Denisof claims that Wesley was originally supposed to "come in, irritate Giles and Buffy for a couple shows, and then be gloriously terminated". However, the writers became fond of the character's "curious humour" and found themselves unable to kill him off. Joss Whedon struggled to find a place for Wesley in the series where he wouldn't clash with Giles, and eventually approached Denisof with the offer of appearing in spin-off show "Angel". For Wesley to work as a long-term character, Denisof claimed they had to re-shape the character to be more sympathetic. Characterization. Wesley matures significantly over the course of both "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel"; in his early appearances he was largely cowardly and incompetent. Alexis Denisof claims that his initial goal in playing the character was to be as annoying as possible for the other characters. He explains, I thought that an irritating version of Giles would be annoying for [Giles] and also for Buffy. Wesley's purpose was to come there and point the finger and get things shipshape. He's a by-the-book school teacher. Considering what kind of person it would be who would have dedicated his life to this peculiar task of being a Watcher, and what would be the unique characteristics of somebody who had made those decisions, and then was taken out of that environment and put into Sunnydale. To Wesley that was a completely new and bizarre place. During this time, Denisof came up with a background story for Wesley regarding his father to explain "why he was so repressed." The writers used this story in the show, alluding to it in early "Angel" episodes such as "I've Got You Under My Skin", and "Belonging". While discussing Wesley's character development over the course of "Angel", Denisof explains: "I decided that Wesley was internally confronting his father and that released him a little bit and made him less repressed." Wesley is introduced in "Angel" having been fired from the Watcher's Council. Denisof says the experience gave the character "a little shake". He elaborates, When he arrived in Sunnydale, he was straight out of Watcher grad school; he lacked practical experience. He was living in the ideal of the perfect way to execute his duties. I think that losing his job and going out alone roughened him up a little, lopped off some of his sharper corners. It made him more approachable and more personable, less sure of himself all the time. Coming into the show immediately following the death of Doyle, Wesley serves as a partial replacement for that character. Comparing the two characters, Denisof states, "Wesley is a clearer counterpart to Angel, whereas Doyle had more street smarts. Although [Doyle] was struggling with his demon nature, he had seen a lot more of the world in the same way Angel had." Nonetheless Denisof believes that in this period, his character "was so anxious to be a tough rogue demon hunter but was clearly a kind of soft puppy dog." Denisof complimented the season three "Angel" episode "Billy", in which Wesley tries to murder Fred after becoming supernaturally misogynous, "because it was the first real dark change in Wesley to experiment with". Discussing Wesley's betrayal of his friends to protect Angel's baby, Denisof explains, It isn't that he's purely bad or purely good, we're discovering a deeper and more complicated area of the character where good and bad aren't as clear, where Wesley does something motivated, he thinks, for the good of all – i.e. saving Connor and relieving Angel of the responsibility of murdering his son – and in doing so creates the situation in which the baby could be kidnapped, Angel loses his son and Wesley has his throat slit for the trouble. So it's grey rather than black or white. Science fiction magazine "Starburst" said that "somber, subdued, bearded Wesley is worlds away from the foolish, pompous Wesley". Denisof says of the period, "It was a great opportunity to explore some of the character's darker layers. You couldn't have predicted it when he arrived in Sunnydale. This was an important element to introduce and explore, to be consistent with the show and to continue the organic exploration of all the characters." Whilst the character spent less time with his old friends, Denisof was "more or less isolated from the [main cast], barring one or two scenes of mild confrontation when they would come to visit me and we'd chew each other out. There's definitely a cold war going on with Wesley versus the world." Wesley's dark attitude is alleviated somewhat when the gang decide to take over Wolfram & Hart. The tension between Wesley and his co-workers did not go away because of the mind-wipe but because "we decided we were better off as a team than as separate entities. And we had to put our differences behind us and build our trust again as a group." Discussing the way Wesley's English accent softens over the course of "Angel", Denisof says, [The modified accent] just sits on him better. As an actor, it just felt that organically the way he was changing, and it also seemed to be accurate when you consider the amount of time he's spent in L.A. that the accent could have softened. And since he isn't surrounded by upper-crust academics as he was as a young Watcher in the Academy in England, it's understandable that he is changing the way he speaks and changing his voice, his delivery, as a result of his environment. Denisof had earlier stated that he thought "it's better for the father [of Wesley] to be kept in the background and not become part of the story." When Wesley's father finally did appear in "Angel" season five, he said: I had mixed feelings [at first]. It was a lot of pressure to have to define something that had been speculated about for many years. I was worried that by making it specific, it would lose its power, both in the mind of the character and in the minds of the audience. All my concerns disappeared as soon as I read it. There are responses to powerful figures in your life, like your parents, that you can't necessarily control. Wesley's a very controlled person on the exterior and presents a very collected persona to the people around him, being with his father he would no longer be able to control his responses. That's one of the things I wanted to explore with this, the subtle ways in which you respond to the conditioning of your parents. Wesley has difficulty around his father on a physical level, on an emotional scale, and on an intellectual scale. He is extremely intimidated by his father, and at the same time, still seeking the approval that we all essentially want from our parents when we're children. The shooting [of the cyborg Wesley believed to be his father] was an exhilarating moment in which there was the most dangerous person in his life on every level, and there is a woman he is obsessed with. And to have the woman jeopardized by something as dangerous as his father – I played that moment as a moment of pure instinct. Wesley is centered in his intellect and is more uncertain in his emotional life, but in that moment, he becomes pure instinct because he has to choose between the woman he loves and his father. Wesley undergoes yet another drastic personality change in "Angel"'s fifth season following the death of his love, Fred. Denisof believes that the loss of Fred caused Wesley to become understandably "unbalanced". "By the time we get to the last few episodes, he's got a handle on the grief and is functioning in a more level-headed way," says Denisof. "But underlying it is a huge hole in his heart and it makes it possible for the decision that they make in the final episode. For him emotionally, the stage is set for a life or death battle, possibly for the last time, because at this point, there's nothing more for him to lose." Denisof talked with Whedon about what storylines would have been in place had the television series received another season; Wesley would not have died, and he and Illyria would have featured in an arc in which the transformation of Illyria to Fred would have been extended over many episodes and taken to a "much deeper, darker place" than it briefly was in the late fifth-season episode, "The Girl in Question". Denisof continues, They would have progressed the relationship between Wesley and Illyria in such a way it would conflict with his own feelings for Fred, in a much more profound way. And then we would have gone into the switching of Fred and Illyria and having these two people that he was having these strong feelings about. That was going to be a fairly long journey in the following season, all of which got abbreviated tremendously when [the WB] decided to cancel the show. The cancellation of the show was the inspiration for Wesley's death; Whedon gave Denisof the option of keeping the character alive, but Denisof believed killing the character was right for the story, "It was very upsetting to read. It's too good a story because it hurts."

small upheaval

5092-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=419842

Moral character or character is an analysis of an individual's steady moral qualities. The concept of "character" can express a variety of attributes including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, courage, fortitude, honesty, and loyalty, or of good behaviors or habits, these attributes are also a part of one's soft skills. Moral character primarily refers to the collection of qualities that differentiate one individual from anotheralthough on a cultural level, the group of moral behaviors to which a social group adheres can be said to unite and define it culturally as distinct from others. Psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as "a disposition to express behavior in consistent patterns of functions across a range of situations". Same as, the philosopher Marie I. George refers to moral character as the "sum of one’s moral habits and dispositions". Aristotle has said, "we must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts." Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography about his habitual efforts to develop his moral character. Overview. The word "character" is derived from the Ancient Greek word "charaktêr", referring to a mark impressed upon a coin. Later it came to mean a point by which one thing was told apart from others. There are two approaches when dealing with moral character: Normative ethics involve moral standards that exhibit right and wrong conduct. It is a test of proper behavior and determining what is right and wrong. Applied ethics involve specific and controversial issues along with a moral choice, and tend to involve situations where people are either for or against the issue. In 1982 V. Campbell and R. Bond proposed the following as major sources in influencing character and moral development: heredity, early childhood experience, modeling by important adults and older youth, peer influence, the general physical and social environment, the communications media, the teachings of schools and other institutions, and specific situations and roles that elicit corresponding behavior. The field of business ethics examines moral controversies relating to the social responsibilities of capitalist business practices, the moral status of corporate entities, deceptive advertising, insider trading, employee rights, job discrimination, affirmative action and drug testing. In the military field, character is considered particularly relevant in the leadership development area. Military leaders should not only "know" theoretically the moral values but they must embody these values. History. The "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" provides a historical account of some important developments in philosophical approaches to moral character. A lot of attention is given to Plato, Aristotle, and Karl Marx's views, since they all follow the idea of moral character after the Greeks. Marx accepts Aristotle's insight that virtue and good character are based on a sense of self-esteem and self-confidence. Plato believed that the soul is divided into three parts of desire: Rational, Appetitive, or Spirited. In order to have moral character, we must understand what contributes to our overall good and have our spirited and appetitive desires educated properly, so that they can agree with the guidance provided by the rational part of the soul. Aristotle tells us that there are good people in the world. These are those who exhibit excellences – excellences of thought and excellences of character. His phrase for excellences of character – "êthikai aretai" – we usually translate as moral virtue or moral excellence. When we speak of a moral virtue or an excellence of character, the emphasis is on the combination of qualities that make an individual the sort of ethically admirable person that he is. Aristotle defines virtuous character at the beginning of Book II in "Nicomachean Ethics": "Excellence of character, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect”. In Aristotle's view, good character is based on two naturally occurring psychological responses that most people experience without difficulty: our tendency to take pleasure from self-realizing activity and our tendency to form friendly feelings toward others under specific circumstances. Based on his view, virtually everyone is capable of becoming better and they are the ones responsible for actions that express (or could express) their character. Abraham Lincoln once said, "Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." Religious views. Christian character is also defined as presenting the "Fruit of the Holy Spirit": love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Doctrines of grace and total depravity assert that – due to original sin – mankind, entirely or in part, was unable to be good without God's intervention; otherwise at best, one could only ape good behavior for selfish reasons. Scientific experiments. In one experiment that was done in the United States in 1985, the moral character of a person was based on whether or not a person had found a dime in a public phone booth. The findings were that 87% of subjects who found a dime in a phone booth mailed a sealed and addressed envelope that was left at the booth in an apparent mistake by someone else, while only 4% of those who did not find a dime helped. Some found it very troubling that people would be influenced by such morally trivial factors in their choice whether to provide low-cost assistance to others. John M. Doris raises the issue of ecological validity – do experimental findings reflect phenomena found in natural contexts. He recognizes that these results are counterintuitive to the way most of us think about morally relevant behavior. Another experiment that was done that asked college students at Cornell to predict how they would behave when faced with one of several moral dilemmas, and to make the same predictions for their peers. Again and again, people predicted that they would be more generous and kind than others. Yet when put into the moral dilemma, the subjects did not behave as generously or as kindly as they had predicted. In psychological terms, the experimental subjects were successfully anticipating the base rate of moral behavior and accurately predicting how often others, in general, would be self-sacrificing. Criticism. In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of philosophers and social scientists began to question the very presuppositions that theories of moral character and moral character traits are based on. Due to the importance of moral character to issues in philosophy, it is unlikely that the debates over the nature of moral character will end anytime soon. Situationism can be understood as composed of three central claims: According to Situationists, the empirical evidence favors their view of moral character over the Traditional View. Hugh Hartshorne and M. A. May's study of the trait of honesty among school children found no cross-situational correlation. A child may be consistently honest with his friends, but not with his parents or teachers. From this and other studies, Hartshorne and May concluded that character traits are not robust but rather "specific functions of life situations". These recent challenges to the Traditional View have not gone unnoticed. Some have attempted to modify the Traditional View to insulate it from these challenges, while others have tried to show how these challenges fail to undermine the Traditional View at all. For example, Dana Nelkin (2005), Christian Miller (2003), Gopal Sreenivasan (2002), and John Sabini and Maury Silver (2005), among others, have argued that the empirical evidence cited by the Situationists does not show that individuals lack robust character traits. A second challenge to the traditional view can be found in the idea of moral luck. This idea is that moral luck occurs when the moral judgment of an agent depends on factors beyond the agent's control. Fiery Cushman clarifies that this is judgement of an outcome comprising both the agent's character and an unanticipated circumstance, rather than an agent's intent. There are number of ways that moral luck can motivate criticisms of moral character. It is similar to "the kind of problems and situations one faces" If all of an agent's moral character traits are situation-specific rather than robust, what traits an agent manifests will depend on the situation that she finds herself in. But what situations an agent finds herself in is often beyond her control and thus a matter of situational luck. Whether moral character traits are robust or situation-specific, some have suggested that what character traits one has is itself a matter of luck. If our having certain traits is itself a matter of luck, this would seem to undermine one's moral responsibility for one's moral character, and thus the concept of moral character altogether. As Owen Flanagan and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty write: A moral character trait is a character trait for which the agent is morally responsible. If moral responsibility is impossible, however, then agents cannot be held responsible for their character traits or for the behaviors that they do as a result of those character traits. A similar argument has also recently been advocated by Bruce Waller. According to Waller, no one is "morally responsible for her character or deliberative powers, or for the results that flow from them.… Given the fact that she was shaped to have such characteristics by environmental (or evolutionary) forces far beyond her control, she deserves no blame [nor praise]".

defense industry

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64806923

I-4 was a "J1 type" submarine built by Kawasaki, Kobe, for the Imperial Japanese Navy in the 1920s. She was a large cruiser submarine displacing 2,135 tons that entered service in 1929 and served in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. During the latter conflict she operated in support of the attack on Pearl Harbor, conducted anti-shipping patrols in the Indian Ocean, supported the Indian Ocean raid, and took part in the Aleutian Islands campaign, Guadalcanal campaign, and New Guinea campaign before she was sunk in December 1942. Construction and commissioning. Built by Kawasaki at Kobe, Japan, "I-4" was laid down on 17 April 1926. She was launched on 22 May 1928 and was completed and commissioned on 24 December 1929. Service history. Early service. Upon commissioning, "I-4" was attached to the Yokosuka Naval District, assigned to Submarine Division 7 in Submarine Squadron 2 in the 2nd Fleet. On 1 August 1930, she was reassigned to Submarine Division 8. She was off Kyushu near the Mishima Islands taking part in a exercise in which a group of submarines practiced a mock combined attack on a line of zigzagging battleships on 14 June 1932 when she unexpectedly surfaced in front of the battleships. The battleship , making , took evasive action at the last minute and managed to avoid a direct collision with the stationary "I-4", although "Hyūga" suffered minor damage to her hull plating when her bow grazed "I-4"′s hull. Second Sino-Japanese War. On 7 July 1937 the first day of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident took place, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War. In September 1937 Submarine Squadron 1 was reassigned to the 3rd Fleet, which in turn was subordinated to the China Area Fleet for service in Chinese waters. The squadron, consisting of "I-4" and her sister ships , , , , and , deployed to a base at Hong Kong with the submarine tenders and in September 1937. From Hong Kong, the submarines began operations in support of a Japanese blockade of China and patrols of China′s central and southern coast. From 21 to 23 August 1937, all six submarines of Submarine Squadron 1 operated in the East China Sea as distant cover for an operation in which the battleships , , , and and the light cruiser ferried troops from Tadotsu, Japan, to Shanghai, China. Submarine Squadron 1 was based at Hong Kong until the autumn of 1938. In an effort to reduce international tensions over the conflict in China, Japan withdrew its submarines from Chinese waters in December 1938. 1938–1941. Submarine Squadron 2 was resubordinated to the 6th Fleet on 15 November 1940. On 7 January 1941, "I-4" became flagship of Submarine Division 8. On 10 November 1941 — by which time "I-4", "I-5", "I-6", and the submarine made up Submarine Division 8 in Submarine Squadron 2 in the 6th Fleet, with "I-7" serving as squadron flagship — the commander of the 6th Fleet, Vice Admiral Mitsumi Shimizu, gathered the commanding officers of the fleet′s submarines together for a meeting aboard his flagship, the light cruiser , which was anchored in Saeki Bay. Shimizu briefed them on the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor, which would bring Japan and the United States into World War II. As the Imperial Japanese Navy began to deploy for the upcoming conflict in the Pacific, "I-4", "I-5", "I-6", and "I-7" got underway from Yokosuka on 16 November 1941, bound for the Hawaiian Islands. The submarines received the message "Climb Mount Niitaka 1208" () from the Combined Fleet on 2 December 1941, indicating that war with the Allies would commence on 8 December 1941 Japan time, which was on 7 December 1941 on the other side of the International Date Line in Hawaii. World War II. First war patrol. On 7 December 1941, the submarines of Submarine Squadron 2 took up patrol stations across a stretch of the Pacific Ocean from northeast to northwest of Oahu, with "I-4"′s patrol area adjacent to that of "I-6". The submarines had orders to conduct reconnaissance in the area and attack any ships which sortied from Pearl Harbor during or after the attack, which occurred that morning. At around 03:55 on 14 December 1941, "I-4" hit the starboard side of the Norwegian merchant ship "Hųegh Merchant" — which had been on a voyage from San Francisco, California, to Manila in the Philippines with 7,500 tons of general cargo including 100 tons of explosives and when the war broke out and had been diverted to Honolulu, Hawaii — with a torpedo east-northeast of Makapuʻu Point, Oahu. "Hųegh Merchant" caught fire, and at around 04:05 "I-4" fired another torpedo which hit her near the same place as the first. "Hųegh Merchant" sank at 05:33, and the United States Navy destroyer minesweeper rescued her passengers and crew. Oil barrels from "Hųegh Merchant"′s cargo drifted ashore on Kauai a number of days later. On 9 January 1942, "I-4" was ordered to divert from her patrol and search for the United States Navy aircraft carrier , which the submarine had sighted, but she did not find "Lexington". She arrived at Kwajalein on 22 January 1942, then got back underway on 24 January 1942 bound for Yokosuka, which she reached on 2 February 1942. Second war patrol. While "I-4" was at Yokosuka, Submarine Squadron 2 — consisting of "I-1", "I-2", "I-3", "I-4", "I-6", and the squadron flagship, "I-7" — was assigned to the Dutch East Indies Invasion Force on 8 February 1942. Accordingly, "I-4" departed Yokosuka on 12 February 1942 bound for Palau, where she arrived on 16 February 1942, then got back underway on 17 February bound for the Netherlands East Indies. She arrived at Staring Bay on the Southeast Peninsula of Celebes just southeast of Kendari on 22 February 1942, then put back to sea on 23 February, heading for the Indian Ocean south of Java, where she was to conduct her second war patrol. At about 16:15 on 28 February 1942, "I-4" sank an unidentified Allied steamship — sometimes identified as Singapore-based merchant steamer , although "Ban Ho Guan" may have not been in the area at the time — in the Indian Ocean southwest of Bali. She bombarded the Cocos Islands on 3 March, and concluded her patrol with her arrival at Penang in Japanese-occupied British Malaya at 12:50 Japan Standard Time on 8 March 1942. Third war patrol. Orders arrived from the headquarters of the Combined Fleet for all the submarines of Submarine Squadron 2 except for "I-1" to conduct reconnaissance operations along the coast of Ceylon and western coast of India in preparation for Operation C, the upcoming Indian Ocean raid by the aircraft carriers of the Combined Fleet′s Mobile Force. Accordingly, "I-4" departed Penang on 28 March 1942 with the commander of Submarine Division 8 embarked and with orders to conduct a reconnaissance in the Indian Ocean of Eight Degree Channel and the waters off Colombo, Ceylon. At the western entrance of Eight Degree Channel at about 15:55 on 6 April 1942 — the day after Japanese carrier planes raided Colombo — "I-4" fired two Type 96 torpedoes at the American 6,617-ton steamer , which was on a voyage from Suez, Egypt, to Colombo. "Washingtonian" sighted one of the torpedoes approaching on her port side at a distance of and began a slow turn in an attempt to avoid it, but both torpedoes hit, setting "Washingtonian"′s fuel tanks on fire. Fire soon engulfed the ship, and she had taken on a 25-degree list to port when her crew of 29 and two passengers abandoned ship at 16:05. "Washingtonian" eventually sank. On 10 April 1942 after 01:00, "I-4" surfaced off Colombo in the vicinity of and opened fire with both of her deck guns on a 200-ton Maldivian buggalow, firing fourteen rounds and heavily damaging the vessel. "I-4"′s patrol ended with her arrival at Singapore on 16 April 1942. She departed Singapore on 21 April 1942 to head for Yokosuka, which she reached on 1 May 1942. Fourth war patrol. While "I-4" was at Yokosuka, the Aleutian Islands campaign began on 3–4 June 1942 with a Japanese air raid on Dutch Harbor, Alaska, followed quickly by the unopposed Japanese occupation in the Aleutian Islands of Attu on 5 June and Kiska on 7 June 1942. On 10 June 1942, "I-1", "I-2", "I-3", "I-4", "I-5", "I-6", and "I-7" were reassigned to the Northern Force for duty in the Aleutians, and on 11 June 1942 "I-4" set out for Aleutian waters in company with "I-1", "I-2", "I-3", and "I-7" to begin her fourth war patrol. On 20 June 1942, "I-1", "I-2", and "I-4" joined the "K" patrol line in the North Pacific Ocean between and . "I-4" remained on the patrol line until 3 July 1942. On 20 July 1942, she was reassigned to the Advance Force and ordered to return to Japan. She arrived at Yokosuka on 1 August 1942 and began an overhaul. Guadalcanal campaign. During "I-4"′s stay at Yokosuka, the Guadalcanal campaign began on 7 August 1942 with U.S. amphibious landings on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Florida Island, Gavutu, and Tanambogo in the southeastern Solomon Islands. On 20 August 1942, Submarine Division 8 was disbanded, and "I-4" was reassigned to Submarine Division 7. On 8 September 1942 she departed Yokosuka to head to the Solomons war zone and, after calling at Truk from 15 to 19 September 1942, set out for her fifth war patrol, assigned a patrol area south of San Cristobal. On 29 September 1942, "I-4" was on the surface southwest of Cape Sidney on San Cristobal when at 23:00 she sighted the U.S. Navy cargo ship on her port bow steaming east-southeast at , escorted by the destroyer . "I-4" submerged and began an approach at . At 23:44, she fired two Type 96 torpedoes at "Alhena" and at 23:51 observed the first torpedo hit "Alhena"′s stern near No. 5 hold, blowing a hole open on either side of her stern and igniting several fires. The second torpedo also hit, but did not explode. "Alhena" went dead in the water at and took on a 10-degree stern list. Assuming "Alhena" would sink, "I-4" descended to and began to exit the area at . She broke contact with "Monssen" at 00:25 on 30 September 1942. At 00:47 her sound operator reported contact with another destroyer, but "I-4" soon lost this contact as well. She surfaced at 01:45 and at 04:32 reported that she had sunk a 7,000-ton cargo ship. However, although "Alhena" suffered six U.S. Navy and 24 United States Marine Corps personnel killed or missing she remained afloat, and in mid-1943 returned to combat reconfigured as an attack cargo ship, redesignated AKA-9. On 5 October 1942, "I-4" was reassigned to the "A" patrol group. On 10 October 1942, she and "I-7" were resubordinated directly to the Advance Force and she received orders to divert from her patrol and proceed to the Espiritu Santo area, where a submarine-launched raid was scheduled to take place. The raid was cancelled, and "I-4" was again assigned to the "A" patrol group on 13 October 1942. On 14 October 1942, she received orders to bombard the airfield on Espiritu Santo, but encountered limited visibility as she approached the island from the east and could not find the airfield. On 16 October 1942, she was ordered to patrol in the waters between the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides. She was west of Espiritu Santo on 25 October 1942 when she sighted a westbound battleship — probably — and two destroyers, but she lost them in a rain squall and did not attempt an attack. She returned to Truk on 3 November 1942. While at Truk, "I-4" underwent a conversion between 4 and 16 November 1942 in which her after gun was replaced with a mounting abaft her conning tower for a waterproof "Daihatsu"-class landing craft that would allow her to discharge cargo along coastlines in the Solomon Islands, and she was reassigned to the "B" patrol unit on 15 November 1942. As her conversion was being completed, the commander of the 6th Fleet, Vice Admiral Teruhisa Komatsu, addressed a meeting of the commanding officers of his fleet′s submarines on 16 November 1942 to inform them that the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, had ordered the 6th Fleet to organize a system of supply runs to the 17th Army forces fighting on Guadalcanal via submarine. Assigned to these supply missions, "I-4" departed Truk on 20 November 1942 bound for Rabaul. She stopped at Rabaul from 23 to 25 November 1942 and embarked a waterproof "Daihatsu" on her new mounting, then proceeded to Shortland Island in the Shortland Islands, her commanding officer receiving a briefing on supply procedures at Guadalcanal while she was at sea off Bougainville. She reached Shortland on 26 November 1942. Carrying her "Daihatsu", she departed on 28 November with a cargo of 20 tons of food and medicine and reached Kamimbo Bay on the northwest coast of Guadalcanal on 30 November 1942. She quickly unloaded the "Daihatsu" and got back underway for Rabaul, which she reached on 3 December 1942. On 5 December 1942 at 16:00, she began another supply run to Guadalcanal, again carrying 20 tons of food and medicine, which she unloaded quickly at Kamimbo Bay on 8 December 1942 before stopping at Shortland Island from 10 to 12 December and then moving on to Rabaul, which she reached on 14 December 1942. New Guinea campaign. On 16 December 1942, "I-4" departed Rabaul on an urgent supply run to Buna, New Guinea, to support Japanese forces fighting in the New Guinea campaign. She arrived off the mouth of the Mambare River on the coast of New Guinea at 22:15 on 18 December 1942, but while she was on the surface the U.S. Navy PT boats "PT-121" and "PT-122" detected her. The PT boats fired two torpedoes at her, both of which missed, but they forced her to withdraw. She returned to the area a few hours later, but was unable to contact Japanese forces on shore. Her commanding officer transmitted a message saying that he had decided to abort the supply mission and return to Rabaul. Loss. The submarine , alerted to "I-4"′s presence by Ultra intelligence information, sighted "I-4" at the southern entrance to St. George's Channel off New Ireland, heading north on the surface at , at 06:21 on 21 December 1942. Misidentifying "I-4" as an "I-168"-class submarine, "Seadragon" described her as painted black and with the number "4" painted on her conning tower. At 06:37, "Seadragon" fired three Mark 10 Mod 3 torpedoes at a range of . "I-4"′s lookouts apparently sighted the approaching torpedoes because "I-4" turned in an apparent attempt to comb their wakes. "Seadragon"′s first torpedo suffered a gyroscope failure and missed ahead and her second torpedo detonated prematurely after running for only 18 seconds. Her third torpedo struck "I-4"′s stern, resulting in a ball of flames and much smoke. "Seadragon" saw "I-4"′s bow rise vertically as she sank by the stern at with the loss of all 90 men on board. On 5 January 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy officially declared "I-4" to be presumed lost with all hands off Rabaul. She was stricken from the Navy list on 1 March 1943.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36090978

Video door-phone (also known as video door entry or video intercom) is a stand-alone intercom system used to manage calls made at the entrance to a building (residential complex, detached family home, workplace, etc.) with access controlled by audiovisual communication between the inside and outside. The main feature of video door entry is that it enables the person indoors to identify the visitor and, if (and only if) they wish, engage in conversation and/or open the door to allow access to the person calling. Equipment. Video door entry consists of both outside and indoor elements: an outdoor panel on the outside, an electronic lock release and an indoor monitor. The outdoor panel or street panel is installed beside the entrance door or gateway and incorporates different elements ready for use in any climate conditions: one or several pushbuttons to make the call (usually one per home or apartment), a micro camera adapted for night vision to capture the image of the caller, a microphone to pick up their voice and a speaker to reproduce the voice of the occupant indoors. A video door entry panel may include push buttons to call the homes or offices and a camera to capture the street scene. The video entry monitor allows the occupant to see who has called, talk to the visitor and open the door. Installed indoors, the monitor consists of a screen showing the image of the person calling, a microphone and earpiece for conversation and a pushbutton to trigger the door lock release. The communication set up is full duplex. The electric door release is a device installed in the door lock and operated from inside the building to lift the latch and clear the way for the visitor. Common equipment types. There are several variations on this basic format. In addition to outdoor panels with one pushbutton per apartment, it is possible to find others with a numeric keypad: in this case, designed for large residential installations, the homes are identified by codes. Others have built-in cardholders panels or even small screens to guide the user or facilitate entry for people with disabilities. Some video entry monitors have an earpiece similar to a telephone handset, while others are "hands-free". Other examples are monitors with memories which store an image every time someone calls at the door or touchscreen video entry systems. Classification of video door phone(VDP). Video door phone can be classified two possible classification : 1. Security layers : a. Level 1 security – This is security layer added by VDP system at the community entrance. This layer is given to the guard who will directly verify the entry of a visitor to the community. Such systems are only at a community level. b. Level 2 Security : This is also known as the lobby security – This is to get access to your lobby of the apartment in such a case the visitor will have to dial the number of the flat and then the flat owner allows the access to a visitor from the lobby entrance itself. c. Level 3 security : In this case the visitor communicates with the outdoor camera in front of house door or villa gate. 2. Technologies & classification : a. Standalone – A standalone VDP is a device used in villas or by individual home owners. Types of technology of standalone VDP – i. Analog VDP – It is an analog display and camera. ii. Connected digital VDP – This is a digital LCD display with Digital camera usually with image capture and video capturing ability when the bell is pressed. In this case normally some additional camera integration is also allowed. iii. Wireless video door bell(VDB) : A camera units which gets connected to interned or router and allows communication with ones mobile or tablet top communicate with the visitor. b. Multi-apartment- This is a solution where there is an mass housing scenario. i. Analog Multi-apartment systems – This is an Analog VDP providing 3 tier security. ii. IP VDP Multi-apartment system – This is IP VDP which is 3 tier security and integration with BMS (Building management system ), Security systems like intrusion , CCTV building security and in most cases even home automation. Automatic operation. When a visitor presses one of the outdoor panel pushbuttons, the built-in camera is connected and the image captured outdoors appears on the monitor screen. Connection takes place automatically with no need to activate the equipment, which is one of the essential elements of video door entry. As of this point, the person inside the building can open the door if they wish or begin a conversation, which is usually secret (cannot be heard by other users of the same facility). The equipment also disconnects automatically after a set time has elapsed. The video entry system as a whole runs on low voltage energy from the building’s trunk Extra functions. Many terminals currently on the market are ready to accept extensions, making the monitor into a small automatic function control centre. From here, the user can view one or several additional cameras installed at other access points, trigger light switches or open a second door, etc. Video door entry systems with access control. Video door entry systems are commonly found integrated with different access control systems. This means that elements are installed in the same outdoor panel to allow certain previously authorised users to access the premises. The most common means are proximity cards, fingerprint readers, a keypad for secret numbers or even Bluetooth triggered by mobile phone. Adaptive equipment. Different equipment sets are currently found on the market which make use more accessible for people with different disabilities. So, thinking of the visually impaired, the outdoor panel may include information in Braille alongside the pushbuttons, or a voice synthesiser can also be added which indicates when the door is opened. For people with hearing impairment, the outdoor panel may include a screen with icons signalling the communication status: if the user is calling, if someone is speaking from indoors or opening the door. Also with this type of user in mind, the monitor may be fitted with an inductive loop, an element which interacts with conventional hearing aids to facilitate conversation with the outside without their presence being noticed by other users. The kit also includes visual or audio call alerts.

building gate

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18610870

Pet shipping is an industry that involves transporting animals, specifically pets, often by plane. This service is commonly used when the animal's owner is moving house. However, it can also be used when transporting animals for other reasons, such as performing in dog shows. The worldwide industry body for pet shipping is the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association. Pet microchips, vaccinations, rabies titre tests, import permits, and health certificates may be required to ship an animal. Certain breeds are banned from the process due to the increase in associated risk. Statistics. 2 million domestic animals board commercial flights each year. Domesticated pets have been selectively bred and genetically adapted to live alongside humans, which include dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, mice and hamsters. Dogs and cats are the most popular types of pets that are shipped. From the total amount of pets shipped via aeroplane each year 58% are dogs and 22% are cats. Pet shipping has increased in the 21st century. Contributing factors to this rise include the global increase of pet ownership and the high-cost associated with pet care. Australia has the highest rate of pet ownership in the world where approximately 61% of households own a pet, with 40% being dogs and 27% being cats. Pet shipping is found both beneficial for owners and businesses, as some people will not travel without their pets and airlines therefore receive more demand to fly with them. 37% of owners have opted against travelling to stay at home with their dog, as 9 out of 10 households consider their dog part of the family. The Department of Transport's annual report states over half a million pets flew in 2016 and of these, 26 died and 22 were injured. A third of these deaths occurred on United airlines. The common causes of animal death during pet shipping are excessively hot or cold temperatures, poor ventilation and rough handling, according to the Humane Society. Laws. The International Air Transport Association is the trade association for the world's airlines, covering 93% of scheduled international flights. It sets the minimum standards for the transportation of live animals worldwide under the ‘Live Animal Regulation’. This provides practices for humane treatment of animals, up-to-date government laws and documentation requirements for pet shipping. Requirements. Pet microchip. A pet microchip is a permanent method of electronic identification implanted under the skin into domestic animals. A compatible microchip with the import country is required when shipping a pet, accompanied by any documentation. Vaccinations. Vaccination schedules differ across countries. The US, Australia, UK and Asia require fully vaccinated pets. Cats receive a vaccination that protects them against feline enteritis, rhinotracheitis and "Calicivirus". Dogs receive vaccinations that protect them against distemper, hepatitis, "Parvovirus", parainfluenza and "Bordetella bronchiseptica". Vaccinations must be valid for the entire quarantine period. Rabies titre test. The ‘Rabies Antibody Titre Test’ is a blood test taken after the rabies vaccine to ensure the pet has adequate levels of the rabies antibody in their blood. This test safeguards local animals when pets have been imported from countries where rabies is prevalent. Import permit. Import permits include a shipping fee and suitability guidelines for shipment, filed by the pet owner with the government of the importing country. Pet passport scheme. A pet passport is a document that accompanies the pet during its travel. The passport allows the pet to travel between countries of the EU and others that accept the passport, without needing a quarantine period post shipment. The pet passport contains information regarding the animal's microchip, rabies vaccination, rabies titre test results, parasite treatments, a picture of the pet and the animal's veterinary and ownership details. Countries outside of the EU refer to a ‘pet passport’ as all of the valid information required for a pet to travel between countries. Health certificate. Globally, a health certificate validated by a veterinarian is required within two weeks of the travel date. The veterinarians carry out laboratory tests in accordance with importing country requirements, undergo specified pre-export treatments, perform the final pre-export health examination and inspect the transport cages. The certificate provides confidence for the importing country that the animal has been correctly prepared for travel. Pet carrier. Pets are transported within a carrier that meets the International Air Transport Association standards, ensuring safety throughout travel. The International Air Transport Association requires the carrier to be large enough for the animal to sit, stand and lie comfortably within it, with a solid floor base. Fourteen percent of the floor and walls must be open to allow adequate ventilation and airflow, with shelter for protection. Handles are required for the crate to be carried, a label (with the owner's details) for identification, an arrow (indicating the way it should be placed and carried), and food and water bowls for long journeys. The International Air Transport Association recommends getting the pet accustomed to the space before departure to reduce frightened behavior caused by the foreign enclosed environment. Banned breeds. Breed Specific Legislation are rules and regulations that place restrictions on breeds from being imported into a country. 52 countries have some form of breed-specific legislation, restricting animals due to legal presumption that they are dangerous or vicious. Australia. Cat breeds such as the Savannah cat, Safari cat, Chausie and Bengal cat are banned from entering Australia, according to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999. Dog breeds such as wolfhounds, Japanese Tosa, Pit-bull Terrier, Presa Canario and the Fila Brasileiro are banned under the legislation of the Department of Home Affairs. United States. American Pit Bull Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bulldog and American Mastiff are banned dog breeds by the federal government of the United States. United Kingdom. The Parliament of the United Kingdom implemented the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which prohibits the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and the Fila Brasileiro from entering the UK. Process. Pets can be shipped as carry-on baggage, checked baggage or in the cargo of an aeroplane. If the animal is small enough to fit under the passenger seat in an airline-compliant carrier (such as kittens, rabbits and Maltese shit-zu dogs) some airlines allow the pet in the cabin of the plane as carry-on baggage. Larger dogs (such as a full grown Labrador) and cats are flown as checked baggage in the climate controlled sections of the cargo hold. All required paperwork is provided by the owner at check-in. They are then placed in a pet carrier that is approved by the International Air Transport Association and relocated to a separate baggage handling area specifically for animals. Animals are the last of the baggage to board the plane, to reduce the amount of time in the confined space. Baggage handlers strap animal crates in place and wrap them with perforated air cushion rolls. Cargo hold size and conditions depend on the airline and type of plane the pet is being flown in. For most planes, the baggage area is directly below the passenger cabins. To meet restrictions set by the ‘Animal Welfare Act’, airlines do not travel in extreme hot or cold temperatures to avoid increasing health risks. Pets remain in the carrier and are not accessed by cabin crew throughout the duration of the flight. When the flight arrives at the destination, ground staff ensure pets are unloaded as soon as possible after landing. Risks. Animal stress. A 2002 study by the "Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research" on the physiology and behavior of dogs during air transport, revealed the stress that was placed on animals during the shipping process. Higher salivary cortisol levels and heart rates were measured, signifying the physical pressure of the confined cargo hold and lack of adequate ventilation placed on the animal's body. Risk of breeds. Animals from ‘Brachycephalic’ (pushed faced) breeds, such as bulldogs, pugs and Persian cats, are prone to respiratory problems. Their short nasal passages makes them particularly vulnerable to oxygen deprivation and heat stroke during the process of pet shipping. Most airlines prohibit these breeds from being shipped due to the associated health risks. Sedation. The International Air Transport Association regulations do not recommend sedating or tranquillising pets during shipment as it can increase the risk of breathing and vascular problems. Sedation remains the main cause of death whilst shipping an animal as the effect that the drug has upon the animal is uncertain and cannot be predicted before travel. Airlines no longer accept sedated pets on board their aircraft. Quarantine. Quarantine is a process where the pet remains isolated in a quarantine facility to prevent the spread of infectious disease in the local destination. This process is required for strict rabies-free countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. For Australia, all pets must be imported into Melbourne and quarantined in the post entry facility for a minimum of 10 days. An extension of the quarantine period is necessary when biosecurity risks are increased, such as finding a tick on the pet. All quarantine processes must be approved by International Pet and Animal Transport Association pet agents before release. North America, South America, Europe and Asia do not require quarantine periods. Controversy. United Airlines has recorded the highest animal death rate from 2015–2017, responsible for 75% of all the deaths in 2017, data kept by the United States Department of Transportation. This high death rate may be associated with their acceptance of brachycephalic breeds, which other airline carriers do not allow due to the increased risk. In 2018, for instance, a 10-month year old bulldog died on United airlines flight as a flight attendant placed the carrier in the cabin overhead compartment. United Airlines accepts brachycephalic breeds as they believe pet owners rely on United to ship their pets and without the airline taking this risk they would have to sell their animals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals urges all airlines to prohibit companion animals from being flown as checked baggage due to the confusion, noise, extreme temperatures and improper pressurisation of the cargo holds during travel. Improved procedures. Contracts that govern the shipment of pets have been improved by stating all of the risks associated with pet shipping, ensuring owners understand the serious procedure involved. The ‘Safe Air Travel for Animals Act’ was introduced in 1999 by Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Robert Menendez. The act requires US airlines to report monthly on any animal death, injury or loss, allowing pet owners to compare the safety records of airlines. ‘Pet Airways’ was the first pet-only airline, established in 2009, which transported unaccompanied pets in the cabin area of the plane. Attention is refocused on the pets, reducing the potential risks of live animal shipping by cargo. The company ceased operations in 2011. Several airlines have changed the way the animal carriers are moved. Removal of the live animal cargo from the routine baggage handling reduces rough handling, decreases the possibility of animal escape and limits the pet exposure to temperature variations.

dog contests

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21855857

The electric ant ("Wasmannia auropunctata"), also known as the little fire ant, is a small (approx long), light to golden brown (ginger) social ant native to Central and South America, now spread to parts of Africa (including Gabon and Cameroon), North America, Puerto Rico, Israel, Cuba, and six Pacific Island groups (including the Galápagos Islands, Hawaii, New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands) plus north-eastern Australia (Cairns). The name, electric ant (or little fire ant), derives from the ant's painful sting relative to its size. This ant's impact in those environments and countries outside of its place of origin has been described as follows: "Wasmannia auropunctata" .. is blamed for reducing species diversity, reducing overall abundance of flying and tree-dwelling insects, and eliminating arachnid populations. It is also known for its painful stings. On the Galápagos, it eats the hatchlings of tortoises and attacks the eyes and cloacae of the adult tortoises. It is considered to be perhaps the greatest ant species threat in the Pacific region. Description. The ant is described as follows: "Wasmannia auropunctata" workers are monomorphic, which means they display no physical differentiation... The ants are typically small to medium-sized, with the workers ranging from 1-2mm ... [It] is light to golden brown in color. The gaster is often darker. The pedicel, between the thorax and gaster, has two segments; the petiole and postpetiole. The petiole is "hatchet-like", with a node that is almost rectangular in profile and higher than the postpetiole. The antennae have 11 segments, with the last two segments greatly enlarged into a distinct club. The antennal scape (the first segment) is received into a distinct groove (scrobe) that extends almost to the posterior border of the head. The thorax has long and sharp epinotal spines. The body is sparsely covered with long, erect hairs. This species is well-known for a painful sting, seemingly out of proportion to its size. Reproduction. In "Wasmannia auropunctata", queens produce more queens through parthenogenesis. Sterile workers usually are produced from eggs fertilized by males. In some of the eggs fertilized by males, however, the fertilization can cause the female genetic material to be ablated from the zygote. In this way, males pass on only their genes to become fertile male offspring. This is the first recognized example of an animal species where both females and males can reproduce clonally resulting in a complete separation of male and female gene pools. These ants get the benefits of both asexual and sexual reproduction - the daughters who can reproduce (the queens) have all of the mother's genes, while the sterile workers whose physical strength and disease resistance are important are produced sexually. Automixis. Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. Thelytoky is a particular form of parthenogenesis in which the development of a female individual occurs from an unfertilized egg. Automixis is a form of thelytoky, but there are several kinds of automixis. The kind of automixis relevant here is one in which two haploid products from the same meiosis combine to form a diploid zygote. "W. auropunctata" thelytokus queens from clonal populations can reproduce by automictic parthenogenesis involving central fusion of haploid meiotic products, a process that allows conservation of heterozygosity in progeny. The same parthenogenic queens that produce progeny by automixis may also produce normally segregating meiotic oocytes, which upon fertilisation by males give rise to diploid workers. The oocytes that undergo automixis display much lower rates of crossover recombination (by a factor of 45) than the oocytes produced by sexually reproducing queens that give rise to workers. These low recombination rates in automictic oocytes favor maintenance of heterozygosity, and allow only very low rates of transition from heterozygosity to homozygosity (0 to 2.8%). The sharp decrease in recombination rates likely allows clonal queens using automixis to benefit from thelytoky (transmission of their entire genomes to individual progeny), while also avoiding the potential for inbreeding depression that would result from random fusion of meiotic products leading to loss of heterozygosity. In general, parthenogenesis appears to be favored in recently disturbed habitats (such as produced by floods, fires and glaciers). The clonal populations of "W. auropunctata" are mostly found in habitats disturbed by recent human activity. Ecology. The native range of the little fire ant is in almost all portions of South America and Central America, excluding colder climate regions. Little fire ants are habitat generalists that tend to colonize areas associated with humans in warmer regions. These habitats include forest edges, managed forests, agricultural fields and plantations. Little fire ants are generalists that consume other insects, decaying vegetation, seeds, and plants. These ants also consume honeydew and engage in mutualistic symbiotic relationships with other herbivorous insects, such as aphids. The little fire ants are effective predators that have a venomous sting that can subdue large insects and vertebrate prey. Little fire ants establish colonies under rocks and plant litter. These ants are also considered a residential pest as they establish colonies in furniture, food, and clothing in people's homes. Colony movement can be amplified after a heavy rainstorm. Invasive species. The little fire ant has been unintentionally transported from its native range to Africa, North America, Puerto Rico, Israel, Cuba, and multiple Pacific Island groups. Invading ants cannot survive in global regions that have cold environments. But, little fire ants are found in Canada and England where they find refuge in large human infrastructure and greenhouses. Human disturbed landscapes – such as the practice of monocultures, and the deforestation of land – have caused an explosion in the little fire ant population in regions of Brazil and Colombia which have a prevalence of cocoa farms and sugarcane monocultures. In Colombia, research shows that high abundance little fire ant populations reduce other ant diversity in heavily deforested regions. The little fire ant preys on native insects, causing a decline in population densities, and they can also attack small to medium-sized vertebrates if the ant colonies are disturbed. Throughout their invasive and native range, the little fire ant reduces native ant diversity when successfully colonized. These ants successfully outcompete the other ants because they exploit a multitude of resources other species need to survive, including honeydew residues, nectar and refuges in vegetation. Pets and large domestic animals (such as cats and dogs) stung around the eyes by this ant are known to develop blindness. In the Galapagos Islands, the little fire ant is regarded as one of the most aggressive species introduced to this region. The ant has contributed to the decline in tortoise populations, as these ants eat the tortoise hatchlings and attacks the eyes of adult tortoises. Furthermore, large population declines of scorpions, spiders, and native ants can be directly attributed to the invasive ant. When humans are encountered, these ants have a powerful sting in proportion to its size. The sting causes inch long welts that are itchy and painful. Some workers and farmers may have issues properly harvesting crops in high density little fire ant agricultural areas. Research shows that the ant can strip nutrients from agricultural plants, which increases crop susceptibility to disease and other herbivorous insect pests. As a result of the ant's presence in agricultural fields, crop yields diminish, and have a negative economic effect on any particular agricultural industry affected by the ant. Control strategies. There are several proposed control and prevention strategies that have been taken to help minimize or eradicate the little fire ant. The Pacific Ant Prevention Program is a proposal that illustrates prevention methods within the islands located throughout the Pacific region in Polynesia (such as Hawaii and Futuna) for invasive ant species including the little fire ant. The program was initiated to provide improved quarantine protocols for the Polynesian area, in addition to raising awareness of the possible impact of the little fire ant. In 1999, the Hawaiian State Department of Agriculture proposed a 100% inspection policy on all plant material exported from the state to check for the ant so that it cannot spread to other regions. Generally, better agricultural land management -including the reduction of monocultures and lower crop production- can reduce little fire ant populations. In addition, proper land management plans can alleviate ant population spikes that occur in highly degraded areas. When first constructing an agricultural field, minimizing landscape changes -such a deforestation- can prevent or reduce the population density of the little fire ant. Chemicals and pesticides have been employed in smaller density ant populations in the Galapagos Islands. These little fire ant populations were no bigger than approximately 24 hectares. Other control methods such as non-selective ant poisons, fire and vegetation clearing have been successful on small ant populations and small islands. Keratopathy. There is a strong suspicion of a link between Florida keratopathy or tropical keratopathy and presence of "W. auropunctata".

native type

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13674692

Love of God can mean either love for God or love by God. Love for God ("philotheia") is associated with the concepts of worship, and devotions towards God. The Greek term "theophilia" means the love or favour of God, and "theophilos" means friend of God, originally in the sense of being loved by God or loved by the gods; but is today sometimes understood in the sense of showing love for God. The Greek term "agape" is applied both to the love that human beings have for God and to the love that God has for man. Baháʼí Faith. The teachings of the Baháʼí Faith hold that the love of God ("philanthropia") is the primary reason for human creation, and one of the primary purposes of life. The love of God purifies human hearts and through it humans become transformed and self-sacrificing, as they reflect more the attributes and qualities of God. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion wrote: "There is nothing greater or more blessed than the "Love of God"! It gives healing to the sick, balm to the wounded, joy and consolation to the whole world, and through it alone can man attain Life Everlasting. The essence of all religions is the Love of God, and it is the foundation of all the sacred teachings." Christianity. The Old Testament uses a rich vocabulary to express the love of God, as a concept that appears in many instances. The Lord expresses his love through the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness" (Jeremiah 31:2). However, the exegesis of the love of God in the Old Testament has presented problems for modern scholars. The love of God appears in a number of texts (e.g. Hosea 1–3, and then in Ezek 16 and Isa 62) but resolving the references to produce a consistent interpretation has been challenging and subject to debate. Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 'The Difficult Doctrine of Love, says both the love of God and the wrath of God are ratcheted up in the New Testament over the Old. Also the concluding verses of several epistles emphasis love ( , , ). Many of the most stunning promises in the Bible are for those who love God, notably (all things working for good for those who love God) and part of the prelude to the 10 commandments (those loving God being blessed to a thousands generations, where many of the worst curses in the Old Testament where curses went to 4 or 10 generations). Jonathan Edwards said his chief obligation was to raise the affections of his congregation as high as he could toward God in volume 4 of the Yale edition of his works, entitled “The Great Awakening.” Both the terms love of God and love of Christ appear in the New Testament. In cases such as in Romans 8:35 and their use is related in the experience of the believer, without asserting their equality. In Jesus expresses his love for God the Father. This verse includes the only direct statement by Jesus in the New Testament about Jesus' love for God the Father. Greek polytheism. In polytheism, that which is loved by the gods (τὸ θεοφιλές) was identified as the virtuous or pious. Socrates famously asked whether this identification is a tautology (see "Euthyphro dilemma"). "Philotheos" and "theophilos". In Greek, "philotheos" means "loving God, pious", as "philosophos" means a lover of wisdom ("sophia"). , using the word "philotheos" in the plural form, speaks of certain people as φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόθεοι (lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God). The word "Theophilos" was and is used as a proper name, but does not appear as an adjective or common noun in Greek, which uses instead the form "theophilês," which means "dear to God" but also "loving God". However, Eric Voegelin used "theophilos" to mean "lover of God": "In the "Phaedrus", Plato has Socrates describe the characteristics of the true thinker. When Phaedrus asks what one should call such a man, Socrates, following Heraclitus, replies that the term "sophos", one who knows, would be excessive: this attribute may be applied to God alone: but one might well call him "philosophos", a lover of wisdom. Thus in the classic sense and reference of 'philosophy', actual knowledge is reserved to God; finite man can only be the lover of knowledge, not himself the one who possesses knowledge. In the meaning of the passage, the lover of the knowledge that belongs only to the knowing God, the "philosophos", becomes the "theophilos", the lover of God." Hinduism. In Hinduism, in contrast to kārma, which is selfish, or pleasurable love, prema – or prem – refers to elevated love. Karuna is compassion and mercy, which impels one to help reduce the suffering of others. Bhakti is a Sanskrit term, meaning "loving devotion to the supreme God". A person who practices bhakti is called a bhakta. Hindu writers, theologians, and philosophers have distinguished nine forms of bhakti, which can be found in the Bhagavata Purana and works by Tulsidas. The philosophical work Narada Bhakti Sutras, written by an unknown author (presumed to be Narada), distinguishes eleven forms of love. On the mystic side of Hinduism, one of the forms of Yoga includes Ishvarapranidhana, or self-surrender to God, and his worship. Bhakti movements. Devotees of Krishna worship him in different emotional, transcendental raptures, known as "rasas". Two major systems of Krishna worship developed, each with its own philosophical system. These two systems are "aishwaryamaya bhakti" and "madhuryamaya bhakti". "Aishwaryamaya bhakti" is revealed in the abode of queens and kingdom of Krishna in Dwaraka. "Madhuryamaya Bhakti" is revealed in the abode of "Braja". Thus Krishna is variously worshipped according to the development of devotee's taste in worshipping the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna, as father, friend, master, beloved and many different varieties which are all extraordinary. Krishna is famous as "Makhanchor", or butter thief. He loved to eat butter and is the beloved of his little village in Gokul. These are all transcendental descriptions. Thus they are revealed to the sincere devotees in proportion to the development in their love of Godhead. Vaishnavism is a form of monotheism, sometimes described as 'polymorphic monotheism', with implication that there are many forms of one original deity, defined as belief in a single unitary deity who takes many forms. In Krishnaism this deity is Krishna, sometimes referred as intimate deity – as compared with the numerous four-armed forms of Narayana or Vishnu. It may refer to either of the interrelated concepts of the love of God towards creation, the love of creatures towards God or relationship between the two as in bhakti. Islam. The love of God, and the fear of God, are two of the foundations of Islam. The highest spiritual attainment in Islam is related to the love of God. "Yet there are men who take (for worship) others besides God, as equal (with God): They love them as they should love God. But those of Faith are overflowing in their love for God." (Quran 2:165)Another Islamic concept is that God's love leads towards good deeds "And feed with food the needy, the orphan and the prisoner, for love of Him (ie. God)." Islam, as Christianity, has numerous mystics and traditions about the love of God, as in: The concept of Divine Love, known as "Ishq-e-Haqeeqi" (Persian), is elaborated by many great Muslim saints to date. Some Sufi writers and poets may have taken human love as a metaphor to define Divine Love but the prominent mystics explain the concept in its entirety and reveal its hardcore reality. Rabia Basri, the famous 7th century mystic, is known as the first female to have set the doctrine of Divine Love. In Islamic Sufism, Ishq means to love God selflessly and unconditionally. For Rumi, 'Sufism' itself is Ishq and not the path of asceticism (zuhd). According to Sultan Bahoo, Ishq means to serve God by devoting one's entire life to Him and asking no reward in return. Judaism. The love of God has been called the "essence of Judaism". "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." () Other. Goethe expresses the sentiment of love of God alongside the opposite sentiment of hatred of God in his two poems Ganymed and Prometheus, respectively.

express assertion

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55128735

Germany–Qatar relations are the bilateral relations between Germany and the State of Qatar. Relations were first commenced in 1973. Diplomatic representation. By January 1973, just two years after Qatar gained its independence, Germany was among the eighteen countries that Qatar appointed an ambassador to. Qatar has had an embassy in Berlin since 2005. It is headed by Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani as of 2017. Germany has an embassy in Doha, which is headed by Hans-Udo Muzel as of 2017. Diplomatic visits. In 1999, sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani visited Germany, marking the first time the Qatari leadership made an official visit to the country. President of Germany Johannes Rau paid a visit to Qatar in 2001, and in 2002 Sigmar Gabriel, the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, also visited Qatar. The first German chancellor to travel to Qatar on an official capacity was Gerhard Schröder, who did so in 2005. During his visit, the two countries signed a security agreement. Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani visited Angela Merkel in September 2017 to discuss the 2017 Qatari diplomatic crisis. Merkel expressed "great concerns" over the dispute and the absence of any immediately foreseeable resolution. Diplomatic relations. Political. In August 2014, Gerd Müller, German Minister of Development, alleged that Qatar was funding ISIS militants. Following the comments, Germany said that it "regrets" the remarks made by Müller, and that it did not wish for any misunderstandings. One day after Germany commented on the minister's statements, Qatar denounced ISIS and claimed that it does not provide funding of any kind. 2017 Qatari diplomatic crisis. On 6 June 2017, German FM Sigmar Gabriel condemned the Saudi-led boycott of Qatar. In July, he called on the blockading countries to respect Qatar's rights as a sovereign nation, and applauded its prudence in responding to the blockade. Military. In April 2013, Qatar signed a $2.5 billion deal with German defense company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann to purchase 62 Leopard tanks. Almost half of the tanks had been delivered to Qatar by October 2016. In early 2019 Germany announced that it had approved the sale of the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) weapon system to Qatar. The deal was criticized by opposition lawmakers citing ongoing human rights concerns in the Persian Gulf region. Announcement of the deal came amidst a freeze on German weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Business and investment. Qatar has made large-scale investments in some of Germany's most prominent companies, including Volkswagen, Siemens and Deutsche Bank. The Qatar German Business Forum was inaugurated in 2000, and a joint economic commission between the two countries was set up in 2007. In 2015, Germany accounted for 7.3% of Qatar's foreign trade volume. Qatar's main export to Germany is liquefied natural gas. Germany's main exports to Qatar are motor vehicles and machinery. Arts and culture. The Qatar Germany 2017 Year of Culture was an initiative organized by Qatar Museums Authority to enhance cultural ties between Qatar and Germany. The first joint event was a performance by the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, which was directed by German conductor David Niemann. They played both German and Qatari music at the Katara Opera House.

initial collaborative function

2568-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58219825

Battaash (foaled 10 February 2014) is an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse. A specialist sprinter who usually competes at the minimum distance of five furlongs, he is noted for his exceptional speed and unpredictable temperament. He won once from five starts as a juvenile in 2016 and was gelded in an attempt to improve his behaviour. In the following year he emerged as one of the best sprinters in the world, winning the Scurry Stakes, Coral Charge and King George Stakes before ending the season with an emphatic win in the Prix de l'Abbaye. In 2018 he won the Temple Stakes and recorded a second victory in the King George Stakes. As a five-year-old he won a second Temple Stakes and a third King George Stakes before producing his best performance of the season to take the Nunthorpe Stakes. In 2020 he was unbeaten in three starts, namely the King's Stand Stakes, King George Stakes and Nunthorpe Stakes. Background. Battaash is a bay gelding bred in Ireland by the County Limerick-based Ballyphilip Stud. In October 2015 the yearling colt was put up for auction at Tattersalls and was bought for 200,000 guineas by Hamdan Al Maktoum's Shadwell Estate Company. Battaash was sent into training with Charles "Charlie" Hills at Lambourn in Berkshire. His sire Dark Angel won four races including the Mill Reef Stakes and the Middle Park Stakes as a two-year-old in 2007 before being retired to stud at the end of the year. Dark Angel's other offspring have included Harry Angel, Lethal Force, Mecca's Angel and Persuasive. Battaash's dam Anna Law showed no racing ability, finishing at the rear of the field in all four of her races in 2012. Her grand-dam Noirmant was a half-sister to Braashee (Prix Royal-Oak), Ghariba (Nell Gwyn Stakes) and Adam Smith (Fort Marcy Handicap) and, as a female-line descendant of Pelting (foaled 1958) related to several other major winners including Moon Ballad, Bassenthwaite, Telescope and Awzaan. Racing career. 2016: two-year-old season. Battaash made his first appearance in a maiden race over five furlongs on good ground at Bath Racecourse on 18 May and started a 14/1 outsider in a nine-runner field. Ridden by the apprentice jockey Michael Murphy he started poorly but took the lead a furlong from the finish and went clear to win "readily" by four lengths. The colt was then stepped up in class for the Listed Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot in June. He became highly agitated prior to the race and reared up in the starting stalls before finishing unplaced behind Ardad. Shortly after the race he was gelded. Battaash recovered from his operation and returned to the track on 9 September in a minor race at Doncaster in which he led for most of the way before hanging to the right in the closing stages and finishing third behind Lost At Sea and Dream of Dreams. Two week later, under top weight of 133 pounds, he ran third in nursery handicap at Haydock Park. On his final appearance of the season, the gelding was stepped up to Group 3 class for the Cornwallis Stakes at Newmarket on 7 October. He briefly took the lead approaching the final furlong before being overtaken and beaten into third place by the fillies Mrs Danvers and Clem Fandango: as at Doncaster he compromised his chances by hanging badly to the right. 2017: three-year-old season. On his three-year-old debut, Battaash was partnered by Dane O'Neill and started at odds of 11/1 for the Listed Scurry Stakes at Sandown Park on 17 June. He started slowly but went to the front a furlong out and won from Koropick and the favourite Copper Knight despite displaying his old tendency to drift right in the closing stages. O'Neill was again in the saddle when the gelding was matched against older horses in the Group 3 Coral Charge over the same course and distance on 8 July. On this occasion he started 5/2 favourite against nine opponents including Goldream, Muthmir (2015 King George Stakes) Mirza (Prix du Petit Couvert) and Tis Marvellous (Prix Robert Papin). He took the lead soon after the start, opened up a clear advantage, and won in "impressive " style by three and a quarter lengths from Mirza. Battaash was moved up to Group 2 class for the first time when he contested the King George Stakes at Goodwood Racecourse on 4 August in which he was ridden by Jim Crowley. He went off at odds of 9/2 in an eleven-runner field which included Profitable (King's Stand Stakes), Marsha, Priceless (Temple Stakes), Take Cover (winner of the race in 2014 and 2016), Washington, D.C. and Ardad. Battaash tracked the leaders before accelerating into the lead a furlong out and winning by two and a quarter lengths from Profitable. After the race Charles Hill commented "He's a three-year-old who's improving and going through the ranks and this is another step up today. He's up against some proper sprinters there and he just travelled with such ease." The Nunthorpe Stakes at York Racecourse on 25 August featured a much-anticipated clash between Battaash and the American filly Lady Aurelia. Battaash was among the leaders from the start but was unable to quicken in the closing stages and came home fourth behind Marsha, Lady Aurelia and the outsider Cotai Glory (also trained by Hills). In October the gelding was sent to France to contest the Group 1 Prix de l'Abbaye over 1000 metres at Chantilly Racecourse and started favourite in a thirteen-runner field which also included Marsha, Queen Kindly (Lowther Stakes), Signs of Blessing (Prix Maurice de Gheest), Profitable, Finsbury Square (Prix de Meautry) and Son Cesio (Prix du Gros Chêne). Crowley sent Battaash into the lead soon after the start and the gelding steadily increased his advantage to win "unchallenged" by four lengths from Marsha. Crowley commented "It was an unbelievable performance. He broke well and was absolutely winging; they just couldn't go fast enough for him. I ended up taking it up after a furlong and a half. With Battaash you're just a passenger, it's as simple as that." In November, Battaash underwent an operation to correct a potential breathing problem caused by a trapped epiglottis. In the 2017 World's Best Racehorse Rankings, Battaash was given a rating of 123, making him the twelfth-best horse in the world and the second best sprinter, two pounds behind Harry Angel. 2018: four-year-old season. Battaash began in his third season in the Temple Stakes at Haydock on 26 May, in which he was ridden by O'Neill. Despite carrying a five-pound weight penalty, he started the odds-on favourite and produced a strong late run to win by a head from Washington, D.C. The other beaten horses included Muthmir, Take Cover, Mabs Cross (Palace House Stakes) and Kachy (Molecomb Stakes). The Group 1 King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in June saw Battaash start the 9/4 second favourite behind Lady Aurelia in a fourteen-runner field. After becoming agitated before the start, the gelding led for most of the way but was overtaken inside the final furlong and beaten into second place by the Godolphin representative Blue Point. On 3 August Battaash started the 8/11 when he attempted to repeat his 2017 success in the King George Stakes at Goodwood. Take Cover, Muthmir and Kachy were again in opposition while his other seven opponents included the three-year-olds Sioux Nation (Phoenix Stakes) and Havana Grey (Sapphire Stakes). After tracking the leaders, Battaash took the lead two furlongs from the finish and accelerated away from his opponents to win impressively by four lengths from Take Cover. Hills said "He is an exceptional horse, and I think that could well be a career-best. It was also the best he has behaved in the preliminaries. He has had plenty more racing now and I think he is learning with every run", while Crowley commented "When those gates open, you light the fuse". Three weeks after his win at Goodwood Battaash made his second attempt to win the Nunthorpe Stakes and started 4/5 favourite in a fifteen-runner field. Once again however, he failed to show his best form in the race, briefly taking the lead but fading in the final furlong and coming home fourth behind the 40/1 outsider Alpha Delphini. Jim Crowley said "I don't know what to make of it. He didn't get upset in any way... He just didn't have any kick... I don't know why, I'm gutted". When Battaash attempted to repeat his 2017 success in the Prix de l'Abbaye he started favourite but after leading for most of the way he was overtaken in the last 200 metres and came home fourth behind the filly Mabs Cross. In the 2018 World's Best Racehorse Rankings Battaash repeated his 2017 rating of 123, making him the fourteenth best horse in the world and the second best sprinter, level with the Australian Trapeze Artist and one pound behind the American dirt performer Roy H. was placed eighth, with a rating of 125. 2019: five-year-old season. On his debut as a five-year-old Battaash attempted to repeat his 2018 success in the Temple Stakes and started 4/5 favourite against five opponents including Mabs Cross, Alpha Delphini and Kachy. With Crowley in the saddle he took the lead two furlongs out and drew clear to win in "impressive" style by two and a half lengths. In June the gelding made his second attempt to win the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot and started the 2/1 favourite in a twelve-runner field. He raced on the stands side before switching to the centre of the track but despite making good progress in the closing stages he was unable to get on terms with Blue Point and was beaten into second place. On 2 August Battaash started the 1/4 favourite as he attempted to become the first horse to win three runnings of the King George Stakes with the best fancied of his eight opponents being the French-trained pair El Astronaute and Big Brothers Pride (Prix Sigy). He raced in second place before taking the lead two furlongs out and was "always in command" thereafter, winning by three quarters of a length from Houtzen. Crowley commented "He's all speed. He's the fastest five furlong horse around and he doesn't really get much further. If there were four and a half furlong races around he'd be unbelievable". Three weeks after his win in the King George, Battaash made his third attempt to win the Nunthorpe Stakes and started the 7/4 second favourite behind the three-year-old Ten Sovereigns. The other nine runners included Mabs Cross, Fairyland and Soldier's Call (Flying Childers Stakes). Battaash raced close behind the leaders before going to the front two furlongs out and drew away to win by three and a quarter lengths from Soldier's Call. His winning time of 55.90 broke the record for the race at York, which had stood since Hamdan Al Maktoum's Dayjur won in 56.16 twenty-nine years earlier. Charlie Hills said "he'd finished fourth on both starts here before but he's a lot more experienced now and now I think he's one of the fastest horses there's ever been... he was on the wing and got a great lead.. To lower Dayjur's record is pretty amazing... I thought there would never be another one faster than him. But there is now, and Willie Carson always said to me that he looks like he could be the next Dayjur". In October Battaash started odds-on favourite for the Prix de l'Abbaye on very soft ground at Longchamp but ran very poorly to finish fourteenth of the sixteen runners behind Glass Slippers. Plans to send him to the United States for the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint were abandoned. Hills said "He's come out of it really fresh. We gave him a good look over and couldn't find anything wrong with him, so I just think it had to be the ground." In the 2019 World's Best Racehorse Rankings Battaash was given a rating of 126, making him the 5th best racehorse in the world and the highest rated sprinter. 2020: six-year-old season. The 2020 flat racing season in England and Ireland was disrupted by the COVID-19 Pandemic and Battaash did not make his reappearance until 16 June when he contested his third King's Stand Stakes and started the 5/6 favourite against ten opponents including Liberty Beach (Molecomb Stakes), Glass Slippers, Equilateral (Scarbrough Stakes), Tis Marvellous and Sergei Prokofiev (Cornwallis Stakes). Battaash led from the start and never looked in any danger of defeat, drawing away in the closing stages to win by two and a quarter lengths from Equilateral. Jim Crowley commented "I had to hold him for two furlongs as he was on a bit of a going day today and wanting to charge off - my only concern was trying to get the fractions right on him as there was nothing quick enough to lead him. When the gates opened today, he was gone. Every time he wins it feels special, as when he wins he wins well. I was a bit worried the stiff uphill finish might find him out on his first run, but he's just a real superstar." Only six horses appeared to oppose Battaash when he went of at odds of 2/7 in his attempt a record fourth consecutive win in the King George Stakes at Goodwood on 31 July. He overtook the front-running outsider Ken Colt three furlongs out and kept on well to win by two and a quarter lengths from Glass Slippers. Hills commented "The conditions were great for him today and they obviously went a very fast pace. The key to him is to not take him back really - his main advantage is he seems to get horses out of their comfort zone in the middle part of the race. He's a six-year-old now and knows more about racing than most of us at this stage. He's got very professional... It's a credit to the horse to still have the enthusiasm he has - he's a true athlete." Three weeks after his win at Goodwood Battaash started 1/2 favourite for the Nunthorpe Stakes at York with the best fancied of his six opponents being the three-year-olds Art Power (Lacken Stakes) and A'Ali (Prix Robert Papin). After racing in second place he got the better of a sustained struggle with the four-year-old filly Que Amoro over the last quarter mile to win by a length. After the race Hills said "The second showed amazing speed, and with the tailwind it can be hard to reel them in, so I knew it was going to be tough. I'm so proud of him today, I probably think it was the best run of his career as conditions were against him. He had to knuckle down and work really hard." The gelding was expected to end his season in the Prix de l'Abbaye but was scratched from the race on account of the very soft ground. Hills explained "It's a real shame but the ground looks like it will be the same or worse than last year and it would be silly to take a risk with a horse like him." On 19 November Battaash was named Champion Sprinter at the Cartier Racing Awards. In the 2020 World's Best Racehorse Rankings, Battaash was rated on 123, making him the equal 15th best racehorse in the world and the best sprinter in Europe.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18171389

Auburn University has several notable traditions, many related to its varsity teams, the Auburn Tigers. Creed and songs. Auburn University has a creed, an alma mater, and a fight song. Auburn Creed. In the early 1940s, Auburn professor George Petrie, who brought football to Auburn in 1891, wrote a creed which grew to become a unifying set of beliefs and principles common to all Auburn students, faculty, and alumni. This creed is said to embody the spirit of Auburn and is reflected in every member of the Auburn family. The Auburn Creed was written in 1943, not 1945 as is frequently stated in various Auburn publications. It was first published in Auburn's student newspaper in 1944. "Alma mater". Auburn's "alma mater" was composed by Bill Wood in 1924, with revision to its lyrics by Emma O'Rear Foy in 1960. The 1960 changes became necessary when the Alabama Legislature granted university status to what had been known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute. The author of the 1960 revision was unclear until 2000, when Auburn professor Dale Coleman discovered the author to be Foy, wife of former Dean of Students James Foy. Both were University of Alabama alumni who later became boosters of Auburn. Originally the first verse and refrain were: Fight song. Auburn University's fight song, "War Eagle", was written in 1954 and 1955 by Robert Allen and Al Stillman. It was introduced at the beginning of the 1955 football season and served as the official fight song ever since. The alternate version the second half of the lyrics has been around since the initial publication, but is rarely heard. It was designed for use when singing with children, and for those offended by "hell" in the lyrics: The carillon in the Samford Hall clock tower play the fight song every day at noon. Game-day traditions. A-Day. Each spring, a Founder's Day celebration is held in Auburn. As part of this celebration, the football team plays a scrimmage game that gives Auburn fans a chance to preview the Tigers before the fall. Tiger Walk. Two hours before the kickoff of each Auburn home football game, thousands of Auburn fans line Donahue Drive to cheer on the team as they walk from the Auburn Athletic Complex to Jordan–Hare Stadium. The tradition began in the 1960s when groups of kids would walk up the street to greet the team and get autographs. During his tenure, coach Doug Barfield urged fans to come out and support the team, and thousands did, including the person responsible for starting this tradition: Dick Andrews. Today the team, led by the coaches, walks down the hill and into the stadium surrounded by fans who pat them on the back and shake their hands as they walk. To date, the largest Tiger Walk occurred on December 2, 1989, before the first ever home football game against rival Alabama—the Iron Bowl. On that day, an estimated 20,000 fans packed the one block section of road leading to the stadium. According to former athletic director David Housel, Tiger Walk has become "the most copied tradition in all of college football." Toomer's Corner. The intersection of Magnolia Avenue and College Street in Auburn, which marks the transition from downtown Auburn to the university campus, is known as Toomer's Corner. It is named for businessman and State Senator Sheldon "Shel" Toomer who founded Toomer's Drugs on the corner of Magnolia Avenue and College Street in 1896, and helped to found the Bank of Auburn in 1907. Toomer's Drugs is a small business on the corner that has been an Auburn landmark for over 130 years. After their planting in 1937, two massive old-growth oak trees hung over the corner. A tradition developed in which, whenever there was cause for celebration in the Auburn community, the trees were festooned with toilet paper. Also known as "rolling the corner" or "rolling Toomer's," the tradition is often said to have begun when Toomer's Drugs had the only telegraph in the city. During away football games, when employees of the local drug store received news of a win, they would throw the ticker tape from the telegraph onto the power lines. The apocryphal ticker tape origins are frequently taught prospective students and incoming freshman in various orientation activities, though there is zero evidence to support the theory. The corner likely first began to be rolled at least semi-regularly in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The massive celebration at Toomer's Corner following Auburn's win in the 1972 Iron Bowl (the so-called "Punt, Bama, Punt" game) is often cited as the first time the corner was rolled; however, by that time fans had been rolling the corner for at least a year. Mainly used as a way to celebrate football victories, the tradition became a way to celebrate anything good that happened involving Auburn. The Student Government Association worked with the City of Auburn to bring pep rallies on the plains back to Toomer's Corner during football season. On January 27, 2011, a caller to the Paul Finebaum Radio Network who identified himself as "Al from Dadeville" claimed to have poisoned the oaks at Toomer's Corner with Spike 80DF, a potent commercial herbicide containing tebuthiuron, after Auburn's defeat of Alabama in the 2010 Iron Bowl. Subsequent soil tests showed high concentrations of the poison around the trees, and experts did not expect them to survive. There was also some concern about the possibility of the poison affecting the groundwater, but, on April 19, 2011, the University announced that tests of the groundwater had determined that it was safe. After an investigation, Auburn city police, on February 17, 2011, arrested Harvey Updyke Jr., a 62-year-old man from Dadeville, and charged him with criminal mischief, a class C felony in Alabama. A grand jury subsequently indicted him on four felony charges and two misdemeanor charges. Updyke originally pleaded an insanity defense, but, on March 22, 2013, as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal damage of an agricultural facility. The prosecutors dropped all other charges. Updyke was fined $1,000 and was given a three-year "split sentence" of imprisonment. Under the terms of the split sentence, he had to serve six months in jail and would then be on five years of supervised probation. He was given credit for 104 days of time already served. The conditions of his probation included a 7 p.m. curfew and bans on talking to the news media, entering the Auburn campus, or attending a college sporting event. Updyke was released from jail on June 10, 2013. Tree experts worked for more than two years to save the Toomer's oaks, but, in the end, the efforts were not successful. On April 23, 2013, the two trees were cut down. Three days earlier, Auburn fans "rolled" the trees for a final time. Wood from the trees was made into keepsakes, and royalties from the sales of the keepsakes were earmarked for a special scholarship fund for Auburn students. A bowl that was also made from the wood was placed in the University art museum's permanent collection. In November 2014, the University announced it would plant two new full grown oak trees in the spot the original trees stood, and additionally would plant thirty oaks descended from the original trees along a walkway approaching Toomer's Corner. The new trees would be planted in February 2015, and would be given at least one year to acclimate before the toilet paper rolling tradition would resume. Aubie. Aubie is the official tiger mascot of Auburn University. Aubie is an anthropomorphic tiger. Aubie has very animated characteristics such as his strut walk, quick turns, and exaggerated pointing. His style is to mix tiger and human traits such as using props, riding a moped, leading the band, and performing clownish pranks. Aubie made his debut in 1979 and is a popular beloved character among Auburn fans and one of the more animated mascots in the country. Aubie has won a record nine mascot national championships (his latest coming in 2016), more than any other mascot in the United States. Aubie was named the 2014 Capital One Mascot of the Year and was among the first three college mascots inducted to the Mascot Hall of Fame, inducted on August 15, 2006. Birmingham artist Phil Neel first drew the cartoon tiger Aubie in the late 1950s. From 1958 through 1976, Aubie was featured on the cover of all of Auburn's home football game programs. In 1979, James Lloyd, spirit director for the Auburn Student Government Association, brought Aubie to life when he ordered a man-sized Tiger costume based upon the cartoon and wore it to the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament. Barry Mask became the first official Aubie in 1979-80. Aubie won an eighth Universal Cheerleaders' Association mascot championship on January 17, 2014. Aubie was inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame on August 15, 2006. He was part of the first group of three collegiate mascots inducted. "War Eagle". The Auburn University battle cry is "War Eagle". It originated as an expression of support of Auburn's athletic teams, but today is also commonly used as a greeting between members of the Auburn community. The cry is yelled in unison by spectators for kickoffs of football games and tip-offs of basketball games. In 1930, Auburn gained a live golden eagle mascot, known as "Tiger". Today, the seventh War Eagle, nicknamed "Nova", lives at a raptor center on the Auburn campus, and is featured before football games by a flight in which the eagle circles the stadium before landing at mid-field. Auburn University's website states that the most popular version of the "War Eagle" story dates back to 1892 when Auburn and Georgia met for the first time on the football field. The story tells of a Civil War veteran and his pet eagle he had found on a battlefield and rescued. During the game, the eagle soared into the sky over their field as the Auburn football team simultaneously charged the Georgia end zone and achieved their first, exhilarating win over Georgia. After the Tigers' victory, the eagle suddenly nose-dived, crashed into the field and died. But the "War Eagle" lived on in the hearts and spirits of proud Auburn fans everywhere. Wreck Tech Pajama Parade. The Wreck Tech Pajama Parade was inspired by a prank pulled by a group of mischievous Auburn cadets who, determined to show up the more well-known engineers from Georgia Tech, sneaked out of their dorms the night before the 1896 football game between Auburn and Tech and greased the railroad tracks leading into Auburn. According to the story, the train carrying the Georgia Tech team slid through town and didn't stop until it was halfway to the neighboring town of Loachapoka, Alabama, The Georgia Tech team was forced to walk the five miles back to Auburn and, not surprisingly, was weary at the end of their journey, likely contributing to their subsequent 45–0 loss. USA Today ranked the prank as the second best college football-related prank in history. While the railroad long ago ceased to be the way teams traveled to Auburn and students never greased the tracks again, the tradition continued through 1988 in the form of a parade through downtown Auburn, as students paraded through the streets in their pajamas and organizations built floats. This tradition was recently renewed in 2003 and 2005, when Georgia Tech returned to Auburn's schedule after nearly two decades of absence. Auburn University Marching Band. Founded in 1897, the band has long performed at school football games and pep rallies. The band was awarded the 2004 Sudler Intercollegiate Marching Band Trophy, the nation's highest award for college and university marching bands. The Auburn University Marching Band marched in the United States Presidential Inaugural Parade (for President George W. Bush) in 2005. In 2006, the Auburn University Marching Band had over 375 members, the largest in Auburn University history. The Auburn University Marching Band performed on January 15, 2007 at the Alabama Governor's Inaugural Parade in Montgomery and in 2008 in the St. Patrick's Day Parades in Limerick and Dublin, Ireland. The Tiger Eyes are the "visual ensemble" of the Auburn University Marching Band. The Tiger Eyes are composed of three distinct lines—flags, majorettes, and dancers—that feature complementary choreography. The three lines work for one common visual effect as one ensemble. Tiger Eyes are selected by individual auditions. Other traditions. Callouts. Callouts is a tradition in which members of one of Auburn's many organizations will stand on the back steps of Cater Hall and "call out" the new members of the organization. After being "called out," new members traditionally run up the steps and join the other new members inside Cater Hall. The Student Government Association, Student Recruiters, and Camp War Eagle are just a few of the organizations that participate in the tradition. It is typical for friends and family of the candidates to attend callouts in support. Hey Day. Hey Day is a tradition that takes place in both the fall and spring semesters dedicated to promoting friendliness on Auburn's campus. Students, faculty, and staff wear name tags and say "hey" to those they pass. There is also free food for students and entertainment provided by various campus performance groups. Despite AU officially dating the tradition to the 1950s, it actually started at some point in the 1940s. In 1985, there was a comical, short-lived Hey Day countermovement. Homecoming. Though the 100th anniversary of homecoming at Auburn was celebrated in 2016, Auburn's first homecoming was actually held in 1909 and may have been the first college homecoming celebration in America. Foy Information Desk. The Foy Information Desk is a telephone and walk-in information service provided by the university and is hosted in the new Student Union building. The service has been in continuous operation since the 1950s. At one time, the service was available 24 hours a day, but now is available from 6 am to midnight Central Standard Time. The Foy Information Desk service was initially designed as a resource for Auburn students who were looking for course information, grades, or campus services, but now accepts calls from the general public. In November 2007, Matt Lauer from the "Today Show" placed a call to Foy. The call was part of a feature in "O Magazine" called "Phone numbers that can change your life." The phone number to the Foy Information Desk is (334)844-4244.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44167816

On the Swahili Coast in southern Tanzania lie the ruins of a stone town known as Songo Mnara. The stone town was occupied from the 14th to 16th centuries. Songo Mnara has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with nearby stone town Kilwa Kisiwani. In total, archaeologists have found six mosques, four cemeteries, and two dozen house blocks along with three enclosed open spaces on the island. Songo Mnara was constructed from rough-coral and mortar. This stonetown was built as one of many trade towns on the Indian Ocean. Layout of Swahili Towns. Archaeologists have been analyzing the layout of stone towns on the Swahili coast, mainly focusing on the relationship of the mosques and houses, in order to understand the role of the Swahili coast in Islamic culture, the functions of specific towns, and the complex economic and ritual process of land ownership. Open spaces in towns were used for both functional purposes for social organization. Cemeteries are found both inside and outside the town walls. The layout of Songo Mnara is typical of stone towns along the Swahili coast, though its wall is a unique feature. Excavations. Excavations have helped archaeologists to better understand ways of life at Songo Mnara. Many different areas have been excavated, including several of the more than 40 houses found surrounding the stone town. Trenches were dug in House 44, House 23 outside the houses, by a tomb, and a well. Many different types of artifacts have been found, although few were recovered from within the excavated houses. Archaeologists carefully mapped and recorded their finds. House 44 was an important area of research because of the complexity of the rooms and the fact that it was an individual's house. This house had excavations in each room, each trench having a different number. There was a 1 x1 m test unit on the southwest room, dug slowly because of the layers of ceramics. This excavation stopped when they hit the level of plaster underneath the floor. There was another located on the south-west side of the house which was approximately 4 x 2.25m. There were also ceramics found in this room. The next room was in the center of the house, where they found plaster and coral among the layers of rubble. In this room, they stopped excavations at the plaster floor. There were also excavations done at entrance room, southeastern room, and the back room of the house. The ceramics found at house 44 were from the 15th century. House 23 is located in the southwestern corner of Songo Mnara. Due to time constraints, this house only had samples taken from it instead of excavating it completely. A 4 x 1m unit was put in the courtyard of the house. During excavations, steps were uncovered, along with floor made out of coral bedrock. The next room was a central room which had a 2 x 2m unit placed. There was no plaster floor like what was found at House 44. Houses 31, 40, and 34 were excavated during the 2011 field school at Songo Mnara. Preliminary research was done during a field school in 2009. There were six areas within the house that the archaeologists did during the 2009 excavations of the houses at Songo Mnara. Once again plaster floors were found at each house and artifacts were present. Ceramics were found at one of the front entrances tested to be showing a lot of activity. The back room that was tested did not show the activity the front rooms did because they were too tidy compared to the front room. During this field school, Kilwa-type coins were found under the floor. All the information found at these houses showed not only was the open space shared, but the houses were also shared at the site. During the 2009 field school, there were excavations done on the open spaces of Songo Mnara. All the activity is laid out by the structures that make the private space separate from the public space. When looking at it archaeologically, there is an abundance of activity found in layers of ceramics and other artifacts. Coins were also found in the open areas, thinking of all the open areas that are there as open areas are used for activities that area found normally to be outside. For the 2011 field school at Songo Mnara, the open area was also looked at by shovel test pits, this time looking at what the soil could tell a person about the site. There were also trenches dug, showing from the artifacts that the areas were related to household activities. During the 2011 field school, mosques were looked at, unlike in the 2009 field school at Songo Mnara. The central mosque was looked at to understand Songo Mnara. Looking at the tombs, it was obvious people cared for those who were buried after they were first buried. Geoarchaeology. Songo Mnara is an island built atop bedrock and sandy subsoil. Its proximity to the epicenter of Kilwa Kisiwani and its limited occupation make it a favorable area for geoarchaeological research. In 2011 soil samples from Songo Mnara were taken, and geoarchaeologists conducted microstratigraphy chemical and phytolith analyses to differentiate what matter was deposited naturally versus what was deposited by human residents. Two open spaces were tested: one at the north end of Songo Mnara, and one at the south end. Samples were also taken from rooms that contained fill, and from the floors of the houses. In samples from house 44 a great number of palm phytoliths were found, which is not a natural occurrence. Public spaces. The research done at Songo Mnara's public space is to see how urban centers can help us understand layouts of cities. Within the wall around the town, there is a great deal of space that does not have any architecture, and a public space. Both graveyards and mosques are also considered a public space. Archaeological testing, phytoliths and micromorphology techniques, are a new way of looking at public space. Seven different locations were looked at when doing this research: the western shoreline and areas associated with wattle and daub housing. These areas hold a large variety of artifacts associated with houses within the open space. When looking at the geochemical data, it was found there was a large amount of human activity in the areas of the western shore and areas associated with the wattle and daub houses. Location three looked at space looking at the public spaces and the cemetery/mosque space. During testing of this area, Iron tools were uncovered in primary context, showing there was iron smithing at Songo Mnara. Location four is graves and tombs in the central area, showing the people memorialized the people who were buried there. For memorializing those buried, there were Kilwa coins in remembrance of the loved one buried there. There were ceramic shards found, which would have been used for offering in remembrance of the buried. Location five is the mosque and graveyard. This section was looked at for how the markers were laid out, along with where the mosques were positioned. The geophysical looked at the soil being good for the burial, and no grave goods were uncovered. The sixth location is the public well area, showing this location is the most private place out of all the areas. There was also a midden when doing excavations around the well with a variety of artifacts. The last place looked at is the northern public space, showing with the phytolith research that there were possible garden plots or orchards in the area. During excavations, a variety of domestic and household items were found in this area because it was so close to the houses. In looking at public spaces at Mnara, there were three different areas of public spaces: organized centers, green space and areas of non-elite members’ areas. Houses as public spaces. Researchers have studied the layout of house 44. The back rooms contained artifacts, but the entrance room only contained traces of palm phytoliths in its soil sample. Each back room showed signs of different activity compare with the open space. Excavations of many other houses follow some of what was seen in house 44. The entrance room in house 31 and a center room in house 23 were different than their corresponding rooms in house 44, partly because house 23 is grander than house 44. The artifacts discovered in each room of each house suggested a different activity. Coins within the middens (refuse heaps) along with burials inside the back room suggest the house was not private, but a public space to do business. This is different than how Swahili coast houses have been researched in the past. The evidence suggests that what played out within a city of trade is showing up in the houses that people live in. This shows there is not always a defined way to determine what is a public space and what is a private space. Kilwa type coins. The coins date from the 11th to 16th centuries. More coins were legible than coins that were not. They were uncovered by excavation trenches across Songo Mnara, mostly in the floor layers. Nāsir al-Dunya, ‘Ali b. al-Hasan, and al-Hasan b. Sulaimān were the types found on the site. The Nāsir al-Dunya was not easy to read due to poor preservation. ‘Ali b. al-Hasan markings make up most of the types of Kilwa coins at Songo Mnara. Coins could have been left on the surface from other people, as they predate when the site was occupied, due to dates earlier than occupation of the location. Trade. Trade on the Swahili coast ranged from China, India and other countries who dealt with trade on the Indian Ocean. When looking at who traded with Songo Mnara, there was evidence of ceramic shards from China and southeast Asia. The Chinese ceramics were blue-and-white porcelain, green-glazed stoneware dating from the 14th century. The Southeast Asian pieces were unglazed and green-glazed stoneware from Thi. Only a small amount of imported goods were found due to the agriculture that was carried out at the site. The ceramics found at Songo Mnara were exchange goods. Documentation with 3D Laser Scanning. Between 2005 and 2009, the Zamani Project documented some of the Swahili ruins on Songo Mnara with terrestrial 3D laser scanning. Structures documented on Songo Mnara include: The palace, the mosque and a number of residential buildings. Some of the textured 3D models, panorama tours, elevations, sections and plans are available on www.zamaniproject.org. External links. Archaeology Magazine article on Songo Mnara: Stone Towns of the Swahili Coast - Archaeology Magazine

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46649375

Anant Maral Shastri (1912–1999) was an Indian freedom fighter, journalist, literary figure, poet, Sanskrit scholar, linguist and bureaucrat. At a very young age, he left Ambikapur, now in Chhattisgarh, and joined Kashi Vidyapeeth, a nationalist institution of learning in Varanasi, where he found a Guru in Acharya Narendra Dev, a great freedom fighter, scholar and teacher. Front-ranking Freedom Fighters. At Kashi Vidyapeeth, Acharya Narendra Deva and Acharya JB Kriplani, both renowned freedom fighters, were Anant Maral's teachers. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who rose to become Prime Minister of India after the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and Kamlapati Tripathi, who later became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, were his contemporaries at Kashi Vidyapeeth. Civil Disobedience Movement 1930-32. There was a two-year period between 1930 and 1932 during the Civil Disobedience Movement, when the British had gagged the press. Anant Maral went underground to evade arrest and published the Congress Bulletin and Congress Samachar from Allahabad. He used to write in his own hand and cut stencils to print copies of the Congress bulletin. He used to go on foot from one village to another to distribute it and carry forward the Congress message. He also served as the Youth League secretary in Varanasi. Ram Bhakti Shakha. After acquiring the Shastri degree, Anant Maral went from Varanasi to Lahore where, after a short stint as a college "Professor", he became Editor of Hindi Milap—a prominent newspaper. By now he was extremely popular in literary circles of Lahore. His well-researched treatise on the Bhakti Movement was published as a book titled "Ram Bhakti Shakha" in Lahore (now in Pakistan) in 1945. It was prescribed as a text book for MA Hindi Literature by the Punjab University during the pre-Independence period. Renowned Hindi scholar, dramatist and former director All India radio, Udayshankar Bhatt wrote the preface of Ram Bhakti Shakha. Quit India Movement and Independence. Anant Maral was arrested and kept at the Patna Camp jail during the Quit India Movement in 1942. Sitaram Kesri, who later became the Indian National Congress President, was one of his cell mates in the Patna Jail. At the time of Independence, he shifted to Delhi from Lahore and joined the Publications Division in Government of India, as editor of "Ajkal"—the highest-circulated and the most popular Hindi magazine during those days. This magazine had become a platform for many budding poets and some of them emerged as India's greatest poets during the second half of last century. "Bhaiyon aur Behnon" (Brothers and Sisters). At Publications Division, Anant Maral also played the key role in compiling and editing Mahatma Gandhi's Prayer Speeches that were recorded earlier by All India Radio. A collection of these speeches was published as "Bhaiyon aur Behnon" (Brothers and sisters). Saluting the Legends. In 1949, Anant Maral Shastri came to Madhya Bharat as Director of Information and Publicity, a post which he also held in Madhya Pradesh after the reorganisation of States in 1956. He remained at the helm and managed the culture scene in this state for a long time (1956–71). During his tenure, two important annual events organised by the State—the famous Tansen Samaroh at Gwalior (music festival to commemorate the memory of Miyan Tansen—one of the nine gems in the court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar) and the Kalidas Kalidas Samaroh (festival) at Ujjain to salute Kalidas, the great Classical Sanskrit poet and dramatist had touched the pinnacle of glory. India's first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad had inaugurated the first Akhil Bharatiya Kalidas Samaroh (National Kalidas Festival) in 1958. Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the chief guest at the second. On this occasion, Nehru was presented with Kalidasa's famous work, Raghuvansh. The epic was especially translated from Sanskrit to Hindi by Anant Maral Shastri for this occasion. It was at the initiative of BV Keskar, the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting (1952–62) that Tansen Samaroh was turned into a national Music festival and has remained a popular platform for maestros to perform. For close to two decades, Anant Maral also spearheaded Madhya Pradesh Shasan Sahitya Parishad and Kala Parishad (State Councils for Literature and Arts). The Tagore Centenary and Alauddin Khan Centenary celebrations as well as the magnificent event organised during the 1960s at Khandwa to honour Makhanlal Chaturvedi, the legendary Hindi Poet, were a high water mark and shall always add to the pride and glory of Madhya Pradesh.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4998666

Deir Hanna (, ) is a local council in the Northern District of Israel, located on the hills of the Lower Galilee, southeast of Acre. In it had a population of . Approximately 90% of Deir Hanna's inhabitants are Arab-Muslims and the remaining 10% are Arab-Christians. Etymology. Several etymologies had been presented including: History. Crusaders. In the Crusader era, Deir Hanna was a fief known as "Berhenne", or "Der Henne". In 1174 it was one of the casalia (villages) given to "Phillipe le Rous". In 1236 descendants of "Phillipe le Rous" confirmed the sale of the fief of Deir Henna. According to architectural researcher Andrew Petersen, no traces of Crusader occupation were found in the village. Ottoman Empire. Deir Hanna became a base for the Zaydānī family in the 18th century, and thus its importance grew with Zahir al-Umar's rise to power during that time. In the early to mid-18th century, Zahir gave his elder brother, Sa'd el-Omar, control of the village and nearby Arraba. The two villages served as the rural stronghold of the Zaydani family, and before taking the port town of Acre, Zahir resided in Deir Hanna and used it as his principal base of operations. Sa'd commissioned the construction of most of Deir Hanna's fortifications and in 1732-33, he built its mosque. When Sa'd died in 1767, Zahir's son Ali requested control over the village, but Zahir refused, earning him Ali's resentment. Following Zahir's defeat and death at the hands of the Ottoman military in 1775, Ali al-Zahir took over Deir Hanna. The Ottoman governor Jezzar Pasha launched a military campaign against Zahir's sons and besieged Deir Hanna. The strength of the village fortress allowed Ali to withstand the siege for several months until Jezzar received reinforcements from the Kapudan Hasan Pasha in July 1776. With the siege intensifying, Ali managed to escape the village and seek safety in Mount Lebanon, settling in the village of Niha. On 22 July, heavy damage to the fort by Ottoman cannon fire forced the remaining defenders to surrender. The surviving defenders of Deir Hanna were expelled from the village with their families by Jezzar, who subsequently demolished large parts of the village's fortress. Sa'd el-Omar is credited with the construction of the village fort's high inner walls, which at the time had 12 towers. Zahir is credited with the construction of the outer walls, while Ali al-Zahir had two towers built off of the eastern and western sides of the fort. Both of the latter towers were separated from the fortress and were meant to serve as additional protection in the event of a siege. The Zaydani mosque of Deir Hanna, before its destruction in 1776, had been the "most famous of all the Zaydani's buildings in the Galilee", according to historian Moshe Sharon. Local tradition claims that the mosque was built on top of an older Crusader-era church and that Jezzar Pasha had been so impressed by Sa'd's mosque, that he copied its design for his namesake mosque in Acre. Local peasants re-inhabited Deir Hanna sometime after Jezzar's assault, but the village did not recover its prominence and no longer posed a threat to Ottoman authority. In 1838, Deir Hanna was noted as a Christian and Muslim village in the "Esh-Shagur" district, located between Safad, Acca and Tiberias. In 1875 Victor Guérin found 40 Muslim and four Greek Orthodox Christian families living in Deir Hanna. In 1881, the PEF's "Survey of Western Palestine" (SWP) described the village and the building works of the Zahir al-Umar era as: "High walls all around the village, which is built of stone. The walls have round towers ..." It is situated on the top of a high ridge, and contains about 400 Christians. It is surrounded by olive-groves and arable land. Water is obtained from cisterns and an old paved birkeh [pool] to the north of the village." A population list from about 1887 showed that Deir Hanna had about 365 inhabitants; 280 Muslims and 85 Catholic Christians. British Mandate. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Dair Hanna had a population of 429; 320 Muslims and 109 Christians, where all the Christians were Orthodox. By the 1931 census the population had increased to 563; 427 Muslims and 136 Christians, in a total of 117 houses. In the 1945 statistics, it had 750 Arab inhabitants; 540 Muslims and 210 Christians, with a total of 15,350 dunams of land. Of this, 2,799 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 5,242 used for cereals, while 38 dunams were built-up land. Israel. During Operation Hiram, 29–31 October 1948, the town surrendered to the advancing Israeli army. Many of the inhabitants fled north but some stayed and were not expelled by the Israeli soldiers. Deir Hanna remained under Martial Law until 1966. Deir Hanna forms the Land Day triangle with Sakhnin and Arraba. The town has been through a thorough modernization process in the last 10 years, and now has a full education system, health care facilities and sports playgrounds. Landmarks. Deir Hanna has a castle from the Zahir al-Umar era. Parts of the castle are still standing, as are the town walls, the old village church and a mosque, and it is considered a tourist attraction.

serious destruction

12342-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21775231

At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 in Liberec, Czech Republic, twelve cross-country skiing events were held with six for men and six for women. The format of the program was unchanged since the 2005 World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. For the men's events, Norway won five of the six events and a total of six medals with Petter Northug winning golds in the pursuit, 50 km and relay events. Ola Vigen Hattestad won two golds in the sprint events (individual and team). The only event the Norwegians did not win was in the 15 km event (Eldar Rønning was the highest finisher at seventh), won by Estonia's Andrus Veerpalu, who became the oldest world champion ever. Norway won only one medal in the women's event with a silver in the pursuit event by Kristin Størmer Steira. Dario Cologna of Switzerland, the overall World Cup leader entering the championships, won no medals, with a best finish of fourth in the individual sprint event. For the women's events, the biggest winners were Finland's Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, the women's overall World Cup leader entering the championships, and Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk, the women's World Cup leader in the distance event, winning four and three medals respectively with golds in five of the six events (three for Saarinen and two for Kowalczyk). The only event not won by either Saarinen or Kowalczyk was the individual sprint which was won by Italy's Arianna Follis. Individual sprint silver medalist Kikkan Randall became the first American woman to medal in cross-country skiing at the World Championships and the second American overall to do so (Lindsey Van had won a gold medal in the women's ski jumping individual normal hill event at the championships four days earlier). Cross country World Cup Sprint leader Petra Majdič of Slovenia won no medals, earning her best finish of ninth in the pursuit event. Nine countries won medals at the championships with Finland winning eight, Norway winning seven, and Germany and Italy each winning four medals. Men's events. Individual sprint freestyle. 24 February. Jens Arne Svartedal of Norway was defending champion, but was eliminated in the quarterfinals at these championships. It was the first individual medal for all three finishers. Team sprint classical. 25 February. Italy's Renato Pasini and Christian Zorzi were the defending champions. Zorzi did not compete, but Pasini did though he was eliminated in the semifinal round with teammate Fulvio Scola. Hattestad and Kjølstad, the gold and silver medalists in the individual sprint event the day before, teamed up to win the gold medal in the team sprint event while Jauhojärvi and Nousiainen earned their first championship medals. Germany beat Finland in a photo finish. 15 km classical interval start. 20 February. A 10 km qualification event took place on the 18th. Norway's Lars Berger was the defending champion, but could not defend his title to his involvement at the 2009 Biathlon World Championships in Pyeongchang, South Korea which was going on at the same time of the Nordic skiing world championships. The top ten finishers in the qualification event advanced to the 15 km event on the 20th. Heikkinen had the fastest time at 5 km while Bauer had the fastest time at 10 km. This was Veerpalu's third medal overall and first since the 2001 championships. The top three qualifiers from the 10 km event finished 66th, 63rd and 65th, respectively. Veerpalu is the oldest world champion ever, having turned 38 earlier that month. 15 km + 15 km double pursuit. 22 February. Germany's Axel Teichmann was the defending champion and would finish seventh in the event. The top three leaders at the classical part were Södergren, Sweden's Johan Olsson (he finished 16th), and Italy's Pietro Piller Cottrer (he would finish 32nd), while the fastest pit time belonged to Finland's Matti Heikkinen. Mathias Fredriksson of Sweden had the fastest time in the freestyle leg to move from 39th at the end of the classical portion to finish 17th. Northug and Södergren earned their first individual medals at the championships. 50 km freestyle mass start. 1 March. Odd-Bjørn Hjelmeset of Norway was the defending champion, but did not participate due to this event being held in freestyle. The lead was different at every interval mark on the official report. At the 12.5 km mark, the three leaders were Austria's Christian Hoffman (he finished 25th), Russia's Alexander Legkov (he would finish 18th), and France's Jean Marc Gaillard (he finished 23rd). By the 20 km mark, the top three were Italy's Pietro Piller Cottrer (who would finish 11th), his teammate Christian Zorzi (would finish 12th), and Russia's Vylegzhanin. The top three at the 27.5 km mark were Zorzi, Switzerland's Curdin Perl (who would finish 27th), and his teammate Remo Fischer (who would finish 19th). With 7.5 km left in the race, the top three were Fischer, Norway's Tord Asle Gjerdalen (who would finish 20th), and 2006 Winter Olympic 50 km gold medalist Giorgio Di Centa of Italy (who would finish fourth). Northug, seventh at the 42.5 km mark, would win his third gold medal at the championships and fourth overall. It was Vylegzhanin's first world championship medal and Angerer's sixth career medal. The top 19 finishers all completed the course in under two hours while the top 22 finishers were separated by no more than 26 seconds at the finish. During the event, Angerer had to change skis. 4 × 10 km relay. 27 February. The Norwegian team of Eldar Rønning, Hjelmeset, Berger and Petter Northug were the defending champions and repeated for the fifth straight time with Hofstad taking Berger's spot on the relay team. Germany's Filbrich had the fastest first leg time with the top three positions at the first exchange being Germany, Canada (who would finish fifth), and Estonia (who would finish eighth). Jauhojärvi of Finland has the fastest second and in the classical style to move his country from fifth to second at the second exchange. The leader at the second exchange was Germany with Estonia being third. Italy's Pietro Piller Cottrer had the fastest third leg, moving his team from tenth to fifth (The Italians would finish fourth.) with leaders at the third exchange being Germany, Norway and Finland. France's Emmanuel Jonnier had the fastest anchor time and freestyle technique time to move the French from 12th to ninth. Norway's Northug used his leg to move past Germany to win the gold. Women's events. Individual sprint freestyle. 24 February. Norway's Astrid Jacobsen was the defending champion, but did not make past the qualifying round. It was Follis's first gold medal at the championships. Randall became the first American woman to medal in cross country skiing at the championships while Muranen, the 2001 champion under her maiden name Manninen, became the first woman to medal in this event twice in the championships. Fourth-place finisher Natalya Matveyeva of Russia would be banned for doping on 23 December 2009 though she had tested positive at the 2010 Winter Olympic test event at Whistler Olympic Park in Canada which were held a month prior to the world championships. The results were changed as of 20 March 2010 to show Matveyeva's doping disqualification. Team sprint classical. 25 February. Finland's Riitta-Liisa Roponen and Virpi Kuitunen were the defending champions. Kuitunen defended her title with Aino-Kaisa Saarinen. The Finns led at every exchange until the last rounds at the finish to win by 20 seconds. This event was Saarinen's third medal at these championships. Anna Olsson earned her first championship medal while Andersson, Longa and Follis earned their second medals at these championships. 10 km individual classical interval start. 19 February. A 5 km qualification for this event took place on the 18th. Organizing Committee chair Katerina Neumannová of the Czech Republic is two-time defending champion, but retired after the 2006–07 season. The top ten finishers of the 5 km event advanced to the 10 km event on the 19th. Saarinen won her first individual gold medal as a follow-up to her relay gold medal at the previous championships in Sapporo, leading at all time marks. Longa and Kowalczyk both earned their first medals at the championships. The top three 5 km qualifiers, Smyth, Li and Kashiwabara, finished 51st, 55th, and did not start respectively. Pursuit 7.5 km classical + 7.5 km freestyle. 21 February. Russia's Olga Zavyalova was the defending champion though she only finished 34th at this year's championship. The top three after the classical part of the event were Saarinen, Italy's Marianna Longa, and Steira, while the top three during the pit portion were Saarinen, Longa, and Valentina Shevchenko of the Ukraine. Kowalczyk and Saarinen switched medal positions from the 10 km event two days earlier. 30 km freestyle mass start. 28 February. Finland's Kuitunen was the defending champion, but did not finish the event at this championships, having dropped out after the 15 km mark. The top three leaders at 7.5 km were Therese Johaug (who would finish fourth) and Kristin Størmer Steira (who would finish fifth) (both of Norway) and Kowalczyk. At 15 km, the top three were Steira, Johaug, and Finland's Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (who would finish seventh). At 22.5 km, the top three were Steira, Kowalczyk and Saarinen. Kowalczyk pulled away at the last 7.5 km to win her second gold medal by 8.8 seconds and third overall at the championships. Medvedeva, Shevchenko and Johaug had a fight to finish with Johaug losing the bronze by 0.6 seconds. It was Medvedeva's and Shevchenko's first individual championship medals. 4 × 5 km relay. 26 February. The Finnish team of Kuitunen, Aino-Kaisa Saarinen, Roponen and Pirjo Manninen (Muranen since June 2007) were the defending champions and repeated albeit in a different starting order. The top three at the first exchange with Poland (who would finish sixth), Finland and Russia (who finished eighth), with Poland's Justyna Kowalczyk having the fastest first leg. Finland's Kuitunen had the fastest time in the classical technique and the second leg to propel her team from second to first with Norway (who would finish fourth) and Japan (who finished seventh) rounding out the top three at the second exchange. Germany's Gössner had the fastest time of the third leg, moving her team from sixth to fourth. At the third exchange, the top three teams were Norway, Finland and Poland. Sweden's Kalla had the fastest time in the freestyle technique and the anchor leg to propel her team from sixth to the bronze medal, losing the silver to Germany by 0.4 seconds. Saarinen of Finland won the gold by 13.0 seconds.

next engagement

413-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=408381

Anal beads are a sex toy consisting of multiple spheres or balls attached together in series which are continuously inserted through the anus into the rectum and then removed with varying speeds depending on the desired effect. Design. Anal beads are available in many sizes, with individual beads measuring from 25 mm in diameter to 125 mm diameter or larger. Most users enjoy beads of approximately 45 mm, but some will become more adventurous with experience, and try larger sizes. Anal beads are commonly made of silicone, plastic, rubber, latex, glass or metal and end with a ring or similar handle designed for pulling. The purpose of this ring is to prevent the beads from becoming fully lodged in the rectum, and to ease removal. The beads may either be joined flexibly, requiring individual insertion, or by a semi-rigid thin shaft, allowing anal insertion in a single motion. The many nerve endings of the sphincter provide arousal both during insertion and removal, and larger beads may create feelings of pressure while in the rectum. Some anal beads are enhanced with vibration technology. Use. Anal beads can be incorporated into many fetishes that involve anal sex, ass worship, spanking, enemas or anything involving the buttocks, anus, or the anal area. As with all anal sexual activity, the anal beads and the rectum should be well-lubricated with a sexual lubricant intended for anal sex. It is important to do this as the rectum can be easily ripped, torn or injured. Anal sex toys should be well washed with warm soapy water and left to dry naturally after use. Alternatively, they can be placed inside a condom, which is recommended if they are shared with a partner. Care must also be taken to count the beads before and after use to ensure they are all removed from the anus. Strings have reportedly broken during intense rectal movements. If a bead gets stuck in the rectum and cannot be expelled naturally, medical intervention may be necessary. Safety. If the beads are threaded onto a string, which is a porous material, they cannot be fully disinfected. They should not be shared between partners without using a physical barrier such as a latex or neoprene condom to prevent the transfer of faeces. Sharing unsterilized anal toys can expose users to various sexually transmitted diseases. Further reading.

lone movement

2432-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14759868

Semaphorin-3A is a protein that in humans is encoded by the "SEMA3A" gene. Function. The SEMA3A gene is a member of the semaphorin family and encodes a protein with an Ig-like C2-type (immunoglobulin-like) domain, a PSI domain and a Sema domain. This secreted Sema3A protein can function as either a chemorepulsive agent, inhibiting axonal outgrowth, or as a chemoattractive agent, stimulating the growth of apical dendrites. In both cases, the protein is vital for normal neuronal pattern development. Semaphorin-3A is secreted by neurons and surrounding tissue to guide migrating cells and axons in the developing nervous system. Axon pathfinding is the process by which neurons follow very precise paths, sends out axons, and react to specific chemical environments to reach the correct endpoint. The guidance is critical for the precise formation of neurons and the surrounding vasculature. Guidance cues, such as Sema3A, induce the collapse and paralysis of neuronal growth cones during development of the nervous system. This guidance cue for axons of neurons is signaled through receptor complexes containing Neuropilin-1 (NRP1) and a co-receptor. One of the first identified intracellular messenger required for the growth cone-collapse induced by Sema3A is the CRMP protein called CRMP2. In addition to its role in the nervous system, Sema3A also acts as an inhibitor of angiogenesis, the process by which new blood vessels develop. Clinical significance. The protein Sema3A is highly expressed in scar tissue after traumatic central nervous system injuries, such as spinal cord injury. Sema3A, and the other class 3 semaphorins, contributes to the failure of neuronal regeneration after CNS injury by regulating axonal re-growth, re-myelination, re-vascularisation, and the immune response. Increased expression of Sema3A is associated with schizophrenia and is seen in a variety of human tumor cell lines. Also, aberrant release of this protein is associated with the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, the terminal Schwann cells of ALS mice (SOD1 mutant) express Sema3A at fast-fatigable fiber neuromuscular junctions greater than wild-type mice. This expression is greatest pre-symptomatically corresponding to ALS progression in which fast-fatigable fiber denervation precedes clinical symptoms. Because Sema3A is involved in growth cone collapse and axon pruning and repulsion, it potentially holds a causal relationship to synaptic weakening and denervation that precedes motor neuron apoptosis in ALS.

exact construction

12065-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23925170

The Xiling Seal Art Society () is a Chinese arts organisation based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, PRC. It was founded in 1904 but, with antecedents dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, is one of China's most important traditional stone seal engraving associations. Alternative names. Other possible translations include the Xiling Seal Society, Hsi-ling Seal Society, Xiling Seal Engraving Society, Xiling Seal Engraver's Society, or Xiling Epigraphy Society. History. Pre-society history. During the Yuan dynasty the most famous seal engraver was the scholar and artist Wang Mian, who is credited with first using soft stone for seal making. During the Ming and Qing dynasties seal engraving flourished in China, especially in the Yangtze River Delta region, where there was a continuous rich artistic tradition. There were many different schools of seal making and many independent artists specialized in seal cutting, seal script calligraphy, and the selection of seal stones. In South China, the three major schools of seal engraving during these periods were the "Hui School" (whose artists mainly came from current Anhui Province), the "Zhe School" (whose artists mainly came from current Zhejiang Province), and the "Hai School" (which was mainly developed in Shanghai, and whose major artists came from current Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces). The Hui School was already a mature seal engraving school as early as the Ming dynasty, especially during the Jiajing and Wanli eras. The most famous seal makers during the early phase of this school were Xiu Ning (休宁) and He Zhen, who were active in the mid–late Ming dynasty. During the Kangxi-Yongzheng-Qianlong era of the Qing dynasty the second climax of this school appeared, and the most typical representative artist during this period was Cheng Sui from She County, Anhui. In the late Qing dynasty this school had its third climax of development and influenced engravers from outside Anhui. Typical figures of this third phase were Huang Shiling (黄士陵), Yi Dachang (易大厂), Qiao Dazhuang (乔大壮), Wang Fu'an (王福庵), and Li Yisang (李尹桑). The Zhe School () first became famous and influential during the Qianlong era of the Qing dynasty. The main founder of this school was Ding Jing (). Ding made his school the dominant seal engraving school during his time. Because Ding was a native of Xiling and active in Xiling for a long time, a society was later formally organized with its headquarters in Xiling named the Xiling Seal Society. Ding's most accomplished students were Jiang Ren (蒋仁), Huang Yi (黄易), Xi Gang (奚冈), Chen Yuzhong (陈豫钟), Chen Hongshou (陈鸿寿), Zhao Zhishen (赵之琛), and Qian Song (钱松), who are now widely regarded as the Eight Masters of Xiling. The Hai School or "Shanghai School" of seal arts is the most recent school and mainly started developing during the late Qing dynasty. This school in fact combined different styles of previous schools, especially those artistic elements of the Hui and Zhe Schools. It's mainly considered as a modern school of seal art. Early important artists from this school are Qian Shoutie (钱瘦铁), Wu Hufan (), Huang Baoyue (黄葆戉), Bai Jiao (白蕉), Ma Gongyu (马公愚), Qin Bomo (秦伯未), Hua Ji'an (华笃安), Zhu Hongda (朱鸿达), Wu Zhongjiong (吴仲坰); Tang Linze (汤临泽), Chen Zili (陈子彝), Qin Kangxiang (秦康祥), Wu Youqian (吴幼潜), Jin Tiezhi (金铁芝), Zhi Ci'an (支慈庵), Lai Chusheng (来楚生), Hou Fuchang (侯福昌), and Gao Luoyuan (高络园). Establishment of the society. Before the establishment of the society there were many local or small-sized organizations or artists groups existing, especially in Zhejiang and Shanghai, however, it was not formally registered nor recognized by the government (nonofficial). The seal artists from different schools and places first founded the Xiling Seal Society as a large/national and academic society of learning, research, and art in 1904. The first board of directors included Ding Ren (丁仁), Wang Shi (王禔), Wu Yin (吴隐), and Ye Ming (叶铭). The first President of the society was Wu Changshuo (), a famous scholar, calligraphist, painter, seal maker, and writer from the Hai School. Current situation. The headquarters of the society are located on the western side of Gushan Hill () in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Gushan Hill is an island in the north of West Lake. From the top of the hill people can get a very nice view of the lake and enjoy its beautiful landscapes. To the northeast of Gushan is the famous Bai Causeway () named after Bai Juyi, a famous poet and governor of Hangzhou. To the west is the Xiling Bridge. The society has several museums of seals and seal-related arts on the mountain. It also owns many old buildings mainly built during the Ming and Qing dynasties. There is also a pool and several caves on the mountain. Every year artists get together there to discuss art. The artists are mainly from Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. There are also many exhibitions and activities on the mountain annually. The famous China Academy of Art is also not far from the site of the society. The Zhongshan Park of Hangzhou is quite nearby. The society and its facilities are now listed as one of the Major Sites Protected at the National Level of China.

contemporary academy

1843-2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1229233

Child neglect is a form of abuse, an egregious behavior of caregivers (e.g., parents) that results in a deprivation of child of their basic needs, including the failure to provide adequate supervision, health care, clothing, or housing, as well as other physical, emotional, social, educational, and safety needs. All societies have established that there are necessary behaviors a caregiver must provide in order for a child to develop physically, socially, and emotionally. Causes of neglect may result from several parenting problems including mental disorders, unplanned pregnancy, substance abuse, unemployment, overemployment, domestic violence, and, in special cases, poverty. Child neglect depends on how a child and society perceives the parents’ behavior; it is not how parents believe they are behaving toward their child. Parental failure to provide for a child, when options are available, is different from failure to provide when options are not available. Poverty and lack of resources are often contributing factors and can prevent parents from meeting their children's needs, when they otherwise would. The circumstances and intentionality must be examined before defining behavior as neglectful. Child neglect is the most frequent form of child abuse, with children born to young mothers at a substantial risk for neglect. Neglected children are at risk of developing lifelong social, emotional and health problems, particularly if neglected before the age of two years. Definition. Neglect is difficult to define, since there are no clear, cross-cultural standards for desirable or minimally adequate child-rearing practices. Research shows that neglect often coexists with other forms of abuse and adversity. While neglect generally refers to the absence of parental care and the chronic failure to meet children's basic needs, defining those needs has not been straightforward. In "Working Together", the Department for Education and Skills (United Kingdom) defined neglect in 2006 as: ...the persistent failure to meet a child's basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child's health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment); protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger; ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate care-givers); or ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment. It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child's basic emotional needs. Child neglect is commonly defined as a failure by a child's caregiver to meet a child's physical, emotional, educational, or medical needs. Forms of child neglect include: Allowing the child to witness violence or severe abuse between parents or adult, ignoring, insulting, or threatening the child with violence, not providing the child with a safe environment and adult emotional support, and showing reckless disregard for the child's well-being. Other definitions of child neglect are: Summary The definition of child neglect is broad. There are no specific guidelines that determine when a child is being neglected; therefore, it is up to state government agencies and professional groups to determine what is considered neglect. In general, child neglect is considered the failure of parents or caregivers to meet the needs that are necessary for the mental, physical, and emotional development of a child. Child neglect is one of the most common forms of child maltreatment, and it continues to be a serious problem for many children. Child neglect tremendously affects the physical development, mental development, and emotional development of a child causing long term consequences, such as poor academic achievement, depression (mood), and personality disorders. These consequences also impact society, since it is more likely that children who suffered from child neglect will have drug abuse problems and educational failure when they grow up. Types. There are various types of child neglect. Child neglect can also be described by degrees of severity and the responses considered warranted by communities and government agencies. Experience. Children may be left at home alone, which can result in negative consequences. Being left at home alone can leave young people feeling scared, vulnerable and not knowing when their parents are going to return. The frequency and duration of being left at home alone may range from every evening, to several days or even weeks at a time. Also, young children may not be provided with a suitable amount of decent food to eat, which is another form of neglect. Children have reported being provided with moldy food, or not having any food in the house, or they were given an insufficient amount of food. Causes. The causes of child neglect are complex and can be attributed to three different levels: an intrapersonal, an inter-personal/family, and a social/economic level. Although the causes of neglect are varied, studies suggest that, amongst other things, parental mental health problems, substance use, domestic violence, unemployment, and poverty are factors which increase the likelihood of neglect. Children that result from unintended pregnancies are more likely to suffer from abuse and neglect. They are also more likely to live in poverty. Neglectful families often experience a variety or a combination of adverse factors. Intra-personal. At the intra-personal level, the discussion around neglectful parents' characteristics often focuses on mothers, reflecting traditional notions of women as primary caregivers for children. "Neglectful attributes" have included an inability to plan, lack of confidence about the future, difficulty with managing money, emotional immaturity, lack of knowledge of children's needs, a large number of children, being a teenage mother, high levels of stress and poor socioeconomic circumstances. Mental health problems, particularly depression, have been linked with a parent's inability to meet a child's needs. Likewise, substance misuse is believed to play a crucial role in undermining a parent's ability to cope with parental responsibilities. Recent empirical works have also pointed to parental burnout (i.e., chronic lack of parenting resources) as an especially potent mechanism in driving neglectful behavior toward children. While the literature largely focuses on mothers, the role of fathers in neglect, as well as the impact of their absence, remains largely unexplored. There is still little known about whether mothers and fathers neglect differently and how this affects children. Similarly, not much is known about whether girls and boys experience neglect differently. Inter-personal/family. At the inter-personal/family level, a significant number of neglectful families are headed by a lone mother or have a transient male. Unstable and abusive relationships have also been mentioned as increasing the risk of child neglect. The impact of living with domestic violence on children frequently includes either direct violence or forced witnessing of abuse, which is potentially very damaging to children. While the UK Department of Health connects children's exposure to domestic violence to parents' failure to protect them from emotional harm, the notion of "failure to protect" has been challenged as it focuses primarily on the responsibility of the abused parent, usually the mother, who is often herself at significant risk. A recent reform to the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004) has introduced a new offence of causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult, thus reinforcing the notion of "failure to protect". Research on domestic violence, however, has consistently shown that supporting the non-abusive parent is good child protection. There is some indication of the cyclical and inter-generational nature of neglect. A study on childhood abuse and the mother's later ability to be sensitive to a child's emotions showed that mothers with a self-reported history of physical abuse had higher indications of insensitivity and lack of attunement to infants’ emotional cues than mothers with no history of abuse. Although the literature suggests that neglectful parents may have been affected adversely by their own past experiences, more research is needed to explore the link between past experiences of maltreatment and neglectful parenting behaviours. Alcohol and drug abuse in caregivers are important risk-factors for recurrent child maltreatment after accounting for other known risk factors; the increased risk appears to be similar between alcohol and drug abuse. Social/economic. At the social/economic level, the association between poverty and neglect has frequently been made. A study of the maltreatment of children by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children supports the association between neglect and lower socio-economic class. US studies have shown that less affluent families are more likely to be found to maltreat their children, particularly in the form of neglect and physical abuse, than affluent families. Some argue that many forms of physical neglect, such as inadequate clothing, exposure to environmental hazards and poor hygiene may be directly attributed to poverty whereas others are more cautious in making a direct link. Studies have shown that parents in a low socioeconomic level are less likely to purchase resources needed for their children, which makes them experience school failure at a more frequent level. While poverty is believed to increase the likelihood of neglect, poverty does not predetermine neglect. Many low-income families are not neglectful and provide loving homes for their children. However, when poverty coexists with other forms of adversity, it can negatively impact parent's ability to cope with stressors and undermine their capacity to adequately respond to their child's needs. It can also mean that parents who want to work are faced with the choice between being unemployed and leaving their children at home. McSherry argues that the relationship between child neglect and poverty should be seen as circular and interdependent. Where caregiver alcohol abuse is identified, children are significantly more likely to experience multiple incidents of neglect compared with children where this is not identified, as were children where other family risk factors (including markers of socioeconomic disadvantage) are found. Parenting styles. The patterns of repetitive behavior point out that a cycle of violence repeats. Research on correlation between child neglect and parenting styles has shown that those who suffered from parental neglect tend to have problems in relationships as adults. Attachment style of children of abusive parents was less secure compared to children with authoritative caregivers. Children who suffered from physical and emotional abuse are more likely to have insecure attachment, such as preoccupied, dismissive, or fearful. There are three parenting styles that lead to child neglect: authoritarian, permissive, and disengaged styles. Taboo. There is some evidence to suggest that there is a cultural taboo around acknowledging child neglect in one's own family. In one research study parents who accessed a service focused on families where child neglect is a concern never mentioned the word 'neglect' during interviews designed to find out about their experience of the service. In an analysis of NSPCC Childline data, John Cameron, the Head of Helplines reported that many of the neglected children who contacted the line did not use the word neglect and did not indicate that they were being neglected when they first spoke to a member of Childline. Effects. Effects of child neglect can differ depending on the individual and how much treatment is provided, but generally speaking child neglect that occurs in the first two years of a child's life may be more of an important precursor of childhood aggression compared to later neglect, which may not have as strong a correlation. Children who suffer from neglect most often also have attachment difficulties, cognitive deficits, emotional/behavioral problems, and physical consequences as a result of neglect. Early neglect has the potential to modify the body's stress response, specifically cortisol levels (stress hormones) which can cause abnormalities and alter the body's overall health. Research has shown that there is a relationship between neglect and disturbed patterns of infant-caretaker attachment. If parents lack sensitivity to their baby's needs, the baby may develop insecure-anxious attachment. The neglectful behavior the child experiences will contribute to their attachment difficulties and formation of relationships in the future, or lack thereof. In addition to biological and social effects, neglect affects intellectual ability and cognitive/academic deficits. Also, children who suffer from child neglect may also suffer from anxiety or impulse-control disorders. Another result of child neglect is what people call "failure to thrive". Infants who have deficits in growth and abnormal behaviors such as withdrawal, apathy and excessive sleep are failing to thrive, rather than developing to become "healthy" individuals (Barnett et al., p 86).. A study by Robert Wilson, a professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and his colleagues, showed for the first time that children under the age of 18 when they were moderately neglected in some manner by their caregivers had a 3 times likely risk of stroke over those with moderately low levels, after controlling for some common risk factors (they interviewed 1,040 participants ages 55 or older; after years, 257 of them died and 192 were autopsied, with 89 having stroke evidence upon autopsy and another 40 had a history of it). Neglect, bullying, and abuse have previously been linked to changes in the brain's grey matter and white matter and to accelerated aging. For further information, please see the link to the online news story article on the study, from the NBCNews.com Health VITALS blog, by unnamed LiveScience staff. Statistics. In terms of who is reported for neglectful behavior, it is most often women. The higher proportion of females reported for neglect may reflect the social attitude that mothers are responsible for meeting the needs of their children. In recent years, latent issues for child development and for the culture and political economy that are associated with paternal neglect have received more attention, however. Neglecting parents interact less with their children, engage in less verbal instruction and play behavior, show less affection and are involved in more negative interactions with their children, for example verbal aggression. Often parents who neglect their children are single parents or disabled mothers who already have to care for themselves, and therefore the child is an additional stress. This additional stress is often neglected. Family size can contribute to child neglect. If a family has several children, they may not be able to give all the children all the basic necessities needed to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, if the family cannot provide for all their children, children can suffer neglect. Family history can play a role in parents’ neglectful behavior. If parents were neglected as children meaning they learned neglectful behavior from their own parents, they often internalize and believe those behaviors to be the "norm", which results in neglecting their own children (Barnett et al., p. 92). In one study done in 2011, results showed that one in four mothers were neglectful, and neglect was four times as likely with a maternal history of physical abuse in childhood than with no history of maltreatment. Disclosure. Research suggests that most neglected children, even when they are able to talk to a professional about their circumstances, do not use the word 'neglect' and may not even indicate that they are being neglected. It is therefore recommended that professionals are proactive in exploring for and identifying neglect. When neglect is disclosed, action is not always taken. Equally when professionals pass concerns about neglect on to other professionals in the workplace they find those professionals do not always respond. The NSPCC recently reported on the case of a teaching assistant, who contacted the organization with concerns about a particular child. The teaching assistant asked to remain anonymous, fearing that she would be sacked by her school if they were to find out that she'd made the disclosure. Assessing and identifying. Assessing and identifying neglect pose a number of challenges for practitioners. Selecting the right method to identify neglect can be helped by having a clear conceptualization of neglect. Neglect is a process whereby a child experiences developmental delay owing to the fact of not having received sufficient levels of any combination of care, stimulation or nutrition, what collectively can be referred to as nurturance. Given that neglect is a dynamic between the child's development and levels of nurturance, the question in identifying neglect, becomes one of where does one start, with the child's development or with the levels of nurturance? Development focused methods. Some professionals identify neglect by measuring the developmental levels of a child, for if those developmental levels are normal, one can, by definition, conclude that a child is not being neglected. Areas of development that could be measured include weight, height, stamina, social and emotional responses, speech and motor development. All these features go up to make a medical assessment of whether a child is thriving, so that a professional looking to start an assessment of neglect, might reasonably start with information collected by a doctor. Infants are often weighed and measured when seen by their physicians for well-baby check-ups. The physician initiates a more complete evaluation when the infant's development and functioning are found to be delayed. What this suggests is that social work staff could consult medical notes to establish if the baby or child is failing to thrive, as a first step in a pathway towards identifying neglect. If developmental levels are subnormal, then the identification of neglect requires the professional establish if those subnormal levels of development can be put down to the level of nurturance experienced by the child. One needs to discount that the developmental delay was caused by some genetic condition or disease. Starting the assessment by examining the nurturance received by child. Another way of beginning the process of identifying neglect is to identify if the child in question is experiencing a level of nurturance lower than that considered necessary to support normal development. In part, this requires a knowledge of the level of nurturance required by the child to sustain normal development, which might be particular to his or her age, gender and other factors. However, quite how one ascertains what a particular child needs, without referring back to their level of development, is not something theory and policy on neglect is clear about. Furthermore, ascertaining whether a child is getting the requisite level of nurturance needs to take into account not just the intensity of the nurturance, but also, given that the intensity of certain forms of nurturance can carry across time, the duration and frequency of the nurturance. It is OK for a child to experience varying and low levels of certain types of nurturance across a day and from time to time, however, it is not OK if the levels of nurturance never cross thresholds of intensity, duration and frequency. For this reason, professionals are minded to keep detailed histories of care provision, which demonstrate the duration to which the child is exposed to periods of subnormal exposure to care, stimulation and nutrition. Starting the assessment by examining the nurturance provided by the carer or parent. Professionals should focus on the levels of nurturance provided by the carers of the child, where neglect is understood as an issue of the parents' behaviour. Some authors feel that establishing the failure of parents and caregivers to provide care would be sufficient to conclude that neglect was occurring. Action for Children state that, "A child experiences neglect when the adults who look after them fail to meet their needs" clearly defining neglect as a matter of parental performance. This raises the question about what level of nurturance, a carer or parent needs to fall under, to provoke developmental delay, and how one goes about measuring that accurately. The method, which focuses on the stimulation provided by the carer, can be subject to critique. Neglect is about the child's development being adversely affected by the levels of nurturance, but the carers' provision of nurturance is not always a good indicator of the level of nurturance received by the child. Neglect may be occurring at school, outside of parental care. The child may be receiving nurturance from siblings or through a boarding school education, which compensates for the lack of nurturance provided by the parents. Linking development to stimulation. Neglect is a process whereby children experience developmental delay owing to experiencing insufficient levels of nurturance. It has been argued that in principle, this means that when starting an assessment of neglect by identifying developmental delay one needs to then check the levels of nurturance received by the child. Certainly, where guidance on identifying neglect does urge for practitioners to measure developmental levels, some guidance urges practitioners to focus on how developmental levels can be attributed to parental behaviour. However the narrow focus on parental behaviour can be criticised for unnecessarily ruling out the possible impact of institutionalised neglect, e.g. neglect at school. If one starts by concluding that the levels of nurturance received by the child are insufficient, one then needs to consider the developmental levels achieved by the child. Further challenges arise however. Even when one has established developmental delay and exposure to low levels of nurturance, one needs to rule out the possibility that the link between the two is coincidental. The developmental delay may be caused by a genetic disorder, disease or physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Of course the developmental delay may be caused by a mixture of underexposure to nurturance, abuse, genetics and disease. Practical tools for measuring. The Graded Care Profile Tool is a practice tool which gives an objective measure of the quality of care in terms of a parent/carer's commitment. It was developed in the UK. The North Carolina Family Assessment Scale is a tool which can be used by a practitioner to explore whether neglect is taking place across a range of family functioning areas. The NSPCC makes use of the NCFAS in their Evidence Based Decision-making Practice Model, which involves a Society practitioner working alongside the local authorities' assigned social worker to review the functioning of the family in complex neglect cases. Intervention programs. Early intervention programs and treatments in developed countries include individual counselling, family, group counselling and social support services, behavioural skills training programs to eliminate problematic behaviour and teach parents "appropriate" parenting behaviour. Parenting programmes. Video Interaction Guidance. Video interaction guidance is a video feedback intervention through which a "guider" helps a client to enhance communication within relationships. The client is guided to analyse and reflect on video clips of their own interactions. Video Interaction Guidance has been used where concerns have been expressed over possible parental neglect in cases where the focus child is aged 2–12, and where the child is not the subject of a child protection plan. SafeCare. The SafeCare programme is a preventative programme working with parents of children under 6 years old who are at risk of experiencing significant harm through neglect. The programme is delivered in the home by trained practitioners, over 18 to 20 sessions and focuses on 3 key areas: parent-infant/child interaction; home safety and child health. Triple P. Triple P (Parenting Program) is a positive parenting program. It is a multilevel, parenting and family support strategy. The idea behind it is that if parents are educated on "proper" parenting and given the appropriate resources, it could help decrease the number of child neglect cases. When deciding whether to leave a child home alone, caregivers need to consider the child's physical, mental, and emotional well-being, as well as state laws and policies regarding this issue. Effectiveness of intervention programs. Evidence for the effectiveness of intervention programs can be divided into two types. One type is impact studies where the aim of the evaluation is to demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in outcomes on a population, which can be attributed to the intervention. A second type is qualitative studies which aim to illuminate the mechanisms through which program participants can access the resources and help offered in the program to achieve better outcomes. Impact studies. Several interventions aimed at families where child neglect is occurring, have been subject to an impact study. Video interaction guidance. Video Interaction Guidance has been used where concerns have been expressed over possible parental neglect in cases where the focus child is aged 2–12, and where the child is not the subject of a child protection plan. An evaluation of the project demonstrated that VIG produced a significant change in the emotional and behavioural difficulties of the population of children who received the service, and improvement in reported level of parenting and reported parental relationship with their children in the population of parents whose children received the service. The data excludes to parents who failed to complete the programme, parents who completed the programme but decided not to complete evaluation measures, and on some measures parents who completed measures but whose feedback was adjudged to have been positively biased. SafeCare. The SafeCare programme has been provided to families in the United Kingdom where a professional has judged there is a risk of experiencing significant harm through neglect. Outcome data shows that on average families who participated in the evaluation of the programme improved parenting skills and reduced neglectful behaviours. Furthermore, all referrers reported see positive changes in the families they referred, particularly in home safety, parent child interaction and health. However, in the absence of a comparison group it was not possible to attribute the changes to SafeCare. Triple P. Triple P has also been provided to families in the United Kingdom where neglect is a concern. The findings from this service showed that, on average the children who participated in the evaluation experienced improved emotional and behavioural outcomes. However this positive change could not be attributed to Triple P because a control group had not been established. Mechanisms to stop neglect. Qualitative research studies have also illuminated some of the ways in which programs can help individual parents. Social learning theory. Evaluations have demonstrated that in certain cases parents have learned to improve their parenting in the way described by social learning theory. Social Learning Theory suggests people learn by observing behaviours and the positive outcomes associated with them. An evaluation of the Triple P intervention highlighted how many parents were able to improve the way in which they related to their children after having received advice about how to be clear with their children, and in some cases after having tried and seen the effects of such approaches for themselves, first-hand, and often for the first time. Prompted by Video Interaction Guidance, parents–with several children, who traditionally spent time with each of them all-together in a group–started spending one-to-one time with their individual children, oftentimes for the very first time. Some parents also started to do activities with their children, which involved a small element of risk, after having agreed to do them for the first time as part of Video Interaction Guidance. Relationship between practitioner and parent. A common finding across evaluations of programmes designed to help families where neglect is a concern is that the principal factor which influences parents' engagement and perception is the quality of the relationship that they are able to build up with the practitioner delivering the programme. Key factors in helping practitioners engage parents into the intervention include: In the case of Video Interaction Guidance, when parents were asked about their experience of the intervention, parents invariably referred to the care and support provided by the practitioner. Effectively the intervention is experienced as an aspect of the overall relationship of care. Children's responses. There are a variety of ways in which children can act in response to an experience of neglect. Some children attempt to talk about the neglect to their parents. In some cases the parents may respond aggressively or abusively to such attempts to resolve the issue. Some children steal money from their parents' purses in order to feed themselves. Babies are too young to ameliorate parental neglect, however in some cases siblings will step in and take care of them. Some older siblings go without food so that their younger siblings can eat.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1353537

In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are lowercase characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight, close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technically not a case-transformation, but a substitution of glyphs, although the effect is often simulated by case-transformation and scaling. Small caps are used in running text as a form of emphasis that is less dominant than all uppercase text, and as a method of emphasis or distinctiveness for text alongside or instead of italics, or when boldface is inappropriate. For example, the text "Text in small caps" appears as text in small caps in small caps. Small caps can be used to draw attention to the opening phrase or line of a new section of text, or to provide an additional style in a dictionary entry where many parts must be typographically differentiated. Well-designed small capitals are not simply scaled-down versions of normal capitals; they normally retain the same stroke weight as other letters and have a wider aspect ratio for readability. Typically, the height of a small capital glyph will be one ex, the same height as most lowercase characters in the font. In fonts with relatively low x-height, however, small caps may be somewhat larger than this. For example, in some Tiro Typeworks fonts, small caps glyphs are 30% larger than x-height, and 70% the height of full capitals. To differentiate between these two alternatives, the x-height form is sometimes called petite caps, () preserving the name "small caps" for the larger variant. OpenType fonts can define both forms via the "small caps" and the "petite caps" features. When the support for the petite caps feature is absent from a desktop-publishing program, x-height small caps are often substituted. Many word processors and text-formatting systems include an option to format text in caps and small caps, which leaves uppercase letters as they are, but converts lowercase letters to small caps. How this is implemented depends on the typesetting system; some can use true small caps glyphs that are included in modern professional font sets; but less complex digital fonts do not have small-caps glyphs, so the typesetting system simply reduces the uppercase letters by a fraction (often 1.5 to 2 points less than the base scale). However, this will make the characters look somewhat out of proportion. A work-around to simulate real small capitals is to use a version of the small caps generated by such systems, to match well with the normal weights of capitals and lowercase, especially when such small caps are extended about 5% or letter-spaced a half point or a point. Uses. Small caps are often used in sections of text that are unremarkable and thus a run of uppercase capital letters might imply an emphasis that is not intended. For example, the style of some publications, like "The New Yorker" and "The Economist", is to use small caps for acronyms and initialisms longer than three letters—thus "U.S." and "W.H.O." in normal caps but "nato" in small caps. The initialisms ce, bce, am, and pm are often typeset in small caps; see 12-hour clock#Typography. In printed plays and stage directions, small caps are usually used for the names of characters before their lines. French and some British publications use small caps to indicate the surname by which someone with a long formal name is to be designated in the rest of a written work. An elementary example is Don Quixote de La Mancha. Similarly, they are used for those languages in which the surname comes first, such as the Romanization Mao Zedong. In many versions of the Old Testament of the Bible, the word "Lord" is set in small caps. Typically, an ordinary "Lord" corresponds to the use of the word "Adonai" in the original Hebrew, but the small caps "Lord" corresponds to the use of "Yahweh" in the original; in some versions the compound "Lord God" represents the Hebrew compound "Adonai Yahweh". In zoological and botanical nomenclature, it is common use to print names of the family group in small caps. In Computational complexity theory, a sub-field of Computer science, the formal names of algorithmic problem, e.g. MᴀxSAT, are sometimes set in small caps. Linguists use small caps to analyze the morphology and tag (gloss) the parts of speech in a sentence; e.g., "The Bluebook" prescribes small caps for some titles and names in United States legal citations. In many books, when one part of the book mentions another part of the same book, or mentions the work as a whole, the name is set in small caps (sometimes typesetting small caps after transforming to Title Case), not italics and not roman type within quotation marks. For example, articles in "The World Book Encyclopedia" refer to the encyclopedia as a whole and to the encyclopedia's other articles in small caps, as in the "Insurance" article's direction, at one point, to "See Nᴏ-Fᴀᴜʟᴛ Iɴsᴜʀᴀɴᴄᴇ", "No-Fault Insurance" being another of the encyclopedia's articles. Criticism. George Eliot's 1856 essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" is critical of Victorian novelists for using excessive small caps and italics to indicate unnecessary emphasis. History. Research by Margaret M. Smith concluded that the use of small caps was probably popularised by Johann Froben in the early 16th century, who used them extensively from 1516. Froben may have been influenced by Aldus Manutius, who used very small capitals with printing Greek and at the start of lines of italic, copying a style common in manuscripts at the time, and sometimes used these capitals to set headings in his printing; as a result these headings were in all caps, but in capitals from a smaller font than the body text type. The idea caught on in France, where small capitals were used by Simon de Colines, Robert Estienne and Claude Garamond. Johannes Philippus de Lignamine used small caps in the 1470s, but apparently was not copied at the time. Small capitals are not found in all font designs, as traditionally in printing they were primarily used within the body text of books and so are often not found in fonts that are not intended for this purpose, such as sans-serif types which historically were not preferred for book printing. "Fonts in Use" reports that 's Maxima (1970), for Typoart, was "maybe the first sans serif to feature small caps and optional oldstyle numerals across all weights." (Some caps-only typefaces intended for printing stationery, for instance Copperplate Gothic and Bank Gothic, were intended to be used with smaller sizes serving as small capitals, and had no lower case as a result.) Italic small capitals were historically rare. Some digital font families, sometimes digitisations of older metal type designs, still only have small caps in the regular or roman style and do not have small caps in bold or italic styles. This is again because small caps were normally only used in body text and cutting bold and italic small caps was thought unnecessary. An isolated early appearance was in the Enschedé type foundry specimen of 1768, which featured a set cut by Joan Michaël Fleischman. (Bold type did not appear until the nineteenth century.) In 1956, Hugh Williamson's textbook "Methods of Book Design" noted that "one of the most conspicuous defects" of contemporary book faces was that they did not generally feature italic small capitals: "these would certainly be widely used if they were generally available". Exceptions available at the time were Linotype's Pilgrilm, Janson and their release of Monotype Garamond, and from Monotype Romulus. More have appeared in the digital period, such as in Hoefler Text and FF Scala/Scala Sans. Computer support. Fonts. The OpenType font standard provides support for transformations from normal letters to small caps by two feature tags, codice_1 and codice_2. A font may use the tag codice_1 to indicate how to transform lower-case letters to small caps, and the tag codice_2 to indicate how to transform upper-case letters to small caps. Word processors. Professional desktop publishing applications supporting genuine small caps include Quark XPress, and Adobe Creative Suite applications. Most word processing applications, including Microsoft Word and Pages, do not automatically substitute true small caps when working with OpenType fonts that include them, instead generating scaled ones. For these applications it is therefore easier to work with fonts that have true small caps as a completely separate style, similar to bold or italic. Few free and open-source fonts have this feature; an exception is Georg Duffner's EB Garamond, in open beta. LibreOffice Writer started allowing true small caps for OpenType fonts since version 5.3, they can be enabled via a syntax used in the Font Name input box, including font name, a colon, feature tag, an equals sign and feature value, for example, codice_5, and version 6.2 added a dialog to switch. Unicode. Although small caps are allographs of their full size equivalents (and so not usually "semantically important"), the Unicode standard does define a number of "small capital" characters in the IPA extensions, Phonetic Extensions and Latin Extended-D ranges (0250–02AF, 1D00–1D7F, A720–A7FF). These characters, with official names such as , are meant for use in phonetic representations. For example, ʀ represents a uvular trill. They should not normally be used in other contexts (the 'normal' character set should be used with suitable formatting controls as described in the preceding sections). As of Unicode 13.0, the only character missing from the ISO basic Latin alphabet is the small-capital version of X. The following table shows the existing Unicode small capital characters from the ISO basic Latin alphabet as used in IPA: Additionally, a few less-common Latin characters, several Greek characters and a single Cyrillic character used in Latin-script notation (ᴫ, small capital Л) also have small capitals encoded: Since these glyphs come from different code ranges, they may not display the same size and style, because few typefaces supply all of them. In Unicode standards. The Unicode Consortium has a typographical convention of using small caps for formal Unicode character names in running text. For example, the name of U+0416 Ж is conventionally shown as . Cascading Style Sheets. Small caps can be specified in the web page presentation language CSS using . For example, the HTML renders as Since the CSS styles the text, and no actual case transformation is applied, readers are still able to copy the normally-capitalized plain text from the web page as rendered by a browser. CSS3 can specify OpenType small caps (given the 'smcp' feature in the font replaces glyphs with proper small caps glyphs) by using , which is the recommended way, or , which is (as of May 2014) the most widely used way. If the font does not have small-cap glyphs, lowercase letters are displayed. renders as Computer support for petite caps. Fonts. The OpenType font standard provides support for transformations from normal letters to petite caps by two feature tags, codice_6 and codice_7. A font may use the tag codice_6 to indicate how to transform lower-case letters to petite caps, and the tag codice_7 to indicate how to transform upper-case letters to petite caps. Desktop publishing applications, as well as web browsers, can use these features to display petite caps. However, only a few currently do so. LibreOffice can use the method. Cascading Style Sheets. As of September 2018, there is no specific support for petite caps in web pages using the CSS Fonts Module Level 3 by the W3C, but can be specified by using font-feature-settings: 'pcap';. If the font does not have petite-cap glyphs, lowercase letters are displayed.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38456035

Jackass Investing: Don't do it. Profit from it. is a book written by Michael Dever published by Ignite LLC in 2011. Dever is the founder and CEO of Brandywine Asset Management, Inc., an investment management firm founded in 1982. The book has also been released under the title Exploiting the Myths: Profiting from Wall Street's misguided beliefs. Overview. "Jackass Investing" is a best-selling investment book that challenges conventional investment wisdom and presents an entirely new system of thought. The book describes 20 common investment myths and explains why each is a myth and not a fact. The book is based on the trading philosophy of author Michael Dever. Dever's trading philosophy is based on broad strategy and market diversification. According to Dever, the definition of "Jackass Investing" is taking unnecessary risk. The book was published in 2011, but Dever initially developed the idea for the book in 1999. He decided to write "Jackass Investing" to systematically refute major investment myths by presenting the truth. He believes that most investment professionals preach similar "myths" that prohibit investors from creating truly diversified portfolios. Dever introduces the concept of "return drivers" and explains how to use them to create trading strategies, which are the components necessary to create a truly diversified portfolio. A return driver is the core underlying reason that drives the price of a market. The Myths. The "myths" include the following:

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